theodore roosevelt that gave to the food and drug act, and it have got queen elizabeth, it is a fascinating history, and we have two of america's leading experts on government and food and health. this is just a superb team we have assembled on this topic. ezekiel the great

emanuel, chair at the university of ends of enya, and in his spare -- of pennsylvania, and in his spare time, a chef. he got rave reviews from the washington post, and as a result of that, he is now on the james their nominating committee, so this man, in addition to having than anyone else for health reform in the united states, is a great man and a great friend. he will be joined by professor jacob gersen. he is the director of the food law lab at harvard law school. we could not have done better than zeke and jacob. this conversation will be moderated by michael gerhardt. he is our new visiting scholar here at the national constitution center. he is a superb presidential scholar.

thoughtfulf the most constitutional commentators in the country, and i am so thrilled to have him at my side to oversee all of this great constitutional content that we are hosting here. so ladies and gentlemen, without further a do, please join me in s, anding our great guest enjoy the show. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. it is a great honor to beer twoght and to have extraordinary scholar share their expertise and i have to confess to the outside we will be able to talk about the quality of food and particularly the reasons why the government regulates food and some of the major issues arising right now with respect to food regulation,

jump right to jacob and have him talk to us about why the federal government is involved in regulating food. jacob: to start with, the government is involved with regular include because the law is almost always been evolved to goulate food, so when you back and read the bible, the bible has a lot of food law. when you go back to roman times, roman times have a lot of law, and the basic problem in that is the basic problem we face today, purity ando -- food food safety. they are related but not the same. when i buy this thing and i put it in my body, am i getting what i see, and how do i know that? glass of milk, it is hard to tell if it is milk and water or some other thing, and whether that is poisonous or organic -- it is so hard to tell by looking at an drinking the product. that is true for almost all

food, and that has always been true for almost all food, so we have ways of addressing that, purity disclosure rules today, laboring rules, safety rules, production programs, so much of what the federal government is doing, and also the state and local governments are doing, is actually trying to fix up problem, which we never have. the food purity problem -- making sure that what we eat is what we want and does not make us sick. michael: thank you. up and gets us running. zeke, give us the most pressing food regulation. zeke: obesity has to be at the top of the list. certainly if you're worried about national health policy. obesity is one, too, and three. just a small corner of it, diabetes alone we spend a quarter of $1 trillion, so

worrying about how the government is involved in food, promoting food, not promoting certain foods, is clearly quite important. we have a lot through, you know, , andubsidies for farmers biasing growth one way or another. we have issues through food the national school and program is a way that the government can impact what, especially children eat. the issue of should we change .he labels we have somewhat complicated labels of ingredients and attrition. there has been a lot of -- certainly when i was in the white house, we pushed for pack labeling. and we have obviously -- obviously, i say -- in the affordable care act, it included

a requirement for caloric menu labeling by any establishment that has 20 outlets or more. under a tested change or have an impact on the obesity epidemic, so i think there are a lot of different ways that the government does intersect with think it hasand i had a big impact certainly on what children eat, if nothing else. michael: jacob, in terms of federal regulation, what are ways the federal government can do to make sure that people eat more nutritious food? two basic questions. one is making people aware and giving them access to more nutritious food, and that is basically an informational problem and an access problem. which foods are in fact the ones we should be eating?

my friends in the public health they we have known that for long time, and my friends outside of the community think we have no idea, so part of it really is conveying information that we know to the public in an effective way and allowing us to make choices, but even if someone has that information, if one does not have access to those good food products, it is not going to matter much, so there is the question of being it will to get those affordable and really available healthy food, nutrition food, however we decide what that is. there is a lingering question that we come back to come i think, which is even if you have an information and you have the access, if your pallets and cases such that you do not want it, then you have a different kind of problem that we need to solve, and i think we have all three of those issues currently. i would just say one of my great frustrations, having worked in the government, is how much we as a country, and it is very understandable, to say we

give people information, and they will act on it. everything economics tells us about human behavior affects to your information is never enough to get people to switch, and you know this in your life, and just to give you a very concrete example, people who smoke know more about the ill health effects than you do about smoking, right? they have gotten that information in their ear, they have absorbed it probably more than most people, we have a lot of data about that. it has not changed their behavior. theoing from information to right behavior is a very big step, and it is typically -- information is of course necessary, but it is almost never sufficient, and we, over and over again, i think, when we think about government doing things, over and over again behave or pass regulations and laws as if that were easy.

