Americans overwhelmingly support labelling foods that contain—wait for it—DNA!

January 19, 2015 • 10:00 am

On Saturday the Washington Post reported the results of a survey by the Oklahoma State University survey on how Americans feel about government regulation of food and drugs (pdf of original survey here.)

You can see the saddest result in the third bar from the bottom: 80.44% of American think that there should be mandatory labelling of foods containing DNA. You know, of course, what that would cause. The purchase of food and vegetables would drop precipitiously, as would meat, and we’d be left buying sugar and flour (or does flour have any DNA in it?). The data:

Picture 1

Here are my feelings on the above, which show that for nearly all of these questions I disagree with most of my fellow countrymen:

  • Tax on sugared sodas?: I disagree, for this would lead to a tax on anything considered “not good for you.” What’s next: a tax on red meat? I abhor the spread of “food policing” in the US. If people want to know what food is good for them, let them find out and make their own choices. Or let them be warned with labels or signs. It’s not as if the dangers of fats and sugars haven’t been amply publicized!
  • Ban on the sale of marijuana? Of course not: just have it regulated by the government, as it is in Colorado.
  • Ban on the sale of foods made with transfat? No, this is just more food fascism. If you want to make people aware of these fats and their dangers, just put a label on the food or a sign in the restaurant, and in the latter perhaps offer alternatives.
  • A ban on the sale of raw, unpasteurized milk? Mixed feelings. This can be dangerous, but many great cheeses are made from such milk, and I wouldn’t want to see those banned.
  • Calorie limits for school lunches? Sure, if they’re produced and handed out by the public schools themselves. If kids don’t like them, they can supplement them with more calorific foods.
  • Mandatory calorie labels on restaurant menus? Hell, no! If you want to know, they can put a notice on the regular menu that calorie counts are available on a separate menu. What a way to take the fun out of dining!
  • Mandatory labels on foods containing DNA? Of course not!
  • School lunches must contain two servings of fruit and veg.  Why not?
  • Mandatory country of origin labels for meat? I’m not sure what this is about, unless some countries produce dangerous meat (say those containing mad cow disease). I’d need further information to make a decision about this one.

Ilya Somin, author of the Post piece, tries to apportion the blame for the scientific and political ignorance of Americans (i.e., 25% of Americans don’t realize that the Earth orbits the Sun instead of the reverse, and in 2014 only 38% of Americans realized that Republicans controlled the House or representatives). But I think his analysis is misguided:

It would be a mistake to assume that widespread political and scientific ignorance are the result of “the stupidity of the American voter,” as Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber put it. Political ignorance is not primarily the result of stupidity. For most people, it is a rational reaction to the enormous size and complexity of government and the reality that the chance that their vote will have an impact on electoral outcomes is extremely low. The same is true of much scientific ignorance. For many people, there is little benefit to understanding much about genetics or DNA. Most Americans can even go about their daily business perfectly well without knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun. Even the smartest people are inevitably ignorant of the vast majority of information out there. We all have to focus our time and energy on learning that information which is most likely to be instrumentally useful, or at least provide entertainment value. For large numbers of people, much basic political and scientific information doesn’t make the cut.

What does the complexity of government have to do with whether voters know what DNA is, and whether it’s dangerous, or whether the Earth orbits the Sun? Indeed, much of that information doesn’t help people with their daily lives, but it certainly can, as witnessed by the widespread disapprobation of GMO foods, which are not only harmless but, as in the case of golden rice, can be valuable and even lifesaving. Ditto for knowing about what homeopathic medicines are—a form of useless and watery nostrum sold to gullible yuppies in Whole Foods (shame on them both!). And besides, learning about DNA and the solar system is something that everybody should know from their school days. But what that all has to do with “the enormous size and complexity of the government” is obscure, unless the author didn’t mean it when he said “the same is true of most scientific ignorance,” in which that case he didn’t write clearly.

Regardless, the scientific ignorance of Americans does do harm—far more harm than just making a lot of people think that evolution isn’t true.  There are, for example, the misguided ideas that prayer can heal, that vaccinations cause autism, and that food with DNA could hurt you.

h/t: Gregory

208 thoughts on “Americans overwhelmingly support labelling foods that contain—wait for it—DNA!”

  1. It just occurred to me that we might have a level of technology that would permit safe consumption of unpasteurized milk, such as through screening or the use of UV for sterilization or some other variation on the theme.

    But, Jerry, your ambivalence on the matter points to a difficult question. I think we’re all fine with prohibiting the sale of foods contaminated with infectious diseases. We’re probably all also on board with prohibition of foods with a high probability of being contaminated, such as unpasteurized milk that doesn’t benefit from modern technology.

    But sugar and trans-fats bear with them a significant probability of causing non-infectious disease.

    I think the answer may lie in the same sort of Surgeon General’s warning labels we see for alcohol and tobacco. Pregnant women, for example, can still drink a six-pack of Bud and smoke a pack of Marlboroughs, but they’ve got that label staring them in the face that they’re fools to do so.

    b&

    2. It’s true that the nutritional information about transfats, corn syrup, and other cheap unhealthy additives is out there and available.

      But it’s also true that corporate budgets to market those products are almost certainly many orders of magnitude greater than governmental budgets to educate the public about their risks. I’m not sure a warning label would be enough to make a level playing field in the head of a typical consumer. Or indeed if that’s the right target to aim for.

      And isn’t raw milk already outlawed as a whole in the US?

      1. Raw milk is generally outlawed, but there are exceptions for cheeses so long as they’re properly labeled. There may be other exceptions.

        b&

        1. Given the link between smoking and cancer (the “health” argument for tobacco tax) and the inextricable link between foods with very high sugar content and type 2 diabetes (one of the fastest growing diseases in modern times), Jerry, are you also against taxation on tobacco products in principle, or, on reflection, isn’t a high sugar tax (for example on sugary soda) desirable? Or are you baulking against just singling out soda? For example, would you support a generic “high sugar foods” tax as opposed to one that just singles out soda?

          1. I don’t know why I find it strange that some of us demonize certain commodities (tobacco, marijuana, sugars, fats, etc.)because we think they’re “bad”, then tax them to make them cost more to the consumer who shouldn’t consume them but also to raise money for the government coffers.

          2. It depends on how your government works. In my country (NZ) most healthcare is paid for by the government. Being healthy without going broke is considered a human right, and a healthy population is better economically. So the government is the one paying for smoking related illnesses. Therefore it’s in their interests to help people stop smoking, which they do in multiple ways. In the meantime, a high tax on cigarettes is both a disincentive to smoke and a way of getting smokers to pay towards their much higher health costs. The average cost of a pack of 20 is around NZ$20, and it is planned to raise it much more. High price has been found to be the most effective factor in stopping smoking.

          3. Several reputable studies have shown that the highest average lifetime medical expenses are incurred by non-smokers who are not obese. Smokers have the lowest average lifetime expenses. I’m all for my government being interested in my well-being, but if money is going to drive policy (ahem, USA) they should just shut up.

          4. I’d have thought raising the price would make the problem worse, if some smokers are so strongly addicted to tobacco that they would bankrupt themselves sooner than give them up.

          5. Rowena, so why do we tax anything at all? All tax goes into Government coffers. We then hope that governments use this for public good and we elect representatives who hopefully achieve this. It is rarely the case that tax on products is proportionally spent on mitigating the bad effects of those products. You just have to look at the tax on petroleum and gasoline to realize that.

        2. Last I heard there were some exceptions for direct-from-farm sales of small amounts.

          (Guess either one of us could google it–I nominate you. 😉 )

          Linda G. probably knows–there are some goat-milk fanatics around.

        3. By the time that a gallon or 90 of milk has been through the biochemical assault that STARTS cheese -making, is that related to food science in general?
          I sniffed the litre of milk I put aside for kefir. I’m not sure that the culture has taken. But I kept a ‘starter’ culture, so “meh”.

    3. It just occurred to me that we might have a level of technology that would permit safe consumption of unpasteurized milk

      IIRC Canada and Europe irradiate it instead of pasteurizing it. That’s why their milk can be sold unrefrigerated and yet still has a much longer shelf life.

      So yes, we have that level of technologoy. And in fact we’ve had it for probably 40-50 years.

      I have no idea how irradiation may impact high-end cheese production. Maybe its necessary to use milk before its irradiated…or maybe not. I don’t know.

      1. One would think that the people who object to DNA in their food would love irradiated foods because radiation sterilizes in part by damaging DNA.

      2. Nuclear milk is indeed available here (in the Netherlands) but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone buying it (it’s maybe 10% of the shelf space of ‘normal’ milk).

