Local Food Nonsense

Last night I went to the fridge to grab a bite of cheese.  We have bought the same brand of tasty cheddar cheese for years, but for some reason I've never before noticed all the labels appearing on the package.  There was one label in particular that caught me by surprise. I took a picture of it and posted it below (sorry for the grainy quality!).  

It says "Keep Local Farms.org."  On the front of the package, I can read that the cheese comes from "farm families in New York & New England."  What is the "local" label supposed to mean?  I haven't the faintest idea.  

I'm sure the dairy farmers in New York are fine people.  But, they certainly aren't local to me.  I bought the cheese at Walmart in Stillwater Oklahoma.  A dairy in Mexico is probably closer to me than one in New York.  Other than the taste of the cheese, it isn't at all clear to my why I should prefer to support the dairy farmers in New York as compared to the ones in California or the ones in Oklahoma or Texas.

When I click to the link advertised on the package, I come to a web site promoting dairies in the New England and New York.  That's all fine and good, but what does it possibly have to do with "local"?  Last time I checked, Oklahoma isn't in New Engand!  Maybe they want me to buy their cheese so they can stay where they are - in their locale - irrespective of where I happen to be.  But, I still don't get it.  Why should I care more about keeping them in their locale than keeping anyone else making cheese in Wisconsin, California, or New Mexico (who presumably don't want to move either) in their locale?        

A likely explanation for this label is that the marketers know most people see the word "local" and conjure up all kinds of positive images without much conscious thought.  Yet, when "local" starts being trumpeted as a national cause or brand, it loses some meaning - because my local isn't your local and vice versa.  By all means, tout the merits of cheese from New York or New England but local has nothing to do with it.    

This little example wouldn't be worth mentioning if it weren't symptomatic of a larger problem of a lack of critical thinking among many of those who religiously promote the buy local movement.   

Are Healthy Foods More Expensive?

Are healthy grocery items more expensive than their regular within category counterparts? How do purchases of foods with positive health attributes change given negative unemployment shocks? To answer these questions, I supplement five years of multi-market, multi-chain scanner data with additional information on positive health attributes to create a unique dataset. First, this enables a robust descriptive analysis of the price of products with positive health attributes versus their regular within category counterparts; I find no evidence that products with positive health attributes are systematically more expensive or promoted systematically less.

That's from the job market paper of Jessica Rider in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at UC Berkeley.  

This is an interesting contribution to the debate between some folks at the USDA, who argue that healthy foods are not more expensive, and the work of people like Adam Drewnowski who say the opposite (here is just one example of many news stories on the debate).  

Coca-Cola Fights Back

A remarkably large number of pundits and public health professionals have focused their angst on sugar-sweetened sodas.  The proposals range from soda taxes, bans on large soda sizes, removals of soda machines from schools, to prohibitions against purchases of sodas with food stamps, to vilifying Beyonce for starring in Pepsi commercials (apparently she is no longer up to snuff to sing the National Anthem at Obama's re-inauguration).  It's hard to know how much traction these proposals will ultimately gain, but there does seem to be some concerted effort focused on this issue at present.  (I previously blogged about one of the biggest anti-sugar activists here).

According to this bit on the Fox News Channel, it appears Coca-Cola is (sort of) fighting back.  From the small snippet available in the preview on Fox, it appears their main defense goes something like this: almost all foods, including Coke, have calories; yes, we want folks to lose weight but why single out calories from Coke?  Oh, and we're also developing non-calorie sweeteners.    

I somehow doubt this response will alleviate the angst those who abhor Big Food.  Whether it is convincing to the average consumer is a different question.  Will Coca-Cola's response have any impact?  Hard to say . . .  

Food Socialism

From Bloomberg.com, we learn:

At a bustling food market in downtown Caracas, armed officers belonging to President Hugo Chavez’s National Bolivarian Guard marched by boxes of lettuce and tomatoes, checking prices and storage rooms.

and

“This is the worst it’s ever been, I can’t find any eggs, rice or flour,” Noreli de Acosta, a 55-year-old housewife.  

What is behind it all?

Chavez suffered his only electoral defeat in 2007 when voters narrowly rejected a referendum to change 69 articles of the constitution amid shortages of beef, milk and sugar. He subsequently accelerated the nationalization of farms and food industries. Since taking office in 1999 he’s seized more than 1,000 companies or assets.Capital controls have exacerbated shortages by limiting the amount of foreign currency Venezuelans can obtain to import goods.

Yet, rather than freeing up capital controls, here is what the socialist government is up to:

Last year the government ordered companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) and Unilver Plc (ULVR) to lower the price of shampoo, soap and other personal care products to contain inflationary pressures. Authorities regulate prices for a wide range of products including chicken, cheese and coffee.

The government blames producers and merchants for hoarding products and this week carried out televised raids of warehouses. Among goods confiscated were 9,000 tons of sugar, part of which was imported by a supplier to the local unit of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP)

Shockingly, Chavez supporters are undeterred:

At a nearby poultry store, display cabinets were half empty and one shopper complained that prices were twice what the government mandated.

Morela Tirado, a 53-year-old housewife, said such shortages are only a small inconvenience and have not undermined her support for the Chavez government.

“So you switch meat for chicken, pasta for rice, what’s the big deal? Nobody is going hungry,” said Tirado. “It’s not that there’s no food, you just don’t always get what you want.”

It's too much of a stretch to say that calls for fat taxes, large soda bans, and veggie subsidies will lead to this kind of outcome.  But, I'd at least hope that situations like this in oil-rich Venezuela at least serve as a cautionary tale for those who think we can top-down engineer everyone's weight, health, and eating patterns.  After all, it is hard to imagine that Chavez and his advisers thought their capital controls, import restrictions, price-caps, and confiscations would lead to such bad outcomes.  These were - I'm sure - well meaning (but short sighted) plans to control the economy in one way, all the while forgetting that interventions in one area cause unexpected disruptions in another.    

Who Is To Blame For Obesity?

A recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked people what they thought were major vs minor causes for obesity.  You can find all the issues listed here (see question 3).  The two major reasons were:

People spend too much time in front of TV, video game and computer screens

And

Fast food is inexpensive and easy to find

82% thought the first issue related to TV was a major reason and only 14% thought it minor.  75% thought inexpensive, available fast food a major issue, 17% thought it minor.

Some discussion over at Reason.com suggests that these findings indicate people perceive “technology” as the most blameworthy category.  But, I think the fact that fast-food availability is the 2nd leading cause casts some doubt on this interpretation.

A more direct way to get at the issue of whether people perceive the problem to be one of personal responsibility, nefarious actions of “Big Food,” or the “food environment” is to directly ask.  That’s exactly what we did in the same survey I discussed in my last blog post.  I’m not going into the details much now because they are the centerpiece of a paper we currently have in review, but I will reveal some juicy nuggets.

We asked people to indicate for each of seven entities, whether they thought each entity was primarily, somewhat, or not to blame for the rise in obesity.  Here are the results with the % ascribing primary blame in parentheses.

Individuals (80%)

Parents (59%)

Food manufacturers (35%)

Restaurants (20%)

Government policies (18%)

Grocery stores (10%)

Farmers (4%)

It is remarkable that 80% say individuals are primarily to blame for obesity when one notes that over 69% of adults in the US are overweight or obese according to the CDC. It is comforting to see that people haven’t completely abrogated personal responsibility.