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If people want it, the government must subsidize it

A recent report from the Australian government argues that consumers are taking more responsibility for their health (HT Ellen Goddard).  The evidence used to bolster this claim is the fact that Australians are spending more money on over-the-counter medicines that are not subsidized by the government.  

That use of these unsubsidized "complementary" medicines is on the rise is apparently all the reason that is needed to now subsidize them.  

“The growing contribution of complementary medicines needs to be seen by the government as the impetus for fostering the appropriate proactive policies and for recognising complementary medicines as vital part of a comprehensive Australian health care system.””

This seems to be another example where any government intervention in the name of "public health" is justifiable by definition because it is intended to improve public health. So, the logic seems to be: if people are voluntarily willing to spend more money on an item through the market, then this is evidence that the government needs "appropriate proactive policies" to help people buy the item.  

It is a strange day when one sees the market working well at providing people what they want as evidence that more government intervention is necessary.

Even the Amish grow GMOs

Last week, I was in the grocery store looking for popcorn.  I ran across a brand I'd never seen before that advertised "Amish popcorn."  I gave it a try and it tasted just as good as the heathen brands.

While munching on the tasty treat, a question came to mind: do the Amish use GMO crops?  As far as I know, there are no genetically engineered popcorn seeds on the market, but all those reality shows I see advertised on A&E, Discovery, and the like show hardy field corn and tobacco plants growing alongside the homes of the Amish.

Sure enough, a quick internet search turned up story after story after story revealing that many Amish farmers indeed plant genetically engineered corn or tobacco.  

It seems the Amish have turned the tables on conventional wisdom.  Most consumers are very pro-technology and innovation when it comes to things like cell phones, TVs, and cars, but are often technology-averse when it comes to agriculture. It seems that at least some of the Amish hold exactly the opposite position.  

There is a deep irony in the fact that the Amish farm is something many people idealize - small, family-run operations - that uses a technology that frightens many consumers.  In part it reveals the disconnect between romanticized images of farm life and the reality of the choices made by the flesh-and-blood people who work there.

While it might do well if more people understood more about production agriculture, it seems I could have known a bit more about the Amish before writing this paragraph at the end of a chapter on biotechnology in the Food Police:

“Perhaps we Americans can afford to give up a few comforts and pay more for more “naturally” grown food. But, this return to nature is pure fantasy. Human interactions with nature have altered animals and vegetation in a way that our ancient ancestors could scarcely imagine. The food elite’s vision of the world would return production agriculture to its state a hundred years ago; to a time when food was far less plentiful and in which those who did the back-breaking work of farming lived a meager existence. We might like to visit the Amish but few are clamoring to convert.”

It seems that the at least some of the Amish are more technologically progressive than I gave them credit for.  In fact, in this one dimension, they are more technologically progressive than many Americans.

 

 

What drives ingredient-based food fears?

That was the question asked in this article just published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.  The authors, Brian Wansink, Aner Tal, and Adam Brumberg surveyed over 1,000 mothers to study which food ingredients they found fearful, and they consider how such fears can be alleviated.  

The abstract:

“This study investigates food fears that are ingredient-based, focusing on the case of high-fructose corn syrup. The results of a national phone survey of 1008 U.S. mothers offer five preliminary sets of observations: first, consumers with a fear of a specific ingredient – such as high-fructose corn syrup – may exaggerate and overweigh perceived risks. Second, such consumers may often receive more information from the internet than from television. Third, they may be partly influenced by their reference group. Fourth, ingredients associated with less healthy foods mainly hurt evaluation of foods perceived as relatively healthy. Fifth, food fears may be offset when an ingredient’s history, background, and general usage are effectively communicated. These findings suggest new insights for understanding how public health, industry, and consumer groups can more effectively target and address ingredient fears.”

From the conclusions:

“When health risks exist, food fears are merited. In other cases, ingredient fears and avoidance may be wrongly based on the stigmatization of an ingredient or on misinformation. These results offer new preliminary insights about who is most prone to ingredient avoidance, where they receive their information, what types of ingredients are most susceptible to being feared, and how fears might be mitigated.

