Regulating your food choices vs. retailers' food choices

Suppose the government made it illegal for you to buy sugared soda.  What would be your reaction?  How would you feel?  

Now, suppose instead that the government made it illegal for grocery stores and other vendors to sell sugared soda.  Is your reaction to the second law less visceral than the first?  

I suspect so.  But, here's the key: both laws impose the same restriction on your freedom - the outcomes are precisely the same.

Writing at Forbes, John Goodman notes this dichotomy in the case of California eggs (HT David Henderson)

“California has a new law that requires all eggs sold in the state to come from chickens that are housed in roomier cages. Specifically, the hens “must be able to lie down, stand up and fully spread their wings.”

So how many Californians have been arrested for eating the wrong kind of egg? Zero. Not even one? Not one. Actually, the law doesn’t take effect until January, but even then egg eaters will have nothing to fear. The reason: the law doesn’t apply to people who eat eggs. It only applies to people who sell eggs.

When you stop to think about it, that’s not unusual. Almost all government restrictions on our freedom are indirect. They are imposed on us by way of some business. In fact, laws that directly restrict the freedom of the individual are rare and almost always controversial.”

After discussing various reasons for the differences in the way we respond to individual vs. business restrictions, Goodman concludes:

“Finally, the idea being proposed here seems consistent with history. Over the past two hundred years, we have had a steady migration of people from agriculture to the cities, where they became employees of firms. Over the same period of time we have had a parallel increase in the intrusiveness of government.

Bottom line: if there were no firms, taxes would be much lower, there would be far fewer regulations and government would be a much less important institution in our lives.”

How effective is education at correcting misperceptions

Whether its GMOs or pesticides or economic effects of various food policies, it seems that the public often holds beliefs that are at odds with what the experts believe.  A natural tendency - especially for someone who is an educator - it to propose that we need more education on these topics.

But, how effective are we at changing people's minds?  This article in Pacific Standard by the psychologist David Dunning might give us pause.  

The research suggests:

“What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”

But, before you start feeling too confident in your own abilities, read the following:

“An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest strengths as a species. We are unbridled pattern recognizers and profligate theorizers. Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least to an age when we can procreate. But our genius for creative storytelling, combined with our inability to detect our own ignorance, can sometimes lead to situations that are embarrassing, unfortunate, or downright dangerous—especially in a technologically advanced, complex democratic society that occasionally invests mistaken popular beliefs with immense destructive power (See: crisis, financial; war, Iraq). As the humorist Josh Billings once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Ironically, one thing many people “know” about this quote is that it was first uttered by Mark Twain or Will Rogers—which just ain’t so.)”

Several studies seem to suggest that providing people with a little information may not lead to more agreement on an issue, but rather can result in polarizing opinions. The reason is that information makes use feel more informed, and lets us feel more confident in whatever our political or cultural tendencies would lead us to believe in the first place.  That is, people bend information to reinforce their identity and cultural beliefs. 

An Anthropologist Takes on the Paleo Diet

Interesting TEDx talk by the anthropologist Christina Warner on the accuracy of our beliefs that underlie the modern Paleo Diet.  I particularly enjoyed her discussion around the 11 to 12 minute mark about how many of our current fruits and veggies are modern,  human creations that were no where to be found in the Paleo era.

Frankenfood

Buried in the comments section of an article in the Guardian about a UK retailer selling some American brands that contain GMOs was this comment that made me laugh:

“It should be noted that Frankenstein was not even a hybrid, let alone a gmo. He was a grafted individual, much like today’s grapevines in vineyards and apple trees.”

Assorted Links

Pollan, Bittman et al. opine on desire for national food policy in a Washington Post editorial (I agree with their call to eliminate current farm subsidies, though they don't seem to really understand their effects; the rest is full of platitudes and ill-conceived policies that are unlikely to withstand a serious cost-benefit analysis.  It's this kind of writing that led to the Food Police)

USDA approves a new, healthier GMO potato

I was surprised at this statistic: the most recent water withdrawals data show that withdrawals in 2010 were lower than at any time in the past 40 years back to 1970 (not only are we using less water today, but apparently what is used is much more productive - we're getting more from it).