you just give them the information, they will ask, and they will be free to act, and we do not think about how hard it is. we can tell people what the right food is, but if they go with excessively sweet, excessively salty, and that is what their palette is catered to, i think we need to think a lot more creatively about what we do, and information, i think is never sufficient. i know why we do it, of course, because then we are not biasing, we are not saying these foods are bad. there leaving of i it up to individual. that is un-american value, but it is very ineffective. if we are combat obesity, it will not be an effective solution. michael: jacob, there is a perception -- correct me if i'm wrong -- but healthy food actually costs more. if that is correct, why is that,

and how -- i suspect that also influences choice as well. jacob: i guess i want to offer two things. one, the last one i saw that it more a day to.50 eat a healthy diet per person. that is about $500 a year. is that a lot or a little? there are families for whom that is a huge amount of money, but for many families, it is not that much of the overall annual budget for their family. what does it mean that it costs$1.50 more per person or per year to eat a healthier diet? it might mean that they do not know that. thenot sure that that is case. it might mean that they do not value that sell the fact that more than $500.

again, that is hard to imagine. but really they do not like the healthier diet. they actually prefer the less healthy food, the less healthy diet for any number of reason, and i think many of them probably are pallets. when we think about the government diet or the government's plate, we need to think about the government producing certain kinds of food, exposing young kids to those foods. let me turn to young people when you talk about school lunches. that is an opportunity to make choices, and they may make it on imperfect information, but also the information available to them in school lunches may not be particularly nutritious. is the problem with nutritional value for lunches? zeke: under the obama

administration, i'm no longer shilling for them, but we did change the formula on school lunches and made them more nutritious -- more vegetables, more fruits, and that is very important. i mean, we have data that in fact kids are eating more vegetables sheared they are not eating more fruits, although they are taking more fruits. michael: not enough fruit and vegetables in my house. zeke: that has some positive impacts, and we know in the past kids that were exposed to the school lunch program launched by the federal government were actually more obese on average than their peers. it is a little hard to control because of all of the variables -- they come from different economic household and the rest of it, but in the past -- and remember, in the past, a lot of what went into a school lunch was determined by what farmers wanted. a program not run by the people itponsible for nutrition,

was run by the department of agriculture. that tells you a lot about what the priorities were going to be for that. because of the awareness of obesity in the country in the effort to change it, we have gotten a better formulation, a more healthful formulation on the national school lunch program, and i think that is a bit. have we gone as far as we should? probably not. when i was in the white house, we had a big controversy over mayor bloomberg wanted to prevent the use of food stamps for soda. that was viewed as not acceptable. i thought it was perfectly acceptable, and it would've been , whetherportant path in fact or how much sodas can contribute to obesity. so we do, we have a lot of play in the government. you have the school lunch program with what we permit people to buy with wic and food .a.p.,, now called s.n

influence on what people do consume, and again, we all pay for it. we pay for coming in in terms of the food, and also for it going out if people get obese on those diets. i think being more or shaping them much more with oan eye to the health of people and not as caloric intake is important. agreel: jacob, do you that regulations regarding the school lunch program are at the right balance? jacob: i think it could probably be better. [laughter] i think we all agree on that. i think they have gotten better than they were. some of the action is how those , different food groups, and there has been some controversy, but overall, it is just a remarkable, captive audience to talk about obesity in kids, it is an amazing captive audience. hours a day,e 8

six hours a day, and that is each daymillion kids that are fed. that is a massive portion of the u.s. population that we just get to decide what they eat. we just get to decide what to eat, and we could decide they that eat a little bit less as caloric. we could decide they only eat vegetables or any number of different things, but that is a really big tool that the federal government has. riserinkle has been in the of what they call competitive foods in schools that were not around when i was growing up your what are they competing with? they're competing with the school lunch that is provided, and those competitive foods have sugar, candy, increasingly branded fast food in schools, and low and behold, if you put pizza, burgers, and

fries or soda next to the healthier options, the cafeteria workers say the kids do not seem to want the healthier options. michael: that is rather shocking. jacob: it is shocking. that, too, is getting better. so the competitive foods also need to meet the competitive standards, but that is pretty late in the process. michael: i think what is really important -- i can see from the age of the audience many of you children,d your own and what you need to know is what you feed them as kids -- kids do not go through a lot of real, radical changes in their food preferences, so, you know, all those people who sell cere al, sell soda know this. if they do not implicate kids in drinking their soda or eating ereal, they probably lost them for a lifetime. it is a very formative moment in

