 You know, and a lot of economists use as well, to think about kind of problems and situations in the world in general. It's called the economic way of thinking. So I was wondering if you could introduce us to that idea and then we can start exploring about how it applies to diet. Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that fall under the idea of the economic way of thinking. And I think at its most basic, there's a couple of things. The most basic part of the economic way of thinking is recognizing the omnipresence of scarcity. That we can't get everything we want and that what that means is any choice we make, one, we have to choose between the things, the multiple things we might want, and that any choice we make involves a cost. There are lots of kinds of things we might want to do in life, or things we might want to purchase, or whatever we're thinking about, whatever goals we have, whatever ends that we have. But that all of those involve, again, we have to make choices. We can't do all the things we want to do. There's not enough time, there's not enough resources, so we have to make choices. The economic way of thinking recognizes that human life really is defined by the necessity of choice and the fact and scarcity. So the idea of scarcity, of course, is a key concept in economics and the economic way of thinking. The other thing that goes with that is the idea of opportunity cost. That when you make a choice, you're giving up something else. What we call opportunity cost is that choice that you forego. That if you decided to spend an hour and 15 minutes with us tonight, you could have been doing something else on Facebook, you could have been watching House of Cards, you could have been doing pretty much anything. But you made this choice, and what you gave up is the opportunity cost. And if we really want to be specific, what you've given up, you don't even know what it is you've given up because you gave it up, right? So when we talk technically about opportunity cost, what we're really talking about is the expected subjective utility of what you thought was the next best choice. So if your choice tonight really was watching House of Cards, your opportunity cost of spending the hour and 15 minutes with us is what you imagined you would get from watching House of Cards and since you don't actually watch it, you don't know for sure, could have been a great episode, could have been a terrible episode. We might be great, we might be terrible. The necessity of choice is a world of expectations, right? When we choose, we choose based on those expectations. And the second piece of the economic way of thinking is the idea that when we choose, we choose on the margin as economists say, right? That we choose between one specific thing and another specific thing. So tonight, to stay with our example, right, you're choosing between this episode of Big Ideas Live and the episode of House of Cards you would have watched next. If I say you made this choice, which one do you prefer, you're not choosing House of Cards in general, you're not choosing Big Ideas Live in general, you're making a choice on the margin. How do I spend the next hour with an hour of this or an hour of that? So when we think, my favorite example, this comes from the economic way of thinking textbook, the example, they use there as a student who's studying for a big physics exam and his friends say, hey, you know, come out, go to the bar with us, right? And the student says, no, I have to study for my physics exam tonight. I can't. And the friends say, oh, well, you must love physics more than you love us. And the friends' response is, on the margin, yes. Tonight, right now, today, this choice, right? That's what I need to do. So in any case, I think that is key to the economic way of thinking. And so understanding that when we do choose, that's how we're choosing. So the combination of the idea that we have to choose and that we choose on the margin mode defines the economic way of thinking. So with that in mind, there's one other thing, I guess, that we should include. Or one other way we should think about this, which is if we think about the idea that we are always choosing facing constraints, right? That the world, the opportunities out there in the world give us a set of constraints that we have to deal with and that those constraints, the sort of reality of that world means that when we choose, we can't get all the things we want. We're faced with limited resources, with limited time, whatever. Right. So in the case of diet, to narrow it down a little bit to what we're talking about tonight, some good examples of opportunity costs might be, you know, if you choose, well, say you're trying to be healthy. This is just from my own personal experience, which we'll talk about whether or not you can generalize from a personal experience. Say you really want to go out for drinks with your friends and you really want to have some birthday cake or ice cream cake or something. You can't choose to have both of those things and to stay healthy, right? Or maybe you can make another choice like I could choose to go for a run or something like that. So that's kind of how opportunity costs, I mean, to some extent, right? Like it's a lot more complicated than that applies. But in terms of constraints, how would you say that constraints really apply when it comes to thinking about diet and exercise? Like what's an example of that? Well, you know, whatever we know of the science, for example, of food and of diet, and again, one of the points that we want to bring out is that that science is that we hear conflicting things all the time from different people about what's best for you and what's not best for you. But we certainly know you need to have a minimum number of calories to stay alive. Every meal includes 12 beers. That's probably a bad idea. So we know that there are certain facts of the world that we have to deal with. And we know if you overeat consistently, odds are pretty good that you're going to put on weight. So those are constraints, right? But we choose within those constraints, and we have preferences about what we'd rather do. I mean, take your example. One might want to eat healthy, but one also wants to be part of a party and wants to enjoy a birthday cake from time to time. So we know that we have the cake possibility, but we also know if we eat too much of it, other things are going to happen. So we have those realistic constraints that we faced of the facts of the world, and we have preferences, and we have to figure out what are we willing to tolerate and what are we willing to accept. And as you say, we might make one choice one day and another choice another day. That looks a little bit different. But again, all of those choices are preferences being subjected to the realities of the world. And I mean, even within, certainly we've got preferences. I'm a little bit famous with a group of people that Steve knows for not really being a big fan of cake, which some people find really upsetting. I'd rather eat a pound of chicken