Regulation of Fast Food

Posner has a post on whether it's justified to regulate the fast food industry that reminded me of something I said to MoLT the other day (on his comments). I basically like these fast food bans and regulations. Not because I think they're justified or because I think fast food is obviously horrible. Mainly because I'm curious, and I get the sense we really aren't entirely sure how strong the evidence is that fast food causes serious health problems. Here's Posner's point, which I basically agree with.

The argument for the New York City ordinance thus comes down to the argument for social experimentation generally: that it will yield valuable information about the effects of public interventions designed to alter life styles. I therefore favor the ordinance, though without great optimism that it will contribute significantly to a reduction in obesity.

But this is, admittedly, not the only criteria you should use in endorsing or promoting social experimentation. But, when the costs of the intervention are admittedly sort of low, I think the expected value of the experimentation is in many cases high - especially if it can help conclusively solve some annoyingly elusive social question we can't answer because of a lack of quality data and experimentation. Pretty much for the reason Posner names, I tend to both support the experimentation and like MoLT think it probably won't yield much.

There should be a number of experiments you try, even if you are skeptical, because statistically some of them will hit. You just want to make the diversification of that portfolio optimal. If most of your experiments are most likely to fail, then probably the effort won't get you a good return on your investment. Still, putting that aside, I think that's probably not the case here. Before we end up with massive, sweeping health regulations on transfats and fast foods, I like that regions are considering small interventions like these.