The Food Police

by Jayson Lusk

  Paternalists routinely point to the bad outcomes that accrue from unhealthy diets to justify their regulations. Seeing someone with diabetes or heart disease is supposedly proof of poor choices. Such conclusions confuse the undesirability of a bad outcome with a potentially reasonable choice made amid uncertainty. It is not as though anyone actually wants to have a heart attack. But we don’t choose whether we have a heart attack; we make choices that influence the likelihood of having a heart attack.

  In real life, we face choices such as whether we want a piece of chocolate cake that will certainly be tasty now but will increase the chances of a heart attack by, say, 0.00001 percent five years from now. It would make no more sense for the paternalist to call the choice of cake wrong than it would be for him to say it is wrong for you to play a lottery in which you have a 99.9 percent chance of winning $10,000 and a 0.01 percent chance of losing $10,000—even if you unluckily lose the money.

  By saying that a heart attack is evidence of poor decision making, the paternalist is drawing a false comparison between the choice made by a fictitious, all-knowing being with perfect foresight and a real human faced with trade-offs and uncertain outcomes. By claiming to know how our dietary choices should be made, the elite are assuming the role of the all-knowing being with perfect foresight. As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it in 1949, “No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of this fellow’s will and aspirations, declares what conditions of this other man would better suit himself, the critic.”24

  Given the almost obvious elitism, how is it that behavioral economists have been so effective selling books and promoting paternalistic policies? In part, their success can be explained by the use of a rhetorical illusion. Popular writings on behavioral economics place the reader in the role of the elite, of the person who must decide what to do about all the seemingly irrational behavior. In the book Nudge, we are asked to put ourselves in the role of a choice architect. Of course, the reality is that very few of us will ever actually be in the position to invoke the paternalistic plans we might scheme. An honest appraisal of paternalism would put the shoe on the other foot. Paternalism doesn’t seem so bad when we envision ourselves as the ones with the power to pass laws overriding others’ decisions with our own preferences. The appeal quickly fades when we realize that it is most likely our own preferences that will be overridden by someone else. I also suspect the more manly sounding paternalism would lose much of its appeal if it went by its more accurate motherly sounding moniker: maternalism.

  Myth 3: Experts can make better decisions than layfolk.

  The food police tell us that we need experts and elites to enact regulations to help people avoid bad choices. But aren’t experts people, too?

  The elites, of course, answer no. They aren’t regular people. The very concept of being elite implies being more enlightened—above the thinking and mistakes of the regular Joe. They claim to have special knowledge and insight that give them the responsibility and the authority to enact their preferred plans for others’ lives. It is true that many of the elite have PhDs from Ivy League institutions. But the knowledge of the elite tends to be a special kind—an academic knowledge about abstract concepts and theories. This special knowledge can be contrasted with what Thomas Sowell calls mundane knowledge, the more practical knowledge of how things work in the real world; the knowledge of “plumbing, carpentry, or baseball.” The elites’ special knowledge is only one kind of knowledge, and one that is particularly impervious to refutation by real-world facts. When a plumber’s mundane knowledge is wrong, the feedback is immediate (and wet!), but a sociologist or psychologist may never receive any consequential feedback on the veracity of his conjectures.

  Sowell argued that “the fatal misstep of such intellectuals is assuming that superior ability within a particular realm can be generalized as superior wisdom or morality over all.” Even though special knowledge is often held in higher esteem in our society than mundane knowledge, “in the aggregate, mundane knowledge can vastly outweigh the special knowledge of elites, both in its amount and in its consequences.”25

  Elites mistakenly believe they know more than they actually do, and successes within their own specialties of knowledge lead them to overestimate their competence in other areas—such as policy setting. Are we really to believe that a nutritionist who measures vitamin content in carrots has any keen insight into what will happen within and beyond agriculture when the government subsidizes conversion to organics? The problem is that those with expertise in Shakespeare or string theory fail to realize their lack of knowledge in other areas. With regard to food, those other areas are just as important in determining how people will respond to government action.

  This arrogance leads elites to overlook their own decision-making problems in areas outside their focus. Chess players, for example, while able to solve exquisitely complicated reasoning problems on the chess board, utterly fail at solving similar reasoning problems outside of chess. The same is true of world-class poker players and professional soccer stars.26 Expertise is typically limited to a very narrow field of inquiry. This is why we should bristle when we read of experiments about free candy bars being used to justify health care interventions. At least when a chess player errs, his mistake only costs him the game. When the academic elite lobbying for more paternalistic food polices err, we all suffer.

  The hard, cold reality is that experts make mistakes, too. One of the central themes in Thaler and Sunstein’s book, Nudge, is that we tend to suffer from a status quo bias. We tend to pick the option that we know, the status quo, for no reason other than that it is the default. How ironic it is, then, that government itself is perhaps more prone to the status quo bias than are individuals. There is a well-known adage in Washington that it is much easier to pass a new law than to remove an existing subsidy. Today even most environmentalists agree that ethanol subsidies are a bad idea, and yet they continue to exist for no better reason than that it is the status quo.