  2. The call for mandatory country of origin labeling for meat does indeed originate with the mad cow outbreak of the ’90’s. I would cautiously suggest that we successfully dodged a bullet there since exposure of the British population to that agent probably ended in 1996, although with that agent, you could potentially see cases 30 or 40 years later. I would think that if we were going to have a large epidemic, it would have stated itself by now.

    As for dietary evils, the ones that really count, the ones that are generally agreed upon are added salt, added sugar, and excessive calories. There are probably others, but those are the big ones.

    With regard to taxing sugary soft drinks, I do not generally like government deciding what is bad for you, but if people engage in behavior that busts your budget (Medicare and Medicaid, in other words you and I, pay for lots of obesity-related health care costs), and if after years of education, pleading, and nudging, they persist in behavior that busts your budget, shouldn’t government be able to nudge back harder to get things under better control? Using some way (read taxes) to increase the prices of items that are causing the problem is probably the only really effective mechanism available.

    With that said, if I were in Congress, I am not sure that I would vote for such a tax right now, but I agree that it should be in the armamentarium as a last resort.

    1. There was some discussion recently about sending American-grown chickens to China to be processed into “foods”, then shipped back to the U.S. and elsewhere. Given the adulteration of numerous Chinese manufactured products, this should give cause for concern. I assume that these chickens would be considered and labelled American chickens,

      But, frankly, if we’re going to label, it needs to commence much lower down the food chain with who raised the “meat”, in what conditions, what were they fed, what medicines were they given, etc. At all levels of meat production for Americans, there are unsafe practices and conditions with insufficient overview and protection of the buying public by governmental agencies.

    2. If Big Sugar treated its workers humanely and paid them fairly, the cost of high sugar foods would increase without increasing taxes. Big Sugar are big donors and lobbyists, so in a country where that matters, successive governments won’t do anything that would reduce their profits.

    3. In Ireland, meat produced in Ireland is traceable to the farm and animal it was produced from. Farm to fork.

      http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CE4QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fmm.org.my%2Fimages%2Farticles%2FBeefTraceabilityCaseStudy-Ireland.pdf&ei=-lW9VM74OKGO7AbNmYC4Dw&usg=AFQjCNFExhxKekdxFgCNpt0NEmxIlX3Cug&sig2=-OAkSf_0-qZTe7-lfjHYwA

      Case study. Ireland also does a range of DNA testing to ensure what is on the label is what’s in the box, hence the reason that horsemeat scandal first broke from Ireland

    4. I know New Zealand has a wretched time exporting meat to the US due to different food safety regulations. I might go into more detail if i can find my resident microbiologist.

      1. It is alleged (from this end at least) to be due to protectionism and the US farm lobby. Must be true because our (NZ) farmers would never tell a lie…

  3. Oh, and labeling food containing DNA is essentially the same as labeling food that contains protons and electrons. It is a nonsensical label that would end up on just about anything.

    1. I’ve been impressed lately to find out how many foods contain carbon and thus are labelled ‘organic’…

      1. On the other hand I’ve seen “organic” salt being sold. It was promoted as “organic” as it was “naturally” dried from a salt lake. Go figure that one out!!

        1. And I’ve seen coffee shop at Adelaide Airport adveetising organic water. Perhaps it was contaminated with Escherchia coli?

    2. Not quite:

      Bottled water, table salt, pure sugars, cooking oils and fats, etc. are all DNA-free. Which isn’t to say that the idea is silly and a waste of money.

        1. Quite right! I, for one, am all for proper government labeling of all gravel, grit, and sand I regularly consume. Not to mention the plastics, styrofoam, aluminum, Taco Bell…

          2. I read that as, “rodent faces” and tried to imagine a rat with a bug body and legs. Shudder!

  4. I’m pretty sure there’s acronym confusion happening here.

    I wonder who wrote the questions. Did they do it to purposefully confuse the voters? Maybe they’re exploiting the fact that most people don’t read things thoroughly.

    1. There should be a third choice –

      For
      Oppose
      WTF??

      I would have answered WTF?? on a few, I’m pretty sure.

      1. Personally I don’t what any WTF in my food either. Keep your TLA’s in the laboratory where they belong!

  5. Who needs needs science with all its cumbersome facts when you can order off the free range anxiety menu?
    Do these folks really think that all the various crops and animals that one might commonly associate with agriculture have remained unchanged since they were first cultivated by man?
    The size or relative complexity of government has, to my knowledge, little bearing on the fact that GMO have been around almost as long as agriculture itself. So, it is apparently the speed and efficiency of modern science, rather than the less efficient process of selective breeding and hybridization, that seems to be scaring people.
    And, if you think about it, that’s a pretty silly thing to fear.

  6. I suspect the answer to that question only tells us that a significant number people don’t know what DNA is. Which doesn’t surprise me.

        3. I want food with NO CHEMICALS in it! Any fule noze that chemicals are very bad for you.

          1. No shit. And besides, Haltiwanger’s analysis has shown that cell membranes and spiraled fluid-protein components are analogous to conductors, semiconductors, resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductor coils, transducers, switches, generators, and batteries. It’s at the 1:19:41 mark of this fascinating video that will only take 3 hours and 38 minutes of your time.

          2. Do notice that the speaker IS a doctor. And he’s got the white coat to proooove it. Also note the thumbs up/down ratio, the number of views, and the gist of the comments. I think it’s talks like this that quench Americans’ ravenous appetite for solid information, unlike all that crap that Monsanto pays scientismists to say.

          3. Not sure how that relates to my (tongue-in-cheek) comment? (Views 5 seconds of the link…) Oh I get it. It’s Woo. As in WooWooWooooooooo. Forgive me if I skip the other 3 hours 37 minutes.

            I recall from decades back, our council was debating regulations for refuse accepted at a new landfill, prohibiting e.g. batteries, explosives, motor parts, chemicals, concrete rubble…
            A well-known consulting chemist submitted an objection that began “To a chemist, everything is a chemical…” And he was quite right, without a further definition of ‘chemical’ how could anyone ever know what was acceptable and what wasn’t?

          4. You are forgiven, my son. 🙂 Yes, it was peripheral – just thought you might enjoy the extreme silliness. It is sometimes instructive to pop onto the dark side of social media, despite the fact that it is biased (self-selecting, sometimes policed – with dissenters purged) — just to see their general popularity and appreciate the arguments of the woo supporters. That this “doctor” has multiple 3-hour videos, goes on speaking circuits spouting HIV/AIDS denialism, Alex Jonesish conspiracy stuff, etc… It can be depressing to do, but just wading in the waters a little bit can give me a sense of the dynamics of belief & what “science” and “skepticism” actually *mean* to very large numbers of people. I used to be surprised when my friends on the left, who I had assumed to be rational, suddenly spout off about chemtrails, etc. It surprises me no more — so many simply cannot tell the difference between good and bad evidence.

          5. Indeed, I hope I wasn’t too dismissive of the link. I notice YouBoob suggested a whole lot of other videos by the same gentleman for my delectation. I am indeed quite familiar with woo (of the non-religious New age type), I used to frequent DansData (it was a link from there that led me to WEIT), and Daniel Rutter, alongside his techno-geekery, was a consistent critic and exposer of woo-ey things from Magic Fuel Pills to Magnetic Therapy Bracelets to thousand-dollar speaker cables^H^H^H^Hinterconnects (audiophile woo is a whole topic in itself). It can indeed be highly entertaining to contemplate the idiocy of the credulous. I don’t know if the Intertoobs has increased the amount of woo around (after all, War of the Worlds, alien abductions and Area 51 preceded the Internet) or just made it more visible.

  7. Way simpler and more reasonable (and potentially more educationally insightful for the public as it dawns on people just how many foods are not so labeled) might be to label as “CONTAINS NO DNA” those (relatively few) edibles that do NOT contain DNA.

    But I share Jerry’s perspectives on the matter.

    Last week a lady asked me how I felt about “genetically modified foods;” I said I felt reasonably good about them on account of my not knowing of any foods on Planet Earth that have NOT been “genetically modified” (randomly and then selected non-randomly by Mother Nature, if not by humans purposefully and selected by artificial selection). She said she would ponder that and I have not heard back from her yet.

      1. Not only is salt ‘GMO free’ but is also ‘DNA free’!!!!!1!!!!!

        Sadly, it is not electron free.

        1. I use unpurified sea salt which likely has quite a bit if DNA in it. I wouldn’t even count on it being GMO free given the amount of plastic with ‘corn’? starch built into it and so much ground up plastic in the ocean.

          8. “NewEnglandBob’s electron free foodstuffs, coming to a grocer near you!”

            Sounds like an opportunity for food homeopathy. At any rate, it would do something for the obesity epidemic.