setting the food palette and palate and food preferences. we need to be more health in how we are structuring those meals. by the way, again, we can all be mona the fact that the glass is half-empty, but we have made some important strides. made strides on the competitive food thing, the vending machines in schools, so they actually have more nutrition. and let's be honest, philadelphia has been a major national leader in demonstrating you can be a -- you can make a big difference in getting the suite beverages out of the school, and that can make a big difference in kids' obesity rates. data are bouncy, but we have

turned a corner in the city major leadership in the city from the mayor on down on this very issue, so we know that politically you can take it on, and you can make a difference about what is in the school and the impact on kids, but we do not have to wait a whole set of generations or years to actually see that impact. michael: so jacob, went to subsidies come into play? we have federal policies as well, and the perception, which may be wrong, is that the subsidies that the federal be givent gives may to factory farms, given to producers of foods that are not is that also a problem that has to be reckoned with in this particular area? inob: so we had a farm bill various forms addressed in the 1930's and started, like many of these ,

if it was too much, then the government bought it, and if you reduced supply, prices go up, and everybody is happy. so that worked for a wild, and there was a great coalition -- word, butbe the wrong there was a great coalition between the farm program. what happened over time as those payments started being done somewhat differently. instead of paying farmers not to grow, which sounds crazy but is not if what you want to do is keep prices high, we started paying farmers to grow more. the more acres you planted, the more money you got. prices could not fall the way what happened was very straightforward, then, you grow a lot more stuff, and that is not keep prices high -- that makes rice is go down.

now, i like low prices as much as the next person, but people who really like low prices are people who use those commodities as input for their products, and that is that a lot of the , it is a food industry lot of the ethanol industry and biofuels, and it is a lot of it on cointreau, for example, among many others. example,n syrup, for among many others. so there's an industry that wants to not keep prices up lucky prices down. again, there is a program that gets renewed every five years. every five years, it is an opportunity to decide how the crops are going to be planted. if you want different crops planted, obviously the soy farmers will not like it if you do not subsidize soy farming as much. that is clear. but the mass of other people might. so fruits and vegetables are known as specialty crops in the farm legislation.

i guess my view is they should not be specialty crops if we want more fruits and vegetables should favorn we those, frankly, if we are going to favor one or the other. michael: is this based on your expertise and study or experience? what is your reaction to begin another kind of perception, which is the meat and chicken industries, essentially, have taken captive the food and drug administration. to what extent are they in the driver seat and are moving around the obstacles you put up to diminishing their product? "captive"o not know -- that is a little stronger. people talk about regulatory capture all the time. it is a very pretentious thing. you have to understand the mindset of a federal burea bureaucrat. i do not mean that in a negative way. most of these are incredibly

smart people working incredibly hard, often, as we are about to enter again, another period of the government is going to shut down, you will be forced to not get a paycheck, and it is a little stressful. one of the things that ends up happening, i think for many people who are in the federal government wanting to do the they have i think a motivation of minimized and -- of criticism minimizing incoming criticism. so what happens is you try to tread these fine lines. the meat an industries a lot more concerned with what happens in the regulation than consumers. they are worrying about mad cow disease, and they're worried that my chicken will actually be clean, and they are worried about my fish and i actually get the dish that is labeled in the

food store. but those industries have a lot at stake, so they can really push their agenda. and if you are a bureaucrat and want to do the right thing by consumers, want to do the right thing by producers, you end up, i think, biasing yourself toward ok, where is the most chris is unlikely to come from, and producers are very good at making criticism. that ends up being very powerful. it is hard for someone in the federal government to give some of our big producers and big money makers in this country -- none the less, again, i view the glass as a little more half-full. we have had a major conversation about obesity in the last five years thanks to the first lady and the recognition and the widespread perception about obesity. we have talked about the problem of sugar sweetened, or in this case corn syrup-sweetened,

beverages. drinking of those things have gone down not just in the last five years, over the last 20 years. coquette struggled because of that domestically. they're shifting to buying tea companies, buying water companies, and things like that. that is good news. sugar sweetened beverages shift over to more healthy items. these are not habits we got to over a year. we got to it over a generation, and it will take time to break the habit. know,rly, i think, you moving off junk food and thatssed food, cereals, is another thing. sales of cereals have gone way down. you are hoping they have been high-proteiny more intake, especially early morning, but these are positive trends that show is first people will change their diet, and second, we can push harder on those things.

