I have long opposed the AquAdvantage salmon, taking pretty familiar positions that any member of the local/organic/wild food community would recognize: Positions that include the fear that the fish will escape and contaminate wild populations of salmon, and that the fish requires much wasteful transport since it would be cloned in Canada, grown in Panama and then flown back to the U.S. for consumption. But at a recent lecture when I was laying out these old chestnuts, it suddenly occurred to me that the non-fishy public might be missing one monumental fact about the AquAdvantage salmon, with all its attendant risks:

It is completely unnecessary.

Despite AquaBounty’s appeals to our concern about over-fished oceans, the environmental and market advantages they claim for their genetically modified salmon are readily debunked. And while the fish is not very useful to us or the oceans, it may be, in fact, very useful to AquaBounty — in a grab to control salmon farming as we know it.

So, rather than hash out the old arguments, I thought I would lay out four somewhat fresh points that show exactly how unnecessary this particular fish really is.

Reason Number 1: There are plenty of wild salmon.

AquaBounty likes to emphasize that their fish will be a way of taking pressure off of stocks of wild salmon. But there are many, many wild salmon still out there. The 2011 wild Alaska salmon harvest is projected to be one of the largest since Alaska became a state, with something like 203 million fish anticipated to be caught. These salmon are harvested under strict supervision of the State of Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game and nearly the entire Alaska salmon harvest has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Even with these intense restrictions on fishing in Alaska, we still have much more salmon than we use. As much as 50 percent of the United States’ wild salmon catch is shipped abroad in canned or frozen form, leaving one with the question: Why are we sending the cleanest, most omega3-rich protein abroad when it could be a key source of (delicious) nutrition here in the United States, particularly for children?

Reason Number 2: Farmed salmon is already pretty efficient, and getting more so without genetic engineering.

In the early days of salmon farming it could take as much as six pounds of wild fish to grow a single pound of salmon. But improvements in diet, husbandry, and selective breeding programs that don’t involve genetic engineering have lowered the feed conversion ratio on the most efficient farms below 2-to-1. AquaBounty claims that it could improve that efficiency by another 20 percent (a claim organizations like Food and Water Watch dispute). But even if their claims are true, making a salmon more feed-efficient is just one of many pathways to make salmon have a smaller footprint. There are now vegetable-based salmon diets in trials that require no wild fish at all and some of these new feeds are made from recycled agricultural byproduct that might otherwise go unused. Shouldn’t improving feed be our first priority, not artificially improving salmon?

Reason Number 3: There are fish that offer many of the advantages of the genetically modified salmon, with none of the risks.

For many years, conservationists have worried that farmed salmon, grown in “sea cages” where there is frequent interaction with wild fish, has led to disease transfer, escapes into the wild, and fouling of the environment. Tank, or “containment” growing, environmentalists argue, is the only safe way to farm salmon, but it is energy intensive and farmers worry that slow-growing fish would not allow a farm to cover its energy costs. One of the arguments put forward by AquaBounty is that their salmon grow so fast that they can be cost-effectively produced in out-of-ocean, re-circulating tanks that would not impact the ocean. But this barrier has already been broken with two unmodified fish. The arctic char, a fish from the same family as salmon, turns out to have a natural adaptation for living in close quarters and does well in containment facilities. Nearly all the arctic char that reaches the market today is grown in containment either in Iceland or Canada. The char’s flesh is delicate and moist like a salmon but does not have the overpowering salmon taste that many diners find off-putting. And for those who do like that salmony taste, SweetSpring of Washington state has perfected a technique for growing Pacific coho salmon entirely in containment. If these two options exist for cost-effective containment growing of salmonids, why should we even broach the possibility of genetic contamination in the form of genetically modified salmon?

Reason Number 4: People don’t seem to want it very much.

Consumers have expressed distaste for a genetically modified salmon in the marketplace. If the fish is accurately labeled (as it will be in California thanks to a recent move in the state legislature) it is unlikely we will see droves of consumers flocking to buy it. Online polls by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal showed that only about 36 percent of consumers would willingly eat genetically modified salmon if it were labeled as such. And in European markets zero percent would eat it. Thanks to overwhelming consumer disapproval, genetically modified foods cannot be sold in the European Union.