wings personally. But I mean, that's totally different from me to the other people that are out there, I should say. And that's going to factor in as well, certainly. And in addition to that, I mean, some people can certainly eat more and get away with it. And other people can't, right? So you've got to not only take into account your preferences, but also just the personal realities that affect only you. And that's another form of constraint, right? Another kind of constraint that our preferences are subject to is knowing our own bodies and how our own bodies trade off one thing against another. Just as an example, I'm not a small person, but I'm a lightweight with alcohol, right? I have a couple of drinks and I'm out of it. And that's just the way my body processes alcohol, but people who are much smaller than me who can drink a lot more and be perfectly fine. The same way different people process different kinds of foods, I have a slight bit of high blood pressure when I went to my doctor, I said, do I need to cut down on salt? And his answer was, well, it depends on, people's bodies are different, right? You're going to find out if you cut down on salt, you might reduce your blood pressure, but you might not. It might be that you're just not very salt sensitive or you are very salt sensitive. It turns out I'm not salt sensitive, so it doesn't make a difference one way or the other. But for some people, it really does. And so I think when we think about what do you eat and how do you stay healthy, one of the facts of the world, those constraints that we have to take into account is our own bodies and how our own bodies react to things. And so, again, as we think about, you know, applying the economic way of thinking to how we think about food and how we think about what to eat, that's, you know, that's a good example is knowing that we have certain preferences, whether it's over types of food or losing weight or whatever, but to execute those preferences, we need to know what the reality is we're bumping up against. All right, I'm going to pause right now and give people a chance to ask questions because I think this is a really important concept that we're talking about. And while I do, I've got a poll that people can participate in. So I hope you guys should see it pop up. And I'll see when you vote. So I'll give you a few minutes to vote and ask questions. So far, most of what I'm getting, well, most, I've got some support for the idea that cake is overrated, which I can't know. It's fun having this conversation, eating cake Sunday night at dinner with my daughter, who also thinks it's overrated. Well, I mean, there's a time and a place for cake, just like most things. So I've got about 44% of people in. Some support for your daughter's opinion on cake. Excellent. And Steve, since I'm not getting any questions yet on the economic way of thinking, which is great, because I'll take that as the idea that people are generally on board. Maybe I'll give you a chance to say anything that you think needs to be said on that before we move on. Well, I mean, I'm, you know, I think if you understand the idea of scarcity and opportunity cost, I think if you understand, and maybe it's worth emphasizing again the idea that value is subjective, right? That what, you know, understanding that economic decision making is about achieving, about the best ways to achieve the ends that we value, and different people value different things, right? So, you know, again, if we think in terms of food, some people want to be skinny and sort of think that that's the path to living the longest life possible. Other people say, I'm willing to give up a few years of longevity to, you know, eat those buffalo wings or whatever it might be. So again, what our ends are, what our goals are, and the way in which each of us place value on different goals is different, obviously, and that I think matters for how we think about food. What this suggests is that there's a really important difference between what we might call economic efficiency, that is getting the most value out of something, right? Making sure that marginal benefits greatly exceed marginal costs, and technological efficiency. You know, just knowing what is the most, you know, for example, we can imagine creating a car that gets 100 miles to a gallon, right? But the question is, one, what would it cost? Two, how heavy and safe would it be? Not very. And people simply wouldn't want it, because miles per gallon isn't the only thing people care about, right? There's trade offs all over the place. So, understanding that point and understanding that the economic way of thinking looks at the relationship between means and ends, and not just a kind of technological idea that there's one sort of physical goal that we have to achieve. All right, so just in case anybody's curious, most people think that the economic way of thinking can be applied in most situations. We've got a few people that think it depends, and we've got a few people that says you should be applying it all the time, so they're the real hardcore, I guess. Just to give everybody an idea of maybe where you stand. So, okay, let's focus in a little bit more on diet, even though we've kind of started already. If you have met Steve or I before, or you meet us in the future, we can't help ourselves. We love food, which is why this is such a fun event, I hope, for both of us to be doing. But I thought diet would be a really good topic because people have so many opinions on it. It can be really, really confusing. A lot of people have one rule. So, for instance, you stop eating fat, or you stop eating carbs, or you drink three liters of water a day. There are a bunch of things. People have the kind of one rule that if you do this, you'll be healthy and you'll be able to maintain a good weight. But a lot of those recommendations can be conflicting. The people who say cut out fat generally think that you should be eating whole grain carbs. Not always. I don't want to misrepresent anybody's point of view. And a lot of people who like to eat lots of fat do it by cutting out carbs completely, which I tried once, and I just love potatoes way too much. So it just doesn't work for me personally, which kind of goes back to what we were saying. So, Steve, why do you think there are so many mixed signals? I mean, we talked about the fact that there are some experts, but it seems like it's still confusing. Yeah, I mean, I think... Look, a couple of things. Well, many things. One is, bodies are different, right? And I think that oftentimes, even though we're all human beings and in some sense we all share the same physical mechanism, different bodies process things differently sometimes. And I think for some people, eliminating one thing works. For other people, eliminating another thing works. And sort of what nutritionists and dietitians and scientists know often depends upon what they're looking for, how they set up the various experiments or studies they do. And again, I'm not denying that science is relevant here. I think it is. But we