The Food Police (25 page)
Authors: Jayson Lusk
HAPTER
4: A
RE
Y
OU
S
MART
E
NOUGH
TO
K
NOW
W
HAT
TO
E
AT
?
1.
B. Wansink and J. Sobal, “Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook,”
Environment and Behavior
39 (2007): 106–23.
2.
Statement made in a talk to the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., on September 19, 2011,
cnsnews.com/news/article/usda-secretary-we-must-create-appropriate-transition-what-americans-eat
.
3.
whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/15/the-never-ending-pasta-bowl-goes-healthy-with-the-first-lady/?iref=allsearch
.
4.
It is worth noting that this is a literature to which I, too, have contributed; e.g., see A. Arunachalam, S. R. Henneberry, J. L. Lusk, and F. B. Norwood, “An Empirical Investigation into the Excessive-Choice Effect,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
91 (2009): 810–25; D. Roberts, T. Boyer, and J. L. Lusk, “Preferences for Environmental Quality Under Uncertainty,”
Ecological Economics
66 (2008): 584–93; J. L. Lusk and K. O. Coble, “Risk Aversion in the Presence of Background Risk: Evidence from the Lab,” in
Risk Aversion in Experiments
, J. C. Cox and G. W. Harrison, eds.,
Research in Experimental Economics
, vol. 12 (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2008). However, finding that people sometimes make mistakes does not axiomatically imply the need for paternalism. Stated differently, there are some behavioral economists who do not advocate paternalism.
5.
D. R. Just, L. Mancino, and B. Wansink, “Could Behavioral Economics Help Improve Diet Quality for Nutrition Assistance Program Participants?” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Economic Research Report No. (ERR-43), June 2007,
www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err43/
.
6.
C. Camerer, S. Issacharoff, G. Loewenstein, T. O’Donoghue, and
M. Rabin, “Asymmetric Paternalism,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
151 (2003): 1211.
7.
G. A. Akerlof, “Procrastination and Obedience,”
American Economic Review
81 (1991): 2.
8.
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein,
Nudge
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 7.
9.
Ibid., p. 19.
10.
D. Ariely, “Dan Ariely Picks the Seven Most Powerful New Economists,”
Forbes.com
, November 4, 2010,
www.forbes.com/2010/11/01/dan-ariely-world-bank-opinions-powerful-people-10-new-economists_slide.html
.
11.
Kahneman and Thaler concluded, “People do not always know what they will like; they often make systematic errors … and, as a result, fail to maximize their experienced utility,” whereas Kagel et al. concluded, “Animals have behavioral repertoires that can be characterized as solutions to a constrained maximizing model.” D. Kahneman and R. H. Thaler, “Anomalies: Utility Maximization and Experienced Utility,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
20 (2006): 221–34; J. H. Kagel et al., “Demand Curves for Animal Consumers,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
96 (1981): 1–16.
12.
The quote is from
www.fullerthaler.com/Default.aspx
.
13.
The quote was in reference to J. P. Morgan’s “Undiscovered Managers Behavioral Growth Fund” (ticker symbol: UBRLX), for which Fuller and Thaler serve as sole advisers. The statement was made by Christopher Davis on June 1, 2010.
14.
A. Santoni and A. R. Kelshiker, “Behavioral Finance: An Analysis of the Performance of Behavioral Finance Funds,”
Journal of Index Investing
1 (2010): 56.
15.
C. Wright, V. Boney, and P. Banerjee, “Behavioral Finance: Are the Disciples Profiting from the Doctrine?” (August 22, 2006), p. 33, available at SSRN
ssrn.com/abstract=930400
.
16.
D. Ariely,
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 62.
17.
Ibid., p. 118. He also offers a compromise “if mandatory health checkups won’t be accepted by the public,” by suggesting the use of self-imposed deadlines and penalties for procrastinators.
18.
