Category: Food and Drink

Wal-Mart and obesity

Here’s Charles Courtemanche and Art Carden:

We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding robust evidence that non-grocery selling Wal-Marts reduce weight while grocery-selling Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor. We then examine the effects of these retailers on exercise, food and alcohol consumption, smoking, and eating out at restaurants in order to explain the results for weight. Most notably, the evidence suggests that all three types of stores increase consumption of fruits and vegetables while reducing consumption of foods high in fat. This is consistent with the thesis that Wal-Mart increases real incomes through its policy of "Every Day Low Prices," making healthy food more affordable, as opposed to the thesis that cheap food prices make us eat more.

Of course, not everyone likes Wal-Mart.

Markets in everything, China edition

Stir Fried Wikipedia.

Or so the translation goes.  Here is the explanation (with photos):

It’s not entirely clear how this error came about but it seems likely that someone did a search for the Chinese word for a type of edible fungus and its translation into English. The most relevant and accurate page very well might have been an article on the fungus on Wikipedia.
Unfamiliar with Wikipedia, the user then confused the name of the article with the name of the website. There have been several distinct
citings
of "wikipedia" on Chinese menus.

That’s from the Revealing Errors blog and I thank Kat for the pointer.  The blog is very good; here is an interesting post on "the Cupertino effect."

Eating local

Will Wilkinson serves up his wisdom:

How far your food travels matters a lot less than what kind of food it is, or how it was produced. According to a recent study out of Carnegie Mellon University, the distance traveled by the average American’s dinner rose about 25 percent from 1997 to 2004, due to increasing global trade. But carbon emissions from food transport saw only a 5 percent bump, thanks to the efficiencies of vast cargo container ships.  [TC: do note that precedes the rapid run-up of oil prices.]

A tomato raised in a heated greenhouse next door can be more carbon-intensive than one shipped halfway across the globe. And cows spew a lot more greenhouse gas than hens, or kumquats, so eating just a bit less beef can do more carbon-wise than going completely local. It’s complicated.

Addressing the cool folks, Will adds:

Should we minimize our “music miles” and boycott bands on tour? Thankfully, our next-door neighbors have a band, Dead Larry. We don’t have to go anywhere to hear them.

Here is the full CMU study cited by Will on food miles.  In my view we do have duties to behave more responsibly at the dinner table but the simple admonition "eat less meat" will do.  Maybe you don’t like tofu but sardines are delicious, or use Goya small red beans with shredded Mexican cheese (even the Kraft package is decent) and ground chile on a corn tortilla.  Don’t forget the lime on top.

Lowering the drinking age

Here is another reader request:

There’s been recent talk about what would happen if the legal drinking age were lowered to 18. Would there be a net increase or decrease in risky binge drinking, accidents, etc?

New Zealand lowered its drinking age to 18 in 1999 and bad consequences followed, including a higher rate of drinking-related car crashes.  Illegality, even when it can be circumvented, really does raise the price of an activity in many instances. 

Nonetheless I still think that 20-year-olds — legal adults in just about every other way — have the right to drink alcohol.  Sometimes I call myself a "two-thirds utilitarian."  I am a pluralist who thinks that utility is often but not always the primary consideration behind policy choice.

There’s always another paternalist intervention to save children’s lives but no one is for all of them.  We could ban swimming pools and buckets for instance.  We could ban high school football.  We could raise the drinking age to 25.  How about a drinking age of 50?  How about a driving age of 21?

I see at least two major analytical questions.  First, how much normative force should "extra death" have in a policy argument?  Second, what is special about the number 18?  Consistent with the latter question, I think that 15-year-olds should be able to drink in a restaurant when clear parental permission is present.

Rules for eating in Chilean restaurants

1. Order the avocado ("palta," not "aguacate") whenever you can.

2. Order crab, in any manifestation possible, whenever you can.  There is nothing you should prefer over the crab.

3. Scallops are next in the hierarchy.  The sea urchin is quite good if you like it.

4. The fish is of excellent quality but the preparations are usually boring.  The greater the number of sauces you are offered, the less likely you should take any of them.

5. Fear not the mayonnaise.  It is good.  Really.

6. Parmesan cheese on either clams or scallops is excellent.

7. If you can, try a ham and cheese sandwich, roast beef, figs, mashed potatoes, vanilla ice cream, honey, butter, and the juices.

8. Provided you obey these rules, do not be put off by simple-sounding menus.

9. The overall quality of the food is very high, but the very best restaurants are not much better than the good restaurants.  This is often the case in areas with excellent natural ingredients, as human labor becomes a less important input.

10. A subtle blending of Chilean and Peruvian food is occurring in Santiago; the Peruvian restaurants by the way are first-rate.

The drink-ice cube ratio

Sorry Europeans, but some drinks taste better with ice cubes.  The key is to get the ratio right.  As a first approximation, there are two main problems.  First, the ratio of drink to ice cubes may be too high.  In that case you start off by doing some drinking merely as an act of investment in the future quality of the drink.  (Ideally I would prefer to pour some drink on the floor, though I am too civilized for that.  Alternatively, this can be reason to dine with a companion, who will sop up your excess.)  Another reason the ratio becomes too high is if the waiter comes by and pours excess drink into your glass, so that he may take away your can or bottle "too soon" for his own not quite legitimate purposes.  This can be avoided by placing your bottle or can in an inconvenient, hard to reach place.

Country restaurants in Thailand sidestep these problems by sending around a staff member to replenish drinks with fresh ice cubes and restore the proper ratio; trust is essential.

