Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

Mini Soda: The New Light Cigarette?

You'll drink Coke mini for the same reason you already drink Coke: to sate your addiction. And if you don't get enough "sparkle" from the smaller can, no problem. Just open a second 7.5-ounce can, and you'll get 20 percent more sparkle than you used to get from a 12-ounce hit.

You'll also get 20 percent more calories. But you'll feel better about yourself, because now you're practicing "portion control" and "a healthy lifestyle." Just like you felt better about smoking light cigarettes.

More here.

Hooked on Soda Taxes

When taxes on cigarettes were first proposed, the revenue was supposed to be used to help smokers quit and to prevent others from starting. But it didn't take politicians long to siphon the money away for other purposes. Now state governments count on cigarette revenue to help fund their budgets. We've all become nicotine-dependent.

Like the tobacco-tax movement, the soda-tax movement began with a rationale of preventing and curing addiction. And like the tobacco-tax movement, it's evolving into a revenue addiction.

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The Fresca Rebellion

It's the left that's turning conservative. Well, not conservative, but pushy. Weisberg put his finger on the underlying trend: "Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching." Today's morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator. They're more likely to berate you for outdoor smoking than for outdoor necking. It isn't God who hates fags. It's Michael Bloomberg.

More here.

Redefining Food

New York City Health Commissioner Tom Frieden has just been named to head the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In announcing his new job, the White House touts his expertise in health care reform, swine flu, and tuberculosis. But Frieden's distinctive expertise isn't in infectious diseases. It's in chronic diseases associated with eating. Frieden is the world's most ambitious innovator in redefining unhealthy foods as not really food. By rhetorically pushing these items out of the category of sustenance, he's paving the way for more aggressive regulation of what you eat.

First Frieden went after trans fats. There, he had a good case that the targeted ingredient was industrial, not nutritional. But he wasn't shy about exploiting that angle. In its two documents explaining the city's ban on trans fats, Frieden's health department uses the word artificial 77 times.

Then he went after salt. Only 10 percent of the salt we consume "is found naturally in food," the health department declared in a bulletin devoted to topic. The vast majority was "processed" and "packaged" by "manufacturers." Frieden used this point in his campaign to pressure food companies to halve the salt content of high-sodium foods.

Then, last month, Frieden and Kelly Brownell, the director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, propose a penny-per-ounce excise tax on "sugared beverages." Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, they rejected the notion that soft drinks were sacred "because people must eat to survive." On the contrary, they argued, "sugared beverages are not necessary for survival."

I'm not saying these initiatives are out of line. I detest trans fats, soda, and excess salt. But let's be clear about what's going on: We're recategorizing things so we can get away with aggressively regulating them.

Americans don't like the idea of bureaucrats banning or restricting unhealthy food. We tend to think it's none of the government's business. But food-related disease, particularly obesity, has become a huge problem for any government agency charged with disease control and prevention. If Frieden can persuaded us that trans fats are artificial, sweet drinks aren't necessary for survival, and most of the salt we eat is unnatural, then maybe we can accept restrictions on them as akin to regulation of tobacco or additives, not a jackbooted assault on eating in general. And if we do, I'll be curious to see what Frieden goes after next.

Soda Tax Update

A month ago, when advocates of a federal soda tax laid out their case, revenue generation was a secondary point. Today, as Congress looks for ways to finance universal health care, it's front and center. At a Senate finance committee hearing this week, proponents argued that a soda tax would help fund medical care while improving public health.

How much money would a tax bring in? The Congressional Budget Office says a tax of 3 cents on each 12-ounce container would generate $6 billion per year; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claims a penny-per-ounce tax would produce $10 billion per year.

Will Congress agree to such a tax? According to the Wall Street Journal, "Senior staff members for some Democratic senators at the center of the effort to craft health-care legislation are weighing the idea behind closed doors." But Politico reports:

There appeared to be a bubble of support among the experts for taxing bad behavior, including a $2 tax on a pack of cigarettes and a higher excise tax on alcohol. But soda and sugary drinks found a friend Tuesday in Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Finance Committee. He categorically rejected the idea during a conference call with reporters. "No," he said swiftly, when asked if there was any chance of taxing it. "I think, quite frankly, the only reason it's being brought up is to get it shot down early so it doesn't become part of the debate. I don't think it's going to have any legs at all."

Human Nature's interest in this subject isn't about the money. It's about how we think about food, drink, and drugs. Why do we treat marijuana, but not alcohol, as a forbidden drug? Why do we regulate nicotine but not caffeine? And how do we reshuffle these categories? How do we recast french fries as a dangerous substance? How does soda, which used to be a drink, become a target of sin taxes, like alcohol and tobacco?

Our sister publication, The Big Money, has a good post on the soda tax debate that illustrates this struggle to reframe food. Dan Mitchell notes that the American Beverage Association is calling the chief soda-tax advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a branch of "the food police" who "make their living ... by bashing foods and beverages." Mitchell replies that "people in the food industry make their living ... by persuading Americans to consume a lot of crap."

That's the cultural struggle underway as Congress looks for revenue sources to fund health care. Can Republicans and the beverage industry protect sugary soft drinks from being lumped in with booze and cigarettes as a deserving tax target? And as money gets tighter and Americans get fatter, how long will that defense last?

The Tax War on Soda

The food police are closing in on their next target: a soda tax.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, they propose a penny-per-ounce excise tax on "sugared beverages." That's nearly $3 per case. Why so much? Because this tax, unlike the petty junk-food taxes of yesteryear, is designed to hurt. Its purpose is to discourage you from buying soda, on the grounds that soda, like smoking, is bad for you.

