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The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is the undisputed leader among America’s “food police.” CSPI was founded in 1971 by current executive director Michael Jacobson, and two of his co-workers at Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Since then, CSPI’s joyless eating club has issued hundreds of high-profile—and highly questionable—reports condemning soft drinks, fat substitutes, irradiated meat, biotech food crops, French fries, and just about anything that tastes good.

CSPI fancies itself a “watchdog” group but behaves more like an attack dog, savaging restaurants, disparaging adults’ food choices, and discouraging even moderate alcohol consumption. It famously dubbed fettuccine alfredo a “heart attack on a plate.” Its nutrition nags encourage the public to “just say no” to fried mozzarella as though it were an illegal drug.

CSPI’s self-anointed “experts” also encourage “a whole lot of lawsuits” against fast-food restaurants (the group says it is “looking at tobacco as a model”), mostly because they see legal action as leverage to enact all the restrictions on food they have long supported.

CSPI also has a bias against meat and dairy. Jacobson, himself a vegetarian, wrote in an issue of CSPI’s Nutrition Action Healthletter that proper nutrition “means eating a more plant-based diet …

In keeping with his personal vegetarianism, Jacobson quietly sits on the advisory board of the “Great American Meatout,” an annual event operated by the animal rights zealots at the Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM).

CSPI gets over 70 percent of its income from subscriptions to its monthly Nutrition Action Healthletter. Accordingly, much of what it promotes as “science” is often geared more toward selling subscriptions than providing wise counsel.

CSPI regularly perverts science for the sake of a scary press release