meat is one of those funny things which on the one hand, you do want people to eat roasting. protein is very good, and we probably should have more that, but it also has some bad effects , too. but the same thing is true of dairy. in moderation, most ends are ok. tostitos. [laughter] so we also try to figure out this point, jacob, what we are not talking about yet, and this is what zeke was saying. we have not talked about gmo's yet, genetically modified organisms. the government has not made a decision between gmo's and non-gmo's. jacob: i think to say we are not talking about is not quite right. there are a lot of voices right now better talking about it who are very, very concerned about it. for mott past the first gmo --

vermont passed the first gmo labeling legislation in the country. host: [indiscernible] a similar initiative failed in not benia, but i would surprised they went back. those questions are very much being asked. there is a big push at the to passlevel legislation to spring of those laws and stop states from alsoring gmo labeling and to require it. social media does effective. studying? definitely. are we there yet? it is a little less clear. from my reading of the literature in the studies them i am not aware of any study, i would like to see one if there is, that shows concrete, physical health effects or harm from consuming gmo products.

there is totally sensible literature suggesting that what has happened with some of the gmo products that will produce environmental harm that can be scary. if you think about monsanto's roundup ready product, genetically modified seed that you plant that is resistant to monsanto's roundup. that means you can put as much as he wants, and the plant will be fine, and all the other weeds are going to go down, and that makes forming very efficient, and all is fine and good, and less using a lot of ground up is bad for the environment or anyone who consumes that. over acern is that couple of years rather than a couple of hundred years, the weeds that survive that roundup will be very strong in resisting weeds, super weeds, so we will up the round

next batch of roundup. it producesre horrible evolutionary effects, but we are anxious about it. if i asked my students, they say no, no, no. have no them why, they idea. i think that is a common reaction. there is there an concern, but we cannot quite articulate exactly why. will talk about this a lot more. zeke: first, i would agree with main,ou said, the certainly on the health front, there is no study, and again at some a nose of his attic and i would love to hear about it, but again,s no study -- and if somebody knows of a study, i would love to hear about it, but there is no study showing a health problem from a gmo p or dwayne to be upfront and honest about that. from a gmo.

and we to be upfront and honest about that. always perplexed me -- we have got to give the consumer all the information and let them choose. this is one area where producers do not want to give them the information and are really trying to obstruct providing this basic information on the idea, exactly as jacob said, that most of us actually feel queasy about it, and we would probably avoided if we could. if something said gmo and sympathetic non-gmo, and we were sure that we got the right information, we would only make the choice on that basis, even not may make no health difference to us because who knows why. that theyd this idea object suddenly to releasing that information on first amendment grounds or whatever ground, as kind of crazy. don't give the consumer the information. make is ine i would actually do think in this case

personally the american public is a lot more rational than the european public. publiceuropean -- gmo's, you would think they are the black plague the way they talk about them. [laughter] i am not joking. they are much more into excluding gmo's, etc. i have got to tell you, most people do not appreciate, in the developing world, which is if they have gmo seeds, they cannot sell to europe. i mean their products. it creates a real problem because the europeans are very stringent about any contamination, etc., so have a big impact on farmers in africa, which we would not think about in terms of restricting their to markets in europe. i think the europeans have gone overboard on this issue, and i think we are a little more sober about it, but i do think this

issue -- if we have enough states, i do not know what but if weeans, have more states doing what states prefer one national law, which they are hoping they will be able to get to a lowest common denominator. michael: let me get both of first,actions, jacob jacob, you introduce something important to this conversation, and that is the possibly negative environmental impact that some food production can produce. it is thought, for example, that crude thatms produce is actually harmful to the environment. would you agree with that? secondly, to what extent should that also become part of the conversation with regard to food regulation? jacob: i absolutely agree with

that. food is dubious of our mental issue there will be in the next 20 years. food is the biggest environmental issue there will be in the next 20 years. farming, ranching practices, production, all of those consequences are massive environmentally. farming is a quirky area in u.s. regulation. we regulate some stuff, not other stuff. the next frontier of u.s. environmental law and rightly so. of then that regard, one things we have not also spoken about is the whole use in meat production of antibiotics. the antibiotics you get to the cows and chickens and stuff in the water supply, in the meat itself, and we are all recipients. it it is not just antibiotics. it is hormones and all the rest of it. and again, part of the problem is the data are not overwhelmingly great, but other

