At a press conference about endangered salmon, I met Heather Hardcastle, who works at Taku River Reds, a fishing company in Juneau, Alaska. She went to graduate school at Duke in 2002 where she studied marine conservation biology. “Everyone thought fishermen were bad,” she told me. “I’d grown up in a fishing family, so to them I was a bad person. Most of the students thought of themselves as environmentalists — as if I wasn’t.”
What a failure of education. Surely people who make their living fishing would suffer the most if fish runs out; and surely people who have spent a lifetime fishing might know something useful to fish preservationists. Somehow this escaped the majority of the Duke students and, apparently, their professors. At the end of The Shangri-La Diet, I mention this problem: the idea that business is the enemy. In the case of obesity, of course, lots of people think that big food companies are the enemy. Well, yes, it’s pretty clear that big food companies are responsible for the obesity epidemic — but maybe that means they should be more involved in the solution, not less?
Stephen Dubner interviewed me in my office to write about me in the Freakonomics column. I mentioned a discussion I’d had with a friend about the Enola Gay controversy at the Smithsonian; my friend and I thought it was unfortunate, I told Dubner, that neither of us knew someone on the other side of the argument. Dubner said that a lot of reporters at the New York Times wrote about military stuff, but hardly anyone at the Times that he knew had even visited West Point, which was less than 60 miles away.
Great, great post. On many different levels. Almost heresy in academia.
At the end of The Shangri-La Diet, I mention this problem: the idea that business is the enemy. In the case of obesity, of course, lots of people think that big food companies are the enemy. Well, yes, it’s pretty clear that big food companies are responsible for the obesity epidemic — but maybe that means they should be more involved in the solution, not less?
I like your openness, but I take a different view. If anyone is responsible for the obesity ‘epidemic’ (other than us being responsible for our own health, first and foremost) it is government! Not business. Government should not be in the business of telling us what government scientists think is good/healthy/natural etc etc and then spending taxpayer’s monies on promoting their nonsense, and even worse, setting public policy to their tune — when they have no idea what they are talking about. Be it on nutrition or ‘global warming’.
I think Taubes made that point, at least implicitly, and more eloquently, with review of the low-fat diet recommendations promoted by government funded scientists in the 80s.
The most recent government mandated nutrition debacle that comes to mind is the trans-fat ban in NYC under the current Health-Nazis. Because_we_know_that_trans-fats_are_bad_for_us.
Hhhhhhhhhmmm, why did restaurants start using trans-fats in the 80s? This may have already slipped down the memory hole forever, but If I remember correctly, (and I may be mistaken), ironically, NYC/’government’ banned the use of animal fats sometime previously. This forced restaurateurs to switch to trans-fat type products.
I leave you with this:
https://texasholdemblogger.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/trans-fat-bans-for-thee-but-not-for-me/
Do as I say, not as I do.
Andrew, the relevance of the grad students thinking that Heather was “a bad person” is that when you demonize someone it becomes harder to learn from them. Not to mention work with them. This is why it matters that the grad students saw her that way. It is truly weird that the Duke professors, not to mention a thousand other teachers, didn’t teach that.