One of my favorite libertarian watchdogs, the Cato Institute’s Radley Balko, responds to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s demand that soda cans feature warning labels cautioning a benighted (and evidently, quite confused) public that soda, consumed in excess, might cause obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, and osteoperosis. Writes Balko, in his Cato news release:
First, the studies CSPI cites in calling for these warnings are far from universally accepted […]. A Harvard study released last year, for example, followed 14,000 school-age children and found that ‘there was not a strong association between intake of snack foods and weight gain.’ This included soda. Studies published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and Obesity Research last year came to similar conclusions. Even anti-soda researcher David Ludwig was forced to conclude in one of his own studies, ‘there is no clear evidence that consumption of sugar per se affects food intake in a unique manner or causes obesity.’ For its part, CSPI was forced to retract key data from its own 1998 alarmist soda study ‘Liquid Candy’ after critics pointed to gaping flaws in its methodology.
Second, the idea of singling out some foods for warning labels is preposterous. Any food eaten to excess will cause weight gain. Over the years, CSPI has attacked pound cake, grilled chicken alfredo, fondue, cheesecake, Chinese food, popcorn, hamburgers, corn chips, pizza, fried chicken, fat-free foods, low-carb foods, eggs, clams, beer, shellfish, milk, wine, and garlic bread, among others. Will all of these require warning labels, too?
Finally, policymakers should ask themselves if this is really the kind of society we want. Do we really want every consumer decision nagged by warning labels and healthist propaganda? Do we want every measurable risk taxed and regulated? Do we want the equivalent of a government nanny lurking in each grocery aisle clicking her tongue at what’s in our shopping cart?
In 1994, CSPI President Michael Jacobson told the Washingtonian magazine, ‘CSPI is proud of finding something wrong with practically everything.’ He claimed to be joking. One wonders if he really was.
Well, I watched Jacobson debate Neil Cavuto on the junk food labeling issue yesterday. And if that was any indication of how this guy actually thinks, I’m sorry to say that no, he’s not joking. At all.
In fact, one suspects that if he could get away with it, this guy would affix a warning label to warning labels—the small print on which is almost certain to cause an “epidemic” of eye strain somewhere down the road.
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update: FOR THE CHILDREN!
If it were the 1960s, maybe, but this is the Age of Google. If you still don’t know excess sugar is bad, you should do the human genome a favor and exit the pool.
Be sure to check out his new side project: Spurlock Watch. It’s sort of a rolling fisking of Spurlock’s new book and tv series.
All these studies and warning are great, but if you don’t care does it matter if you get warned. Are they for putting the label on to tell me something I don’t or so they can limit liability?
Either way, you can eat just about anything with exercise and it’s not going to matter.
Hey America, swim one mile a day and the national obesity problem would drop dramatically over night.
Better yet, cut half the high school and junior high school classes (or shorten them considerably) and replace them with longer gym classes.
Either way, you can eat just about anything with exercise and it’s not going to matter.
Sorry, seriously no offense intended, but that’s a fairly ignorant statement that’s finely contingent on what “matter” means.
Well, he was writing a press release, not a medical journal paper. But for what it’s worth to you, he did cite a number of studies.
This has “lawsuit by Michael Moore” written all over it.
TallDave, you bastard. Now I can’t make my self-mocking “I’m tremendously fat” lawsuit joke.
I can, however, sue you for making me feel bad.
You’ll be hearing from my attorney.
I need your address though; please send it along.
742 Evergreen Terrace
Springfield
You’ll have to figure out the state, tho.
Well, obviously it’s wherever the Simpsons live. That would be Illinois, right?
We’ve put so many “warnings” on things, that the real warnings are lost among the noise. So many warnings therefore actually make us less safe.
turing word is of course “problem”
They would have to put the warning in pictograms I guess, since anybody that stupid can’t read either.