Why then is AquaBounty pursuing this course? What’s the motivation if there are plenty of other fish that do the job in the water and little appetite for it in the supermarket? It seems to me that what the AquaBounty AquAdvantage salmon represents is the privatization of the salmon genome. Should salmon farming come to be dominated by the AquAdvantage fish, farmers could become dependent on a single company for their stock, just as soy, corn and wheat farmers must now rely on large multinationals like Monsanto to provide seed for their fields year in and year out. AquaBounty will literally own salmon farming.

Of course none of these arguments necessarily hold legal water for the folks at the Food and Drug Administration who are debating the genetically engineered salmon’s future. For them, the AquaBounty-designed genetic material inserted into the AquAdvantage salmon is a “veterinary drug.” Yes, a drug — a Chinook Salmon/Atlantic Salmon/ocean pout genetic construct that “medicates” fish to help them grow faster. But the issue is much larger than this narrow definition. It is about the protection and preservation of a democratic and healthy food system that we Americans actually want and desperately need.

But how “friendly” is Ronald? A new study done by outside marketing group Ace Metric found that in a survey group of 500, an overwhelming amount found a guy with big red lips and white greasepaint more creepy than cute.

McDonald’s refuses to give up on Ronald, though, and its defense on why it needs to keep a terrifying clown as its mascot would be charming if it weren’t so ridiculous and backward. Below, five of the responses McDonald’s has given for keeping Ronald on the payroll.

1. Complaint: “It’s really remarkable how often I saw the word ‘creepy’ [in regards to Ronald],” says the V.P. of a company that conducted the survey.

McDonald’s response: “For everyone who may feel that way, there are more who feel the opposite.”

2. Complaint: Ronald McDonald is an evil clown.

McDonald’s response: “He is a force for good,” says McD’s CEO, Jim Skinner.

3. Complaint: Too many damn clowns running around.

McDonald’s response: “There’s only one Ronald,” McDonald’s chief creative officer Marlena Peleo-Lazar said in response to several questions about how many actors portray the smiling clown.

4. Complaint: He is hurting a brand image that is trying to be more adult … like Starbucks.

McDonald’s response: He is the brand image. “It would be almost as if the Geico gecko disappeared, or the Aflac duck,” says one marketing strategist. God forbid.

5. Complaint: Ronald encourages childhood obesity.

McDonald’s response: Around 2004, McDonald’s christened Ronald as a “balanced, active lifestyles ambassador,” and stuck him in commercials where he trained for the Olympics. He got workout clothes. He got a tuxedo. He moved from McDonaldLand into the real world. 

You know who can also move into the real world after being trapped in a fantasy land? Freddy Krueger.

It’s actually in CAI’s favor to have a scary mascot act as a deterrent for children trying to buy fries. It should be thanking McDonald’s for keeping such a creepy figure right in front of the golden arches.

Why did Jenny Craig do so well? The magazine explains:

What gave it the edge over the other big names we assessed — stalwarts such as Atkins, Ornish, and Weight Watchers — was a 332-person, two-year study of the program published in the Oct. 27, 2010, Journal of the American Medical Association. Ninety-two percent of participants stuck with the Jenny Craig program for two years — a remarkable level of adherence — and at the end of that time weighed an average of about 8 percent less than when they started.

However, Scott Hensley at NPR’s health blog, Shots, points out that the study in question was actually funded by the Jenny Craig company (not to mention conducted by a former member of Jenny Craig’s advisory board) — a fact that did not escape media attention when its findings were released last fall. Furthermore, as CNN reported at the time, study participants had fewer reasons to quit than typical, sometimes cash-strapped dieters:

The program and all of the prepackaged food were free — the food typically costs about $100 a week, in addition to a $359 enrollment fee.

Hensley asked Consumer Reports about the “potential conflict” involved in using this Jenny Craig-funded study. A representative replied:

It would be great if more [independent] studies of popular diets were published, given the amount of money consumers spend on them, but in the absence the next best thing is randomized clinical trials funded by the diet programs but of sufficient quality to be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

But the rules are changing.