More here.

No Tears for Salt

First they came for the cigarettes. Then the soda. Then trans fats. Then fast food. Now salt.

Reuters brings the news from across the Atlantic:

Alarmed by high death rates from strokes in Portugal, deputies from the ruling Socialist party submitted a bill to parliament Friday to slash the use of salt in bread ... The bill calls for salt content to be cut to a maximum of 14 grammes per kg, or by about 25 percent, introducing fines of up to 5,000 euros ($6,435) for exceeding this. ... Socialists have the majority of seats in parliament and the bill is likely to pass without a hitch.

Yes, the socialists. Cue Rush Limbaugh.

The rationales are the same ones we've already used to legislate against trans fats and fast food. Saving lives:

According to the Portuguese Society of High Blood Pressure, a reduction of salt intake by one gramme a day on average would save 2,650 lives per year.

And saving money:

The document links excessive salt consumption to high blood pressure, which in turn causes strokes, generally reduces life expectancy and means high medication costs for the state.

We don't have a viable Socialist Party in the United States. But could salt restrictions happen here? Sure. Little more than a year go, the FDA held a hearing to consider regulating salt as a food additive. Proponents argued that we eat too much salt, that reductions could save 150,000 lives a year, and that we could lower health-care expenses.

Then, a few months ago, New York City health commissioner Thomas Frieden, with the asserted support of health departments in other cities, summoned food-company executives to the mayor's residence and urged them, in concert, to cut the salt content of high-sodium foods by 25 percent in five years, and then to cut the same percentage again in the next five years, for a total reduction of nearly 50 percent. He told the New York Times, "If there's not progress in a few years, we'll have to consider other options, like legislation."

Can Frieden and his allies deliver on the legislative threat if the food industry doesn't cooperate? I don't know. In some ways, the more interesting question is what happens if the industry does cooperate. The plan is essentially collusion between the government and an all-encompassing alliance of corporations. The aim is to deprive consumers of the targeted food item, beyond a specified limit, through "quiet, mass reduction." Frieden's team calls it "stealth health":

He wants to get most of the major food and restaurant companies to do the same thing at the same time ... Key to the plan is a gradual reduction in sodium levels. The theory is that if the salt disappears slowly enough, consumers will not notice. Dr. Sonia Angell, director of cardiovascular health for the city, said: "We've created a whole society of people accustomed to food that is really, really salty. We have to undo that."

I'm supposed to be a raving libertarian. But I like the collusion plan. My six-year-old daughter is a total salt fiend (she's been that way since birth, unlike my son), and even she couldn't finish the can of Progresso vegetable soup she requested for lunch yesterday. Why? Because it has 990 milligrams of sodium—41 percent of the recommended daily allowance. So I poured out the "broth" and substituted hot water, and she gave it the thumbs-up. That's how salty the soup was: The vegetables alone made water taste like broth.

Corn chips are the same way. The number of grocery stores near us that offer unsalted chips has dwindled to one. But that's what I keep in the house, so our kids are used to it. A month ago, we were served Fritos on an airline flight, and we could barely stand them. That's what happens when you dial down the salt volume in your life: You start to notice how absurdly oversalted most prepared foods are.

Dr. Angell is right: Today's unhealthy salt levels have been commercially manufactured. It's now much harder to escape salt than to find it. And nobody's talking about taking away your table salt. If you want to dump 990 milligrams into your soup, it's your funeral.

So here's to you, Dr. Frieden. I hope you and your captains of industry get away with your hush-hush salt-fixing scheme. I want to see whether people really miss all that sodium, or whether they get used to a saner level and don't miss a thing. And I want to see whether we can pull this off without legislation. I'll keep quiet about it if you will.

Cut the Salt

Happy Thanksgiving. Here's a request to those of you who are cooking today: Go easy on the salt.

In case you haven't heard, salt is the latest target of the health police. First smoking, then fat, now salt.

In the case of smoking, I'm with the health cops all the way. As one country after another has banned indoor smoking, I've been fist-pumping. When the health crusaders turned to fat, I celebrated again. Trans fats? Don't need ‘em. Soda? Disgusting.

But then they banned new fast-food restaurants in south L.A, and I freaked out. Cigarettes are industrial and nutrition-free, I figured. Trans fats and soda are artificial, too. But burgers and fries? The cooking's modern, but meat and potatoes are basic. They're food. You can't do that to food.

What happened to calories and saturated fat is now happening to salt: Public-health groups are clamoring for regulation, the FDA is holding hearings, and industry is adapting. Here's the latest from Reuters:

Burger King said on Wednesday it would limit sodium to 600 milligrams or less in all of its Kids Meals advertised to children younger than 12. ... McDonald's Corp already prepares its children's meals with less sodium. Its four-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal ... has 390 calories and 570 milligrams of sodium. ... Burger King's currently advertised Kids Meal is its first to meet the new criteria. ... The meal has 340 calories and 505 milligrams of sodium.

That's still too much salt, but it's a start. And I'm with the health cops on this one. Salt is different from meat and potatoes. It's food, but it's also an additive. It's great that industry is reducing it voluntarily. If industry doesn't move far enough and the health cops want to restrict salt in prepared food, I won't cry. You can always add more salt from a shaker or from takeout packets.

Here's my pitch to the burger joints: Thanks for letting us choose whether to leave out the lettuce and tomatoes. Do the same with salt