There appear to be at least two non-mutually exclusive motivating factors behind ingredient avoidance. First, some individuals may overweigh the perceived risks of the avoided ingredient. Second, some individuals who avoid ingredients may have a greater need for social approval among their reference group than those with a more moderate view (though such effects were small in our sample). This is a key contribution to the literature on risk because it underscores a novel potential motivation – akin to the Prius Effect – behind ingredient avoidance. ”

How good is Budweiser, Coors, and Miller?

I've been reading Maureen Ogle's book, Ambitious Brew, which is a history of beer in America.  It is a great book, full of interesting stories about Pabst, Busch, Schlitz and others.

One of the most fascinating discussion relates to how we Americans came to think of substituting rice and corn (or "adjuncts" as they were called in the brewing industry) for barley in beer.  

There is a common mantra that the main selling beers in the US (Bud, Miller, Coors) are "low quality", and that drinking them is akin to drinking "horse piss."  Ogle shows that this perspective - particularly the perspective the adjuncts are low quality - rose out of the "pure food movement" in late 19th century, and is as much a result of sensationalist journalism than anything else.   

Ogle writes that the "The [prohibitionist] crusaders also used the "pure food" crazy as a means of attacking brewers."  There were people like George Angell, who wrote Jungle-like reports on the nation's food supply and stirred up  (much unsubstantiated) concern about glucose, a sweetener made from corn.  Realizing that some brewers used corn (and thus somehow must use glucose) provided the "in" that many prohibitionists needed to sell sensationalized stories to the media.

“The owner of a struggling Milwaukee newspaper in search of a scoop had used the moment to attack the city’s beermakers. “It is well known,” the investigating reporter informed readers, “that the brewers are a poor, struggling heaven-forsaken class” who, when faced with rising barley prices, turn to “cheaper substitutes.” As proof, the reporter listed the amounts of corn and rice recently published by several of the city’s brewers . . . Over the next few weeks, the newspaper blamed Milwaukee’s high infant mortality rate on “spurious beer” . . . A local physician informed readers that beer brewed from rice caused diarrhea, upset stomach, and brain damage.

A second local newspaper, not to be robbed of this episode of high drama, had chimed in with charges that rice and corn beer caused “temporary insanity””

There were rumors that Emil Schandein, one of the owners of what became Pabst brewing, operated his brewery as a

““secret drug store,” where a “French practical chemist” was paid a “fancy salary” to teach Schandein the secrets of chemical adulteration.”

Yet, as Fredrick Pabst pointed out at the time, rice cost fifteen or twenty cents more per bushel than barley.  He argued that "[w]e are not aiming to make the cheapest beer in the market; we are trying to make the best beer."

The reality is that the new adjunct-based beers were much higher quality than what previously existed.  Ogle writes:

“Beer aficionados today scorn lagers made with corn or rice as inferior to all-malt products, believing that brewers adopted the use of other grains only to save money. That was not true: It cost Adolphus Busch more to make his adjunct-based beers than his all-malt brews, and those lagers sold for higher prices than did their conventional Bavarian-style counterparts.

Nor were the beers inferior. If any one fact lies at the heart of the stunning success of Busch, Pabst, and the Uihleins, it is that by the 1880s, they were brewing some of the finest beers in the world, beers that stood up against competition with anything made in Europe. the Uihleins [owner of Schlitz] knew that: In the fall of 1880, they shipped some of their bottled Bohemian to relatives of a Schlitz employee in Zeitz, a city in north central Germany. The recipients took the beer to a local chemist for analysis. The man expressed astonishment at its purity. Its flavor and character, he reported, compared with the finest Bohemian lagers. ”

The sole use of American barley produced cloudy beers that had short shelf lives.  Ogle documents how the use of adjuncts increased the clarity, purity, consistency, and shelf life of the beer. 

Just a little something to keep in mind as you're selecting which beverages to imbibe over the 4th of July holiday . . .