“The U.S. FDA announced a plan to investigate and potentially regulate caffeine.” [James Hamblin, The Atlantic]
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Posts tagged as:
soft drinks
Per the Los Angeles Times: “New research [on which more -- W.O.] shows that prompting beverage makers to sell sodas in smaller packages and bundle them as a single unit actually encourages consumers to buy more soda — and gulp down more calories — than they would have consumed without the ban.”
I’ve done a new Cato podcast with interviewer Caleb Brown discussing Cass Sunstein’s attempts (channeling the behavioral economics literature) to distinguish a softer, less threatening “paternalism of means” from a bossy, intrusive “paternalism of ends.” I don’t think the distinction really works in practice, but as usual with Sunstein’s work, it’s at least worth hearing out. I go on to recommend the work of Joshua Wright and Douglas Ginsburg challenging the new behavioral economics, and suggest that while the scholars of the behavioral economics school do make some headway in showing that private choice is fallible and mistake-ridden, they are less successful at showing that trained experts can improve on these choices without touching off new unintended consequences.
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- New D.C. regs threaten to strangle capital’s vibrant food truck culture [Michael Hamilton/Greater Greater Washington, Jessica Sidman, Washington City Paper]
- Food Safety Modernization Act would impose only modest costs on farmers, or so we kept being assured when it passed in 2010. Someone tell the orchard guys [WaPo, earlier] Town of Brooksville becomes ninth in Maine to pass symbolic “food sovereignty” resolution [Jordan Bloom, The American Conservative; Food Renegade (Dan Brown of Blue Hill)]
- “Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food” by lawprof Timothy Lytton [Prawfs]
- “Why Is Your Child’s Safety The Responsibility Of Some Stranger Who Sold You Instant Soup?” [Amy Alkon]
- Two views of so-called “Monsanto Protection Act” [Ramesh Ponnuru, pro; Baylen Linnekin, con]
- Aaron Powell ties Bloomberg’s soda ban in with John Stuart Mill and the dreadful-sounding new book Against Autonomy [Libertarianism.org] Too bad editors of the New York Daily News, which lives by newsstand choice, can’t identify with food choice [Charles Cooke]
- “California Chef Who Gives Away Free Foie Gras Gets Sued. Again.” [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- “Food desert” myth, widely credited in policy circles a very short time ago, now sinks beneath sands of contrary evidence [Jacob Geller; earlier here, here, here, here, here, etc.]
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Given the bossiness of the legislature in Annapolis these days, I had to check the calendar on this one. [Anita Park, Greater Greater Washington, April 1]
P.S. And from The Onion, where every day is April 1: “Mississippi Bans Soft Drinks Smaller Than 20 Ounces.”
Yet more: Didn’t Ilya Shapiro predict this? “Supreme Court upholds same-sex marriage as a tax” [Tax Foundation]
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“This amendment would prohibit federal regulation of the size and quantity of food and beverages,” the Texas senator’s office explained of his budget proposal, which was not adopted by the Democratic majority. [Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner]
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- If you thought “finger in chili” was bad, meet the Utah couple arrested on charges of planting razor blade shards in doughnuts and swallowing some [KSL, Daily Mail]
- My talk a few weeks ago as part of Cato Institute panel on nanny state [YouTube, Bruce Majors]
- New Reason-RUPE public opinion survey finds public broadly opposed to food and drink bans [Sullum]
- Feds’ bad advice on polyunsaturated fat: more damaging than any mass tort in sight? [David Oliver] More: Hans Bader.
- Coroner blames woman’s death on Coca-Cola addiction [TV NZ] Monster Beverage: natural causes, not caffeine toxicity, killed Maryland teen [Reuters, NYT, earlier] More: Jacob Sullum.
- Oh, CSPI, thou contradictest thyself [Baylen Linnekin; more from him on parents' and kids' food choices quoting me, NYC soda ban]
- “Bloomberg limits seder portions” [Purim spoof, New York Jewish Week]
- Kelly Brownell, guru of obesity-reduction-through-coercion formerly based at Yale, named dean of public policy school at Duke;
- “A Knife, a Walmart Birthday Cake and a Frenzy of Overreaction” [Free-Range Kids] Mardi Gras perennial: can you buy king cake with baby figurine already in it? [same, earlier]
- Now they tell us: NYT book review not conspicuously enthusiastic about Michael Moss anti-food-biz book hyped to the rafters in NYT magazine three weeks earlier [Ira Stoll, SmarterTimes, our take]
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I respond at Cato to a remarkably lame piece by Slate’s Emily Bazelon. Earlier on the case here and here.
