United Liberty

Americans are fat. Many are getting fatter, as I type and you read this. Apparently, New York City solved all of its problems and turned their attention to what they can do to stop their citizens from increasing their waist sizes last year. The Board of Health decreed that all food service establishments with more than 15 locations change their menu signage to include caloric counts “prominently.” I will not harp on the added cost to the small (or large) business owners this affects, as the law passed and remains in effect over a year after its initial implementation. I do, however, want to draw your attention to a study conducted by professors at Yale and NYU.

The study includes tracking customer activity at four major-label quick service restaurants, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and KFC, in poor neighborhoods among the NYC boroughs with high levels of obesity, comparing them with socioeconomically similar neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey, an area without the menu-labeling requirement. On the surface, it seems that providing people with more information would guide consumers toward “healthier” choices when faced with a decision about what to order.

After years of lobbying, following an announcement of the “obesity epidemic” by the U.S. Surgeon General in 2002, nanny staters in New York City found themselves to be blazing a trail for regulations of this kind, as the law took effect during the summer of 2008. Interestingly, thirteen other state or local governments nearly immediately followed suit, regulating what their citizens see on the menu without a single study of the effects caused by New York City’s legislation. The study I linked to above seems to be the only one of its kind, and its results are not what was promised upon implementation.

The study collected receipts of customers for two weeks prior to the mandatory menu change and four weeks after it commenced. In the neighborhoods studied, only 54 percent of customers noticed the additional information when ordering their meals, but just over a quarter of those that noticed, 28 percent, stated that they used the additional information in determining their order. Of that number, 88 percent stated they made “healthier” choices in response to the newly-provided information. In real numbers, that means that of every 1000 fast food customers, only 133 of them made the choice that the regulation intended they make, using the additional information provided.

Additionally, the mean number of calories in each purchase increased from 825 calories pre-labeling regulations to 846 calories post-labeling regulations for the New York City neighborhoods, while the control group in Newark for the same periods increased from 823 calories to 826 calories. This was certainly surprising to me, as I expected that with 13.3 percent of those studied claiming to make healthier choices as a result of the new menu information that the caloric level would have remained steady, if not dropping slightly.

Based on the information found by the study, the authors seek to further the social engineering desired by those I refer to as “nanny staters” by finding that there is a need for further government intervention. In fact, based on the menu labeling data, the lead author of the study stated, “I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” in a recent interview with the New York Times. Personally, I found exactly the opposite, especially for the 13 areas that added this regulation without any substantive evidence, for what is described as a “first attempt” to change the eating habits of Americans.

As someone who seeks a liberty-minded solution, the idea of social engineering of citizens through regulation of the businesses they patron is appalling. While this is small, and a “first attempt,” I shudder to think of what else lays in wait for us as our government officials decide what is “best” for us and legislate those decisions.

Personally, I prefer to make choices based on my own efforts, rather than having someone else make that decision and enforce it. You have heard many times about the “slippery slope” that many innocuous solutions begin our slide, and this is yet another example.  I find it bothersome that when something does not work, the solution is to go further, rather than admit failure.