Unnaturally Delicious

My new book is set for release tomorrow - Tuesday March 22nd.

It should be a fun few weeks of media rounds from Brian Lehrer's radio show on WNYC tomorrow morning to Stuart Varney's TV show on the Fox Business Network on Friday to Russ Robert's podcast EconTalk set for release next week.

To give a sense of the book's contents, here's an excerpt from the introduction.

“This is the story of the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food. I’ll introduce you to David Waits, the farmer turned-entrepreneur whose software is now being used on more than 100 million acres in twenty-three countries to help farmers increase yields and reduce nutrient runoff. You’ll meet Tom Silva, who helped his employer build a new hen-housing system that improves animal welfare at an affordable price. Mark Post is a scientist whose work may lead us away from eating animal products altogether. He’s growing meat in his lab. Without the cow. I’ll take you behind the scenes of a student competition at which Sarah Ritz and Aaron Cohen coaxed bacteria to signal when olive oil is stale and Paul Tse and Marco So engineered a probiotic to fight obesity. I’ll take you to South Dakota, where Eldon Roth created a new way to fight food waste. You’ll learn about work by my former student Abdul Naico and the German scientist Ingo Potrykus that aims to fight malnutrition in the developing world with nutrient-enhanced rice and sweet potatoes. My plant science colleagues at Oklahoma State University reveal how they’re helping wheat farmers sustainably grow more with less. And the engineering professor Hod Lipson discusses how to get fresh, tasty, 3-D printed food at the touch of a button, perhaps even delivered to us by Mark Oleynik’s robotic chef.”

The introduction ends as follows:

“Life—particularly in the realm of eating—is substantially better today than it was in our great grandparents’ time. And, if history is our guide, it will become better still. Let me tell you how.”

There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison

Some words to ponder (written in 1958)

“There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison. ”

-Paul Goodman, US author and poet

Cited on page 339 in Andrews, R. 1993.  The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.  New York: Columbia University Press.
 

Politico on Food

Yesterday Politico.com came out with a whole series of articles on food policy.    

I was one of the "experts" interviewed for this piece on food policy.  I must admit to being in the minority opinion on several of the questions.  For example, one of the questions asked, "Are the presidential candidates doing a sufficient job in the campaign discussing the future of food policy?"  I was one of the 3% that said "yes" (I might have been the only one).  It is important to note that this is a survey of FOOD experts, and as such it's not at all surprising that they think their issue isn't getting enough attention.  But, with issues like ISIS, health care, immigration, etc., its no wonder food policy takes a backseat.  Total food and agricultural spending is a very small part of the federal budget.  In 2014, the whole of USDA was responsible for only about 4% of total federal spending (and the vast majority of that - around 80% - was for food assistance programs like SNAP). I suspect the candidates, on both the left and the right, have lots of smart, well-paid advisers, and the candidates are devoting an optimal amount of time to these issues given the likelihood they will actually sway votes.  Keep in mind Ted Cruz won the Iowa Republican caucus despite taking a stance against the ethanol mandate (a supposed sacred cow in corn-growing Iowa politics).  Anyway, you can read how the experts responded to the other questions at the link.

Another story on the complicated interrelationships between federal agencies in food safety regulation, applied particularly to chickens was interesting.  The story included the following fascinating graphic.  

Cost Effectiveness of Soda Taxes

In a piece for Cato, Christopher Snowden discusses the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of soda taxes that seem to be gaining traction worldwide.  Snowden's views closely mirror my own.  I like the way he framed the relative effectiveness of soda taxes in this passage:

“Whilst the benefit remains forever on the horizon, the cost can be easily calculated; it is simply the amount of money squeezed from consumers by the tax. In New Zealand, for example, advocates claim that a 20 per cent tax on soda would save 67 lives per year and raise $40 million (NZ).[12] Leaving aside the reliability of the New Zealand forecast, this works out as a cost of $600,000 (NZ) for every life that is extended and does not represent good value for money.

Political action on public health grounds is often justified by the costs of unhealthy lifestyles to the healthcare system, and therefore to the taxpayer. The economic costs of obesity are often misrepresented and fail to account for savings to taxpayers, but even if they were more reliable it is far from obvious that additional taxes would relieve the economic burden.[13] For example, the UK’s Children’s Food Campaign recently claimed that a 20 per cent tax on sugary drinks would reduce healthcare costs in London by £39 million over twenty years, but their own figures suggest that the tax itself will relieve Londoners of £2.6 billion over the same period.[14] The cost of the tax will therefore exceed the savings by several orders of magnitude.”

By the way, if you want to see which (out of more than 100) action will produce the biggest bank for your buck, check out the work of the Copenhagen Consensus, which routinely conducts cost-benefit analysis on a whole set of issues.  See their list for the most cost-effective actions.

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - March 2016

The March 2016 edition of the Food Demand Survey is out.

Some results from the regular tracking portion of the survey:

• Willingness to pay for steak and chicken breast was up; willingness to pay for pork chops and ham was down
• Consumers expectations for beef and pork price increases are markedly lower than was the case a year ago
• There was an increase in awareness and concern for animal welfare issues this month, particularly battery cages; E. coli was less visible in the news this month and less of a concern this month compared to last.
•  

A few new ad hoc questions were added this month.  

First, all respondents were asked the question, “Compared to five years ago, would you say you are spending more or less time engaged in the following activities during a typical day?”  Individuals were presented with seven categories ranging from about 45 minutes less to about 45 minutes more.  Overall, respondents reported spending more time shopping for food and eating at home.  About the same amount of time reported being spent on cleaning dishes and on cooking.  Slightly less time was reported spent watching TV and reading about food.  Less time was reportedly spent eating away from home.

Second, one group of respondents was directly asked three questions for which there might be some sensitivity regarding the answer or where there might be social pressure to respond in particular ways.  The direct questions were: 1) “Last week did you buy organic food?”, “Last week, did you use a SNAP EBT card?”, and “Last week, did you receive food assistance from a charitable organization like a food pantry, free community meal, or some other free grocery program?”

As the following figure shows, when directly asked, the percent of respondents affirmatively answering these questions was 43%, 13%, and 7% respectively.  

The other groups of respondents were asked these questions in an indirect fashion.  In particular, we used an approach called a “list experiment”, which has been used in political polling for years.  The approach asks people to indicate HOW MANY of a list of items relate to the respondent (not which one).  This question is asked to a control group, and then a treatment group receives the exact same list plus one additional sensitive (or controversial) issue.  By comparing how many items the respondent indicates in the treatment relative to the control, one can back out the aggregate percent of respondents to whom the additional issue applies.  The essence of the approach is that people don’t have to actually tell you whether each issue corresponds to them, and thus it removes the potential for social desirability influencing respondents.

In the control group, respondents were asked, “Below are three activities; How many of the following things did you do last week?   Went to a movie, Ate spaghetti,  Bought toothpaste.” The treatment groups were the same except we added an additional fourth item, either “bought organic food”, “used a SNAP EBT card” or “Receive food assistance from a charitable organization like a food pantry, free community meal, or some other free grocery program?”   

As the figure shows, the degree of affirmation inferred from the indirect question was lower for all three issues, particularly for organic food.  The result suggests that respondents might face social pressure to indicate more support for organic food than they actually have, as the percent who said they purchased organic fell from 43% to just 11%.  However, the results related to SNAP and charitable assistance are opposite of what was expected in that one might expect respondents to under-report these activities when directly asked if in fact respondents were remiss to reveal such information.