G. Loewenstein and P. Ubel, “Economics Behaving Badly,”
New York Times
, July 15, 2010, p. A31.
19.
The culprit for the decreasing puberty age is likely related to the fact that adolescents are now better fed and weigh more than they once did. For example, see the
New York Times
,
www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/health/08real.html
.
20.
Data on prices of organic versus conventional milk prices can be found in K. Brooks and J. L. Lusk, “Stated and Revealed Preferences for Organic and Cloned Milk: Combining Choice Experiment and Scanner Data,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
92 (2010): 1229–41.
21.
L. Stewart,
Implanting Beef Cattle
, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service, Bulletin 1302, February 2010,
www.caes.uga.edu/publications/pubDetail.cfm?pk_id=7430
.
22.
The propensity to overweight low-probability events was one of the cornerstones of prospect theory, which was introduced by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. This theory is sometimes credited with the birth of modern-day behavioral economics. See “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,”
Econometrica
47 (1979): 263–92.
23.
V. K. Smith and E. M. Moore, “Behavioral Economics and Benefit Cost Analysis,”
Environmental and Resource Economics
46 (2010): 232.
24.
L. Mises,
Human Action
(Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008; originally published in 1954), p. 19.
25.
Thomas Sowell,
Intellectuals and Society
(New York: Basic Books, 2009), pp. 13–14.
26.
S. D. Levitt, J. A. List, and D. Reiley, “What Happens in the Field Stays in the Field: Exploring Whether Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments,”
Econometrica
78 (2010): 1413–34.
27.
P. E. Tetlock,
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Other researchers have found that experts’ beliefs about their knowledge of a subject can actually lead to the creation of false memories, which leads to poor choices. Experts make up facts that don’t exist to make their perception of the world conform to
their supposedly more knowledgeable view. See R. Mehta, J. Hoegg, and A. Chakravarti, “Knowing Too Much: Expertise-Induced False Recall Effects in Product Comparison,”
Journal of Consumer Research
38 (2011): 535–54. Experts and regulators are potentially prone to other types of biases: action bias, motivated reasoning, the focusing illusion, and the affect heuristic. See S. Tasic, “The Illusion of Regulatory Competence,”
Critical Review
21 (2009): 423–36.
28.
R. Roberts, “Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverted Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis,” Mercatus Center Publication, George Mason University, April 28, 2010,
mercatus.org/publication/gambling-other-peoples-money
.
29.
Brian Wansink,
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2006), p. 11. If the recommendations in his book are not enough, then one can turn to his website and join Wansink’s weight-loss plan—the Mindless Method (see
www.mindlessmethod.com/
).
30.
R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalism,”
American Economic Review
93 (2003): 175.
31.
Thaler and Sunstein later added this alternative to their list in
Nudge
, written five years later—perhaps in response to critiques by people such as Robert Sudgen (2008) (see note 32), who has made the same point I am making here. When later mentioning the alternative in their book, they dismiss the option by asking, “But should [the manager] Carolyn really try to maximize profits if the result is to make children less healthy, especially since she works for the school district?” The claim that paternalism is inevitable must be particularly narrow if it can be applied only in such special cases.
32.
R. Sugden, “Why Incoherent Preferences Do Not Justify Paternalism,”
Constitutional Politics and Economics
19 (2008): 243.
33.
R. Sugden, “Opportunity as a Space for Individuality: Its Value and the Impossibility of Measuring It,”
Ethics
113 (2003): 785.
34.
A. K. Sen,
Inequality Reexamined
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 41.
35.
“The State Is Looking After You,”
The Economist
, April 8, 2006.
36.
Sugden, “Why Incoherent Preferences Do Not Justify Paternalism,” p. 247.
HAPTER
5: T
HE
F
ASHION
F
OOD
P
OLICE
1.
The quote is by Urvashi Rangan, director of technical policy for the Consumers Union during a National Public Radio debate about the merits of organic food, held at New York University as a part of the program Intelligence Squared (see
intelligencesquaredus.org/wp-content/uploads/Organic-041310.pdf
).
