And now I'm not claiming that there aren't any problems, or that there aren't things we need to think about, but what I am saying, is that we need a sort of accurate picture of the world that surrounds us before we start advocating all kinds of changes. So, just to give some examples, you know, one is that life expectancy is increasing, it's been dramatically increasing over the past years, but even in the last 20 years alone, while there's been all of these supposed health problems, life expectancy has continues to rise.
In addition to that, and I don't know the statistics on Canada, but in the US there are actually more farms today than there were 10 years ago, there are more small farms today. The farms that do exist are making more money than they once did. It used to be the case that being a farmer was an occupation of a popper, but today the median income of farmers far surpasses the median income of, you know, regular households.
That's not to say anything about the assets that those farmers hold too. So, financially, farmers are doing well off, and small farmers are also doing relatively well off. I'm sure they wish they were doing better [laughs] but they're doing well. And I think whenever we look at even other things like food safety, it's also getting better. The, you know, for example, the number of confirmed cases of E. Coli, for example has gone done significantly over the past decade or so.
People in the US are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were in the 70s. Women are spending much less time in the kitchen than they did in the 60s. Now I know some people like Michael Pollan, in his recent book Cooked, he's trying to get everybody back to the kitchen. I think that's a fine thing to suggest, but I think if you actually looked at the lives many of our grandmothers led, you know, it was not all that romantic [laughs] and to feed that family, they had to spend a lot of time in that kitchen.
And I think that's, of course there are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the reasons many women today can now enjoy working outside the home is because a lot of the tasks you used to have occupy a lot of the time for women are now obsolete, and I think that's a great thing. So, you know, I could go on and on but I think the overall picture that I'm trying to paint here is that the state of food and agriculture in our society is great, it's never been better, and it's never been better in the history of humankind. I mean the biggest challenge for humans, historically, has been finding enough food to eat.
And yea, we have some problems now about maybe eating too much, but in my opinion, that's the lesser of two evils. We might need to think about ways we can get better at that but in a lot of ways, I think we're really enjoying absolutely amazing abundance [laughs] of food both variety and quantity and quality that's never been witnessed in human history. In a previous podcast that we did with David Schweikhardt, we looked at the history of farm bills in the United States.
And this history starts in the s and contemporary, what we call the contemporary food system as you know, has built a lot of government policies, some which we might be more critical of than others. But in its initial, in its starting point, Dave Schweikhardt mentions in the podcast that really the main goal was to raise farmers income, that is was decidedly less than others and it was perceived as a social goal.
And that sort of motivated many of these initial government policies, and that was the starting point. When I read the book, and I looked at a lot of the policies that you were critical of, it seems, perhaps unlike where we were in s, that you just aren't buying the starting point of what the appropriate role for government should be. In other words, in the s when these farm bills started, the objective of supporting farmer income might have been something that was generally perceived as an appropriate role of government.
But that's something different from the set of policies like local bands on certain food groups, and fat taxes.
- Broken (This Book 1).
- A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate;
- Poetic Imagery - Volume One!
- The food police : a well-fed manifesto about the politics of your plate!
- The Haunted Mirror;
- Jayson Lusk: The food police: a well-fed manifesto about the politics of your plate.
You seem to be saying this isn't an appropriate role for government. Is that a fair characterization of the difference between, you know, the role of government historically in supporting agriculture and the set of policies that you tackle? Yea, I mean I think I would be critical even if some of those policies with the goal of supporting farm income back in the 30s. So, you know, in general some of those are sort of philosophical issues about what is the appropriate role of government. You know, should the government be involved in, sort of, redistributing wealth to those people who sort of, you know, out of economic favour with the times.
And indeed, I think that's what we've seen is we have these policies and they might have addressed a, you know, a need of the time in the 30s, but what you find is they actually had all kinds of unintended consequences even at that time. You know, one of the ways they tried to prop up prices back then was by destroying commodities, restricting the supply, and this was at a time, in the Great Depression, where there were big soup lines.
So it was, you know, ironic sort of convoluted set of policies that persist today and in fact a lot of the arguments of the, sort of modern day foodies, the food police that I call them, are actually, you know, their problem is with those same policies and they blame them on a lot of the problems that we have now. I think, I'm not a fan of the farm policies, but I think they're ascribing all the problems that the, sort of, food police see to those policies is also misplaced. And this is a characterization, it's not true of all of them, but they tend to be middle-class, upper-middle-class people that have a particular aesthetic preference about food and how food should be produced.
And my concern, is what they're doing is imposing those sets of preferences of everybody else in the country who don't have the same incomes that they do, the same desires that they do. It's all great to say that you want local, you know, heirloom tomatoes. That's fantastic if you can afford to do it. But to say that that's how everybody should be eating and that we should be spending our tax dollars to make those outcomes happen, I think is really mistaking the challenge that a lot of people are actually dealing with.
