Transfat Ban

No doubt most of you have heard by now of the FDA's plans to ban transfats .  I've had a few reporters ask about my thoughts on the issue, so I thought it would be useful to pass them along here.

First, from my reading of the research (and I will admit to being no expert on the issue), it does seem that consumption of "synthetic" transfats have deleterious health effects.  Interestingly, however, a few studies show that "natural" transfats from animal sources may not be as unhealthy, despite having similar chemical compositions as the "synthetic" transfats.  

The question before us isn't whether certain transfats are unhealthy - they are - but rather: what is the government's role in regulating transfats?  The move in recent years to educate the public on the scientific evidence, and even to require labeling of transfats on nutritional facts panels, is reasonable in my opinion given the established safety risks.  And indeed, almost every story I've read on the issue shows that these efforts alone caused a significant voluntary drop in use and consumption of transfats.  The trouble comes when some third party - the FDA in this case - moves from informing public about risks to making the decision for us.  The government has moved from the role of impartial referee conveying the rules of the game to a player in the game picking sides.

Many of the news stories point to the number of "lives saved" if a ban on transfats were implemented.  But, this is misleading when discussed without context.  We could save many more lives each year if the government banned driving.  Many lives could also be saved if we banned alcohol and went back to prohibition.  Skydiving is risky - why not ban that too?  The reasons is that many risk activities convey benefits to the public that must also be considered.  

What are the benefits from the use of tranfats in food?  Taste.  Mouthfeel.  Cost.  Improved shelf life.  What would be the costs of removing transfats?  Higher food prices.  Manufacturers may have to add more sugar or salt or more saturated fat to compensate for the loss of transfats.  The point is that any discussion of the benefits of a ban on transfats must be considered in the context of the costs of the ban.

Even if a ban passed a narrow cost-beneft test, I think we'd also want to ask whether the infringement on freedom of choice can be justified on logical grounds.  Stated differently, where is the market failure? Normally, economists identify market failures if there are price-altering market powers, externalities, public goods, or information asymmetries.  Only the later of these, in my opinion, has any credibility, but with the existence of labels, even that is no justification.  That leaves only one primary motive for the ban: the dim view that the public is unable to properly weight the risks themselves and are in need of paternalistic intervention.  Of course, government officials won't come right out and tell us that their motivation is our perceived ineptitude  because we'd rightly rebel against such a condescending attitude.       

One last point: it seems pretty clear that the provision of information via labels, and resulting consumer demands, induced innovation by food companies to come up with ways to do without transfats.  But, is it possible that a ban could hinder innovation?  As I've already mentioned, all transfats are not created equal.  Is it possible for scientists to develop new fats that convey some of the same beneficial properties as existing "synthetic" transfats without the health risks?  I don't know.  And we may never know if we institute a blanket ban.

Mexico Passes Soda Tax

Friday the Mexican congress passed a nationwide soda and "junk food" tax.  

l've written so much on these sorts of taxes, it is hard to know what more can be said.  I suppose the best, succinct thing I can say is what I sent in a letter to the New York Times, in response to a previous story they ran about the issue:

Writing about a proposed 7.7 cent per liter soda tax in Mexico, Elisabeth Malkin cites a Mexican corner store vendor who doubts the tax will make a dent in sales.  The economic research concurs with this assessment.  Study after study has shown that soda taxes of this magnitude will have trivial effects on weight, and yet will raise revenue from many consumers who can least afford to pay.  For example, my co-authored study in the Journal of Health Economics estimates that a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks would reduce weight by only about two tenths of a pound.  Another study from Cornell University has even found evidence of adverse unintended effects from soda taxes that arise from increased consumption of higher calorie juices or alcohol.  Denmark recently repealed their fat tax for precisely these reasons: complications arising from unintended consequences and consumer backlash. We all want people to lead healthy, fulfilling lives but we must also marry these concerns with the evidence on whether the policies being pursued will actually create the benefits we desire.

This comes on the heels of another "simulation" study was released, this one in the journal BMJ, which concludes:

A 20% tax on sugar sweetened drinks would lead to a reduction in the prevalence of obesity in the UK of 1.3% (around 180 000 people). . . . Taxation of sugar sweetened drinks is a promising population measure to target population obesity, particularly among younger adults.

I suppose the good thing about the Mexican developments is that we can finally put to test the predictions of some of these simulation models.  

FARE Talk

Last week, I recorded a podcast with Brady Deaton, who is a professor of food, agricultural, and resource economics (FARE) at the University of Guelph in Canada. For the past couple years, Brady has been putting out a series of interesting FARE talks on farm policy and other food and agricultural issues.  You can find he full list of interesting podcasts on his website at Guelph.

You can listen to my talk with Brady at the link above or download the podcast at this link.

Food Police Study Guide

With the fall semester fully underway, I've had several people teaching college or high school classes ask if had a study guide available for my book, The Food Police.  I haven't.  Till now. 

I finally took a few minutes to pull together a few questions for each chapter that could be used to help guide discussion.  You can download the study guide (pdf) by clicking on this link. 

If anyone else out there has been using the book and has done something similar (or perhaps even used questions in a book club), and is willing to share, let me know and I'll disseminate.   

The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate

By Jayson Lusk

How Junk Food Can End Obesity

That's the title of a fantastic article by David Freedman in The Atlantic Magazine.   Freedman picked up on some of the main themes in my book - The Food Police but he approaches them from some different angles and he writes about them in a way that (I hope) will have a substantive influence on the food debates.  

Some excerpts: 

An enormous amount of media space has been dedicated to promoting the notion that all processed food, and only processed food, is making us sickly and overweight. In this narrative, the food-industrial complex—particularly the fast-food industry—has turned all the powers of food-processing science loose on engineering its offerings to addict us to fat, sugar, and salt, causing or at least heavily contributing to the obesity crisis. The wares of these pimps and pushers, we are told, are to be universally shunned.

and

In virtually every realm of human existence, we turn to technology to help us solve our problems. But even in Silicon Valley, when it comes to food and obesity, technology—or at least food-processing technology—is widely treated as if it is the problem. The solution, from this viewpoint, necessarily involves turning our back on it.

and

If the most-influential voices in our food culture today get their way, we will achieve a genuine food revolution. Too bad it would be one tailored to the dubious health fantasies of a small, elite minority. And too bad it would largely exclude the obese masses, who would continue to sicken and die early. Despite the best efforts of a small army of wholesome-food heroes, there is no reasonable scenario under which these foods could become cheap and plentiful enough to serve as the core diet for most of the obese population—even in the unlikely case that your typical junk-food eater would be willing and able to break lifelong habits to embrace kale and yellow beets. And many of the dishes glorified by the wholesome-food movement are, in any case, as caloric and obesogenic as anything served in a Burger King.

Read the whole thing.