get, as you say, sort of multiple results. And if you think about even in the last, say, 10 or 20 years, how many diet fads we've gone through where everyone keeps saying, oh, the science shows that you need Afghans. The science shows you need low fat. Does cholesterol lead to heart disease? Yes, no, yes. Part of the scientific process itself is figuring out what works and what doesn't. And so we don't need to necessarily go there, but the analogies to other issues in the news might be relevant here. Whether the science is complete or not, science is never complete. We're always trying to figure this out. So we learn new things year after year, especially as our real understanding of the microprocesses go on. That's part of it. And then as you said, Janet, people have preferences. And a diet or nutrition recommendations, whatever they are, are no good if you're not going to stick to them. So some things work for some people because psychologically they're just better able to do that. And again, knowing your own body and sort of those objective constraints and knowing your own preferences, you've got to figure out how those match. And another thing that might be worth thinking about is, I actually didn't know how much I would miss potatoes. I love cheese. I love bacon. I was like, this is a diet where I can know all the cheese. But there's a funny there's a funny video on the internet where it got, there are many funny videos on the internet, but there's one in which the guy kind of makes a joke. He says, except you have to, you can have all the butter and all the bacon and all the cheese and all you have to do is give up bread and potatoes. He's like, what is the all you have? He says, you can have all of these things if you take away all the things they go with. And it turns out that's the way that I feel. So I couldn't stick with it, but other people really can. And I think that that's great for them. But again, it just, it shows that not only do I not know what works for them, but I didn't even know what worked for me. So it can be, it can be really confusing. And I think something that we might want to talk a little bit about is whether you should, when something works for you, how much you can assume that it will help somebody else. Because you definitely get this in personal relationships. Yes, absolutely. Everybody who finds a diet that works, I shouldn't say everybody. People who find diets that work. They get asked about it, they want to talk about it, they're very proud of themselves, and I think you just have to recognize that you haven't found the one right answer. Any more than if, you know, if I go buy a particular brand of car or breakfast cereal or whatever else. It's not the one right answer. I love my Nissan Altima, but it's not like I think it's the best car for everybody. Because people like different kinds of cars, but people might need a bigger, smaller car, whatever. But there is, part of the problem here, is that we have moralized food in a bunch of different ways, right? Certainly environmental issues are part of this. People who are vegetarians, let's say for environmental reasons, to them it's that there's deep moral issues there. I think for other people who make other diet choices, feel as though, you know, they're doing something like a religion substitute is strong, but at least it has this moral component to it, and I think they feel like, you know, I have to bring this to other people. Look what I found. Here it is. But the reality, again, is that just because it worked for you doesn't mean it's going to work for other people. And that's a kind of paternalist instinct, I think, that we see in lots of other places in society, where people assume, you know, this was right for me, therefore it must be right for everyone else. And I think there's some of that with diet. I've dropped 10-15 pounds in the last few months following a diet, and if people ask me, I'll tell them about it, but I don't know if it's going to work for them. It worked for me because it weirdly matches my psychology for some reason. But that's me, and it might or might not work for you. I mean, my doctor, thank God, every time I go see him, he gives me one or two new diets he's heard about, and he says, go try this, and we finally hit one. Because again, what works with some people doesn't work with others. Yeah, and you kind of touched a little bit on a gray area there, because I certainly don't know, I couldn't tell everybody who's listening today what would work for them. But maybe if I know someone really, really well, I might be able to tailor my advice to them. And it sounds like your doctor is willing to work with you. And so you kind of get this thing where you can't really say that nobody knows what will work for you, because if you know someone really well, you might know that. And I mean, that really does feed into I think the, as you said, the paternalistic instinct. And another thing that maybe we can talk about a little bit is if I make a decision kind of for you and I say, well, Steve, I know how you can lose even more weight. You can give up potatoes and bread and eat all the cheese and bacon or whatever you want. And I can think that that's great. I don't bear for the cost that you feel when you're doing that. So do you have anything maybe to say about that? Well, I mean, I think sometimes you certainly can know people well enough to have more kind of intimate knowledge of them that enables you to suggest things that you think might work. And, you know, money, politics and religion and diet maybe, you know, with close friends you sometimes want to be careful. But again, if people ask me about what I'm doing I'll tell them, but there's no there's no guarantee there. But that's different from total strangers, right? And when we think the sort of question one of the things we learn when we think about the economic way of thinking is that these decisions people have to make are often so idiosyncratic to their own preferences and constraints. In one example I use all the time is the decision of how dual income couples with kids will work out their child care. There's no one right answer. They all figured out their own particular ways based on their own circumstances and their own attempts to sort of match their preferences against their constraints. I think the same is true here too, right? There's all kinds of ways to do this and when we start trying to boss strangers around we just have no clue, right? What it is that will work for them. And even as well as you know someone, right? You still don't really know them as well as they know themselves. So I think being careful about the assumption of one right answer one right way and one size fits all that's the real caution. I totally agree and actually to build on that not only are things very personal but they're time dependent as well. So what's working for you right now just so you guys know he really is like the amazing shrinking Horowitz right now. He looks great just so you can all appreciate it. But one thing that he's talked about when we've talked