  One of the big problems with experts is overconfidence. After analyzing decades of expert forecasts, psychologist Philip Tetlock concludes that, by and large, experts’ predictions are no more accurate than the guesses of a chimp. As Tetlock reveals, the experts aren’t discouraged by their fallibilities; they tend to be overconfident and in many cases dogmatic.27 So much for relying on the experts and their supposed special wisdom to guide our food choices.

  THE PROBLEM WITH PATERNALISM

  Although karma is a concept often associated with Eastern mysticism, it is actually an idea deeply embedded in the thinking of most Americans. We have a fundamental belief that people should get what’s coming to them. A key factor driving anger at Wall Street in the most recent financial disaster was the bank bailout. The entities that many blame for the cause of the financial meltdown were the very recipients of a government handout. The banks’ actions seemed to justify bankruptcy and CEO firing, but instead we saw bailouts and bonuses. Such actions violated a fundamental sense of fairness among many Americans: it violated karma.

  The emergence of behavioral economics and the food police has led to at least one unintended consequence: it has fostered a culture in which there is an implicit abdication of personal responsibility. Behavioral economics, at its best, serves to remind us that we are not perfect. But it has also helped normalize abnormality. By arguing that we lack the ability to choose wisely, some behavioral economists have implicitly promoted the idea that we therefore cannot be judged for making poor choices. We do not punish a toddler the first time he spills milk, because we understand that he lacks the ability to control his actions or to comprehend the consequences of his choices. Likewise, behavioral economics research promotes a climate in which it seems inappropriate to let people suffer the consequences of their poor choices because it suggests that th
ose people are too irrational or unknowledgeable to do better. When the food police use behavioral economics to promote everything from fat taxes to bans on restaurant advertising, the notion that people should not be held accountable for their actions becomes institutionalized and reduces the incentive for our taking personal responsibility.

  If people believe their government will step in and solve problems that arise from decisions to save too little or eat unhealthily, then there is little incentive to alter current bad behavior. It has been argued that one of the many problems that led to the 2008 financial crisis was that banks knew they would be bailed out, even if they made poor decisions and took unwise risks.28 Likewise, no matter how caring they seem (and in some cases are), generous government-funded retirement plans and health care serve to bail out people who chose not to consider the future and, in the process, to reduce our incentives to take care of our future selves. We are smart enough to know not to save for retirement if someone else does it for us.

  I am not arguing that the poor and elderly should be ignored. Concerns for equity can legitimately motivate actions to help. Nevertheless, we move into dangerous territory when such actions are justified on the grounds of cognitive failures. Observing that people act foolishly in some circumstances does not excuse said behavior. Food police who seek to rescue us from our own fallibilities will, in the process, compound the problem by diminishing our incentives to rescue ourselves.

  Brian Wansink’s book Mindless Eating points out the myriad ways our food choices are influenced by small and irrelevant details. But, interestingly, Wansink doesn’t call for government action to limit plate sizes or ban buffet lines. Rather, he recognizes the power of individuals to make use of behavioral economics research to better their own lives. He promises to show “how to remove the cues that cause you to overeat and how to reengineer your kitchen and your habits … You can eat too much without knowing it, but you can also eat less without knowing it.”29 We don’t need the government to nudge us. We can nudge ourselves. The power to nudge should be left in the hands of those who know when the nudge is needed.

  WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?

  We are often told that there is no alternative to paternalism; that the government and others must make some decision that will influence our choices. To make their point, Thaler and Sunstein ask us to put ourselves in the role of a cafeteria manager. “Consider the problem facing the director of a company cafeteria who discovers that the order in which food is arranged influences the choices people make. To simplify, consider three alternative strategies: (1) she could make choices that she thinks would make the customers best off; (2) she could make choices at random; or (3) she could maliciously choose those items that she thinks would make the customers as obese as possible.”30 What should we do?

  The first thing we should do is reject the premise of the question. There is an alternative noticeably absent from the list: arrange the foods in a way to maximize profit.31 Profit seeking often has a negative connotation, but a surefire way for firms to make profits is to give consumers what they want. Detractors of profit seeking falsely envision an evil monopolist at work, but the reality is that firms are in fierce competition for our business—especially restaurants, which routinely go bust when they cannot supply what the customer wants at a price he is willing to pay. Thus, in a sense, the cafeteria manager has very little control over where to arrange the desserts; if the manager wants to stay in business, she will place the desserts in a location that is most likely to induce consumers to buy them.