Culinary credentials, or even experience, are no longer a prerequisite for success in the culinary world. More and more of these dissatisfied professionals are skipping the usual steps and reaping quick rewards. In just a couple of years since he quit his job in financial services, Luke Holden has opened three branches of his popular lobster roll shack, Luke’s Lobster. Ex-lawyers driving cupcake trucks have popped up in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. (There’s also a Butch Bakery owned by a proudly self-identified “former asset backed securities attorney for a major Wall Street law firm,” that specializes in “bringing a totally unprecedented culinary product to market” — the “manly” cupcake.) The Peached Tortilla in Austin, Texas, is run by yet another disillusioned lawyer. The list goes on and on.

Aside from their white-collar roots, these operations have something else in common — a very simple, savvy business model: develop a relatively low-maintenance product, sell it for a reasonable price, and devote the rest of your energy to aggressive, compelling marketing.

The Fojol Brothers, a food truck in D.C., for example, push their marketing straight into the surreal. The brothers include Justin Vitarello, who previously worked in e-commerce, and Peter Korbel, a former financial analyst, but in their truck, they play colorful, turbaned performers of a “traveling culinary carnival” from the mythical land of Merlindia. In an interview, Vitarello briefly abandoned the shtick to explain, “Our concept involves smells and colors and music and taste.” The Fojol Brothers are selling their costumes, their fantasy, their brand. Their menu — relatively simple, Indian-inspired dishes — might be good, but who cares? They wear fake mustaches and turbans, they play Radiohead during lunch hours. The food is a byproduct of the story.

And, as always, the TV execs have their noses to the wind. A new competition reality show, “America’s Next Great Restaurant,” centers around this business model. Essentially, whoever has the most marketable “fast casual” concept will win an investment from the judges to launch his or her chain. In the Top Ten, we’ve got upscale grilled cheese, meatballs, taco varieties and something called “the sports wrap.” Almost all of the contestants are transitioning from other white-collar fields: financial services, marketing companies and law firms, etc.

The existence of such a contest would have been unheard of just a few decades ago, when being a chef held no cachet and was considered a working-class profession. But Gary Alan Fine, sociology professor at Northwestern University and author of “Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work,” explains that the modern food industry has been trending this way for a long time. Since the mid-1980s, we’ve been gradually privileging marketing concept over menu until the conditions became just right for these entrepreneurs to flourish.

First, there was the rise of the celebrity chef. “Fine dining became more accessible, more democratic,” Fine said. “By the 1980s, it was certainly much more common for people to go out and eat at restaurants that had culinary pretensions, just as they explored art and music and theater. Food became cultural capital. As part of this you began to develop the idea of these celebrity chefs.”

Starting with Wolfgang Puck (“he really made himself into a brand,” according to Fine), chefs began to be aware of and cultivate their own images along with their cuisine. Chefs like Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse developed restaurant empires under the umbrella of their celebrity. And just like that, a new model was born — not just for becoming a celebrity, but for simply making a living as a chef. In order to be competitive in the industry, self-marketing became just as important as quality of food and ambience. Aspiring chefs started hiring P.R. firms and making the Food Network rounds. They created personas that diners could recognize and respond to.

As a result, the restaurant world has shifted from primarily independent restaurants to more and more branded — and financially stable — collections and chains. These collections take on the characteristics of any other large corporation. And this new order changes the role of the chef. “So it’s not a chef-owner situation anymore,” Fine explained. “The chef is an employee, a manager, for a corporation.” And the actual cooking part can become secondary.

Enter the disillusioned lawyer. “If you’re a lawyer or businessperson you are likely to have the social capital and financial capital to switch professions,” Fine pointed out.

In this landscape, financial capital and marketing experience are survival skills; the ability to julienne a carrot perfectly, not so much. You don’t need culinary credentials to start a cupcake truck, and a cupcake truck, with the right paint scheme and Twittercisms, can now be enormously, quickly profitable — much more so than starting as a line cook fresh out of culinary school.

