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LA Food Police

If you haven't yet heard, the Los Angeles City council has declared the first day back to work each week to be "Meatless Monday."  According to one source,

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who also supports the banning of new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles, said  the new resolution is just one part of a new "good food" agenda for the city.

I don't necessarily have a problem with private entities pushing for less meat consumption.  I might disagree with some of their claims (as I did here), but at least we can put all our facts on the table.  One fact that is often forgotten in meat debates is that it isn't sufficient to look at the amount of energy (or crops) expended to get beef.  We also have to look at what we get.  Most people really like the taste of meat.   

Almost no one looks at their iPad and asks, "how much more energy went into producing this than my old Apple II." The iPad is so much better than the Apple II.  We'd be willing to accept more energy use to have a better computer.  Likewise a nice T-bone is so much better than a head of broccoli.  I'm willing to accept more energy use to have a T-bone than a head of broccoli.    

Now, if my T-bone consumption is imposing costs on others, let's talk about that.  But, here the focus would be on the issues causing the externality (e.g., CO2) not on meat per se.  

The real trouble comes when city governments (rather than private entities) start making symbolic gestures (here's my take on what symbolic gestures imply about government).  Even more troubling is when a council-man or -women presumes to know better than a land-owner or restaurant owner how their land and capital should be used.  See this Reason TV video for an interesting account of developments in LA. 

First Lady Michelle Obama hopes to curb childhood obesity by teaching children about nutrition and exercise. "There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue," she says.

Effects of FoodService Establishments and Information on Obesity

A recent paper by Alessandro Bonanno and Stephan Goetz in the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review looks at the relationship between food store density, nutrition education, and obesity.

Here is the issue:

Understanding the role of the food environment vs. nutrition education in expanding the share of adult population engaging in healthy eating habits has clear policy implications and is relevant for the agribusiness sector as a whole.  Food retailers and food service companies, as well as many food manufacturers, are under scrutiny for their potential roles in shaping diets and in contributing to the obesity epidemic. This study seeks to provide additional evidence on whether policies aimed at regulating the food environment (i.e., the location of food retailers and restaurants) are likely to achieve the intended goals

They find:

no evidence of a negative  causal relationship between the density of food-service establishments and the state-level incidence of adult healthy eating (similar to Collins and Baker, 2009, who find no “Granger causality” on obesity incidence using nationwide data), suggesting that policies aiming to restrict access to these outlets may have little impact on improving healthy diets. 

And:

Our results indicate that expenditures on nutrition education programs can improve eating habits and, indirectly, curb the incidence of adult obesity.  However, increases in nutrition education efforts would have to be substantial. . . . our results indicate that quadrupling average expenditure on nutrition education . . . could reduce adult obesity by 0.8%; the feasibility of such a large spending increase as a policy tool is unlikely

How Big Food Responds to Big Government

People who advocate for bans on large sodas, taxes on sugar and fat, and  mandatory calorie labels in restaurants often forget that food companies don't just sit idly by and follow the intentions of the policy makers.  Rather, firms (and even consumers) strategically respond to a new food environment - often in unanticipated ways.  

On that note, here is a paper that just appeared in the European Review of Agricultural Economics by four French researchers.   

They argue that:

. . . it is important to take into account the fact that food consumption decisions involve many dimensions related to price, taste, product convenience, health issues, etc. A consumer has to manage a trade-off between several product characteristics. Similarly, the firms have to deal with these multiple dimensions of food consumption in order to compete on a market in which the nutritional quality is just one of many criteria considered by consumers. The analysis of the economic effects of nutritional regulation must not neglect all of these dimensions as changes in the other (nonnutritional) product characteristics may be a response to nutritional policies which affects the welfare and the economic efficiency of nutritional regulation.

and

our results show that nutritional regulations may induce changes in consumers’ decisions and the product quality choices by firms, but they may also affect the competitive game. In an imperfect competition setting, firms react not only by adjusting price and product quality, but also by modifying the product variety available on the market and hence the level of substitutability between food products. This situation can lead to adverse effects from a public health perspective. Indeed, we show that if the tax rate is not well adjusted according to the quality threshold imposed to avoid taxation, it is possible to observe economic distortions that are not compensated by increased health benefits.

When Common Sense Does Not Make Sense

An editorial  by Dr Dhurandhar discusses two papers just published in the Nature journal: International Journal of Obesity​  that seem to contradict common sense.  The studies, in fact, fall right in line with the arguments I make in my forthcoming book: The Food Police.  

The first study reports results of an experiment that questions the argument that obesity is caused by food addition.  The second study questions the wisdom of mandatory calorie labels (such as the ones mandated in Obama's health care bill).

Here is Dhurandhar (footnotes omitted):​

These two studies do not settle respective issues and additional and larger studies are needed. Yet, they are important because they challenge conventional thinking and commonsense. One study questions the validity of the obese stereotype, and the other suggests that well-intentioned, commonsense solutions may be too simplistic to counter the obesity epidemic. Such studies call for an assessment of the field of obesity research. Perhaps, some other conventional approaches, although well-intentioned, intuitive and deeply entrenched, provide nothing more than a false sense of accomplishment, and thus impede the need to develop better strategies.

and​

Unfortunately, it appears intuitive to consider an obesogenic lifestyle as the root cause of obesity, and deceptively easy to modify. However, over 5 decades of manipulation of diet and activity, including composition, quantity and duration, has repeatedly failed to modify behavior in a biologically significant manner for the majority of people over an extended period of time. Albert Einstein is credited for the quote that ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’.

Can Calorie Labels Actually Increase Soda Consumption?

​This paper which just appeared in the journal Preventative Medicine studied the effects of fat taxes, and several types of "messaging" at reducing sweetened soda consumption.  The results reveal exactly why we should be skeptical about the obesity-reducing effects of these policies.  One should also keep in mind that this study was conducted in several Hospitals - places that employ and house people who one would think might be especially susceptible to attempts to encourage healthier eating.

​Here are some key exerpts from the abstract:

This prospective interrupted time-series quasi-experiment included three sites in Philadelphia, PA, Evanston, IL, and Detroit, MI. Each site received five interventions: (1) a 10% price discount on zero-calorie beverages; (2) the 10% discount plus discount messaging; (3) messaging comparing calorie information of sugared beverages with zero-calorie beverages; (4) messaging comparing exercise equivalent information; and (5) messaging comparing both calorie and exercise equivalent information.

and​

The overall analysis failed to demonstrate a consistent effect across all interventions  Two treatments had statistically significant effects: the discount plus discount messaging, with an increase in purchases of zero calorie beverages; and the calorie messaging intervention, with an increase in purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages. Individual site analysis results were similar.
Conclusions
The effects of price discounts and calorie messaging in different forms on beverage purchases were inconsistent and frequently small.

​Incidentally, the messaging+discount intervention that "worked" was the following: 

 a 10% price discount on all zero-calorie bottled beverages plus messaging that explained the reason for the discount. Messaging consisted of colorful marketing posters, flyers, and signs displayed prominently in the cafeteria These promoted the 10% price discount with the message, “Lighten up for less – 10% off all zero-calorie bottled beverages and wate

​I fully agree with the study's conclusions:

This research augments previous work finding weak, null or even contradictory effects of calorie labeling and price discounts. Our results point to the need for further studies examining the effectiveness of these interventions and their potential moderators. The reality of varying effects in different settings and different populations need be analyzed carefully before contemplating policy interventions such as calorie labeling or sugar taxation in order to avoid ineffective interventions and unintended consequences.