2.
See the
Oprah Winfrey Show
, January 1, 2006, “Eat Organically,” excerpts available online at
www.oprah.com/world/Eat-Organically/1#ixzz1ZFMoGWcu
.
3.
W. D. McBride and C. Greene, “Characteristics, Costs, and Issues for Organic Dairy Farming,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Research Report Number 82, November 2009,
www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR82/ERR82.pdf
.
4.
C. Greene et al., “New Directions in U.S. Organic Policy,” in
Emerging Issues in the U.S. Organic Industry
, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Economic Information Bulletin No. EIB-55, June 2009,
www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib55/eib55d.pdf
. See also:
www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Organic/ProgramProvisions.htm
.
5.
www.oprah.com/world/Eat-Organically/1#ixzz1ZFSCsii4
.
6.
www.wholeliving.com/article/fresh-thinking-how-to-shop-for-fruits-and-vegetables?page=2
.
7.
For evidence on the fact that retail prices of organics are often more than 100 percent higher than conventional, see J. B. Chang, J. L. Lusk, and F. B. Norwood, “The Price of Happy Hens: A Hedonic Analysis of Retail Egg Prices,”
Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
35 (2010): 406–23; K. Brooks and J. L. Lusk, “Stated and Revealed Preferences for Organic and Cloned Milk: Combining Choice Experiment and Scanner Data,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
92 (2010): 1229–41; G. D. Thompson and J. Kidwell, “Explaining the Choice of Organic Produce: Cosmetic Defects, Prices, and Consumer
Preferences,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
80 (1998): 277–87. Data for more commodities are available at
www.ers.usda.gov/Data/OrganicPrices/
.
8.
www.organic-market.info/web/News_in_brief/Food_Quality/Italy/176/187/0/11501.html
.
9.
organic.about.com/od/marketingpromotion/tp/6-Largest-Organic-Retailers-In-North-America-2011.htm
.
10.
Examples of such studies include: L. Johansson et al., “Preference for Tomatoes, Affected by Sensory Attributes and Information about Growth Conditions,”
Food Quality and Preference
10 (1999): 289–98; Å Haglund et al., “Sensory Evaluation of Carrots from Ecological and Conventional Growing Systems,”
Food Quality and Preference
10 (1998): 23–29; A. Poelman et al., “The Influence of Information about Organic Production and Fair Trade on Preferences for and Perception of Pineapple,”
Food Quality and Preference
19 (2008): 114–21; L. Fillion and S. Arazi, “Does Organic Food Taste Better? A Claim Substantiation Approach,”
Nutrition and Food Science
32 (2002): 153–57; D. Bourn and J. John Prescott, “A Comparison of the Nutritional Value, Sensory Qualities, and Food Safety of Organically and Conventionally Produced Foods,”
Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition
42 (2002): 1–34; A. E. Croissant et al., “Chemical Properties and Consumer Perception of Fluid Milk from Conventional and Pasture-Based Production Systems,”
Journal of Dairy Science
90 (2007): 4942–53; A. Jonsäll et al., “Effects of Genotype and Rearing System on Sensory Characteristics and Preference for Pork (M.
Longissimus dorsi
),”
Food Quality and Preference
13 (2002): 73–80.
11.
Brian Wansink,
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2006).
12.
S. M. McClure et al., “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,”
Neuron
22 (2004): 379–87.
13.
Napolitano et al., “Effect of Information About Organic Production on Beef Liking and Consumer Willingness to Pay,”
Food Quality and Preference
21 (2010): 207–12.
14.
C. Baumrucker, “Why Does Organic Milk Last So Much Longer
Than Regular Milk?”
ScientificAmerican.com
: Ask the Experts, June 6, 2008, available online at
www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-organic-milk-lasts-longer
.
15.
