The Great EU Cabbage Myth
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could there really be 26,911 words of European Union regulation dedicated to the sale of cabbage? This figure is often used by those arguing there is too much bureaucracy in the EU. But we trace its origins back to 1940s America. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true today. So how did this cabbage myth grow and spread? And what is the real number of words relating to the sale of cabbages in the EU? After the recent announcement that all schools would be converted to academies, a number of listeners have asked us to look into the evidence of how they perform. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan wrote a guest post on Mumsnet and More or Less were called upon to check her numbers. The popular TV show The Only Way is Essex claimed in its 200th episode that it had contributed more than a billion pounds to the UK economy. We investigate if this is true. Plus, can we trust food surveys? Stories about which foods are good and bad for you, which foods are linked to cancer and which have beneficial qualities are always popular. But how do experts know what people are eating? Tim Harford speaks to Christie Aschwanden, FiveThirtyEight's lead writer for science, about the pitfalls of food surveys. She kept a food diary and answered nutrition surveys and found many of the questions were really hard to answer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tim Harford here, this is the longer Radio 4 version of More or Less, first broadcast on the 1st of April 2016. |
| 0:08.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, the programme that looks for the truth behind the numbers in news, in life, and yes, in politics. |
| 0:17.0 | This week we'll be asking where scientists get their conclusions about the benefits of healthy eating, and how much of them we should believe. |
| 0:24.4 | We look at the evidence in support of turning schools into academies and we review the economic |
| 0:30.4 | contribution of the only way is Essex. |
| 0:34.1 | But first, you may have seen some version of this list |
| 0:37.1 | doing the rounds on the internet. |
| 0:39.0 | Lord's Prayer 66 Words. |
| 0:41.9 | The Ten Commandments, 179 words. Gettysburg address 286 words. U.S. Declaration of Independence |
| 0:50.6 | 1,300 words. |
| 0:53.0 | EU regulations on the sale of a cabbage, 26,911 words. |
| 0:59.0 | Now that is a lot of words devoted to cabbage and with an EU referendum just around the corner |
| 1:06.0 | this cabbage statistic is proving very popular. The director of the free market |
| 1:11.0 | think tank the Adam Smith Institute, Aemon Butler, tweeted the cabbage |
| 1:14.8 | meme and writing in the daily mail last month Rachel Johnson complained, |
| 1:19.0 | As soon as I declared myself an inner last week, I started veering like a wonky shopping trolley towards the Brexit |
| 1:26.7 | and began to find the outer's argument strangely compelling. Take this example, the Lord's |
| 1:32.4 | prayer is 66 words long, the Ten Commandments 79 words. |
| 1:37.0 | The Gettysburg Address 272 words. EU regulations on the sale of cabbage? 26,911 words. |
| 1:49.2 | If you are paying attention, you will have noticed that while these various sources disagree over the length of the Gettysburg address and the number of words in the 10 Commandments |
| 1:57.5 | They are in absolute agreement over the length of the EU cabbage sale regulations. |
| 2:04.0 | 26,911 words. |
... |
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