In the United States there's a record number of people on food stamps. And globally, which is of course where the bigger problem is, there's just under a billion people that the United Nations today says is starving. So, you know, being able to produce enough food inexpensively is, remains a big challenge and it will continue to be a challenge that population, we're supposed to add another billion people, most projections say, in the 25 to 50 years.
And so being able to supply enough food in a cost effective and high quality manner is a different objective than the one of, you know, providing niche high quality food to those people that can afford it and that's sort of, I think the crux of thinking [laughs] or at least my critique of a lot of the modern, sort of fashionable food policies. Alright, let's hop in to one. There's one that's very local, if you will. Currently in Ontario, Bill 36 which is being considered to promote local food establishes a local food week and it allows the minister to set goals to which public organizations should strive to in terms of their provision of local food, and also allows them to audit their material.
Now, you're somewhat critical of these kinds of bills. You start of one of the things, and you kind of address some of the tenants that are often behind these bills, and suggest that they don't really stand up as much as advocates might suggest. And I thought could just go over some of those tenants. So one is that local foods are good for the environment. So if you don't mind I might take one step back and just say [Brady: Yea] I don't have any problem with people buying local foods. In fact, I do it myself.
I buy things from my local farmers market here in Stillwater, Oklahoma. My former students run stands at the farmers markets, so I think those are all nice things and there's nothing inherently problematic with it. Those are the kinds of issues that I take issue with. And the reason I do gets back to the question you asked, Brady that you asked about, what is the appropriate role for government?
You know, normally as an economist we have, you know, a set of quote unquote market failures that would sort of justify government intervention and I think the list that you're sort of about to lead us through here are all the sort of normal things people would say is this a reason for government intervention? And when I look at the actual evidence and the research on these topics, I just don't see them adding up. So the first question you asked me was, okay, surely we should subsidize local foods because they're good for the environment, right?
That's a very common argument, and I think people think this, because what they think is well, if we're buying local foods those foods have travelled fewer miles, and so therefore there must be fewer environmental problems, less carbon emission, less energy use to get the product produced to market. And of course, that's partially true, but what that perspective is missing is that the transportation phase of the food delivery or the food production process is a relatively minor part of the overall energy picture in food production.
And so what that says to me is that what you what to do are find places where you can grow the food most efficiently and then ship that food to market, because that shipping phase it consumers relatively smaller amounts of energy. I think one striking example of this is a study that was done several years ago and they compared the amount of energy that would be used if people that lived in London bought lamb that was grown in, around London, or if they bought lamb that was from New Zealand.
And they actually found that the New Zealand lamb, those Londoners would be better off at least in terms of energy expenditures, buying that lamb that came from New Zealand. How is that possible to have lamb travel 10, miles and use fewer, you know, less energy? And the reason is because New Zealand is naturally endowed with all those things that make rearing sheep especially easy.
Lots of grass, lots of sunshine and moreover, you put that lamb on a boat and shipping by boat is incredibly energy efficient. And so the argument that buying locally will save energy, I think it just doesn't stand up to the facts, and moreover, it could actually be worse because if you think about a lot of small farms, farmers driving small pickups to a market, actually will often generate more energy, will use of more energy or create more environmental pollutants than will one large semi-truck backing into a grocery store, for example. We're over [laughs], if you look at the amount of energy expend, that you and I expend to get ourselves to the supermarket, that is often a bigger energy cost than all, to get that food to the market in the first place.
And that's just one argument, there are a lot of other agreements that surround there, but I think when you look at the whole picture, the one that emerges is we really want to think about growing foods where they can be most effectively grown and in that, if you're worried about environmental issues, is the way you want to think about it.
Another argument that is commonly set forward is while we want food security, or we want to make the agriculture sector more robust locally. You're somewhat critical of that suggestion as well. Yea, I think it's a little short sighted, to think in those terms. Okay, that's fine and good but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be local.
The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate
But, you know, one of the problems with this sort of food security argument is, you know, the nature of production agriculture is that when something, you know, it's cyclical, it comes in seasons. And so what happens is all the produce in an area is likely to come to market at about the same time, so you have these series of times in the year when there's a glut of food, whether its corn or potatoes or tomatoes or whatever it might happen to be, and so, yea, you've got a lot of abundance at one time of year, but you don't at another time of year.
Not only is that wasteful, cause what ends up happening, and if you look at the data this is what happens in a lot of farmers' markets, they throw out large amounts of produce, so it's not particularly good for the environment. But if you go to bigger production regions where you have big processing plants for example, packing plants located next to the fields, than that kind of waste is not nearly as likely to happen there. But the challenge with this sort of food security argument is, you know, what happens if a drought occurs, or a hail storm occurs and destroys the crops in a region?