countries have restricted use, eliminated, i mean, denmark, the use of antibiotics in food, and meat production, again, i think this is one of those big issues, and here i think interestingly enough, consumers have driven a lot of change, so i think it was purdue that just said they are getting ready the antibiotics just used for growth in their chicken. and you see a lot of companies now, to bully and others, talking about how -- chipotl and otherse, talking about how their foods, no gmo's, etc., i think that is going to drive a much bigger segment of the food industry to try to do -- response to what consumers want or think they want. ,nd i think that is actually you know, finally we are now having a pretty positive impact connectionain, the between your diet, your health,

and avoiding disease, i think has gotten much, much stronger in most people, and they can see that even if they do not cook well for themselves, they can see at least demanding of their restaurants that they do a better job. jacob: i would like to follow-up on that, please. just to plug we will have a conference at harvard law school on friday on antibiotics, so anyone who wants more information should watch that. it is a great conference. second, the operative word he said is "finally." finally we are achieving. that has been a very, very long process. the fda started talking what this issue in the late 1970's. there was quite a lot of information, cause for concern, disagreements about the studies -- as there always is. they started a process to stop the use of antibiotics for growth. oft got halted over a period decades by the political process. what has happened now is the fda issued a voluntary guidelines asking the industry to figure out how to reduce the use of

hasbiotics, and industry responded. part of that has been driven by the public, as we said, the consumer. it has also been driven by the industry itself, and all of that is to the good, but it has been a very long process get there. it is not clear whether to think about as a great success or a failure. with any of these issues are transition problems. with the blacktop to any restaurant food industry, what they say as we go to our food producers, and they say yes, we can get there, and five years, not immediately. whether it is no antibodies for , will be ae at all lot of the detail an important in the next couple of years. with a: let me follow up question from the audience , and the question is

here, high fructose corn syrup is a serious issue in the united states. be government allows it to labeled natural or artificial. zeke: well, he is the regulator. [laughter] michael: and you're the one who worked in the white house. across asill come radical, but i do not a problem with not allowing that, even if the a is harmful, bad, has no benefit, keep it out of the food. if it is an ingredient in the food, we have to allow it to be in the food. if it is put in, we generally recognize that as safe. if it is not safe because it is causing harm, then it is not safe, and we should not pretend that it is pure this is an example of problems we see in the federal government, which is the non-specification in terms of the use on labels, and consumers think rightly mean a whole bunch of different things. you can describe a can of

tomatoes as fresh. what does that mean exactly? can describe the high fructose corn syrup as all-natural, what does that mean exactly? organic means something very clear, and that is set by the federal government, but these other terms are not. sometimes there is guidance, sometimes there's a third-party industry group that tells us, but there is a gap between what people think it means and what the term actually means. that is part of the food purity problem, and that is what we need to work hard to solve. they have taken over every word of the federal government that they cannot control and use it to sell, that is what their job is. "organic" finally got a very definitive label, but if it is not very clearly specified what "natural" means, they will use that to sell up what -- that is what they are paid for. i think it is no surprised when we do not have very clear definitions that all sorts of

things get put under that rubric. one of the questions is -- if you took it off and you said all right, you cannot use "natural" corn syrup, but you can use it for sugar, i'm not sure that we would be better off . [laughter] we use high fructose corn syrup because it is cheaper and it does have or peers to have adverse effects in terms of and it does have or appears to have adverse effects in terms of obesity. things that are heavily process, we should try to minimize it anyway. so we should say if it is fraudulent, deceptive, or misleading, that is unlawful or . if the use of that term as applied to that product is misleading or deceptive, that is illegal, and the governments can

deal with that. it will be hard, but that is the case. whether or not that is fraudulent, that is a different sort of question. michael: let me raise another question about regulation from an audience member. what is the concern behind healthy eating and anti-obesity efforts? zeke: i don't know. and i have being honest. it makes no sense other than against for it, we are it. we have a lot of that in politics today, and you would have thought that obesity is one of the things which is nonpartisan in this country, you know. we do have facts on this. there is not a lot of disagreement about the facts. you can look at the evolution over time of every state but a seriousaving obesity problem. one of the interesting things i in madison,ntion,

wisconsin, looking at a health system, they have built these new facilities, and they have decorated them with pictures from the historical society. -- andt was her markable what was remarkable -- and these are not patient from the 1920's, these are pictures from the 1950's and 1970's -- every kid is scrawny. every kid. [laughter] kids were just much, much skinnier back then. caloric intake was lower, the kinds of things they ate were different, and they were playing constantly outside. where the interesting things about all of them, doing baseball or basketball or just running around, and it is undeniable that we have had this big shift. it is undeniable that it is a huge economic threat to the country, a huge burden to medicare, medicaid, private insurance. lots of other items in the country. it seems to me that unless we are being ideological, there is