about this is you don't know if what you're doing now is something that you want to continue doing forever. It's very right now you're trying to you have a specific goal for your diet and in the future you might not have the same goal or maybe you'll figure out it works but even if I know you really well and I know that this will work for you I don't know what's going to work for you in a year or two years and that really complicates things even more. It's basically it's almost impossible actually for me to know or even for you to know. I mean being in a very different circumstance a year or two from now and one diet that helps you say lose weight or helps you lower your cholesterol or whatever your goal and notice by the way losing weight isn't the only goal one might have with a diet. For other people it's not about weight it's not about muscle or it's controlling blood sugar or whatever it might be and we don't even want to get into allergies and intolerances and all that stuff so what might work for me to lose 20 pounds or whatever might not be the same thing that works for me to maintain that weight once I achieve it so again these things are all subjective in context or context dependent on where you are and what you're trying to achieve. Where do you think I mean I think it comes a little bit from when something works for me I get excited about it and I want to share it with people for sure but wanting to share it with your friends isn't really the same kind of impulse that makes you want to share something with the whole world. Where do you think that comes from? Well I think the sort of share it with the whole world and that what we more critically would call paternalism often comes out from a good place people really think they have an answer about how to improve people's lives especially when it's something that people say I want to be better at I want to be healthier I want to diet that will lower my blood pressure or lower my cholesterol whatever it might be and so people say that and I think other people often are well intentioned in thinking well I didn't use this therefore I want to help you this must be the way to do it and I think often it's making the simplifying assumption that everyone's the same everyone's in the same context therefore I mean again think about something like automobile purchases people say oh well you have to buy hybrid because it's good for the environment well that's okay maybe it is that's a question but even if it is everyone has that same goal other people have different tradeoffs that they might want to make with gas mileage environment protection whatever it might be so part of the problem I think is assuming that folks have the identical goal that you do and that they're in the same kind of situation to achieve it in the same way that you have okay so I've got some great questions coming in and they're sort of going to lead us into what I want to talk about next so why don't we take a lot of time to answer them and I'll just kind of use them to springboard so Laurel is asking Laurel do you think that fads are more harmful or deceptive than simply eating in moderation or do you think that and I'm now elaborating or do you think that there's kind of a place for something like fads in the way that people make decisions for themselves that's an interesting question I'm not I you know here the real let me back up and say what I think the real problem is which is determining whether something's a fad or not right I mean that's that's the real problem is how do you know it's a fad versus actually we've learned something here right and so in some sense rock music was going to be a fad with the Beatles right right exactly it'll get right so I mean it might be interesting to think about fads as being kind of the leading edge of something right I mean you know I think we have learned something from things like Atkins that that carbs are a problem right I mean you know you don't have to go all the way to no carbs or think they're the you know positive evil to recognize it yeah even a lot of that that you know processed whatever grains is a problem sugar too so okay but we learned something from it and rather than treat the fads as being the answer recognize that maybe often they make a contribution to making a more sophisticated understanding of what's really going on here you know I so in that sense I don't think fads are are a bad thing I think that you know people get caught up in them I don't know the literature well enough to know the answer to the question but it certainly does seem like again anecdotally that people who jump on both fad diets often will lose lots of weight but if you come check back in five or ten years where are they now it's good some people keep it off some people don't right and that's why I mean you know at least my experience is and certainly it seems logical to me that the best kinds of diet are behavioral change right where you where it's not necessarily about what you're eating though that might matter but about learning to how to change your relationship with food some people say right or change your eating habits in a way that by changing behaviors more likely to stick than simply jumping on a particular set of food is being really good or really bad again there's science all over the map here so I think we don't dismiss fads but I think you have to find a way to integrate them into a broader picture and I mean the way that we with anything including diets the way that we learn what works and what doesn't is generally trying it right and also like all the first movers always bear kind of they're not only bearing the extra uncertainty but I mean along with that comes the possibility of a cost right so you might be able to drop a bunch of weight really quickly but as your body a jet or not to get into too much because I'm not that familiar with the literature I mean I've read a lot but most of what I've read has convinced me that I should defer in a lot of cases to an expert because it's so all over the map I'm just not familiar with the full body of knowledge and to use a kind of Hayekian phrase here it's a discovery process we're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't for us and I'm going to tackle the second half of Laurel's question again I'm a great believer and it's not just about diet it's about everything in the sort of idea of everything in moderation including moderation right so it's okay to splurge and do this and that once in a while but you just got to recognize that you can't live that way right so whatever and I think what we learned from all these fads is that there's trade-offs all over the place here right if you decide to go to the high fat no carbs diet you might be saving yourself one thing but you might well be risking something else right so and if you go to the let's eat more carbs and eliminate the fat you're trading off something else and if you go on a diet where you're eating just to make this up where you're a diet that doesn't have much salt in it you're missing out on flavor and that might matter to