Do long, scary-sounding ingredient names on food labels make you wonder what’s in your food and why? This resource provides the answers!
The International Food Information Council has a new publication describing common ingredients found in food.
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The Organic Food Subsidy Myth
Over at Reason.com, Balyen Linnekin offered a thoughtful response to the recent Stanford review showing little difference in the nutritional content of organic and non-organic food. However, toward the end of the article Linnekin repeats a claim about organics that I’ve heard many times:
Finally, consider that organics critics like Cohen and Bailey attack the high cost of organic food while failing to mention that conventional food production—from soy and sugar to beef and dairy—is highly subsidized. Organic food production, on the other hand, is not.
First, for many, many food products including virtually all fruits and vegetables from tomatoes to spinach to oranges to apples, there are no regular government subsidy programs - organic or not. Thus, government subsides cannot explain the high price of organic lettuce compared to non-organic lettuce.
Here is a part of what I had to say about the issue in my forthcoming book, The Food Police (footnotes omitted):
We’re often told organics don’t get government subsidies, but that’s a fabrication. In Europe, organic farmers are subsidized like all other farmers. In the U.S., there are programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program that pay producers to transition from conventional to organic. There are other programs that use federal monies to help organic farmers pay the cost of certification. Organic farmers can receive government-subsidized crop insurance just like non-organic farmers. Organic milk is subjected to many of the same complex price-support rules imposed by the government on non-organic milk. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent on research and education into organics and on marketing and monitoring programs. The food police tell us that the growth in organic food demand is the free market working at its best, while using the taxing power of the state to manipulate the market by subsidizing organic production, marketing, and research activities. You can’t have your organic-is-libertarian cake and eat it too.
Science vs. Consumer Sovereignty in Food
This from a forthcoming book chapter by Wally Huffman and Jill McCluskey:
The scientific consensus is that first-generation GM foods are equivalent to their conventional counterparts. However, on average, consumers want a discount in order to choose first-generation GM products over conventional products. Thus, the public’s perception of risks, rather than scientifically proven risks, that directly affect markets. This brings up the issue of scientific versus consumer sovereignty (Roberts, 1999). Although the scientific consensus is that GM foods are completely safe for consumption aside from potential allergens, it may still be the case that a majority of the population in a given country prefers to avoid GM foods. We find that information provision affect valuation and the source of information matters.
When people are informed about the science of biotechnology, they can become more accepting of GMOs in food. Yet, this is hardly the only (or even the most persuasive) information confronting the food consumer.
Source: Huffman, W.E. and J.J. McCluskey. “Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods.” In P.W.B. Philips, S. Smyth and D. Castle, eds., Handbook on Agriculture, Biotechnology and Development. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming.
The Science of Sugar
Three years ago, this YouTube video of a talk by Dr. Robert Lustig, a Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at UC San Francisco, when viral (to date, the video has 2.7 million downloads). His argument there, and subsequently in prestigious journals like Nature, is that sugar is toxic.
I’m going to be honest, I haven’t invested the time to adequately evaluate the claims made about the biology, endocrinology, and metabology of sugar, but I suspect there is some truth to the argument that some foods are metabolized differently than others – in other words, it is more complicated than just “calories in, calories out” (although this adage is also almost certainly true on some level).
What I do know is that the science of sugar is not nearly as certain as Lustig purports, a fact mentioned by Gary Taubes who is overall sympathetic to his claim (see also the citations in second paragraph of Lustig’s Wikipedia page).
Lustig is an accomplished and well-published scientist. But, what bothers me is the all too common stance of many folks in the medical and public health communities failing to appreciate how little they know when they move to realms beyond their particular academic expertise.
The viral YouTube talk included a beginning slide with the words “Letting Science be the Guide” and Lustig personally began a speech in 2011 by asserting that “Ultimately science should drive policy.” Yet, I find it a bit ironic that neither of these talks seriously discusses the economic science behind the many sugar-recuing policies he supports.
Economic study after study after study after study shows sugar policies (such as sweetened beverage taxes or bans on school vending machines) will only have very small effects on intake and weight. When sodas are taxed (or banned), people can substitute toward other caloric drinks such as fruit juice or alcohol. Moreover, food taxes are regressive - meaning the burden is disproportionately borne by the poor. It is also worth pointing to the economic research on farm policy and sugar production reveals a much more complicated situation than many pundits presume, with the authors showing that the “link between US sweetener consumption and farm policy is weak.”
So the next time you hear someone pronounce that the “government has to get off its ass” because of sugar consumption, I suggest asking what economic science actually says about what will happen when the government moves it’s preverbal backside.
Addendum: One of my colleagues pointed out that the arguments used to claim sugar is addictive (primarily that our body becomes accustomed to a level of intake and requires more and more to achieve a given level of satisfaction) sounds remarkably like the psychologist’s notion of the hedonic treadmill – a phenomenon that is posited to hold for almost all aspects of life.
The Cost of Mandatory GMO Labeling
Not five minutes after posting on the potential effects of mandatory labeling genetically modified foods in California, I came across this release summarizing the recent work of Dan Sumner and Julian Alston, both agricultural economists at UC Davis.
The bottom line: they estimate that Prop 37, if passed, would cost Californian farmers and food processors $1.2 billion.
Although I understand the appeal of the “right to know” argument to the average consumer, what is less clear to me is why labeling of genetically modified food should, on economic grounds, be mandatory. If the information is valuable to consumers, firms and farmers can profit by providing it. And they have!
There are already many voluntary labeling programs consumers can use if they wish to avoid biotechnology including organic and certified non-GMO labels. Of course, these products are more expensive than conventional products – but that’s because they are more costly to produce. But, it simply isn’t true that Californians do not have a choice to buy GMO or non-GMO foods.