really no reason/is one of those things we should all be able to get together. those from and vegetable growers are small farmers. we want to support them, etc. understand% sure i other than liberals are for us, we have got to be against that kind of mentality. michael: jacob, is there a good argument here? jacob: the only thing i might add is the regulation of foods can code as ideological in a kind of antistate, government out of my kitchen sense. and i think that is wrong anduse i think the table plate, the food that is already so heavily regulated, ok, the very end, the government was going to say out of it. government out of my kitchen, that is ridiculous. the whole choice has been constrained, everything produced has been affected by long government. at that point, it is not antistate or libertarian, but

for so many, there is confusion. between these two healthy and unhealthy things is a journalist, -- is eternalist. the nanny stage, tell me what to eat. i do not think that makes a lot of sense. zeke: that goes to the point that jacob opened a whole session on which is there is no's the ever that have met -- there is no society ever that has not had regulation of food. no society has never regulated food. it is just like it is not a libertarian food in that sense that there will be no state regulation. even libertarians want to know that it is pure, want information about what is in it. there is no way of getting to some neutral standpoint that the government will have no impact on food. not possible. it is not even conceptually possible, and certainly not sustainable. michael: so speaking of the need or perhaps inevitability of regulation, one question here,

jacob, is -- should we put warning labels on hyper palatable foods? [laughter] because presumably they are addictive. jacob: look -- [laughter] 70% chocolate is hyper addictive, and it is really good for you, so i do not think that would be a fair thing. [laughter] general, i think that -- i am in favor of labeling. i like disclosure. i think disclosure is good. the problem is to figure out what sorts of things should we disclose because for each theredual person, is a different set of things they care about different sorts of things in each different product. and just have a laundry list of characters or features of the food, how was it produced, was approved by a big farmer or small farmer, last year or this year, how did it get here? all of these things we might

care about, we have to choose amongst those things, otherwise the information is completely overwhelming and useless. there is a real challenge there, i think. , ahael: a related issue here question specifically for you from the audience, isn't it also likely that people are not going that wonderfulll data on the label, but what they might rely on is the brand. a lot of what happens is the brand substitutes for quality in their view. for example, we have water here. i will wager if i saw another company's water, it would probably have exactly the same ingredients. this case, why what i and up with this water as opposed to another water, the brand? does that sort of work itself into the calculation people make about what to buy, regardless of other things? jacob: i think it does a lot.

and one of the things we are trying to tease out at harvard right now is exactly this question. we are running surveys to show exactly some brands that have sugarrecommend allowance, somebody not, and trying to understand the influence as they draw about the product on the basis of the brand some of the ingredients, and the information disclosed. alternately what you care about is what they think about the product. is this healthy? does it taste good? does it cost a lot? what i buy it? it turns out they are pretty good actually making those inferences, and what they say they care about is taste and cost. and that is relevant, i think, as we structure policies. look, i spent a large part of my time in addition to working on health care reform working on a get food labeling done, trying to pass food labeling. there are a lot of reasons to think it is important. we know people do not read the nutrition facts -- people -- a

small fraction of shoppers actually read the nutrition facts. jacob: some people in this room. [laughter] zeke: it is very hard to read the nutrition facts. they are not the most intuitive. you do not add up everything you eat across a day. and so we had worked for a very long time with the grocery manufacturers association to try factgotiate a voluntary with hope that the fda would be able to step in. very contentious negotiations. they made a big announcement to short-circuit our negotiations to do it voluntarily. of course, you have seen how much they have done voluntarily. it is contentious. what you put on? calories, silver, saturated fat, do you put salt on? was saying, there is a lot of information. it depends what your main objective is and what you think

would be most important. in my view, calories are very -- , and a very important goal the question of some of the other factors, you know, whether sugar, saturated fats ought to be included in some of the contention. i will say that most manufacturers are very fearful about having red, yellow, green, or some other summary measure. and as you know, no single metric is taken off in the united states. i think partially it is contentious, partially they do not want to do it, but also it is very hard to figure out exactly what the best message is , and that will depend upon what we think we need to be aiming for. certainly i think obesity is so high on the national agenda that it ought to be a major factor. michael: right. here is the question directed to zeke, and i will ask this of both of you, if it is ok, jacob,

