Blog

Krugman and Steinbeck on Food

In this post a week ago, Paul Krugman compares the 1950s to today.  I'm not sure that I completely agree with his assessment, but one statement with which I wholeheartedly concur is the following:

Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

There is a lot of romantic idealism in food but I'm pleased to see that Krugman hasn't succumbed to that sort of thinking.  If you find yourself wishing for 1950's era food, I offer the following quote from John Steinbeck's book Travels with Charley  (written in the 1960s):

Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.


 

How Many Labels Are Too Many?

One of my bright former students sent me these pictures today.  Are each of these labels actually contributing new information?  What is the company trying to communicate?  Amazing that so much can be claimed on one package! Here are the claims:

1.       Grass-fed 

2.       Organic

3.       Animal-friendly (Certified Humane)

4.       Non-GMO

5.       Real California Cheese

6.       American Cheese Society winner

7.       No artificial hormones or pesticides (written on back)

8.       Milk from local family farms (written on back - ironic since this picture was taken in Illinois and they claim real California cheese)

cheese1.JPG
cheese2.JPG

Constitutionality of Food Labels

Henry Miller from Stanford University's Hoover Institution weights in with a letter to the editor in the WSJ in reference to my most recent op-ed.

Here is a spinet:

Jayson Lusk is correct that radical activists will likely continue their efforts to lobby state governments to require labeling of certain "genetically engineered" foods ("The Food Police Are Routed at the Ballot Box," op-ed, Nov. 20). However, whatever such requirements state legislatures or electorates attempt to impose, those efforts are destined to fail in the courts.
Federal law pre-empts state labeling rules that conflict with FDA policy, which requires labeling only if a food raises questions related to nutrition or safe use. Just last year, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled that a California requirement to label genetically engineered foods "would impose a requirement that is not identical to federal law" and would therefore be pre-empted.

He's probably right with respect to food labels.  I'm not so sure about the fat taxes which I also mentioned in my piece.  

The Ronald McDonald Rule

A reader named Karl alerted me to  a bill (H.R. 6599) introduced by  Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in the  112th Congress.  The official name of the bill is the Stop Subsidizing Childhood Obesity Act.  

The law would:

amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to protect children's health by denying any deduction for advertising and marketing directed at children to promote the consumption of food at fast food restaurants or of food of poor nutritional quality.

I suppose it is less draconian than the ban on childhood advertisements that have been proposed by some, but I'd be amused to see the lobbying that would go on to define "fast food" and "poor nutritional quality" in the unlikely event this makes it out of committee.