          10. (Hmm. That is a jab at homeopathic logic. Just realized it could also be taken at face value: consuming fewer calories can lower your metabolism, resulting in an initial gain of adipose tissue before overall weight loss kicks in.)

          12. Lol @ both remarks.

            Second made me think–glad I’m not the only one here to over-think things. (Actually there may be a lot of us. 🙂 )

  8. The food system is disproportionately skewed towards making junk food cheaper than fruit and vegetables, because the American government effectively subsidises corn (whose derivatives are placed in a wide variety of foodstuffs) production so that companies can buy it below the cost of production. Americans have a choice, sure they do, but the difference is that poor Americans can only afford to buy the food that is bad for them and well force them to crave more (such a negative externality does not factor into the food companies agenda, after all the government foots the bill – twice). So, yeah there is a choice though it is hardly a fair fight. Let the veggies win.

    2. It may be a matter of “let them eat cake” on my part, but I just don’t see the whole “junk food is cheaper” thing.

      I basically never eat out, and I do almost all my shopping at Whole Paycheck. And I don’t even look at the prices of what I buy; I just buy what I want. And that includes things like Reggiano cheese, seriously overpriced bacon, and what-not, along with plenty of fresh produce.

      And I spend about, usually under, $5 / meal on food on average over a week.

      If I adopted the same shopping strategy at the Food City down the road from me, I’d probably cut that budget in half.

      And I could probably cut that in half again by shopping at Food City with an eye towards price but without at all compromising the nutritional quality of the food.

      But, if I look at the pre-packaged foods…I just can’t see how I could possibly eat for just a couple bucks per meal, and I know there’s no way I could eat out for $5 / meal.

      So, how is it that people with less money spend at least as much on food as I do, if not more, and eat so much worse?

      b&

      1. If you have watched college freshman in a non-majors chemistry course, you can begin to understand how utterly helpless many people are when it comes to doing anything in a kitchen. Hand them a box of oatmeal or cream of wheat, and they’ll prepare it so poorly it will be virtually inedible. Even people who you would think are “good with their hands” have zero experience in cooking for themselves and seem to have no interest in acquiring even basic skills. I knew a German postdoc 30 years ago – this guy is a synthetic chemist(!) – who ate nothing but eggs and potatoes for the entire year he was at Iowa State university. Most of my graduate students – again, inorganic chemists – eat out most of the time.

        1. Sadly, that likely has a great deal to do with it. And a great shame….

          “Home economics” should likely be a required class for high school graduation. Probably an entire year’s worth, with everything from meal planning and preparation to balancing a checkbook to minor plumbing repair to….

          b&

      2. The way the chores sorted themselves out in my house, I have made the kids school lunches for years. In that context it is very easy to see that eating well, as in nutritionally well, is more expensive than eating the manufactured crap that so many US households are habituated to.

        I can feed my kids sandwiches made with whatever the local equivalent of Wonder Bread is with X brand slices of “cheese food” and X brand slices of “meat product”, some kind of fake fruit snack that makes a Snickers candy bar look like health food, and some X brand ding dong type thing, and maybe some kind of yoghurt like snack in a tube that isn’t much better than Moutain Dew.

        Or I can feed them sandwiches made with fresh from the bakery 5 grain Italian bread, a wide variety of real cheeses, fresh chicken or perhaps a decent variety of deli meat, or as they like a fresh salad with the same or tuna or salmon, and fresh strawberries, bluberries blackberries, etc., with a touch of agave nectar and cinnamon, and soup, either homemade or a decent store bought brand.

        Going the first route is half the price, or less, than going the second route. Which is the one I take. Don’t get me wrong, in absolute terms the extra cost is not hugely significant. But it is a big relative difference, and in the case of a poor family the absolute difference that is not significant to me certainly can be to them.

        And as A Kirykowicz wrote, it doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t be that way.

        1. Cheeses can get very expensive very quickly; I’ll definitely grant you that. And deli meats, too…

          …but you can buy an astoundingly large pile of chicken for not all that much money, cook it up as soup one night, and serve it up as sandwiches and chicken salad and casseroles and the like for the next few days, and I’m pretty sure that’s an awful lot cheaper than “X brand slices of ‘meat product.'” Plus, of course, you get the broth that you can use for an endless variety of sauces and what-not, and the mirepoix is instant flavor for all sorts of dishes.

          Same thing for the bread. Sure, your local baker is going to charge a lot more per loaf than the local stop-and-rob will for a loaf of I Wonder How Much Of That Is Bread…but you can buy a 50# sack of organic hard red wheat for about $40 and have basically unlimited nearly-free bread for a year or so with only about five minutes a day of your time.

          Were I on a budget where I had to watch my food pennies, I could likely eat a good, healthy diet for a dollar a day without much effort. There’d be a lot of rice and beans, sure, but there’d also be lots of fresh produce. And the proteins wouldn’t be as interesting and varied as I currently enjoy, but they wouldn’t be all that different.

          Indeed…my planned dinner for tonight would be pretty common: chicken soup with a side of kasha varnishkes. With fresh homemade noodles, even, which, with the kasha, works out to an egg and an half with the meal. Dirt cheap, as healthy as you can get, and not merely seriously delicious but one of my all-time favorites….

          b&

          2. Actually…the “hard” means it has an especially high gluten content, which is what you want for your bread to hold together. The softer wheats have less gluten, which is desirable for cakes and the like as it makes them lighter and fluffier.

            The only people who should be avoiding gluten are those with a very specific and rare allergy to it — somewhat like lactose intolerance. The only way that “gluten free” makes sense in the modern context is as a manufactured marketing madness.

            b&

          3. Yep. It’s at the point when I go shopping that my eyeballs get sore merely from the various packaging and marketing devices causing fits of eyeball-rolling. I thought it was relevant to bring up the gluten madness in this thread, albeit in my satirical way.

          4. Paa..kuh…zhing? Whazzat?

            You mean, like the paper that the butcher wraps the meat in? The little paper bags you put the apples in? That sort of thing? Don’t recall ever really noticing what’s printed on them, if anything…

            b&

      3. When I was super poor and had $20/week to spend on food, I could eat more if I bought canned chili and other processed foods. Fruit and vegetables were too much money and I dreamed of the day I could go into a grocery store and get anything I wanted (yay! I made it!).

      4. Sure, you can eat out for under $5 a meal – at McDonald’s or other fast food places. Not only is it cheap, but it’s also fast – granted, it’s also stuff that only qualifies as food if one is being generous in definitions, but…

        It’s not just about the food items themselves being cheaper, but also a matter of time and energy available to put into food prep and eating. I assume that you spend time putting together most of your meals, with some degree of cooking and cleaning involved – but say you’re a single parent with young kids constantly clamoring for your attention, who is also working two jobs with irregular schedules. You get home from work, you’re exhausted because you’ve worked a 12 hour day, the kids are yelling about being hungry… do you spend the time and energy cooking and cleaning requires, or do you order a pizza? The latter is more expensive in terms of money, certainly, and less nutritious, but in terms of time and personal effort required? Vastly cheaper.

        Being poor isn’t just having less money – it’s having less of everything. You don’t take vacations or even sick days unless you absolutely must (because paid time off is not mandatory in the US), so any time at home, any time you are not working, is time you do your best to cherish, rather than try to fill with more work. Fighting with the kids to get them to eat healthy foods? That’s work. Taking the time to bus down to a supermarket and get a balanced array of foods, rather than just walking to the corner store for a hot pocket and bag of chips? That’s work. And please keep in mind that this is not laziness at play – it is exhaustion.

        Also consider that when living paycheck to paycheck, the ability to spend a lot now to save even more later is significantly curtailed – if your weekly food budget is around, say, $50, and nearly every other penny you have is spoken for, then to do as you suggest below and buy a big $40 bag of wheat (assuming any local store has that option and that you’ve the time to look for/cook it) is something you cannot afford to do because you need to eat NOW, not just later.

        2. I’ll admit to not having ever been in such a situation. Again, this could well be “let them eat cake.”

          But, still…I compare the time it takes to cook various dishes versus deal with their commercial counterparts, and cooking is rarely far behind and sometimes ahead.

          It takes, what, fifteen minutes or so for boxed Mac and Cheese, by the time you’ve boiled the noodles and what-not? That’s about the same amount of time as it takes to make Fettucine Alfredo, starting with an egg, flour, butter, cream, and cheese.

          Pizzas get delivered in half an hour? Making a pizza, starting from flour, water, tomatoes, etc., can be done in about 45 minutes.

          Canned chicken soup, I’ll grant, is very fast. But from scratch, it’s about ten minutes of prep work and maybe half an hour sitting on the stove in a pressure cooker if it’s a big batch — with you not needing to do anything at all during that time.