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My new op-ed at the Daily Caller is their “most shared” this morning. Excerpt:
On Monday, Judge Tingling struck down the soda ban in a sweeping opinion that does everything but hand Mayor Poppins his umbrella and carpetbag. This wasn’t just a temporary restraining order putting the regulation on hold for a few weeks. The judge struck down the ban permanently both on the merits (“fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences”) and as overstepping the rightful legal powers of the New York City Department of Health…
[For] the mayor and his public health crew… the biggest reproach in the decision isn’t in being found to have gotten the facts wrong, it’s being found to have violated the law.
And if anyone is expected to know and play by the rules, it’s a nanny.
Michael Grynbaum, New York Times:
[Bloomberg's] administration seemed caught off guard by the decision. Before the judge ruled, the mayor had called for the soda limits to be adopted by cities around the globe; he now faces the possibility that one of his most cherished endeavors will not come to fruition before he leaves office, if ever. …
The measure was already broadly unpopular: In a New York Times poll conducted last August, 60 percent of city residents said it was a bad idea for the Bloomberg administration to pass the limits…
Ross Sandler, a professor at New York Law School, said city laws deemed “arbitrary and capricious” had frequently been reinstated upon appeal.
The Times also profiles Judge Tingling and reports on reactions by New Yorkers in the street (not favorable toward the ban). Coverage from yesterday, including my podcast with Cato’s Caleb Brown, here. NYU’s Rick Hills, as often happens, takes a different view. (& Point of Law; and more) Update: as of March 15 my Daily Caller piece has been recommended on Facebook 3,700 times, surely a record for me.
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In a sweeping decision, trial court judge Milton Tingling has struck down the ban on sugary drinks decreed by the New York City Department of Health, which had been scheduled to go into effect tomorrow. I discuss the ruling in a Cato podcast above. I’m also quoted by Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review Online:
It was a sweeping ruling, because the judge said not only was the ban arbitrary and capricious, but it also went beyond the public-health agency’s powers under the statute. It meant that, even if Bloomberg went back and got a better factual justification for it, he had no legal right to do it. The agency just plain lacked the power. It means that the powers that public-health agencies claim because of emergency dangers like a raging epidemic — they don’t get to rule by dictate about other elements of our life that are not emergencies.
Other coverage: New York Post, CBS New York, Moin Yahya, David Henderson. As the law’s effective date approached, city residents were learning more about its unpleasant effects on such everyday activities as ordering beverages to split with pizza delivery, mixers at nightclubs, table pitchers to serve kids’ birthday parties, and, most recently, coffee, the subject of a virally famous poster from the local Dunkin’ Donuts operation.
P.S. And now I’ve got a Daily Caller piece out on the decision. See follow-up post here.
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A press release from George Washington University Prof. John Banzhaf describes his latest stunt as follows: “Undergrads Required To Lobby For Obama Policy.” In this case, it’s more for a policy identified with Michael Bloomberg — limits on the size of sweetened drinks — which students were asked to promote in letters to their own lawmakers. I’ve got a write-up at Cato at Liberty, where I list some of the other occasions on which Overlawyered readers have met the gadfly professor. (& Katherine Mangu-Ward, Center for Consumer Freedom) Update: many reactions, including another press release from Prof. Banzhaf.
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The mayor is urging New York state to adopt his city’s ban on large sugary drinks [NY Daily News, CBS New York] And under recently announced details, the city’s ban will prohibit the buying of 2-liter sodas with pizza deliveries and the buying of family pitchers at kid’s birthday party venues, even though such orders are commonly split among several customers in a party [New York Post]:
Typically, a pizzeria charges $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. But under the ban, customers would have to buy six 12-ounce cans at a total cost of $7.50 to get an equivalent amount of soda.
“I really feel bad for the customers,” said Lupe Balbuena of World Pie in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
It will also restrict the offering of mixers as part of bottle service in nightclubs.
