Your audience is so knowledgeable and the discussions in the comments are frequently as informative as the blog post. I actually read almost all the comments.

I also tweeted you an article on fat in the new Ode Magazine: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/64 – I did not ask for feedback – I just thought it was a good article you’d be interested in. Taubes is quoted in it and I cracked up at the title:

Fat is where it’s at
For decades, fat has been blamed for everything from heart disease to obesity to cancer. But new research shows that fat can be good for you.

“New research…..” Obviously they don’t know about the “old research”, even after reading Taubes?

Saw the tweet. Thanks for the link. Nice article.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090425203534.htm

Now if we just knew how to boost beta cells without deranging something else…

I used to drink a diet Coke to abort migraines or ease exercise-induces asthma or a non-diet coke stirred flat as ‘food’ during gastritis (old old treatments for all 3), even Coke can’t be labelled as abolsolutely bad.

True. Even cigarettes help those with ulcerative colitis.

First, even in a case where the behavior in question can be objectively analyzed with good science and common sense, and a correct answer brought to light by conscientious individuals, there is no guarantee that this viewpoint will prevail on the nightly network news, in the New York Times or the Senate Floor. Politicians will sooner follow the prevailing political wind, or the narrower winds emanating from their largest contributors, than the direction dictated by reason and science.

Second, consensus is very often elusive. Allowing the government to weigh in on contentious issues will certainly have a “chilling effect” on minority viewpoints which very often turn out to be correct.

Third, in almost every case, there are individual exceptions that have to be considered. Behavior-modifying legislation is always applied with a very broad brush, and always creates casualties among the exceptional. I can’t think of a case where this applies more than the field of diet and medicine. What is good advice for 90% of the population may be bad advice for someone with cancer, kidney disease or dwarfism. It may be bad advice for the very young or the very old. It may be a cost-benefit equation that works one way for most people, but another for people with a particular career or ambition.

I could go on, but I think everyone gets the point.

Regarding your response:
I agree 100%. Leaving it up to the government, who is to say they will choose what is really best for us (as you point out).

So I vote for the following:
1. minimal comment screening (weed out the spam etc).
2. Don’t ignore the comments all together. A lot of bloggers take the time to publish a “Readers Questions” posts every month or so, in which they select questions they think would be of general interest and respond in depth.
3. It’s also nice when the blogger takes the time to join a comment conversation now and again, but I would recommend doing so as a separate post where you can address the topic in general and abandon the detailed reviews. (Personally I like the detailed reviews of the comments, but it can’t possibly be practical.)

I enjoy your blog, and fwiw, the political comments raised my esteem several levels.

Clearly, there is a curve that produces an optimal revenue stream while producing some modification of behavior.

I do not think that you would suggest that consuming 45g of carbs, in HFCS format, is a behavior that we, as a public, should incentivize. I think all readers of the blog (save nihilists who want to thin the herd through diabetes and obesity… funny), can agree on that point. Which brings us to a question of whether you believe in: A) interventionism, B) liberal paternalism or C) laissez-faire.

Interventionism would be banning HFCS or mandating all sodas be sugar free. Works great in communist countries (lemme tell you about Bird Flu and Vietnam sometime). Here, you probably would have people doing prohibition era stunts with home brew sugar colas.

Laissez-faire is the Ron Paul half of libertarians. You make your choices, you suffer your fate.

LP is a middle way. Let em make choices, but nudge the choice a bit to an outcome we like. Put a price differential between HFCS/Sugar sodas (very bad) and diet sodas (debatable bad, but not as bad as HFCS/Sugar sodas), to give folks a bit of information on their choices. If they want to pay extra to suffer their fate, then that’s commitment.

It’s very sound economics.

Sorry for working the better math of Governor Patterson’s tax.
Figure a million permanent residents from visitors, give or take.
Figure half a million from New Jersey to New York for work, daily.
Maybe another hundred thousand from Fairfield County, CT (maybe less now with Lehman, AIG, etc).
Figure some fudge factor for undocumented people.

I have to agree that his math is probably bad. A second attempt to rationalize it:
Coca Cola, in the 2005 annual report, reported:
1.5 Billion servings of Coca Cola licensed beverages served, each day, globally.
In the 2007 annual report 37% of total sales were in the US.
Figure 19.5 Million New Yorkers, inflate to 20M for roundness, on tourists and office workers,
out of 300 Million Americans, is 6.7% of the US.

Assume homogeneous distribution of soft drink consumption across the US and you get:
37% of 1.5 billion is a tad over half a billion serves of Coca Cola products domestically, per day.
And New York (with our Homogeneous assumption) accounts for 37 Million of those.
Assume half of those are sugared, and you have $185K per day in soda tax revenue.
At 365 days, you’re looking at about $68 Million dollars.
From only the largest company. We haven’t gotten to Pepsi or other brands.
In 2007, Coke saw it’s market share decline to 42.9%. Assume they have maintained that.
Quickly, you divide our $68 Million by .429
and
$158 Million.

Maybe I have made some bad assumptions, but I used a lot of numbers directly from Coke (work with the big one, sort the smaller vendors out later) and really, the only one that I am shaky about is the percentage of sugared/HFCS beverages as a total of Coke’s sales… If that number is only 32%, you still have $100M in revenue.

As to this being onerous, it is onerous on the folks who are consuming HFCS. It presents people with a choice. Be burdened by tax to continue your self destructive habit OR change your habits for the better and avoid the tax burden.

Using it to fund tax rebates, on the other hand, is simply a stupid idea.

As you might imagine, I’m all for the laissez-faire solution. People should suffer the consequences for their own choices.

So, given the above, it’s best left to a laissez-faire solution.

But I agree there is no need to spend *hours* just because someone asks “what do you think of this study?”

Answer the ones you can answer easily, or that amuse you or interest you.