          Bread I already mentioned can be done in five minutes a day. One of those days, shape the bread into buns instead of a loaf, and hamburgers then take all of ten minutes at most.

          Rice and beans require almost no attention at all. The night before, set the beans to soak. The day of, put each on the stove with the right proportions of water and ingredient and wait the requisite amount of time while you go spend quality time doing whatever, and they’re magically ready to eat.

          Eating like that is much healthier and cheaper than the fast commercial alternatives, and doesn’t take all that much longer. And that’s even using things like a two-pound sack of flour rather than buying wheat in bulk. Put the money you save eating like this towards a fund for bulk buys, and then suddenly you have a lot more money you’re no longer spending on food.

          I know living in poverty is difficult, and I know it takes a lot psychologically out of you such that you may well go right for instant gratification. But just a very minor delay of gratification in such cases can pay such huge dividends….

          b&

          1. “But just a very minor delay of gratification in such cases can pay such huge dividends…”

            Not disputing that at all. But since we humans tend to do more feeling than thinking when it comes to decision-making, when you get home after being on your feet for 10+ hours straight, you don’t want to spend half an hour making dinner – you want to sit down in front of the TV, have a beer, and wait for the microwave to buzz. It’s not healthier. It’s not better. It’s not even cheaper. And the person doing it is usually fully aware of all those things – but it’s what the person doing it has the mental energy left to do, it’s a way to relax just for a few minutes and NOT have to work for something, to FINALLY sit down for more than a minute for the first time that day (you may or may not get breaks at work, it depends)… and while you’ll often admonish yourself a bit for doing it, promising that tomorrow you’ll make an actual meal, somehow tomorrow you come home just as tired, the promises to yourself are repeated and the same thing happens again.

          3. I’m in total agreement with that sentiment. Now, I was speaking a bit to the extreme, and in regards to the working poor rather than those in true poverty – it’s not the case that everyone who qualifies as poor ends up feeling entirely like that (though some absolutely do), but we’ll all still feel pieces of it, have bad days, and it’s very easy for habits developed over the course of a few bad days to stick with you for years.

            And in fairness to the Waltons, it’s not like they invented the poor/rich divide – they just help make it worse. 😉

          4. Much of what you are saying I agree with. But I think you are exaggerating some things.

            Boxed mac & cheese (which I disagree is mac & cheese, not sure what it is) is cheaper than making homemade Fettucine Alfredo? The cheese alone is more expensive. You can buy a pack of 15 boxes, each box 3 servings, for about $13.00. Thats $.87 a box, or $.29 per serving. And that is a major name brand.

            Pizza, likely cheaper. Unless you start adding toppings, then it gets iffy. And you can buy large cheese pizza’s for $5.00 from some places fairly regularly.

            Soup, you can get a good can, 18.5 oz, let alone an X brand, for $1.50. You might be able to approach that cost with homemade, but you can’t beat it. Vegetables and meat are expensive.

            Rice & beans, no argument there. As cheap as it gets. But it can quickly get competative with instant stuff if you start adding the things you would if you weren’t constrained. Like onions, celery, carrots, peppers, garlic, bacon, sausage, smoked pork, etc…

            Bread, I have no doubt you can make some decent sort of bread cheaper than even the local snow white X brand, if you buy in bulk. If you buy typical consumer size packages of the ingredients, it is not likely. You can buy X brand loaves for less than $2, much of the time for much less. And how much might you save if you really tried? $.50 a week?

            Regarding time. Just one critique, or maybe it is praise. You can make fresh bread in 5 minutes? That is remarkable. I am by no means an expert at making bread, but I have done it on occasion, and I have seen it done by people that are much better at it than me, and I can’t imagine fresh bread being made in 5 minutes. It takes longer than that just to get the ingredients out. That isn’t even enough time for the necessary chemistry to run its course.

            Much better for you? Absolutely. Tastes a hell of a lot better too!

          5. You can make fresh bread in 5 minutes?

            Five minutes per day — as in, five minutes of prep time on average per day.

            http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/

            For the rest…I was comparing prep time as much as cost. Fettucine Alfredo is certainly going to cost more than boxed mac & cheese, but it’s still a pretty cheap meal…under $5, even with Whole Paycheck ingredients, even with the Reggiano.

            It’s been a long time since I bought either a sack of flour or a loaf of bread…but, I seem to recall, the two had about the same price, and I know you can get much more than a single loaf out of a sack of flour. Similar thing with the beans…a couple pound bag of beans, I’m pretty sure I remember, costs about the same as a single can and again represents many more meals.

            And…underlying all of this is an assumption that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Even if Little Dominator Pizza costs less than homemade, one is likely to give you diabetes and the other isn’t. That tends to negate any short-term savings pretty quickly….

            b&

          6. “And…underlying all of this is an assumption that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.”

            No. Actually, that problem is central to my complaint. The manufactured instant stuff is cheaper, in many cases, and it is a bad diet. And that it shouldn’t be cheaper. Shouldn’t in that the low price is artificially created by people / corps gaming the system for their profit.

            I agree completely that people should eat much more fresh, whole foods. And that much of the problem is that so many people have never learned the habits of good eating. And another big factor, particularly for the poorer demographics who have less options and are more likely to inherit those bad eating habits, is our warped food industry that results in many poor quality manufactured foods being more expensive than many fresh whole foods, and spends tens of millions of dollars on sophisticated ways to encourage and con people into buying them.

          8. Oh, forgot to say “Thanks” for the link to the bread. I am saving that, and I am going to study it and figure it out.

          9. Enjoy!

            The basic idea is pretty straightforward.

            Day one, dump ingredients in bowl, stir until mixed, stash in refrigerator.

            A day or more later, shape into loaves, come back in an hour and turn on the oven, put the bread in the oven when it’s hot, remove it when the timer is done.

            That’s pretty much all there is to it.

            b&

          10. Well shit. That is one way to totally confuse people.

            “. . . is our warped food industry that results in many poor quality manufactured foods being more less expensive than many fresh whole foods, . . .”

      5. Because middle class people can usually take advantage of store specials as they have the capital to spare, which makes things cheaper. Also, eating at a fast food restaurant would be the cheap option for poor families.

    3. That’s true – we should at least stop subsidizing corn producers, because that would have the same effect as taxing junk food. Except that’s not going to happen, because getting on a good side of a major corn-producing state of Iowa (more so that any other state) is a basic requirement of any presidential candidate of any party – which leads us right back into the question of complexities of our political system.

      1. . . . and why the hell do Iowa and New Hampshire get to wield the level of influence on Presidential campaigns anyway???
        Those two states are hardly an accurate analog for the nation as a whole.

      2. It’s not complex it’s corrupt. A candidate needs to be funded to be elected, and the way that the lobbying system works effectively means that those with pockets full of money can support their case. Most of the legislation is not even passed by Congress anyway:

  10. Maybe I have the odd opinion here but I don’t see the “average” citizen as having any more knowledge of politics or science or much of anything else. To think the size of the government is some excuse for not knowing things is also wrong. The numbers who do not know what DNA means is probably pretty close to those who do not know who their congress persons are.

    The great republican run in the last election should be pointing to not regulating anything. But there we have this high support for regulating the hell out of these things. This only proves stupidity in general and people do not know what they want.

    1. In the late 80’s I read a survey on political attitudes in which roughly equal thirds of those surveyed self-identified as liberal or conservative.

      In the crosstabs, about 1/4 of “conservatives” rated Democrats in congress as “too conservative,” and 1/4 of “liberals” rated then-President Reagan as too liberal.

      And shortly afterward I read a survey in which it was found that roughly 1/4 of U.S. adults were not aware that the white flecks in red meat are fat.

      I would not go so far as to say people are stupid, but misinformed – often deliberately misinformed – and ignorant – often willfully ignorant – yes, I think so.

      So on that note, and to your point, the “great Republican run” might point to deregulation if the 25% of the voting population it took to put them in office were remotely interested in policy, but they aren’t. This was a “throw the bums out” election bolstered by congressional districts gerrymandered to skew the results and by a supine corporate media incapable of factual reporting. I read several quotes from voters who said they supported the Republican because they wanted to end the “gridlock” and/or “fighting” in Washington! Voters want action on immigration and jobs – so they voted GOP!

      Oops. I’m talking myself into agreeing with your “people are stupid” theory …

      1. I was coming to the same conclusion, and was going to snipe at “willfully ignorant” and “stupid”, which now seems to me to be a distinction without a difference.

        1. Maybe stupid is too strong for some and I should try to be nice about lack of knowledge or terribly misinformed/confused?

          But how voting for lots more republicans was going to get things done on jobs or immigration is beyond my understanding. I’ll just say thinking upside down.

