A better "healthy food" labeling system

Have you noticed the proliferation of "healthy food" labeling systems lately?

They remind me of a line from Michael Franti's song: "They're telling me to choose, but there's only lies to choose from."

The American Heart Association (AHA), for example, charges a fee to allow manufacturers to put its "heart check" symbol on selected foods, but the selection criteria don't consider trans fat or give much weight to sugar content (see the image at the bottom of this post). So, at your grocery store, you may find the AHA "heart check" symbol on Chocolate Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs. Lucky indeed!

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) today petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to initiate a national discussion about possible improvements to "healthy food" labeling. The public interest group asked FDA to solicit public comments on appropriate nutrition criteria and promising examples of communication tools used in other countries (see the stop light image from the United Kingdom at right).

It is just the sort of thing a pro-market pro-nutrition food policy advocate likes to see. What choices would consumers make if the nutrition label were so clear and graphic that it would be pointless for the manufacturer to clutter it with misleading claims and misdirections? If you are an optimist, you may imagine choices good enough to reverse the current nutrition-related epidemics. If you are a pessimist, you may imagine little change from current behavior, and little harm in trying. In either case, this approach seems respectful of people's right to know what the market is offering them and then to make their own decisions about food.

The modest petition is signed by a number of researchers in nutrition, epidemiology, and food policy, including among others Alberto Ascherio, Eric Rimm, Meir Stampfer, Walter Willett, George Blackburn, Carlos Camargo, and myself.

The electric car and the inconvenient truth

My family is going through a period of reflection and change about lifestyle choices and environmental ethics. We were already getting by with one beat up old Honda Civic for our family of four. Then, our 6-year old son -- probably having heard some conversation between my wife and myself -- suggested that we stop using the car. We haven't sold the car yet, but we have started marking our kitchen calendar in big bold marker with the words "no car" on every day we do without. If we reduce our car miles from 11,000 per year to 7,500 per year, our insurance company will give us a discount. So far, the words "no car" appear on about 10 out of 14 calendar days, and we are still learning rapidly how to get by without it.


You might think this change would be an ordeal, but certainly not so far. We bought new bright bike lights for the kids and reinstalled our own. For travel together by bike path, the six-year-old rides his own new bike and the four-year-old rides the tag-along. For travel that includes roads, the four-year-old gets the old bike trailer and the six-year-old gets the tag-along. We bundle up for the late New England fall, and of course the weather has been mild lately. Every time we make a decision specifically prompted by the discipline of our new calendar record-keeping -- whether walking together in a hard rain or loading up the bikes with a particularly heavy burden -- we get home laughing at the fun we had together.

You might also think we were doing fine on car choices already and must be particularly uptight to be attempting yet more restraint. But, that's not true either. Everybody knows, for example, that per capita energy use or carbon emissions is much higher in the United States than in China, for example. But not everybody may understand the scale of the difference. Aggregate carbon emissions in the United States (population about 300 million) far exceed aggregate emissions for China (population about 1.4 billion). It is almost enough to make a person fear the growing economic justice in the world economy.

The bad news, if you haven't made this kind of change yet, is that at some point in the future you may feel called to deeper lifestyle changes than you now think possible. The good news is that these changes may be carried more lightly than you realize.

How can you get started? Over the last three days, my wife and I watched both Who killed the electric car? and An Inconvenient Truth, recently out on DVD. Both documentaries are entertaining, informative, and moving. I recommend them more strongly today than any other recommendation I have ever made to you. The Al Gore movie ends with an eloquent list of things to do. They are not all about light bulbs. Two of them, which resonated with us after this month's conversation with our kids, have to do with what children can ask their parents, and what parents can promise their kids, about the future of the planet.

Do it yourself publishing

I had previously missed noticing that the 2006 Lulu Blooker prize was won by Julie and Julia, the book by notable one-time food weblogger Julie Powell. This prize for the best "blook" -- or book that started as a website -- is a takeoff on the esteemed Booker prize [edit 12/2 -- Mcauliflower from Brownie Points corrects my previous description of the prize and reports that Julie and Julia had a major publisher]. I see that many books on self-publishing sites such as Lulu and xlibris cover food and cooking topics. While some of these publishing companies are owned by major book publishers, they still offer a do-it-yourself route around the major publishers' control over information flow.

My work life seems to be peppered with interesting efforts in recent years to reduce the price of information flow: dotlearn, the publisher of the competent online microeconomics textbook used by my program at Tufts; the Berkeley Electronic Press, a publisher of interesting journals on economics and other topics; and online basic statistics teaching resources such as SticiGui and HyperStat.