They weren't planning on you needing anything from them. And I also think this sort of gets a little bit to maybe one of the arguments that might come up in a minute, but the sort of, you know, economics of it are that you know, it sounds great, let's just buy from those people that are close to us, and that'll be good, it'll make them healthier. But what happens when you're, when the people, you know, a hundred miles from you decide their going to do the same thing, and now they're no longer buying from you?
That then hurts your farmers and hurts their economic potential. If we only were able to consumer what we could make ourselves, we'd be terribly poor, and not only would we be poor, we wouldn't be particularly secure either. What makes us wealthy is our ability to do something well and trade that with others for what they do well. And this is the stuff of course we teach economics Yea, along those lines, I thought one of the interesting things that I think would surprise many is that you make an argument that local foods are not necessarily healthier.
So you can have healthy foreign food, you can have unhealthy local food. In my opinion, I don't really know what local has to do with it. It doesn't matter whether they're local or not. Yea, there is some argument that if you eat fruits and vegetables that are picked ripe that there is more nutrient content in those fruits and vegetables, but that's ignoring the fact that in big areas of production, say California or Florida or something like that, when they pick these vegetables what they'll often do is quickly freeze them and that locks in a lot of those nutrients. And indeed, if you look at the research of these topics, that the, you know, the nutrient content of a frozen fruit or vegetable that you could find in produce aisle, or I guess in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store, often has more nutrients in it than a vegetable or fruit that was picked and's been sitting on the shelf for a day or two.
And so, the absolute recommendation that it has to be fresh, I think is ignoring the fact that frozen and also canned vegetables have a lot of nutrients. Actually, even the can does pretty well if you look at the nutrient profile relative to fresh stuff that's been sitting out for three or four days. And I think that again that kind of gets back to one of my points about the fact that when you have a lot of fruits and vegetables come to market at the same time, and I know a lot of people like to participate in these CSA's, community supported agriculture. They might buy shares in like, a co-op, where they're delivered a certain amount of food.
And I think the absolutely amazing thing to me is if I go in our grocery store here in Stillwater, Oklahoma, any time of year the availability of different kinds of produce is absolutely astounding. I mean it doesn't matter what time of year it is, I can find a jalapeno, I can find a lime, I can find.. And the way we get that diversity is by trade. And yea, maybe we get to send them some stuff when it's, you know, the opposite time of year for them.
But yea, I think if you're limiting yourself to those things that can be grown only locally, I think you're really limiting the variety in your diet. Now I want to come back to a point before we move to say one of the next policies. But to just refine our discussion a little bit, I hear, it's not so much that you're critical of eating local food, it's that you're critical of the reasons given for government intervention. Yea, you're exactly right. In fact the way I like to say it is, I'm not against local foods, I'm against bad arguments for local foods [laughs]. And so that's what really I'm taking issue with, and really it's not that big of deal.
You know, so what, a few people go into farmers market? But when you start talking about these policies like the one you have in Ontario, now all of sudden you're spending my tax dollars, your tax dollars to implement these policies, and I think that's really when you want to step in and say "wait a minute, does this make much sense? And I'm also, that sort of grates on me a little bit too, for the same reasons that a lot of the arguments that are presented are not as compelling as they might at first seem.
So what is there, is there certain government policies with respect to food that you're supported of? So, forms of labelling that allow people to identify the proportion of a certain food parts, or different nutrients in say, processed food. Yea, so, you know when I think about sort of the appropriate role for government, one way I think about it, and I know there will be others that think differently about this, but I like to think about the government as sort of being a referee.
And so what I think about, as being an appropriate role for government is providing a fair playing field, even playing field once those rules are established, enforcing the rules, and then also making sure that people have the information to know what the rules of the game are. So, with regard to food labelling, I think, you know, that is a role for government potentially, that I don't necessarily like all forms of labelling, but especially when there's a demonstrable safety risk, for example, or a demonstrable health impact, that seems like a relatively benign role for government.
And again, what I see that doing, is sort of stepping in as a referee. They're not saying you should buy this or you shouldn't, but they're saying "here's the information, now you decide whether you think this is an appropriate thing to do or not. You know, trans fats is something that is a legitimate health concern and it seem imminently reasonable that people might want that information and that seems an appropriate role for government. Similarly, I think, you know, providing information on research, what we actually know to be sort of the state-of-the-art in terms of knowledge, seems a reasonable goal.
So I mentioned the trans-fat. You know, when sufficient evidence comes about that something like that might be dangerous, at least if consumed in too high of quantities, then making that known, educating the public, seems like a reasonable thing to do.
Now I think turning around and vilifying people that still make that choice is perhaps a bit mis-headed. But at least, you know, letting people know what the risks are seems reasonable. And the investments that have been made in agricultural production and technology have made food much less expensive than it would have been otherwise.