          1. My completely unresponsive representative, Doug Lamborn, has one of the worst voting records of all time. He’s been in over 7 years, and recently voted back in. If we, the people, were really all about merely throwing the bums out, there would’ve been lots of Republicans like him losing their seats, especially in a swing state like mine. (Colorado).

            The youngsters didn’t show up at the polls. And the people that did were overwhelmingly stupid, for lack of a more nuanced word to describe them. Sorry… I’m a bit depressed right now.

          2. I guess most of the public thought that by voting Repugnant, they were “throwing the bums out”, merely because a Dem was in the executive. That was voting for “change”. That’s as far as American voter logic goes, in the aggregate. Too bad for the rest of the world that we let the brain-dead vote. It kind-of defeats the purpose.

  12. Not on the list, nutritional supplements and homeopathic “remedies.” My gosh, if Big Pharma has to enumerate the side effects (“Men may experience painful urination when sitting, especially if the penis is trapped between the toilet seat and the bowl” – Steve Martin) of FDA-approved drugs, surely we can do better than the wishy-washy “health claims not FDA approved” we put on placebos. The snake oil sellers wear that as a badge of honor, and the merely-credulous hear an implied “yet” in the disclaimer.

  13. Labeling the country of origin is a winner. China doesn’t have any food safety supervision over its products. Remember the contaminated pet food problem? I sure wouldn’t want food from China on my plate. If you Google “contaminated food China”, there are multiple articles, all disgusting.

    1. Country of Origin has been used to stop people buying NZ meat in Britain because of the food miles fallacy. Analysis actually shows NZ meat, despite being transported 12,000 miles, has a lower carbon footprint than most in Britain.

      I agree there’s some scary stuff getting into the food chain in some countries though. However, China is a huge country, and I would have considered Britain a safe destination before BCE. There have been some dodgy reports from Europe recently too. I think the key is importers being responsible for what they distribute – being aware of who their suppliers are, their practices etc.

      1. That’s okay – you’re making a killing selling meat and cheese to the Russians now. 🙂

    2. I thought they already did that – maybe not with meat. I don’t buy veggies and fruit from suspicious countries that may have lax rules about how they spray it for bugs. In Canada, most of the off season stuff is from the US anyway.

  14. “food fascism”

    A lot of what we consider common-sense safety regulations were at one time criticized as evidence of fascism, so I’m hesitant to reject out-of-hand any new proposals.

    I probably would reject regulations that are easily circumvented and cause market distortions, such as the New York ban on soft drinks of certain size.

  15. Even Sherlock Holmes didn’t care to know whether Earth orbits the sun or vice versa, because such knowledge wouldn’t help him to solve cases and take care of day to day tasks. Thus, it would occupy space in his memory better used for other purposes.

    1. That was a serious flaw in the plot line. It’s not at all difficult to think of cases where the angle of the Sun and / or the location of the stars and planets — or even the time of day — could be critical to solving the mystery, and those sorts of calculations really only make sense with heliocentricism.

      Or, for that matter, even more prosaic: if the suspect is a geocentricist, it’s all but a slam-dunk that the suspect is also a fundamentalist Christian, but, if the suspect is an heliocentricist, the suspect adheres to some form of rationalism. And that wouldn’t matter in an investigation?

      b&

      1. I agree there are some situations where such knowledge might come into play, and just such a situation arose in an episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, but they are rare. The angle of the sun and the positions of the planets can be calculated and were calculated under a geocentric paradigm for many years. The sun-centered perspective is more correct and convenient, as recently discussed on this site, but not an absolutely necessary criterion in most cases.

    2. Doesn’t sound reasonable to decide a particular bit of information will never be of use, unless you know your entire future. I think a big reason why science and technology accelerated so rapidly is because all the information, ideas, good and bad, profound and silly, are largely all recorded and available for everyone else to consider for as long as the records last.

      1. The best way to assure a particular bit of information will be useful in the future is to forget it.

  16. My Mum was far from stupid but could never understand why San Francisco, where I was living,had a different time from Edinburgh, Scotland where she was.And was not interested in listening to an explanation.Her friend, upon hearing I was going to study Zoology said-‘well, it’s alright if you’re interested in that sort of thing’. Explanation? No curiosity coupled with a life that took a whole lot more physical energy to just stay reasonably clean and fed and warm.

    2. I’m a compatibilist and assuming that you’re correct that you’re mum isn’t stupid, I think it might be more accurate to say that your Mum “was far from stupid but would never understand why San Francisco, where I was living,had a different time from Edinburgh, Scotland.”

      1. I appreciate your compatibilist comment-a little kinder than the previous. I used ‘could’ because with her attitude she ‘could’ not learn much. But she sure wasn’t stupid. She just had no need of extended knowledge at least to her view. But I appreciate the discrimination you are describing. Could not from native disability or would not from choice. Bless my old Mum. She was a lot kinder than I tend to be and a lot more down to earth.

        1. Sounds a bit like my Mom. Always pretty up on politics, financial matters, a mean bridge player…But had a mind-block against most things scientific. One of her common phrases was, “I’ll never understand how/why __________” (Fill in the blank with something scientific or technical.) And I was constantly answering in my head, “well, maybe if you tried…”

  17. I’m curious about Jerry’s dislike of a tax on sugared sodas, or anything that isn’t good for you. I understand a person’s immediate dislike of food policing, because freedom is something the population views as extremely important. But though, as Jerry points out, the dangers of fats and sugars have been publicized, it certainly does not mean that people actually internalize the danger, or that they are able to rationally make decisions regarding what they should be eating (the way the dangers of smoking have been widely publicized, but people still smoke).

    From a consequentialist perspective (and I believe this is Jerry’s perspective): unless a greater amount of cheap unhealthy food–combined with the well-being increase that comes from having the desired extra freedom– actually leads to greater well-being than if there were taxes on unhealthy food, then there should be the taxes on unhealthy foods. Whether or not people are being given a choice isn’t important, if they are not making the “rational” choice. Does the unhealthy food really benefit people that much? I question this, when there are so many obesity-related problems in the US. And is the freedom really that important to people to counter this?

    Jerry pointed out that this would lead to a tax on other somewhat unhealthy things, like red meat–but how probable is this? Does the country work in such black and white ways we can’t have a reasonable tax without moving over to what might be considered unreasonable? And even if it is probable, does it outweigh the benefits of the other taxes?

    I’m certainly willing to change my mind, if there is something here that I’m missing!

    1. Personally, I think it’s the government’s job to educate people about healthy eating. Yes, there needs to be regulations on food labels so the information is accurately reported but people should know how to eat well. I think taxing may deter people but I think that’s a short term win.

      I don’t know how I feel about limiting calories for school meals. Calories aren’t all the story and fat, additives, etc. are more unhealthy. Meh, I didn’t have school meals when I was a kid. You ate breakfast (or didn’t in my case because eating in the morning makes me feel sick) and your mom packed you a (in my case gross) lunch that you ate (or didn’t and brought home to your dog so it looked like you did).

      I want to make sure kids learn about good nutrition but in our society, it’s a fine line between doing that & creating eating disorders.

      1. If we’re going to limit anything in school lunches, it shouldn’t be calories but rather refined sweeteners (of any variety, including concentrated juices or honey or zero-calorie concoctions or what-not).

        b&

  18. Tax on sugared sodas?: I disagree, for this would lead to a tax on anything considered “not good for you.” What’s next: a tax on red meat? I abhor the spread of “food policing” in the US.

    Well, we tax cigarettes and its basically the same logic: since your lifestyle can be reasonably expected to cost me money in terms of increasing all our health care costs, I have a justification for taxing you for that behavior. Obviously sugar is not even in the same quantitative class as nicotine, but with diabetes on the rise I can see how people can make the case that what’s sauce for the cigarette industry is sauce for the soda industry.

    I’m ambivalent. I agree with you Jerry that I don’t want to see loads of taxes on just about anything/everything bad for you. I want to prevent our government from sliding down that slope. OTOH, I don’t think the slippery slope argument is all that good and I think it may be perfectly possible to come to a regulatory ‘equilibrium’ where the worst health-effecting foods (such as transfats and high-sugar sodas) have some minor tax or regulation but not everything that is bad for you is taxed/regulated.

    The main thing I worry about is that a ‘sugar tax’ could have the effect of pushing people into consuming more artificial sweeteners that may be even worse for them than just lots of sugar. I’m not opposed to better living through chemistry, but I’m also somewhat skeptical that the companies pushing these products have a really good understanding of their potential long-term epidemiological impacts. On most days I think that probably the sugar is better for you in the long run (well, neither is best, but at least I am fairly sure I know what sucrose does when its in the body).