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Tim Carney is glad to see the New York Times returning repeatedly to this theme [Washington Examiner]
Not entirely unrelated, a video from the Institute for Humane Studies on how regulation contributes to the widespread use of corn sweeteners in place of sugar in our food supply (“Why Is There Corn In Your Coke?” with Diana Thomas):
- New law grads and others, come work for liberty at the Cato Institute’s legal associate program [Ilya Shapiro]
- Lawsuit against United Nations seeks compensation for mass cholera outbreak in Haiti [Kristen Boon, Opinio Juris]
- “Parents Sue Energy Drink After Girl’s Death” [NBC Washington; Hagerstown, Md.] “The New York Times Reveals That 18 Servings of an Energy Drink Might Be Excessive” [Jacob Sullum]
- Claim: There is no explosion of patent litigation [Adam Mossoff, Truth on the Market, and further]
- “After Inmates Sue for Dental Floss, Jailers Explain the Security Risk” [ABA Journal, earlier]
- Court: First Amendment protects right of “The Bachelor” producers to consider contestants’ race [Volokh, earlier]
- From Florida tobacco litigation to an, um, interesting higher-education startup [Inside Higher Ed, h/t Overlawyered commenter Jeff H.]
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Guess how big a soda is offered for sale by the concessionaire in Mayor Bloomberg’s own park system? I answer that question (with thanks to Ira Stoll) in my new Cato post.
As expected, the New York City Board of Health has gone along with a proposal from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and become “the first in the nation to ban the sale of sugared beverages larger than 16 oz. at restaurants, mobile food carts, sports arenas and movie theaters.” [Time, AP] Notes Scott Shackford, “the ban shouldn’t affect diet or sugar-free drinks, but as The New York Times reports, establishments with self-service fountains will not be able to stock cups that hold more than 16 ounces. So essentially, thirsty people will want to avoid the targeted businesses altogether even if they’re drinking healthy.” [Reason] Earlier here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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- Prop 37: Oakland Tribune thumbs down [editorial] “Natural” language a flashpoint [Glenn Lammi, WLF] Earlier here, here;
- “Danish government may scrap its ‘fat tax’ after only one year because it simply doesn’t work” [Mark J. Perry, AEIdeas]
- “Mouse in Mountain Dew saga comes to an end” [Madison County Record, earlier]
- Food safety and local producers: “FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers” [Ryan Young, CEI] “How Farmers’ Markets Dodged a Regulatory Bullet in Pennsylvania” [Baylen Linnekin, Reason]
- “On the roads, on the cheese board… many Europeans now have more freedom than Americans.” [Mark Steyn]
- Mayor Bloomberg extends his healthy-beverage solicitude to the youngest consumers [Steve Chapman]
- In France, raw milk in vending machines [Mark Perry] FDA ban on interstate shipment of raw milk dates back to lawsuit by Public Citizen’s Sidney Wolfe [Linnekin]
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For now, at least [Ira Stoll, earlier]. 
Related: “Soda Noir,” Owen Smith’s funny cover illustration for the June 18 New Yorker. And George Will reveals in his column that as part of its stimulus program the federal government spent millions of dollars on campaigns at the local and state level to crack down on sweetened drinks, a policy of dubious legality given that existing law “prohibits the use of federal funds ‘to influence in any manner … an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose, by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation.’” [earlier here, here]
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- Chicago city government joins Boston in threatening to use regulation to punish Chick-fil-A for its political views [Josh Barro, Eugene Volokh, earlier, Tim Carney]
- NYC hearing on Bloomberg soda ban “a pre-scripted event with a foregone conclusion” [ACSH, WLF] despite inclusion of Baylen Linnekin on witness list [Reason, Jacob Sullum] If calories are the point: “Hey, Mayor Mike, why not ban beer?” [Sullum, NYDN]
- California restaurants serving foie gras “can be fined up to $1,000…or is it a tax?” [Fox via @ReplevinforaCow]
- When nutrition labeling meets deli salads: the FDA invades Piggly Wiggly [Diane Katz, Heritage]
- “Raw Milk Advocates Lose the Battle But Win the War” [ABA Journal]
- “PLoS Medicine is Publishing An Attack On ‘Big Food’” [David Oliver]
- More signs that Mayor Bloomberg is eyeing liquor as a public health target [NYP, earlier] Oasis in the putative food desert: “In praise of the corner liquor store” [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason]
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