  Even if the behavioral economists are right and the consumers do not actually know what they want, enterprising cafeteria managers will try out different combinations of food arrangements until they find the one that yields the most money. Their competitors will simultaneously try the same, each using whatever means is at his disposal to convince (or nudge) people that his arrangement is best. This dynamic competition embodied in the marketplace, predicated on voluntary exchanges between willing buyers and sellers, can be said to “give people what they want and are willing to pay for, when they want it and are willing to pay for it.”32

  We may change our minds tomorrow about what we want, but an energetic marketplace will seek to anticipate our mood swings and satisfy our changing preferences. And even if our preferences are incoherent in a way that makes traditional economic welfare analysis nonsensical, we can take joy living in a world that attempts to anticipate our changing needs and presents us with a variety of options. Freedom and choice have intrinsic value. As economist Robert Sugden put it, “[B]eing able to choose how to live one’s life is an aspect of individual well being in its own right.”33 Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen has argued, “Choosing may itself be a valuable part of living, and a life of genuine choice with serious options may be seen to be—for that reason—richer.”34

  Government bureaucracy lacks this key dynamism embedded in the market. A paternalist seeking to improve our health might mandate that all cafeterias place the fruit and vegetables first in line, based on research showing that this will increase those items’ uptake. But what will ensure that this change won’t cause people to eat at McDonald’s instead or bring their lunch from home or eat more snacks later, or even cause the cafeteria to go out of business? If McDonald’s truly is the evil empire the food police claim it to be, why wouldn’t McDonald’s pressure the rule makers to get the outcomes they wanted? The Economist criticized Thaler and Sunstein’s proposal to give the government the power to nudge by saying, “There is a serious danger of overreach … Politicians, after all, are hardly strangers to the art of framing the public’s choices and rigging decisions for partisan ends. And what is to stop lobbyists, axe-grinders and busybodies of all kinds hijacking the whole effort?”35 The food police can rest satisfied in nudging us toward greater health, all the while being unaffected by complex interactions that lead to outcomes the paternalist never intended. The same cannot be said of the cafeteria owner who puts her wallet on the line every time she reorganizes the buffet line.

  The economist Robert Sugden says the paternalists are wrong: “There is a viable alternative to paternalism. It is what it always has been—the market.”36 I don’t know about you, but when I walk into a cafeteria, I want the manager to tempt me—to offer me what looks good at a price I’m willing to pay. Yes, this kind of world might require more willpower and self-control, but the alternative world of the paternalistic food police would deprive us of the noble act of making a wise choice when we had the freedom to do otherwise.

  THE FASHION FOOD POLICE

  ORGANIC—THE STATUS FOOD

  According to ancient Jewish Scripture, man’s first moral quandary began with a choice of whether to eat a piece of fruit. Despite the passage of millennia, we find ourselves back in Eve’s proverbial fig leaves. There is the inexpensive Red Delicious, but who’d be caught buying something so boring? Express some individualism and go for the Granny Smith, or push the basket down a bit farther, prices rising all the way, and go for the organic Gala. Even though budgets are tight, there’s no telling what has been sprayed on the industrially grown apples, and after all, we should consider the health of our children. Or at least consider the kids’ teachers, who would think us the worst kind of parent and environmental deviant if we didn’t double the shopping bill for organic. After all, an adviser for Consumer Reports magazine tells us that nonorganic farmers are “raping the land.”1 Better yet, hop in the SUV and save the environment by heading down to the farmers’ market. Of course, we’ll turn a blind eye to the carbon footprint of the Cadillac Escalade. Unlike Eve, at least we can take some comfort in knowing that the fate of humanity doesn’t hinge on our apple choice. Or does it?

  Let’s face it: food choice was once much easier, though much less exciting. Today’s supermarkets boast over a hundred types of breakfast cereal alone. Which will you pick? Are you a Fruit Loop or 100 percent organic granola? Both will fill your belly, but only one will earn the approving
nod of the fashion food police. Their message is clear: if you don’t choose organic, not only are you unhip, but you’ve sided with the serpent.

  In one sense, the rise of organic food corresponds with the libertarian ideal. On the one side were consumers who demanded new attributes from the food system, and meeting them were entrepreneurial farmers willing to change production practices to make an extra buck. There’s only one thing wrong with this organic-is-libertarian story. It isn’t true. Consider Julia Roberts’s assertion on the Oprah Winfrey Show that it’s our responsibility to be green for our children and eat organic food. Julia’s green food guru, Sophie Uliano, tells listeners that if they can’t find organic items in their local supermarket, “Speak up! … We as women, we are powerful. We have a voice … go to the manager and say to him, ‘I want to see more organic here!’ ”2 Ah, sounds just like un-coerced choices in a free market. As if store managers need to be yelled at to offer products that will bring more profit.

  Hordes of consumers are being scared, mothered, and guilted into buying organic, and political pressures are redirecting millions of taxpayer dollars to support organic production. We’re often told that organics don’t get government subsidies, but that’s a fabrication. In Europe, organic farmers are subsidized like all other farmers. In the United States there are programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which pays producers to transition from conventional to organic. Other programs use federal monies to help organic farmers pay the cost of certification. Organic farmers can receive government-subsidized crop insurance just like nonorganic farmers. Organic milk is subjected to many of the same complex price-support rules imposed by the government on nonorganic milk.3 Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent on research and education into organics and on marketing and monitoring programs.4 The food police tell us that the growth in organic food demand is a result of the free market working at its best, even as they use the taxing power of the state to manipulate the market by subsidizing organic production, marketing, and research activities. You can’t have your organic-is-libertarian cake and eat it, too.