    1. One way around that is to define soft drinks in the way that the multi-state simplified sales tax scheme has, as a drink that does not need refrigeration before opening, contains no milk products, contains less than 50% juice, and is sweetened, naturally or artificially. That way, you tax the artificially sweetened drinks as well. The problem I have with that right now is that the science is not as firmly behind that as it is behind the drinks sweetened with sugars, but it is a starting place.

  19. Keep in mind – only one of the items on this list is calling for a Tax. The others are just demanding regulations but it all seems to be to protect the stupid and maybe a little on safety. Why not vote for more education and regulate the important stuff.

  20. Labeling origin of meat is, I think, mandatory in EU. It lets the consumer choose production methods in a heterogeneous market. E.g. swedish farmers have much more stringent rules and controls on not stressing animals, let them have space, antibiotics use for diagnosed health reasons and not overuse for growth reasons, et cetera. It also helps those who think that “local produced food” means efficient (e.g. more sustainable) transport, but I think statistics says that is wrong.

    As for taxes and bans on unhealthy food, we have some of them as well and I can’t see the general problem. It is much cheaper for the tax payers if food is reasonably healthy, conversely why would you willingly let people eat known dangerous food?

    [Compare safety belts in cars, why did we ever mandate having them and using them when they constrain your seat use? Or water regulations for drinking water, which can change the taste after processing.]

    Now, when risk is coupled to behavior, it becomes harder. Transfat for example seems to have no realistic lower risk free limit. But you need to consume _some_ fat. Et cetera.

  21. In the case of marijuana, it’s so clear how the corrupt, perverse force of government works. First, the sale is illegal and the plant is dangerous, then it becomes legal and the scum bureaucrats create a web or red tape and INSANE fees, licenses and other total B.S. to ‘protect’ us! Just to start up a licensed shop requires a huge investment and layers of bureaucracy so the greedy Feds get their cut! This will insure that pot will remain a black market commodity for a long time to come. Tommy Chong was right when he favored decriminalization, not legalization. Up to now, pot has been cheap, safe and abundant.

  22. American schools get blamed for the poor showing on these surveys, but I believe that EVERY public school kids is taught that the Earth orbits the Sun; and probably, that the hereditary unit of all living matter is DNA, even before they get to high school biology.
    After high school it becomes background info that fades from memory, like remembering the major exports of Australia.
    The problem is that far too many adults think that they have learned all they need to know by graduation. Same with religion – what else do you need to learn about theology and the Bible after you outgrow Sunday School?
    We see this in when total ignoramuses think they are equipped to argue with career PhD scientists about evolution, climate change, or vaccinations. They simply cannot imagine that someone who has spent 10 years getting a degree and has worked in the field for years can know more than them on the subject – ’cause, like, what else is there to know?

  23. Perhaps the most appalling bit of ignorance in this particular article is that exhibited by Ilya Somin himself.

    The DNA question is just a control question, of course.

    If Americans were made to write a paragraph or two about how the greenhouse effect is thought to work – irrespective of whether they have a reason/rationalization for accepting or rejecting the significance of the greenhouse effect – I think that fewer than 20% could give an approximately correct answer. It would be worse than the DNA stupidity.

    Similarly depressing results would probably come from asking members of the public about how prevalent death from communicable diseases was in say, 1900. People may or may not accept the authority of officials who tell them they must immunize their children, but many have no real sense of why the authorities are telling them that.

    Many other examples come to mind: the biology of human reproduction as it relates to the use of morning-after pills, statistical liklihood of surviving a motorcycle accident when using or not using a helmet (or of dying in a motorcycle accident vs. a car accident per mile driven), etc.

    And Ilya Somin thinks that such ignorance doesn’t affect the daily lives of people. The kind of ignorance Ilya Somin exhibits affects the daily lives of people who aren’t scientific illiterates because he makes excuses for the people who are – and we have to share the planet with them and with people who exploit their ignorance for their own profit.

    1. In my 101 Physical Geography exam in 1981 I was required to write about the greenhouse effect. After the first ten weeks I had neither attended that class nor read my textbook or supplied readings. I wrote what I assumed it meant. A few months later I came across the reading we’d been given about the greenhouse effect. I discovered just how embarrassing my answer was – I’m surprised I was given any marks at all.

      1. A highschool friend wrote about it using green pen. She thought her witty ink selection would get her extra points but she did very poorly on the paper. 🙂

  25. There are several studies published about how unhealthy foods are tied to the obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc., epidemic. This study is about teenagers and fast food and how to address this is a democracy.

    “The United States faces a severe epidemic of obesity and poor diet that adversely affects the health of young people. Advertising for highly palatable foods that should be consumed in limited quantities contributes to this epidemic and poses unique risks to children and adolescents. Food companies should refrain from advertising unhealthy products intentionally to children and adolescents, but they claim that the commercial speech doctrine allows them to openly and legally target these products to young people using sophisticated psychological techniques that take advantage of their developmental vulnerabilities. This doctrine is based on an outdated understanding of what advertising is and how it affects consumer behavior. To the extent that it stands as a barrier to regulation of junk food advertising to children and adolescents, the commercial speech doctrine must be reconsidered. Well-tailored government actions to restrict food and beverage marketing specifically targeting children should be able to withstand First Amendment scrutiny. For the health of our children, these actions should be taken and, if necessary, tested in the courts.” – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483979/

    For the legal perspective in having legislation intervene in regulating unhealthy foods see “Reshaping the American Concept of Consumer
    Interest in the Food Policy Debate” at http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&context=yjhple.

      1. It might be truly horrifying to see in black and white exactly what your thinking when you’re not thinking things even you would approve of.

  27. What our scientists and governments have told the American people are healthy diets (whether pyramid or plate)remains in flux. Fats: all good,all bad,all ugly. Sugars: who knows?! Carbs good or bad? Red meat good or bad? Well, it is not a black or white issue. Where’s the nuance? Human beings are not all the same in terms of what they prefer to eat and how different foods affect them physically and mentally. Processed foods are designed to contain excessive amounts of salts, fats and sugars that we find addictive and that make us ill. The ignorant or stupid consumer is the preferred target of corporate food producing America as you can feed them anything.

  28. Country of origin is very important information to have. I long ago decided I wanted to put nothing in my mouth made or produced in China. That includes (especially) drugs.
    If I decide I want to eat shrimp or prawns I want to know what river system feeds the waters where those are taken. I also want to know how domestic meat is produced.
    By the way, I eat DNA with relish. If for no other reason, just to stay alive. I’m drinking my DNA laced coffee as I write.

    1. Yeah, no kidding. Putting plastic in pet food was the last straw for us. We don’t buy Chinese-sourced products if we can help it.

      Athough its getting harder and harder to draw those lines. Recently didn’t something simlar happen in India? Drugs produced with little or none of the active ingredient in them?

      1. That’s been happening for a while in India. Unfortunately, the target for these drugs is frequently underdeveloped African countries that lack the infrastructure to do anything about it.

    2. Being worried about China appears to be a theme today, and rightly so. Not just in the non-existent food prep regulations, but also their complete disregard for environmental regulations, be it over-harvesting, unethical animal husbandry,consumption of endangered species, or the environmental degradation and pollution by industries.

      Likewise, just about any type of seafood imaginable. Shrimp, at least that which is caught by countries like Vietnam, is often caught without the use of TED’s (turtle excluder devices) which have been shown to have no negative impact on the catch, and can even increase the haul, at least as I recall from a few reports I have read. Unfortunately, few nations other than the US require them, and there are reports of US shrimpers disabling them once they get out to sea, because they don’t like or trust the “guv’ment” or scientists.

      and of course, I’m sure we’ve all read or seen reports about false seafood labeling, cheaper fish being sold as expensive species, knowingly or not, but easily exposed by DNA testing.

      1. their complete disregard for environmental regulations, be it over-harvesting, unethical animal husbandry,consumption of endangered species, or the environmental degradation and pollution by industries.

        Literally yesterday I took my kid to a museum exhibit, part of which was about animals that were thriving, endangered, and extinct due to recent human action. I had to explain to him that not all dolphins were extinct, because there in the ‘extinct’ display was big picture of the Chinese river dolphin. Not that causing an extinction is something unique to the Chinese, but still, it was a reminder as to why I try not to buy Chinese.

        1. Wasn’t it Mark Carwardine and Douglas Adams’ book about endangered species,Last Chance to See, that included the story of being served Yangtze River Dolphin for dinner as an “honor”?
          While all peoples are guilty of similar actions throughout our history (19th century museums for instance) ought not the “developing” nations learn from our mistakes instead of insisting on repeating them?