Second, the ratio of ice cubes to drink may be too high.  If you order two drinks you rarely find (for whatever reason) that both have too many ice cubes.  You can put excess ice cubes from your water glass in your Coke but not vice versa.  If you order both mineral and plain water two-way transfers are usually possible and thus the tastes of your two drinks end up insufficiently diversified.

Why is lobster getting cheaper?

David Gross writes:

At root, the global forces that are driving up the price of food don’t
significantly affect the vacation lobster business in Maine. Commercial
and consumer demand doesn’t vary much for off-the-boat lobster. Sure,
many lobsters are sold to processing plants. But unlike other seafood
products–think of canned tuna, or clam sauce, or frozen fish
fillets–lobster is not produced or marketed on a mass global scale,
which also means there are no speculators trying to make a killing on
lobster futures. The fact that people are eating more and better in
China and India isn’t much boosting the demand for lobsters from Maine.
Even in the United States, lobster remains to a large degree a regional
product.

Consistent with Gross’s hypothesis, lobster is phenomenally expensive in Chile right now, in either absolute terms or especially in relative terms (compare for instance to Chilean sea bass, which is half the U.S. price or less but Chilean lobster is at least twice the U.S. prices from a sample of n = 2; Chilean sea urchin is cheap too and delicious).   

But why is lobster cheaper?  Gross samples prices in Maine and higher gas prices may mean lower demand from tourists.  But I am a little confused by Gross’s additional explanation:

Distributors seeking to maintain their margins are cramming down the
fishermen. And with limited local outlets (even swelled by summer
visitors, the population of coastal Maine is relatively small),
lobstermen can’t hold out for higher prices.

Imagine a multi-product firm which applies mark-ups on different commodities.  (If everything is perfectly competitive there won’t be cross-product effects.)  If the marginal cost of buying salmon goes up, can the mark-up on lobster then go down?  Is it that the retailer, now faced with higher salmon costs, "threatens bankruptcy" to get a better result from the bargaining game with the lobster supplier?

Tipping is hard

And should I also say that writing software is sometimes easy?  Stephen Dubner lists some of the new iPhone applications:

iTip, from palaware
iTip, from Uncouth Software
BigTipper, from PureBlend Software
TipCalc, from BAMsoft
Tiptap, from Made with Bananas
Tipulator, from tap tap tap
Tip Calc, from Charles Ying
Tip, from Carlos Perez
CheckPlease, from Catamount Software
Tips, from Kudit.com
mTip, from Pascal Mermoz
TipBuddy, from Justin Jeffress
Gratuity, from TapeShow
QuickTip, from Spare Change Software
Tippety Split, from Manta Ray Software

Freedom Fries Under Attack

The Los Angeles council has just passed on ordinance banning new fast food restaurants in a poor section of South/Central LA.  William Saletan calls it Food Apartheid and writes:

We’re not talking anymore about preaching diet and exercise, disclosing
calorie counts, or restricting sodas in schools. We’re talking about
banning the sale of food to adults….It’s true that food options in low-income neighborhoods are, on
average, worse than the options in wealthier neighborhoods. But
restricting options in low-income neighborhoods is a disturbingly
paternalistic way of solving the problem.

Milton Friedman once said:

I don’t think the state has any more right to tell me what what to put in my mouth than it has to tell me what can come out of my mouth.

Friedman was talking about drug prohibition but today the target could just as easily be food prohibition.

Hat tip on the Friedman quote to Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.

Calorie counts on the menu

Yes I saw the counts today on the breakfast menu in New York City.  Being a silly man, who is easily prone to violating the independence of irrelevant alternatives, I immediately searched for the item with the highest calorie count (it involved butter and lobster, for breakfast).  I thought "no way will I get that" and ordered a bagel with lox and cream cheese.  Yes, I know about anchoring and behavioral economics.  Is not one equilibrium that every restaurant puts an especially high calorie item on its menu, so that people feel virtuous in ordering something else?

Beer prices vs. wine prices

Josh writes to me:

This might not be normal,
but last night I started wondering why beer prices are not listed on
menus, while wine prices are.  My next thought was "Tyler Cowen would
know the exact answer to that".  I know you are busy and it is a rather
trivial question, but I was wondering if you could explain the
differences in wine and beer that lead restaurants to include the price
of one and not the price of the other on their menus.

Only sentence two is foolish but at least on this I am meta-rational and I appeal to you for help.  One possibility is that wine prices don’t have such a tight upper bound so you had better get the customer’s buy-in for a relatively expensive bottle.  Or if fine bottles are being sold relatively cheaply that is worth screaming about but how much can you discount a quality beer?

How are wines arranged in the store?

The wine aisle in your grocery store is probably organized this way.
Yes, I know there is a California section and an Import section and
even a jug/box wine spot, but look within each wine display and you’ll
see the clear price stratification effect. The wines you have come to
buy are probably on the shelf just below your natural eye level, so
that you cannot help but see those special occasion wines just above
them (and the higher priced wines above them on the top shelf). Cheaper
wines are down below, near the floor, so that you have to stoop down to
choose them.

The physical act of taking the wine from the shelf mirrors the
psychological choice you make – reach up for better (more expensive)
wines, stoop down for the cheaper products. The principle will be the
same in upscale supermarkets and discount stores but the choices (what
price wine will be at the bottom, middle and top) will differ as you
might expect.

Here is the full post, which includes a photo.