you so again there's trade-offs all over the place in terms of both the health and your own subjective preferences again I think whenever we talk about food or any of these kinds of things if you're not happy doing what you're doing it's just not going to work and what makes you happy is going to vary from person to person okay kind of a related question and after this question I'll bring up the poll because I've got a couple more questions that really lead into what I wanted to talk about next which I don't want to jump the gun too much but somebody asked kind of a more specific question on what we were just talking about are public overreactions to new information like fad diets part of the natural process of the general public incorporating new information that's a great question and I think it might well be I don't have a theory of fads but it seems to me that I think here's the other part of the problem too I think people jump on the fads because everybody wants the magic bullet everyone wants the pill that means that they can eat whatever they want and not gain weight that's what we all like but that's the world that's free of scarcity and choice and constraint that's the world where the economic thinking doesn't matter if you can just do that right the real world is a world which we have to decide you know what we think is going to work for us and so I do think that's one of the reasons why those fads get jumped on so quickly is oh this is the thing right if we just find that drug that blocks the fat creation in cells or whatever but that's a hopeless dream I do think one other thing I'll throw it in here I guess but I do think it's interesting that in the 1950s the vision of food in the future was everyone would take these pills and get all their nutrition and be healthy and never actually eat or cook anything and that's it think about how stupid is that vision right how much does that vision deny one of life's great pleasures which is cooking and eating all this wonderful stuff that you and I love right it's just stupid and in fact what's really interesting as we become wealthier we actually spend more time what can rich people afford slow food right so that vision got it exactly backwards which is people love good food and love to eat and that means we're very conscious about thinking about all these fans because we don't want to give up the food we want to keep eating and enjoying things we just want to know how to do it more sensible well and I mean that's really a case I think of you've got people like at the time that they came up with that theory right cooking took up a lot of time and if you are not wealthy enough cooking is expensive in time you need to find recipes you need to find ingredients you need to actually dedicate the time that it takes to cook a lot of people don't have that and I mean it's great that it's become normal that food is something that you enjoy and you grow it and all of these things that used to be a chore are now kind of a luxury right we're to use a line I've used before we're rich enough to play it being poor right by growing our own food in the backyard and raising chickens and right it's not like it's not a survival tactic now it's a luxury good and meanwhile they kind of like utopian dream of I mean the pills there's also if you read about it that's soilent stuff that there's I don't know I'm not going to remember the whole story it's basically if people don't know about it you should google it because it's interesting but it's this guy has come up with this as far as I can tell sort of tasteless goo that provides everything that you need and so he just stopped eating he doesn't enjoy eating he didn't he thought it was kind of a waste of time so he's got like a cup of soilent which is named after soilent green which is a little bit creepy if you know a little bit creepy but I mean whatever you know it's a fun pop culture reference I guess but he drinks this stuff and that's all he needs to do and that would drive me bonkers for him he doesn't mind and I mean for a lot of people who could make it taste better that actually might if you're working three jobs to like just pay your bills it might be good if you could like literally because I mean some people say you have a smoothie instead of eating I can't do that I'm just then I'm like now I've had a smoothie and I'm still hungry but some people can do that and it would be helpful for those people but it's really our definition of what is right well again I'm not sure you know I don't know if this is where you want to go but you know imagine there was this magical place where you could go and not get even out of your car and you know in five minutes for five dollars get yourself a complete nutritious healthy pretty reasonably by historical standards nutritious healthy meal with a protein and some carbs magical place right there's you know there's five on every street and again if you're poor and your time constrained that's those are other options other options too one last thing I was thinking about with the pill stuff yeah with the pill stuff too and it ties to the fads which is that pill stuff was about sort of you know a belief in the power of science right that it was you know science will solve all our problems we just little magic pill the scientists tell us it makes us healthy I think that's as much of a problem with the fads now as anything else right that the we you know we the fads are the new version of the pills in the sense that it's we're looking for science to tell us the answer and they go now you should go carb free or now you should go you know what paleo or whatever right there's the new answer so yeah okay I'm just I'm going to bring up our next poll and I'm just reviewing the questions and they're all great it's like you guys know where we're going with this so I'll give you all a few minutes to to vote here this is just kind of I'm just kind of curious where you guys stand on this and I'll let everybody know sort of where the crowd is on this I've got a couple of questions well I've got I've got one one question and comment from someone who's actually a dietician thank you so much for listening and I appreciate your feedback and she says weight loss has a 98% give or take fill rate at two years out in the current model diet is so ingrained that it may be a more question of the magnitude of sorry I'm just having a hard time but basically diet is like so ingrained in the way that we do things in the way that we live that it's really a hard choice to make and the government makes recommendations but not everybody knows them and so should nutrition facts be mandated on manufacturer level that's from Heather and I've also got oh I'm not going to I'm sorry I have somebody who asked this question first and I'm going to butcher his name if I try so I'm not going to try but thank you for your question but it's the same kind of question what do you think of government forcing companies to put nutritional facts on their products is it not a big deal is it useful or what are the consequences so kind of let's