  29. I took a multiple choice test in high school, purportedly to assist me in my career decisions moving forward. At the time I was besotted by the notion of working outside, so in one of the choices I chose “garbage collector”. That answer turned out to flag my response for further review by the counselor- her explanation was that, although it was plausible that someone would choose that as a career, it was more likely that they would choose it because they were unsure of the concept of multiple choice tests, or tests in general, or reading, etc.
    So I wonder if maybe that was the original intent of the test question re: DNA; to weed out the 1 or 2% that did not comprehend what they were doing. If so, the 80% response was kind of useless- they would have to throw out most of the questionnaires.

    1. If it was a test question, they should have discarded the responses of those who clearly didn’t know what it meant imo, or also displayed the responses filtered that way to see if it made a statistically significant difference.

    2. funny. I took a similar type of test in high school, with my answers leading towards the obvious, that I should do something in biological or environmental sciences. What the test suggested, however, was that I should be a logger or trash collector, because clearly someone who loves science, nature, the outdoors, would certainly enjoy garbage heaps or clear cuts! Of course, I was also prevented from changing my class schedule from an art class to botany because, as the counselor said, “You’ve been taking art classes, you need to stick with art classes” and we all know that there is no place for art in botany, just like there’s no place for wanting to try new things in high school. I suppose the idea was that it’s best to know your place and never try to rise above it.

  30. Reminds me of a “Peanuts” strip in which Linus refuses some cocoa. “I read the label–it’s full of ingredients!”

  31. I’m going to ask this, even if it opens me up to the wrath of all the WEIT readers, but what of the opinion that labeling GMO foods so that people will then be confronted with the reality that they’ve been eating it for years, without incident, and perhaps we’d finally get the hell over it all and move on. I can’t imagine many would be able to avoid the shear number of foodstuffs produced with recombinant DNA technology. Well, they might try for a week, but really, do you think an American would last that long without corn chips at a “Mexican” restaurant?!

    I’d also ask a few other things. First, should we stop using the term GMO, it’s an emotionally loaded and imprecise term. If we use the term recombinant DNA technology, perhaps people wouldn’t be so reactionary (or not, I dunno). Second, and going off of ending the GMO term, I don’t think that saying saying artificial selection is the same as genetic modification helps things much. Clearly, a plant breeder doing hybrid crosses in the greenhouse is a bit different than a geneticist with restriction enzymes and plasmids in a lab, even if the results are the same or similar, and not at all dangerous. Third, what about gene editing? Perhaps this would be the way to ease the public into accepting “GM” technology. Nothing outside the species is introduced, no fear-producing jellyfish genes inserted into tomatoes or whatever they panic about. I think that BBC4’s program Plants: From Roots to Riches has brought this up before. So, thoughts, opinions, critiques?

    1. Ahhh the Madge, “you’re soaking in it” approach (70s commercial reference). I recall that it is very difficult to disentangle all the GMO information so there may be additional complexities with labelling GMO foods. I could be wrong though as doesn’t Europe also label?

  32. Fully agree+Interesting articles.

    “Mandatory labels on foods containing DNA”
    Must be a joke.

  33. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think most people know there is a connection among DNA, genes and heredity. But when asked in another context, say food ingredients, that connection vanishes. It sounds like DNA was a good control question in the survey. I wonder if there would be a similar response regarding amino acids?

    This reminds me of an article I saw many years ago in a waiting room magazine (pre-interneg). The author noted that mutations occur in DNA and that genetic damage accumulates with age. The pseudo-scientific leap was then to prescribe eating undamaged DNA as a way to counter aging. DNA in foods rich in young, healthy DNA would replace the body’s mutated, worn out DNA and aging would slow, if not reverse. The mechanism for such transformation was not addressed, and I don’t recall the prescribed DNA rich foods.

  34. I’m all for mandatory labelling that informs the consumer, because at the end of the day the freedom of choice we exhibit relies on being informed about the choices we are making. Misleading or omissions in labels leave us in a state of ignorance about what we are doing.

    Banning, on the other hand, takes the choice away altogether. And while there may be some instances where a ban is warranted, but to me a ban should always be a last resort. People should be free to make their own choices, even if they are the wrong one – provided it was an informed choice. A person drinking raw milk is making a choice to be stupid, and they should be allowed to. Though there is the problem of those stupid choices being forced on children – as we tragically saw in Australia recently with a child dying and many others getting sick from drinking unpasteurised milk.

    I don’t think a tax is a bad idea on certain products, especially if it is our tax money that helps pay for our health system. Taxing does have an effect on consumption, so it’s biasing the market away from the taxed product. Similarly, the revenue raised can be put to the problems associated with the product. It’s a slippery slope, I agree, but I don’t oppose it in principle.

    1. It’s the concern over children that sways to me to favoring a ban on unpasteurized milk. Granted, I suppose you could make it like tobacco, where you had to be 18 to purchase and drink it, and it was a big fine to provide it to a minor. Somehow, though, I doubt the organic types would follow the law on not giving it to their kids.

      1. In Australia it’s already illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption. The ban is gotten around by selling it as a cosmetic product. So a ban didn’t stop adults from drinking it, nor giving it to their children.

        There is a limit to the extent one can legislate against human stupidity.

        1. Here, very rural, you can pitch in to part ownership of a cow and have (really)fresh unpasteurized,unhomogenised milk every day. It is unbelievably good. And because you are at least part owner legally it is your own responsibility. Part of the difficulty is the delivery process in more populated areas where it takes several days for a customer to receive it. If it is pasteurized and sealed in sterile containers then that is OK.you can also buy ‘organic’ milk here which is homogenized and pasteurized to a lesser degree and packaged sterilely-some brands are OK

          1. I’ve heard that’s becoming popular here too. Got to admire the ingenuity of the scheme.

  35. I am always surprised at Dr Coyne’s stand on the government influencing what we eat. As has been argued many times on thsi site, people have no free will, and hence do not choose to eat unhealthy food. The choice here really is: do we allow the food industry to stuff us with sugar and fat (etc), or do we create a slightly healthier environment by regulation – in the general interest? (Note that I am not outlawing anything – just advocating a better balance.)

    I might add that I think it is a bit silly to get worked up about this sort of thing. Isn’t the right to eat as much sugar as you want totally trivial compared to rights like freedom of expression, fair elections, form a union et cetera? Let’s assume the (totally unreal) worst case: the government forces me to eat broccoli every day. So what?

    1. If Dr. Coyne has no free will, what makes you think he can advertise any position other than he does?

    2. “people have no free will, and hence do not choose to eat unhealthy food”

      Determinism doesn’t say that we don’t have choice or cannot change our mind. Why would you think that? Of course people make choices.

      “Isn’t the right to eat as much sugar as you want totally trivial compared to rights like freedom of expression?”

      No, in my opinion, paternalism is only appropriate towards children. Moral equality of persons demands respect for others liberty. I see no triviality here.
      Of course putting some restrictions on the food industry seems to me fine.

      “the government forces me to eat broccoli every day. So what?”

      Wouldn’t that be unhealthy?

  36. I am trying to reconcile being against a tax on sugary sodas but for a tax on marijuana.

    Being against a tax on either I think the later as an argument for legalizing marijuana is rather short sighted and desperate.

  37. I’ll say that I really would like to see calorie labels on restaurant menus, especially fast food menus (kudos to McDonalds for already doing this). Yeah, I know that fast food isn’t the healthiest for me, but some nights it’s just so quick and easy (and often cheaper than a home cooked meal), so it’s nice to have the calories listed on the menu to make a more informed decision about what I’m ordering.

    1. Yes, I like calorie counts on menus. If I’m in one of those “throw caution to the wind” moods, I’ll just ignore them.

      I’d think it would be hard on restaurateurs, though–they don’t tend to have fixed menus like fast food does.

      1. Once, I ate a meatball sub only to find out later that evening it was 1000 calories. So o worked it all off on the treadmill. I never at a meatball sub again!

        1. Oy! That’s some calorie count.

          Most of it came from the sugar in the sauce, I bet, with second being the sugar in the bread.

          …and I bet it didn’t even really occur to you just how sweet it was. “Food” “scientists” are damned sneaky that way.

          …and you don’t want to know how long it takes to burn off that many calories through exercise alone…the good news is that, if you’re reasonably healthy and eat lots of fiber (especially fresh veggies) and only do that sort of thing on rare occasion, your body is probably just going to eliminate much of that sugar without metabolizing too much of it. But you certainly don’t want to make an habit of it, or else you will suffer….

          b&

          1. Believe me, I learned how long it took running on the damn treadmill until I’d burned enough calories. It’s a long time.