Effective marketing is just one of the business sensibilities held over from these entrepreneurs’ past corporate lives. According to the Wall Street Journal, 32 New York food trucks recently started a trade group and hired a lobbyist to try to change laws that govern mobile food vending. Street food vendors have most often been immigrants on the fringes of the system, and issues with licensing and parking spots have historically been dealt with outside of the system, through turf wars and under-the-radar negotiations. Now, these same issues have been transplanted off the streets into the conference room. The head of the trade group, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck co-owner David Weber, should be comfortable there; he holds an MBA from NYU’s Stern Business School and has several years of business consulting experience.

Given the growing domination of the corporate model at the top of the restaurant industry, it might seem like the guys in food trucks at the bottom are the plucky rebels of the food industry. After all, they’re not going through the traditional routes. They’re young, they’re living the dream, and they’re out there on the streets every day. But consciously or unconsciously, they’re bringing with them knowledge of the same rules that rule success at the top. These business-savvy career changers have been trained to understand the importance of branding. And the conditions of today’s food world — more food fans than ever, always hungry for the next new thing — make it easier than ever to succeed on brand alone. These guys recognize that we want the packaging just as much as, if not more than, the food itself. And so they’re going to give it to us, bells and whistles carefully tailored and strategically attached. There’s room for innovation in that, but it seems that food has very little to do with it.

The report goes on to catalog other shrinkages: cans of tuna going from 6 ounces to 5; buckets of ice cream going from 2 liters to 1 ½; orange juice from 64 ounces to 59, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

An immediate and obvious reaction is that this is an outrage — a problem that really puts the screws on people who already have trouble affording enough food to feed their families. Hunger — and the threat of hunger that policy wonks call “food insecurity” — is no joke. (Even if we’re not entirely clear on how many people are truly hungry, and what food insecurity really means.) My point is not to minimize the difficulty this kind of price inflation will create for people truly struggling to eat.

But there is something else that struck me when reading the report. It was the ice cream. And then the Reese’s mini peanut butter cups. These, and presumably many other processed and junk foods, are among the items “shrunken” this way.

Is that really so awful?

First, Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than anyone, ever. In 2008, during the economic crash, we spent an average of 5.6 percent of our income to feed our families, the lowest since 1929. At this point, overeating affects many more Americans than chronic hunger, by far. (Perversely, obesity and diet-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes are actually much more common in lower-income communities, which speaks to a prevalence of junk food that confuses the line between “hunger” and “malnutrition.”) And if current trends continue, over 40 percent of Americans will be obese within the decade.

So how do we deal with this? Anyone who tells you they have a clear answer is selling you snake oil. But a big part of it has to be eating more smartly, and yes, eating less. It’s weird to say this, but maybe food should cost more. Not because we should be poorer, certainly not because we need to be protecting the profits of corporations, but because we have real trouble valuing what’s cheap.

Food, for most of us, is blessedly and cursedly cheap. It’s plentiful. And so we plow through huge dinners nightly. And so we mow down whole containers of ice cream. It’s in our nature to want to eat more. Our bodies and brains have descended from animals that have struggled, really struggled, to get enough food to survive forever. We want to pack as many calories into ourselves as humanly possible, for when the lean times inevitably come. Only we’ve engineered and marketed away most of the lean times, and yet we keep gorging.

So there may be something significant and strangely hopeful about how this food inflation is manifesting. It’s not that prices are rising per se, but that portion sizes are shrinking. That means that if you could afford a box of pasta or a bag of chips before, you can still afford one now; no one is taking all your chips away from you. But the limiting of portion size might do us some good.

Studies by Dr. Brian Wansink at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab regularly show that people keep eating not until they feel “full,” but rather until there is some external signal to tell them to stop. In one notable experiment, Wansink’s team rigged a bowl of soup to secretly keep refilling itself. Without realizing it, diners eating from that bowl ate 50 percent more soup on average, and some ate three times the amount of soup they might have otherwise. We eat mindlessly, as a function of habit and instinct, and so with a surplus of food, we are constantly overeating. Knowing that, maybe we don’t have to begrudge that extra couple of ounces of food companies are saving for the next bag.