if you take the first crack at it. the label, that is our theme here, much of what zeke was talking about. given the perils of excessive sugar intake, why is there no recommended daily allowance of sugar on the food labels? most european countries provide allowances for total ofbs, but knowno specific set allowances for sugar in the united states? jacob: i do not know of any defensible reason not to provide that information. information we provide for all the other ingredients -- there is a political story of why we do not, and that is true, and that is to expect politics be absent from politics is silly. [laughter] on the other hand, politics is not absent from politics. various industries, organizations we are talking about are powerful, strong interests that have been deeply

involved in politics for many, many years, some for good, some for ill. and i think product with a lot of sugar with them do not want to have an information on the label. the reason is very straightforward -- it is incredible how much sugar is in those products. i know this, i teach this, yet every day, i am amazed at how much sugar is in those products. michael: zeke. let me just throw and white bread, something else that is , soght to be unhealthy again, no warning labels put on that -- zeke: carbohydrates are a real problem, and sugar is an example. this is all we are left with, by the way, at the end. [laughter] zeke: we are not going to get there, i do not think. are there other ways of conveying that information that we might be able to offer the public that would be very helpful in that regard? one of the ones i actually have

begun thinking about, and again, this is sort of in the realm, is glycemic index has become a very important assessment of how foods affect the body and induce us to have high glucose levels, and then to crash and to affect our insulin. a major development of type two diabetes for one that has gotten out of control in this country. if we had -- this would be a very useful label both for diabetics and those of us who are not diabetic but want to eat in a better way to avoid, for the long-term, to avoid type two diabetes, things that have high glycemic index are not good for us. gettingld be one way of too much of the sugar element andout a frontal assault

provide information both to regular folks like us as well as people, the millions in the eyes who now have type two diabetes ae on the verge of having diabolic system. michael: jacob, the extent to which it is possible that all of these regulations actually increase the cost of food, so the russian is -- is that -- so the question is -- is that a concern, we do not have enough regulation? jacob: it is true that regulations can cost money, and i think we have gotten pretty good at trying to estimate what the cost of those regulations are. there has been a huge analysis analysisenefit peers some people of that, some people hated it, some people think the studies are terrific, and some think they are absolute gibberish. i think it is a sensible question to ask.

the disclosure and labeling requirements we are talking of a, those are pretty modest usually. they are not wild. restructuring the economy is some way, yes, there is a big cost. a lot of labeling requirements will drive the food costs up. there is a possibility it might actually drive some down. one of the problems that many products have is you go anyone to buy some good eggs, and you want them to be, you know, very range,, cage free, free you want the chickens to be treated really, really well, no and so, no antibiotics, no horms and the like. hormone free, natural, animals treated really well, and you can do all those things, and the people who were not great in price and the way that people who really are, and that means

the ones who are good cannot recover the cost that they should be able to peer if you can fix that market differentiation, the prices might work out ok. for some families in america -- it is millions of the because we are a huge population -- price -- there is a nutrition problem because they cannot afford food. oh we also have to get our head around the fact that -- i think it was in 1930, 28% of the household budget went to food, and today, it is under 10% goes to food, including dining out. so the idea that we are going to slightly raise the cost of food to fulfill some of these regulations on purity, safety, -- all rights, it is going to have an adverse affect on some people, people need food stamps and stuff, but really for the vast majority of americans, that actually might be a good thing, right? it might be -- maybe we will

buy less. maybe we will shift our conception, and -- our consumption. if we ate out less, it might actually be a good thing, not a bad thing. say am a little hesitant to , you know, it is just going to raise the food prices, and we have got to do everything to avoid raising food prices. one of the things you appreciate when you go to a lot of other countries is we like to think we tend to like a lot of stuff for a low price. a lot of other countries or like all right, we will sacrifice for high-quality, maybe less for the same price. that is a trade-off i think we should be doing more of in the united states -- high-quality food, because we do not need 2800 calories a day. will do just fine. maybe if we bought less but higher-quality would be a better deal for the long-term for

the country. we would be healthier, have less obesity, less type two diabetes, etc. jacob: in lots of countries, the serving size is smaller there than it is here. and i think overall, food calories -- michael: we can also link that up with the extent to which there is less obesity them. that one other question is the extent to which we can introduce advertising as something that should be in the mix of regulatory mechanisms. what about advertising to children? starts of the battles over trying to do that as you