Of course, life is not just work. I spent a couple hours or more yesterday reflecting on self-publishing while walking in the Fall sunshine around Middlesex Fells with my earphones blaring the punk classics from the guys at Dischord Records, who started at the DC public high school I attended in the early 1980s and went on to become rock stars. To this day, they play all-ages shows with reasonable door prices and charge comparatively low prices for their records. They never signed with a major record label, though they were surely offered millions. See a newly-posted interview with Dischord founder and Fugazi front-man Ian MacKaye (pictured).

Many people seem to think one needs a major publishing house -- or record label -- not just for the economics of product distribution, but also to help consumers distinguish high quality products in the first place. But then I think about Ian MacKaye and the most successful self-published books and I gain hope that the opposite is true [edit 12/2].

Animal ID to remain voluntary, administration says

One part of the national strategy to protect Americans from mad cow disease is scientific testing of cows. Earlier developments are that USDA in July announced a reduction in the government's testing program and then continued this month to defend in court its decision to prohibit a beef producer from voluntarily testing cattle for the disease.

Another part of the national strategy to protect Americans is animal identification. Public health experts consider the status quo a shambles. Yet, after years of acknowledging the public health importance of being able to trace the origins of beef and other food animals, USDA announced this week that any national identification system would be voluntary. The AP's Libby Quaid reported (via Forbes):

The Bush administration is abandoning plans to make farmers and ranchers register their cows, pigs and chickens in a nationwide database intended to help limit disease outbreaks.

Faced with widespread opposition, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday the animal tracking program should remain voluntary. "Really embracing this as a voluntary program ... will help the trust issues that some farmers and ranchers have raised about the national animal identification system," said Bruce Knight, undersecretary for marketing and regulation...."

Last year, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced that participation would be mandatory by 2009. Later, Johanns said it would be required someday....

First promised in response to the discovery of mad cow disease in this country, the tracking system would pinpoint an animal's movements within 48 hours after a disease was discovered. Investigators never found all 80 of the cattle that came to the U.S. from Canada with the infected dairy cow that became the country's first case of mad cow disease in 2003.

Why does WIC provide free infant formula?

Comments are open for responses to George Kent's unforgiving criticism of WIC's free provision of infant formula, amounting to perhaps half of the infant formula consumed in the United States. Kent's essay appeared earlier this year in the International Breastfeeding Journal.

Perhaps people should have the opportunity to choose to use infant formula, just as they are allowed to choose greasy hamburgers and cigarettes. The point here is that allowing a questionable product to be on the market is one thing. Having the government promote it is quite another. Having the government promote infant formula particularly among poor people raises enormous ethical questions. Does the balance of benefits and risks from the use of infant formula justify the government's providing infant formula to almost half the infants in the US?

Even if they ask, WIC will not provide alcoholic beverages to its clients. The fact that they might ask for beer, for example, is not a sufficient reason to provide it. Similarly, the fact that some WIC clients prefer to use infant formula is not a sufficient justification for WIC to provide it. The large-scale distribution of free infant formula by WIC to all clients who ask for it is a situation that needs to be fixed.

Whether you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing, the full essay contains answers to some of the natural questions. Are breastfeeding rates higher among participants or seemingly comparable nonparticipants? Is the WIC formula provision consistent with international protocols? Is it true that many women cannot breastfeed? Doesn't WIC actually promote breastfeeding? Is formula that much worse than breastfeeding anyway?

The Conservative Futurist says: "Quiznos, you lost my business!"

The politically conservative business-friendly weblogger finds he must explain his reluctant stance in favor of a boycott of Quiznos Subs.

Why? Because Quizno's makes claims like "low carb" and "healthy" without backing it up with facts. It is a chain of lies! Subway can release their information, so why can't Quizno's? After all, Quizno's claims to be the #2 sandwich joint in the nation.

I also must add that I am pained by this decision. I love Quizno's food. But, because of their silence on the nutrition info, I must assume that Quizno's has something to hide - probably the fact that their food is TERRIBLE for you. So, I will no longer eat there....

NOTE: I am aware that Quizno's lists nutritional info for TWO of their sandwiches. But that's all. Also, I am aware that Quizno's Australia posts nutritional data, but the sandwiches are different (as are the measurements).

For myself, I must admit to continued surprise at the company's stubborn stance. But dismay has long turned to bemusement, as this weblog's number one source of readers is people who were seeking in Google for Quiznos nutrition information and ended up reading this post and reader comments.

Do you have research on economics and nutrition?

If you are a scholar with research to present from the borderlands between the disciplines of economics and nutrition, please visit the website of the Food Safety and Nutrition Section of the American Agricultural Economics Association. You can contact myself or Neal Hooker from the section website, regarding the section's upcoming "track" of sessions at the AAEA annual meeting in Portland, OR, next July 29 to August 1.