Earlier this week the Center for Science in the Public Interest
(CSPI), a group that regularly pushes for increased food
regulations and considers
soda to be “a slow-acting but ruthlessly efficient bioweapon,”
announced it would be launching “a major action regarding the
regulation of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.”

The
major action turned out to be a petition CSPI submitted
to the FDA requesting that the agency take action to restrict the
amount of added caloric sweeteners like sugar and high fructose
corn syrup in soda, juices, and other beverages. In its petition,
CSPI also urges
the agency to take action to limit the presence of such sweeteners
in non-beverage foods.

CSPI has a long history—if not a successful one—of exercising
its First Amendment Freedom of Petition.

The group has previously petitioned the FDA to curtail sales of
Quorn (having also promoted its arrival in America), to restrict
the use of trans fats in various foods (after first downplaying any
ill effects associated with its consumption), and to mandate a cap
on the amount of salt that can appear in processed foods. The
latter effort has
dragged on for more than three decades. None of these petitions
succeeded.

This isn’t the first
petition CSPI has filed with the FDA pertaining to soda.
Neither is this the first column I’ve written about CSPI and the
group’s dislike of soda.

In an October 2012
column here at Reason.com I applauded CSPI for a new anti-soda
video because its message was to empower consumers to make up their
own minds about whether or not to drink the very sweetened drinks
the group is this week urging the FDA to crack down on.

“Through words and visuals,” I wrote, “the video argues that
individuals have both the power and responsibility… to make changes
to their own diets and to those of their families.”

I called the video a “fantastic addition to the marketplace of
ideas—which is exactly where debates over food should be hashed
out.”

That doesn’t mean I agree with the opinions presented in the
video. Nor do I agree with some of the “facts” CSPI presents in the
clip—some of which are plainly incorrect.

For example, CSPI claims in its video that the USDA’s 2010
Dietary Guidelines for Americans report describes “soda and other
sugary drinks a[s] the largest source of calories in our diet.”

Yet, as I noted in my October column, Table 2-2 in the 2010
Dietary Guidelines for Americans lists “sweetened drinks… fourth
on the list [of calorie sources] (behind grain-based desserts,
bread, and chicken).”

In spite of these flaws, I noted the group’s ode to personal
responsibility was a refreshing change for CSPI, which often sues
food companies and urges government otherwise to restrict food
freedom. But, I cautioned, if CSPI were ever to revert to an
anti-choice agenda, Keep
Food Legal (the nonprofit I lead) and I would be right there to
call the group out.

“But if and when the group ever reverted to its previous
position—that people are powerless and… lawsuits and bans should
follow,” I wrote, “I’d feel empowered to refer again and again to
the group’s own contradictory words on the issue.”

I have no specific quarrel with CSPI. Despite disagreeing with
the group on a host of issues (including the FDA’s Food Safety
Modernization Act rules, which CSPI
defended directly in response to a recent
column of mine), I find its dietary advice is sometimes useful.
In any event, the group deserves space within the marketplace of
ideas whether or not I agree with its ideas.

But it’s equally true that consumers have a right to make their
own food choices, and that food producers deserve space within the
commercial marketplace to meet that demand. And when a group seeks
to use the power of government to restrict these basic freedoms
after acknowledging the fact we have the power to change our own
diets if we so wish, I have no choice but to point out its flawed
logic and inconsistencies at every turn.