might imagine. interest.g media you have to have some positive changes on that score. which, it is a tough road in part because segmenting the market and targeting -- how --you not target kids -- son saturday morning cartoons. but they watch a lot more than saturday morning cartoons. i think it will be hard. there will be a lot of spillover effect. so, i do not see that as -- i we can doe are things that are important but that will not be the be-all and and all. children'shange diets and parents acting responsibly to change their diets is going to be hard. .ne thing important from shrek

where they had a shrek sticker on in onion. kids wanted the onion. were are creative things could do to increase kids desirability for vegetables and other things. need to be more creative about that and more direct when it comes to kids and good nutrition. we know once we inculcate these things, i will tell you my own personal experiment. my new year's resolution was no added sugar. in tea in theoon morning, and no added candy. it, i am10 months into fine with it but it took a long soe to change my taste buds i did not want it. kandi is so ubiquitous it requires force of will to not have in the center of my office,

i walk through, there are two big jars of m&ms. every time i walk through. very hard for us to break that. that habitual thing, that is not what we are going to do we have in ourselves and our friends. it only gets harder with the social media and the internet. >> it gets really hard. how toinued to struggle deal with kids. social media, kids on the internet. it looks like we might get somewhere with that, but not really. >> we have time for one or two other questions. but it leadsended us to talking more expressive. this person says, what do you think of the food movement? importantre lots of things about the local food

movement that are positive. you reduce the energy to move food.eded you can create local farms and patronize them. i think it is important. on the other hand we have to recognize we are not growing raspberries in winter in pennsylvania. is limits to how much that is going to affect than similarly, you want people to eat more fish, less meat. in the midwest, it ain't in a be local. you'll have to imported from the coast. i sit on the board of a farmers organization in washington, d.c., and the main mission is to promote opportunities for local farmers. do here in we can philadelphia because we have a huge number of local farmers round but there are going to be cants to how developed that

be if we also want to maintain a nice, healthy, balanced diet across the full year. >> i agree with all of that. i will add one thing that can be done is to pair local farms with schools. that would be good. that is something happening. nice, local move and good for the local products and schools and community. , ande of the big hitches it goes to jacob's point, one of the big hitches for local is distribution method. you have the farmer here, you have the demand in a city, and the distributors, right? cisco and the other ones, they cannot do local. not a big enough all you. to get that distribution system working correctly so you can actually get efficiently from the farmers to the markets in urban areas, that, i think, is

still a big challenge for most of these eight local, grow local things. a lot of people are trying to solve that problem. anour time is the much at end by want to ask each of you an open question. and take it in whatever we areon you want, but talking about federal regulation, but there is also state and local regulations. i wonder if you think there is room left in that realm and which would be the better policies to take us in the direction she talked about tonight in terms of state and local regulation. >> i think there is still room there is a space that has been regulated for a very long time and it is by and large appropriate. i think some of the things we have been talking about that are likely to have this gmo characteristic or future whether push.a local or state

in a few states if it happens, it gets federalized. that is gone to repeat over and over. a push for more federal regulation and less state regularization -- regulation. we give up some of the heterogeneity and local character of food. >> i think that is right. in the end, we are now in interconnected country and i do at take we're going to have situation where we will have a checkerboard a very serious regulations for very long. it is hard for industry to work under those conditions and they and up pushing for national regulation. what you hope is we do not go to the lowest common denominator disempowers places like vermont, or gone,

california that want to do more. i think that is unfortunate. >> unfortunately our time is up. is a rare opportunity for a moderator to be able to say and be completely truthful, when he says, we have been so lucky to have the two best experts in the country, the two finest people in the country to talk about this incredibly important issue. i want to thank you both for sharing our time and expertise. [applause] >> on the next washington journal, henry olson, author of the four phases of the republican party, on the current gop presidential race.

about herauthor talks half thinks. other washington journal's live with your facebook, twitter, and facebook comments on c-span. >> sunday night on cue and day, tyler abell, stepson of the late washington merry-go-round columnist drew pearson talks about the second volume of mr. pearson's diary which gives insight on washington, d.c., from 1960-1969. thet was remarkable, all things he did and sometimes he would criticize himself in the diary. if you read him carefully you came across different places where he says, i think that column was too strong a nation and have said it quite that way or, lyndon is going to get mad at me for the way i rank --

wrote that column. but i am glad i wrote it. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. on cue and day. a.q& >> three days after the san bernardino shootings, this panel focused on coverage of muslims in america and how muslims can be heard on national issues. >>