Don’t take my word for it. See Clare et al., “Comparison of Sensory, Microbiological, and Biochemical Parameters of Microwave Versus Indirect UHT Fluid Skim Milk During Storage,”
Journal of Dairy Science
88 (2005): 4172–82.
16.
Dangour et al., “Nutritional Quality of Organic Foods: A Systematic Review,”
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(September 2009).
17.
Quote is reported in J. P. Schuldt and N. Schwarz, “The “Organic” Path to Obesity? Organic Claims Influence Calorie Judgments and Exercise Recommendations,”
Judgment and Decision Making
5 (2010): 144–50.
18.
Ibid.
19.
See Bjørn Lomborg,
The Skeptical Environmentalist
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 233, and the references therein.
20.
C. K. Winter and S. F. David, “Organic Foods,”
Journal of Food Science
71 (2006): E117–R124.
21.
Lomborg,
The Skeptical Environmentalist
, p. 245. See also page 234 for a comparison of the cancer risk from different foods.
22.
Ibid., p. 247. Lomborg also presents the numbers of deaths from radon used in the following paragraph.
23.
www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/06/german-e-coli-crisis-refuels-irradiation-debate/
.
24.
Of course, there were recalls of nonorganic foods, too, during this time. It is also true that many more nonorganic foods are recalled each year than organic. But you have to keep in mind that many more nonorganic foods are produced each year. Only about 0.7 percent of all U.S. cropland and 0.5 percent of all U.S. pasture was certified organic in 2008 (
www.ers.usda.gov/data/organic/
). So, the real question is the rate of food recalls
per pound
of food produced. As far as I know, no such statistic has been calculated.
25.
Mukherjee et al., “Preharvest Evaluation of Coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Organic and Conventional Produce Grown by Minnesota Farmers,”
Journal of Food Protection
67 (2004): 894–900.
26.
J. Horowitz et al.,
“No-Till” Farming Is a Growing Practice
, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Economic Information Bulletin Number 70, November 2010,
www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB70/EIB70.pdf
.
27.
www.dasnr.okstate.edu/notill/hidden/nt_ok_2009_pres/NT_OK_SURVEY.pdf
.
28.
Mader et al., “Soil Fertility and Biodiversity in Organic Farming,”
Science
296 (2002): 1694–97.
29.
McBride and Greene, “Characteristics, Costs, and Issues for Organic Dairy Farming.”
30.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Census of Agriculture,
Organic Production Survey
3, Special Studies Part 2, AC-07-SS-2 (2008), issued February 2010, updated July 2010
www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Online_Highlights/Organics/ORGANICS.pdf
; L. Gianessi and A. Rinkus, “USDA 2008 National Organic Production Survey: National Acreage and Crop Yields,” white paper, CropLife Foundation, March 2010,
www.croplifefoundation.org/Organics/USDA%202008%20National%20Organic%20Production%20Survey%20Analysis.pdf
.
31.
www.ers.usda.gov/data/organic/
.
32.
M. Stewart, “Food Is the New Fashion,”
HuffingtonPost.com
, February 9, 2011,
www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-stewart/food-is-the-new-fashion_l_b_821078.html
.
33.
Ibid.
34.
L. Miller, “Divided We Eat,”
Newsweek
, November 29, 2010.
35.
bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/20U/09/24/is-junk-food-really-cheaper/
.
36.
S. Clifford, “The Plastic Sandwich Bag Flunks,”
New York Times
, August 26, 2011, p. B1 of the New York edition.
37.
See J. L. Lusk and F. B. Norwood, “Bridging the Gap between Laboratory Experiments and Naturally Occurring Markets: An Inferred Valuation Method,”
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
58 (2009): 236–50, and J-B. Chang, J. L. Lusk, and F. B. Norwood, “How Closely Do Hypothetical Surveys and Laboratory Experiments Predict Field Behavior?”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
91 (2009): 518–34.