I love watching debates like this unfold. The “Food Babe,” a blogger and activist dedicated to misinforming people for fun and profit, has been making headlines, both positive and negative, for her over the top claims about food additives by places like Subway, Starbucks, and the majority of beer brewers. Although Subway has caved to her demands to remove perfectly safe ingredients from their bread, other companies are holding fast, and the world’s scientists are beginning to come out to publicly denounce her misleading and misinformed advice.
Personally, I agree that Food Babe is a fearmonger, misinformed, foolish, a bully, and maybe even dangerous. She was named the number one worst abuser of science for the year by Real Clear Science, an honor she very much deserves. As an advocate of food freedom, the campaigns against perfectly safe food additives and the bogus push for “natural” products irk me to no end.
But here’s the thing: when it comes to regulating the types of food people eat and the accountability of the companies that sell that food, there are only two alternatives: Either we rely on the government to regulate food, or we allow private consumer advocates to do it.
Most people are perfectly comfortable with the government regulating food, but the government is far from infallible. Despite rigorous government regulations, food borne illness happens. It happens regularly. The conclusion for from this is not that we need still stricter regulations, but that no system can be perfectly effective, and that we shouldn’t trust a third party to always protect us. A big problem with government safety standards is that people think they are all powerful. If the government has your back, there’s no reason to look out for your own interests, so people act carelessly and take risks that common sense should have told them not to take. This is what is known to economists as “moral hazard.”
More importantly, government regulations strip all personal choice out of the equation. If the regulatory body deems a certain food unfit, no one is allowed to eat it, even if they are perfectly willing to assume the risk associated with doing so. Regulators are people too, and they are not immune from personal biases, buying into a current fad, or the kind of junk science that has made Food Babe a sensation. The difference is, while we are free to ignore the rankings of this one woman, regulatory agencies set the rules by which we all must live.
On the other hand, private consumer advocacy provides information (albeit, of varying quality) without force. It allows for debate. It lets people hear all sides of an issue and make up their own minds. Those of us who fear Subway’s bread can choose to eat elsewhere, while those of us who don’t care can happily continue to chow down. And if enough public pressure mounts against a particular practice, companies will change their behavior to meet consumer demand, as Subway did in this instance. While I disagree with their action in this specific case, it is a good example of how the market is supposed to work.
In a world of private consumer advocates, people like Food Babe are inevitable. But it’s far preferable to have an open discourse, where scientists are free to fight back publicly against such ignorance, than to have a monopolistic agency dictating what can and cannot be done.