let's talk a little bit about when diet is such a personal choice and something that becomes so ingrained and like you said it's a lifestyle how do how can the government talk contribute by letting us know about guidelines or even mandating nutritional labels you know I mean look of all the things that governments do is is mandating that manufacturers put you know nutritional facts or ingredients or whatever or allergy warning which is a whole different thing on their on their you know products that that's to me not a big deal among all the things governments do it's not I think couple of problems we can raise about it though one going back to our earlier discussion if you're going to put nutritional facts on a label that presumably in you know you're making you're using some kind of theory about which things contribute what to nutrition and what the appropriate calorie count is so you're making assumptions about what a good diet looks like or what the relevant information is that you want to have on those so it might be right but it might not so are the things that governments say people have to put on their products really the things that that matter and again go back to earlier conversation what are you trying to do when you're trying to lose weight try to cut down on salt you know how do you know that things they're asking firms to do are the things that customers really want buyers really want or need you know but okay if you're so those are problems and I think ingredient list you know if you're when you know assuming you're not an anarchist libertarian right you can make an argument I think that says listing one's ingredients are one way of you know to ensure that firms aren't defrauding you by what they're doing but that said it seems to me firms would have sellers would have very powerful reasons to want to list their ingredients anyone who didn't have a difficult time selling their product and I think we've come to that by the way with allergy information too now put aside what do you think everybody really has a peanut allergy or gluten or whatever it might be assume for the moment these things are sufficiently real okay and even if they're not as real as they seem they're still out there they're real for some people you know if you don't put now on your thing or list potential allergens people aren't going to buy it because there's so many people who are sensitive to so many different things whether it's gluten or lactose or whatever right that you know the competitive pressure to put that information on would be there even if it weren't mandated and the interesting thing about using the process of competition in this way is that that we find out what people really care about and whether or not what's mandated is really the things that people want to know I agree I think that it's like you said allergies just allergies alone to avoid the lawsuits and just to get people to buy it right if you've got it if you have somebody in your family who's got a really serious allergy and they're definitely out there you're not going to buy something like that's why they've got the peanut like nobody says you have I don't think anybody says that you have to put a peanut free label on chocolate bars right but now at Halloween like it's impossible to find anything with peanut butter in it because everybody's got which is a real pet peeve for those of us who love chocolate and peanut butter by the way well there's what we disagree on because I know it's peanut butter out of my chocolate but I think the more interesting or another interesting example is is all these products labeling themselves gluten free okay and it's fine because in fact they never had gluten in them in the first place right so they're just signaling to people that we're gluten free and I think that's great and that's not been mandated that's I mean like Czech cereal right you know says gluten free all over it why they want to sell Czech cereal to people who have gluten allergies yeah for sure and I mean I and yeah again that gets into like all there's all sorts of all sorts of interesting things that you can watch by by seeing what people are labeling now and I mean again you get into I mean people definitely worry that some of the some of these like allergies are a fad if you're really worried about your your kid having a peanut allergy like it doesn't really matter to you right better safe than sorry so it all it all kind of ties together I'm gonna sort of merge two questions I've got one from Rachel says what about the belief that the cost of other people's bad dietary decisions such as obesity heart disease I'm gonna add smoking to the list she didn't put it on there are born by all of society which is sort of true in the States I'm in Canada for anybody who hasn't figured it out from the way that I say it out yeah there are secret use in all of my letters so we actually have only one in Ontario where I live we have only one health insurance plan and everybody's in it so you can't get away from paying for my decisions or not paying for my decisions because I try to be pretty healthy but that how does that factor in and Heather followed up by asking about what and you can sort of tie these together and if not I mean answer them separately what about mandating levels of certain ingredients so for instance certain serving of so a maximum serving of so many maximum serving of fat or carbs I'm expanding on her question a little bit hopefully not in an unfair way well yeah the first I think the first question this is contingent on the world we live in right which is a world in which the cost of bad health and medical decisions are born by other people because we socialize the cost through various and Sunday government programs right I mean even in a world of it's an interesting question what health insurance would look like in a really market driven economy but even there if you're when we think about car insurance or homeowner's insurance we price risk by premiums and by people's behavior so if you're a smoker you pay more for your homeowner's insurance too so you know or if you have a bad driving record or you're like you know my 22 year old son you know you're in a demographic that's more risky so we try to customize the cost that way and the problem with health insurance is that we can't you know we can't do that and we certainly can't do it now in states under the ACA under Obamacare so it is true that people can in the language of economics externalize the cost of their bad behavior onto onto other health problems onto others the question is what's the solution to that is the one solution obviously is to desocialize the cost right if we get rid of those programs to get back to a really market driven way of pricing health insurance and all that or health care different story but if we don't what does that really mean do we really want to add more on to the pile as it were that government we're going to send government agents into your house to see what you're eating and what's in your cupboard to make sure that you're not imposing costs on other