Note to devious mouthpieces of Big Food ("Always with the negative waves, man."):

Something needn't the sole cause of a problem to be a cause of a problem. So when you fault any attempt to curb consumption of sugary sodas because soda isn't the sole cause of obesity, you're just obscuring the truth.

No, sugary soda is not solely responsible. The problem and its contributors are varied, confusing, and sometimes conflicting.

I have acknowledged my possibly self-defeating urge to bring attention to bullshit that deserves no attention (see: every post I’ve ever done about the liarly named Center for Consumer Freedom (no link, intentionally)). But here I go again.

I was listening to Ira Flatow interview Rob Lustig on a Science Friday podcast when I heard Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC Berkeley, make a really good point.

Big Food spinmeisters subvert the libertarian viewpoint to “keep Big Brother from telling me what to eat” as a way to avoid any fetter on its ability to sell its products, when Big Food is already telling us what to eat!

There are a couple of websites I've been wanting to point out. The first one is foodidentitytheft.com, for which I feel considerable sympathy and collegiality, even if I am not in accord with one of their principle current crusades.

There's a gross moment or two in this, but its direct comparison of drug pushers and Big Food is right on target to me. Its paid flacks will not only disagree but feign outrage, but that's what they do. The fact is, a substantial portion of what Big Food concocts and purveys is as health-threatening as illegal drugs.

I use Pocket to save articles to read later. It is helpful but also a crutch with its own faults, or, I should say, a crutch for my own faults to lean on. Which is to say, I put stuff in my to-do basket, and there it sits, not getting done.

Michael Moss’s Sunday Times Magazine cover story offers the goods in several respects, but no more so than at the beginning, in which he describes a meeting in 1999 — that’s 14 years ago — in which the honchos of Big Food gathered for a rare summit.

Man, these people just don’t get it.

At the FMI mid-winter executive conference, a panel of supermarket mucky-mucks traded pats on the back while complaining that the government’s regulation of their industry is way overdone.

First, alert the media: Big business types think government regulation is onerous. What robber baron, what sweatshop operator, what industrial polluter, what gangster ever thought that government intrusion into his affairs was justified?

The kerfuffle continues over the conflict of interest that exists between the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics and the many Big Food giants who sponsor it.

I've been taking a break from blogging, not to get away from it but to concentrate on a 9,000-word speech and accompanying slide show I'm giving in February. I don't know if you've noticed but Klout sure has, dropping me from 61 to 57, so far. I wish I knew what that meant.