          2. That’s the great thing about resistance training, of whatever form…you’re not going to burn all that many calories during the workout itself, but, if you do it right, you’re going to burn all kinds of calories constantly for the next day or three as your body (re-)builds lean body mass.

            b&

  38. My understanding is that golden rice is a failure. http://www.grain.org/article/entries/10-grains-of-delusion-golden-rice-seen-from-the-ground
    It is my understanding that GMO corn and soybeans only benefit the producers of 2,4-D and glysophate. There is no benefit to the consumer and it may be harmful with the increased residuals of the pesticide left in the product. Then there is the Bt corn that is no longer a plant but registered as a pesticide. What’s it doing once it reaches our intestinal tracts.

    1. Keeping in mind the ones who produce the corn and soybeans are the same companies producing the weed killer you put on the corn and beans. So it’s really good for them.

  39. Ignorance of science drives me crazy. It seeps into medical woo as well. My hair dresser started to tell me, last week, of a client who cured her cancer by taking walks in the woods and painting her walls in her home in bright colours. She told me that the doctor told her she had cancer so to go home and die. I replied that no doctor would tell you that; if you were that far gone, they’d help you with palliative care and pain management. I told her that her client misheard. I didn’t tell her that her that it is a possibility that her client is lying as well. People make up shit for all kinds of reasons. I hope I never run into this person; I’ll probably get in an argument that will culminate in me demanding to see her pathology report!!

  40. If we’d quit putting warning labels on everything, there might not be so many ignorant people running around loose.

    2. And then there are the people (sometimes I think half the planet) who think that by ignorant people, I’m referring to those with an attitude.

  42. Pretty sure I’ve told this one here before, but it’s relevant again. Some 20+yrs ago an Eco-Botanist colleague (known to PCC) in my old dept was interviewing for a position in the dept, and talked to the Dean (who had come from the Physics Dept!). He sheepishly asked her, “Can I ask you a question? Do plants have DNA?”

  44. Contrary to the implications in one or two comments above, tax on on “unhealthy” product is not designed to recoup the perceived (or real) increased healthcare costs of unhealthy lifestyles (be it due to tobacco or sugar) but rather to change the patterns of consumption by making heathier food relatively cheaper; providing economic incentives to change behaviour. Add to this the evidence that demand for a product reduces with increased price both in general and specifically for e.g. tobacco and you have the beginnings of a public health policy to improve the health of the population and hopefully have a greater impact on the poorest sections of society.

    Of course, reality is rather complex and merely increasing tax on sugar or fat is insufficient in itself if people on lower incomes have little access to affordable healthy produce, have no time or enegy left at the end of the day to prepare it, or even lack sufficient knowledge to make quick, cheap, healthy meals.

    You might say that it is an attempt to skew the forces of environmental determinism towards healthy “choices”.

  45. I’m sure someone has already said this; but raw milk cheeses are banned in the US. They have to be aged (I think for 60 days) before importation.

    I favor pasteurization. It’s sort of one of those things basic sanitation. Just do it.

    I found that even one of my doctors was confused about such things. She thought that yogurt microbes were all killed by pasteurization. Not so much. It’s pasteurized and then specific microbes are added and (in most yogurts) are still alive and well when you consume the yogurt. This is the basic procedure even when you make it at home.

    Cheers, and good eating!

    2. Hmm…I know I’ve seen raw milk cheeses for sale at Whole Paycheck, with a large sticker saying exactly that. No idea how much they’re aged, though.

      Yoghurt, absolutely: you have to make sure that no undesirable bugs have already taken up residence before you introduce your own.

      Same deal with all sorts of other fermented foods, like pickles.

      b&

      1. We are big into fermentation at our house: Pickles, sour kraut, loads of Kim Chee, yogurt, aged cheses, not to mention wine and beer. Happily, these things are easy to find locally. Most microbes are your friends.

        There may be local rules on raw milk cheese that are produced domestically; but the imports (primarily France) have to be aged. That apparently causes the (bad) microbes to die.

        There’s a lot of agitation about raw milk here in the Midwest. One farmer here in MN has been prosecuted for selling it off the farm (it’s legal in MN to sell it on the farm to informed buyers.)

        To me, it just seems like a fad, like so many things of this nature. If it’s “natural” it’s a wonder-food. If it’s been processed in any way or selectively bred, then it’s “Franken-Food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Grain is bad! Coconut milk is a miracle. Blah, blah, blah. And it often seems coupled with woo-ism and anti-vaxism, so I’m instantly skeptical when things like this are discussed. My red bullshit warning flag pops up and stays up.

        Salmonella, lusteria, and E. coli are as natural as you please. So is sickness and death from infection.

        And the whole “Paleo” thing makes me laugh. I joke that the paleo diet is eating things* that did not exist during the paleolithic.

        (* With the exception of eggs, seafood, and wild game.)

        1. What also gets me are the people who think that high fructose corn syrup is of the devil, but who then go on to consume vast quantities of honey and agave nectar and the like. Or, on the other side, those who blame butter for all their ills and go on to slather their I Wonder If It’s Bread with I Can’t Believe People Think This Resembles Butter.

          b&

          1. Ha, indeed!

            I try to talk to people about where fructose exists/comes from but it all comes down to “evil businesses” forcing corn syrup on us!

            I always liked putting Karo on my pancakes sometimes for the flavor variety when I was a kid. Very rarely eat pancakes anymore (and if I do, I put strawberry or cherry jam on them).

            I do like pop made with cane or beet sugar in preference to pop which has corn syrup sweetener. Not that I drink much pop — it get mixed with vodka in various concoctions that go under the heading “boat drinks” (I’m a Parrothead).

          4. Oh, there’s lots to blame on evil business and corn syrup, all the way to the Nixon administration’s war on fat.

            But just because one form of sugar happens to be the type that’s most profitable for big business doesn’t mean that every other form of sugar is healthy….

            b&

  46. Meat origin labeling is a protectionist trick. Buying foreign meat, such as Canadian hogs or beef, allows economies of scale. Not however if the Canadian and American flesh must be segregated. Imagine if paper manufacturers had to keep Canadian and American lumber separate, or if beer brewers faced extra administrative and logistics costs for using hops grown in two countries.

  47. Why I support labeling of GMO products and imported meat (agricultural) products.
    1.I judge myself to have the right to know where my food comes from and to whom I am giving my business.
    2.GMO BT insecticide poisons insects, including pollinators, and, like overuse of antibiotics, promotes the evolution of BT resistance in pests. Industrial GMO BT technology threatens the efficacy of traditional BT crop protection and the small companies that developed and sell it.
    3.GMO “Roundup Ready” technology has spurred overuse roundup herbicide and the concomitant evolution of troublesome roundup-resistant weeds. These weeds require higher dosages of the herbicide to eliminate them and augment herbicide pollution.
    4.Monsanto lobbies heavily to impede GMO-labeling of foods, i.e., it proactively fights my right to know and harms the people, mostly small outfits, who grow the food I prefer eating.
    5.Big GMO companies have a vested interest in extinguishing pre-molecular agriculture. When the competition goes under, GMO will be the only game on the block.
    That said, I have nothing against the food grown using GMO technology.

    1. I’m curious… What does “where my food comes from” mean?

      Are you concerned what country it comes from? Does it matter which state or province? Do you need to know the county or town? Should GPS coordinates be provided allowing you to navigate to the square foot of the planet on which your carrot grew? Do you need to know the names of the farmer(s) who raised the crop? Are you interested in the detailed farming practices followed for each of the farm products you consume?

      Should producers of blended scotch whisky report to you the sources of the barley used in their malt and the agricultural practices used to grow it? Do you want to know the source of the peat used for the malting fires? Should we be provided a mineral analysis of the water that went into the scotch?

      I think it would be really cool to have all that information available because I’m a curious fellow. Food labels are not going to provide it. Ever.

      Meaningful health-informative labeling is a great thing. But the labeling being demanded by GMO advocates isn’t that.

  48. For labeling I refer to major political or administrative units. The discussion here focuses on the growing or manufacture of “imported” products. When purchasing tropical fruit, I would like to know if I am giving my business to Venezuela or Colombia or Costa Rica. Might you object to being deceived into buying unlabeled ISIS-produced figs?
    There seems to be no difficulty for importers to inform when and where my wine was made or even for me to discovery where my FEDEX package is sitting at right this instant. Alleged insuperable difficulties in tagging packaged products are the purest malarkey.
    I judge myself to have the right to buy from sources (companies, states, or countries) that treat labor fairly, farm animals humanely, and environment wisely. If the state or society judges me irrational for harboring this desire does not matter: it is my right. Corporate ideology seems to want to limit my right of choice to brand name, technical characteristics and price, with business and government making the moral decisions for me. Such a restriction is invasive and perverse.
    As for Scotch whisky, knowing the name/location of the distillery is sufficient, along with whether or not they use genetically modified ingredients.

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