And it's not necessarily all that clear that its research that would have been done by the private sector. So I think there are lots of things, I agree, there are some areas and important roles for government to play. I think one of the main things they can also do is provide a, you know, the court system that we have, and a lot of the harms that people point to with regard to food and things, you know, if you're being harmed by a big agribusiness and you can prove it, then they should be liable for that. And if you can prove your case in a court of law that you were damaged in some way by some activity of a food company, than I think that's a perfectly legitimate thing for someone to do, and I think providing that court system and the legal role's that surround it is an important role for the government.
Alright, let's now let's again focus on some of these particular policies that you're worried about in your book Food Police.
The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate by Jayson Lusk
Let's talk about fat taxes [Jason: So, I mean maybe you want to make is specific to a particular case, but in general you're critical of a number of sort of [distorted speech] consequences that may result from the fat taxes. And in a sense, you discuss that it maybe not even achieve its main objective.
Let's discuss that a little bit. Yea, so, you know I think one of my problems with these sort of policies, the fat taxes for example, is somewhat philosophical, and the version that is now quite popular is the soda tax [Brady: And indeed, I think in the US at least 33 states have some form of taxes on sodas, but they're being proposed at even higher levels in more locations as we speak. It's like taking money away from you. So under what scenario is someone better off by taking money away from them? If that person thought they would be better off by consuming fewer sodas, they could make that choice now, and then use that extra money they were spending on sodas on something else.
But the fact that consumers are not currently making those choices says that they like to drink soda. That it's something they prefer to do given the cost and even the potential health consequences that result. Moreover, I think anytime we talk about food taxes, taxes on foods, these are policies that tend to be quite regressive, meaning that they taxes are borne primarily by those people that who can least afford to pay it. So the poor spend a larger proportion of their income on food, so as a consequence, when you tax something like food, you're taking that money from some of the least fortunate among us in society, and I think that's problematic on another level.
But as you pointed out, you know, even if you disagree with me on those two things, you might wanna just take a step back and say "well are these things even gonna work? And yet, they'll pull a lot of money out of the backs of people's pockets, so they'll be pretty effective at raising revenue, but they're really not gonna change what people weight very much, unless you really, really, you know, impose, you know, exorbitant taxes on food, which I think is, you know, both bad for the regressive reasons that I mentioned earlier, but also it would be politically infeasible.
Not only does the research tend to suggest they're not very effective, the ones by the way, I should say, the studies that do show them to be effective, often are a little misguided, they're based on simulations and don't really take into account how your body responds to changes in calories as it should.
But there are some studies that suggest that not only will it not change weight by very much, it actually could increase weight. So for example, with a tax on sodas, one study out of Cornell showed that such a policy might actually increase consumption of alcoholic beverages, at least among adults, or fruit juices, which naturally some of them have more sugar than say, a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi or something along those lines. So, you know, my own take is that it is, you know, a soda tax would probably reduce weight but just not by very much. And I suppose the lingo that we economists would use it to say "it's going to create really large deadweight losses" because, you know, it will cause this change but it's gonna extract a lot of money out of people's pockets.
And so, I just don't find them to be terribly, you know, effective policies either philosophically or also just even empirically in terms of the, what the studies show to be their effects. What about, you know, you might hear in this regard someone say, "Well, you know, we've taxed, we've heavily taxed [distorted speech]" and then they try to equate that with, for example, some of these really sugar intensive foods.
And Paula Deen has diabetes! Something must be done. So says an emerging elite in this country who think they know exactly what we should grow, cook and eat. They are the food police. Taking on the commandments and condescension the likes of Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Mark Bittman, The Food Police casts long overdue skepticism on fascist food snobbery, debunking the myths propagated by the food elite. In the past ten years, Lusk has published more than one hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to… More about Jayson Lusk. No empty calories in this expose.
But, as Jayson Lusk, shows in powerful and pointed detail, the FDA creates massive levels of mischief and confusion through its misguided regulation of food and drink. Chocked-filled with telling anecdotes, and informed by strong economic theory, Lusk offers a compelling expose of government misadventure that tends to hurt the very people whom it is said to protect. Reading it was a cathartic experience.
It packs an awful lot of common sense and clear headed thinking into a small space. Lusk makes clear that a lot of what academics and politicians take for granted about our agricultural system is in fact nonsense. It is tempting to dismiss the food police as well-intentioned, if not exactly well-informed about the science and economics of food production and consumption.
Lusk has reinforced my conviction that to ignore them would be irresponsible. The food police have considerable clout at the highest levels of government and they think they know best about what everyone should eat, including you and me. If they get their way, they would put at risk the ability of our farms to produce healthy and nutritious food at a price the whole world can afford. Lusk does that, and in a way that reads like a charming personal memoir by your favorite college professor. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Linux Basics for Hackers.
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