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The New Food Police Are Out of Touch

That's the title of my piece that ran today at TIME.com.  ​

Here are a few excerpts:​

We can be thankful that these folks have reminded us of the joys of cooking, of fresh food, and the long term health of our families and the environment. The resurgence of farmers’ markets and the availability of heirloom tomatoes, free-range eggs, and organics owe at least some of their success to the food movement they’ve backed.
But somewhere along the way, the values of convenience and thrift took a backseat.

Here is the conclusion:

If one is looking for good advice on how to eat and cook well, the food elite have a lot to offer. The trouble comes when their pronouncements take the form of dictates and regulation that we all must heed regardless of our tastes, incomes, or time constraints, and when they deviate telling good stories and divining tasty recipes to projecting the medical and economic consequences of federal food policy that impacts us all.


Why I'm an Economist and Not a Psychologist

​This quote from Michael Moss's book Salt, Sugar, Fat accurately sums up one of the main reasons I see economic analysis as preferable to psychological explanations (and it is one of the main reasons I often prefer non-hypothetical economic experiments to hypothetical surveys).

Pg. 150: “There is not a lot to be gained from asking people why they like something because they don’t bloody know.”  - Fancis McGlone, former Unilever scientist

Pollan vs Lusk

A friend in Canada sent me the following pic from a review of the Food Police in a magazine called Canadian Business​.  The article pitted my book against Pollan's new one: Cooked.  The review wasn't entirely favorable toward The Food Police and one nuance they seemed to miss is that I'm not necessarily against Pollan's eating advice but rather his advice for public policy.

candianbusinessreview.GIF

Interview with Cam & Co

I did an interview yesterday with Cam & Co which airs on SiriusXM Radio Patriot channel.  You can listen and watch here.​  I'm grateful to the host, Cam Edwards, who was apparently sick and came in just for my interview!