people because it's not and it's not like you can label and pass limits and put maximum serving size or whatever but people are going to get around it right if you tell candy bar manufacturers you can't make a candy bar with more than 150 calories in it right okay I'm going to buy two or the Bloomberg soda you can put a maximum soda size I'm just going to buy two small ones people eaters going to eat right people are going to do what they want to do and I don't think you can provide information to help people make better choices but in the end I think we want a world in which people are responsible for their own choices not a world in which other people go around telling them what they can and in the end I mean to be honest the logic of well the costs are socialized on to other people does put you in the world of death panels right where somebody is allocating out from the top down healthcare resources deciding what's okay and what's not that's the logical time point right I mean which is that's a whole other that's a whole other talk so I'm going to restrain myself there because I've got so many awesome questions I think this one is really really interesting so Liz I hope I'm saying your name right so she says she has a comment which is nutrition labeling with specifics on ingredients have the potential to save lives which I think we both agree with when you have milk water has milk dairy and peanut allergies and these are very serious she's been hospitalized several times she's and so I think that we should discuss this though she says economics alone would not have labels and it would allow companies to misrepresent it like if we didn't have a law and all we had was the economic incentives she worries that companies could misrepresent what's in their food or in the Upton Sinclair example put saw us in the need in food so why don't we talk about that just a little bit because I mean I think that's a common concern and it's and people should know my wife is severely lactose intolerant and my daughter has a very bad fish and not allergy so I've lived with my wife's lactose intolerance for 27 years now and and we started dating at a time when it was much you had to look yourself to see if they didn't say allergens milk right it would you have to know is there way on there is there casing what is it and doesn't you have to do this work yourself so it is I mean I'm totally I love the idea that information is there I'm not persuaded that it wouldn't be there if it weren't for mandated labeling I think as we as people as consumers get more concerned about these things again my gluten free checks example right the pressure goes on these firms to provide information that their customers want because we're going to keep calling them up or going on the web and trying to find it right so now just put it on the label make it clear restaurants are you know as far as I know restaurants are not mandated to you know indicate dishes are gluten free or not or if there's gluten in but many restaurants now put that little gluten free symbol on there it's not the law as far as I know but they're doing it because market incentives are there so we do see market incentives tainting food and all that well you know the Upton Sinclair particular example there's some history there that we can talk about that suggests it wasn't what it seems to be but again why would what incentives do firms have to kill their own customers that's the ultimate question right which is you might that's one second question though is if you claiming it's meat and it's sawdust that's fraud and anyone who thinks markets are good things like I do agrees that fraud's wrong and that we can't you know fraud can't be tolerant how best we deal with that is an interesting question whether you try to deal with it by mandating labels but you know mandating information on labels or passing a law that says you must say what's in there accurately doesn't mean people don't still break the law so handling it that way or through lawsuits after the fact just as an example people joke about the you know the hot McDonald's coffee suit from years ago but have you read anything about McDonald's coffee scalding anyone that badly since then right I mean those you know when they seem over the top perhaps and if you read the details of that suit it wasn't that over the top no it was actually pretty serious it was pretty serious and it made some sense but the result has been that people are more careful than how they you know how they how they deal with the coffee so so again I think there's I think market incentives are you know don't underestimate market incentives right okay so I've got a Rue I hope I'm saying your name right has been very patient I've been putting his question back because it kind of goes with what I wanted to sort of talk about last which is how much I mean we've talked about expert setting constraints but I think a concern that a lot of people have especially with diet is how much can we trust experts like we talked a little bit earlier about how confusing it can be especially when you're talking about something that we don't understand that while you get a lot of conflicting information and he asks about the detrimental economic effects of Jane Brodie declaring that egg yolks were bad for you without having any good scientific evidence to back up your claim and kind of on the other on the other hand in the more contemporary sense because I mean eggs go back and forth a lot I've decided to just eat them me too but I mean it does go back and forth a lot but on the other end of the spectrum you've got people kind of they don't want to consume something until they're really certain I mean the best example of this is genetically modified food and I mean we can just to kind of touch back a little bit even though people are sort of really calling for GMO labeling you've seen a lot of no GMO labeling which I think is a really interesting example of firms capitalizing on the fact that people would like to avoid GMOs but what do you think about that like when the science doesn't seem exact how much can we trust experts and how much are we sort of on our own you know let me throw one more piece to this puzzle which is you know there's a lot of rent seeking going on here too right oftentimes and this is not just about food science but all kinds of science in which people are the primary concerns are are they getting grants or are they getting NSF money or whatever it might be so there's pressure to either follow that or come up with new results so again there's politics in all this too which is part of what we might or might not trust about various experts as far as the what do we do well I think science isn't clear you got to go out and do a little research on your own and sort of figure out who you can trust I mean in the GMO case I think it's great that competitors in the market that there's a demand for GMO free food and that people are indicating their food is GMO free if you think that's important that's great if you think it's important that your food's organic that's great