San Fran Happy Meal Ban Based on Shoddy Data

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The statistics being used by a San Francisco lawmaker to ram his Happy Meal toy ban down parents’ throats are “demonstrably false,” reports SF Weekly’s Joe Eskenazi. He says Supervisor Eric Mar’s (D) claim that Happy Meal toys bait kids in to consuming “over one-third of their meals” at fast food restaurants was cherry-picked from a study that recklessly mingles “hyperlocal” and “incredibly broad” data to portray San Franciscans as fast food junkies.

Eskenazi explains that Mar and his staff are promoting a citation from a 2008 study produced by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) that asks whether San Francisco can sustain itself on food produced within 100 miles of the city. The AFT’s “Think Globally — Eat Locally” report “has exceedingly little to do with pizza, fast food, or Happy Meal toys,” he says:

[I]t includes a citation — on page 24 for those who click on the link above — noting that 56 percent of San Franciscans’ food budgets are spent on home-prepared meals. In the very next paragraph, the study notes, “When food intake is measured by weight rather than dollars, fast food and pizza restaurants claim the largest share of total food consumed – a whopping 35 percent.”

This is problematic — as the source for this claim is the 2003-04 United States Department of Agriculture “What We Eat in America” survey. This is a national study of roughly 5,000 Americans’ diets reported over two days — not a survey of San Franciscans’ eating habits, as the juxtaposition implies.

It is simply not accurate to use this national data to claim one-third of the food “San Franciscans” consume by weight is pizza and fast food. That the American Farmland Trust would so casually jump between hyperlocal data and incredibly broad national data is odd — and has led to Supervisor Eric Mar’s staff making an understandable mistake when drafting this proposal.

Read the rest of the article and tell us if you think Supervisor Eric Mar is making an “understandable” mistake by using shoddy data to wage war against children’s Happy Meals — or, do you think he knows exactly what he’s doing and will do whatever it takes to achieve victory?