let the market let the market let a thousand dinners bloom let people put options out there I think in the case of GMOs I'll just note as far as I know the science science is pretty clear that GMOs aren't a big problem but again science could be wrong and if you think it's wrong and if you want something else if you want to know that your food's GMO free keep asking for it you're going to get it just like the gluten free folks are on the other hand if you're me and you think GMOs are great and they're no different from the way which farmers have manipulated crops for thousands of years bring it on I don't care if it's I think it's the mandating of the labels that suggest that there's an answer here what's interesting is the people who are skeptical about GMOs want to mandate labeling the people who like me who think GMOs are fine we don't want a label that says this has GMOs in it it's fine so you should choose I'm perfectly fine with you persuading sellers to label things as being GMO free what I'm not okay with is when you want to take away the option of me choosing the things that have GMOs or more relevantly making the kinds of crops that GMO the kinds of food that GMO makes available available to poor people who really need it because that's ultimately the issue sorry guys I've got an itchy pole finger I wanted to launch our last poll and Steve was done talking and I think we're only going to be able to take one more question unfortunately luckily you guys have asked questions right along the lines of what I wanted to talk about so I've just been going with it and it's been awesome I hope that we get this kind of participation in the future so I've got Ken has asked on labeling laws do we not run into the problem what should and shouldn't be the law and who decides what the law should be he's got some examples about beer there are contradictory labeling laws for beer in different jurisdictions which of course could be used I'm expanding a little bit but that could be used to try and keep and it has been used there's a few webinars about this to keep beer competitors from coming in to a new place have the same goal come up with different regulations so let's talk a little bit about that and I'm really sorry guys there are so many awesome questions I will do my best to follow up with anybody whose question we haven't got to but I also don't want to take up too much of your time tonight even though it's been really fun for me we can go a little bit past eight if we have the availability but just on the labeling thing labeling is wide open for rent seeking the idea of what you want to label how you want to label it will attract people who want to shut competitors out even going back to the history of the United States of the pure food and drug act in 1906 one of the main drivers behind that was a guy named Harvey Wiley who was a whiskey manufacturer who wanted to use the law to declare certain kinds of other kinds of whiskies to be impure I think he was a bourbon manufacturer but whatever it was he saw it as a way to label his competition as impure so even from the very beginning this sort of pure food drug act which we think of as being so clean in terms of rent seeking how to rent seeking component labeling laws give people an opportunity to get their pet thing on there in the way that benefits them not by the scientists or the dieticians but by the politicians and the lobbyists yeah definitely just so everybody knows I will close this most of you have voted I actually didn't let you guys know where we stood on the second one the second poll was are there diet rules that ought to be followed by everybody we had a few people that said yes we understand diet well enough to set the rules medium number of people who said there are some set rules most people say that each person sets their own rules for a healthy diet and for our last poll which I just closed you will recognize this question from the registration I'm just curious to see how you guys move but don't worry I won't out you we've got a few people who believe that individuals can make their own decisions with research and they don't need to consult experts a large number of people relatively speaking that believe that expert advice is valuable to inform our decisions but those decisions should be left up to us and a few people that say expert consensus should be used to write laws they believe that we're pretty sure on a few of these things and as we kind of touched on there's some arguments for cases in which we might want to worry about these things in such a way that we involve the government so I mean we can definitely talk about that I'm so sorry that I didn't get to all of your great questions this has been amazing I've got a lot of questions that are similar so I've just brought up some information and normally I would have shared an article that I thought you guys would find interesting but I didn't have one that was obvious but I've had so many questions on labeling and incentives for safety that people face in the markets that I'm going to dig up one or two articles on that for you guys and I will send it out I send out one email after these events don't worry this isn't like the beginning of a torrent of communication for me we'll definitely try to do that and I will review any questions that we haven't got to and if I think that I can provide a good answer then I will follow up with you guys by email directly I'm just going to put a quick plug in for the next one with Pierre if you're interested in these questions you should definitely be here in two weeks or three weeks whatever that is it'll be about three weeks I'm going to be talking with Dr. Pierre Derochet who's a professor of geography food geography is a job that I didn't know existed before I met Pierre I have some like regrets in my life now because some of Pierre's job is actually traveling around and eating food from different parts of the world which basically sounds like the best thing I've ever seen but Pierre's written a great book called The Locobores Dilemma and he's talking about the 100 mile diet and different ideas about eating local and organic and so we're going to talk about the ways in which a global food supply have helped us out so please if you are available come and join us again and ask some more of your great questions and I wanted to kind of draw attention also if you are interested in this kind of stuff Steve posts about it all the time I'm not joking when I say that the man loves food and so do I you can follow his page on Facebook and keep up to date with any work that he's doing I've got the link up there you can also follow Big Ideas Live on Facebook and I will let you know via that route about any upcoming events which hopefully you will find interesting if you have any questions or comments about today's event or future events or there may be topics that you'd like to see covered you can contact me at jameelsonfd.org that's what that's there for so I want to thank you again everybody for participating tonight and thanks to Steve for coming out my pleasure