People who are either clueless or shills for anti-science hysteria insist 'something is better than nothing' when it comes to laws about food, and that we can just 'fix' it despite its flaws but we should go ahead and pass it if we care about what we eat.

It's smart to reject such simplistic black or white thinking.  Especially in California. This state has too many problems to count and 'fix them' should be an easy concept, except the legislature and 64% of the population remain so one-sided in their thinking nothing ever gets fixed because it is an echo chamber. Believing yet another bad law will magically get fixed when plenty of other bad laws have survived is in defiance of reality. 

While Prop. 37 is being framed as a 'right to know', people who claim to be literate should actually read what it will do, not what partisans being financed by out-of-state special interests claim; instead of being about food transparency, it is a way to let less educated people vote on science and that appeal to populism about scary biology, coupled with intentionally vague language, is why virtually no credible media organization - in arguably the most left-wing state in the country - supports it. 

Given the overwhelming majority of Democrats statewide and in the legislature, there was no need to do an end-run around government and make this a public referendum, unless we are to believe that Democrats don't care about food or science or the people and only outside special interest organic soap makers do.  Proponents of Prop. 37 know that since the law was created outside the legislature, it can only be amended or repealed the exact same way - no one in government can 'fix' it. The San Francisco Chronicle is against this initiative for that reason, noting as I did, "Californians have seen what can happen when attorneys seize on a voter-approved disclosure law as a tool for "shakedown lawsuits." Prop. 65, the 1986 initiative requiring disclosure of toxic chemicals, has been the subject of 16,000 legal actions..."

Which is precisely the intent.  The outside special interests needed a California voter so they found the same guy who created Prop. 65. He denies he thought much about the wording he created, and when an attorney who got rich on shakedown lawsuits says he did not consider the ramifications of his own wording, you should reach for your wallet.

The nonpartisan legislative analyst agrees that  Prop. 37 has been written so loosely that it can include any processed food. So despite claims that it won't force all-natural olive oil producers and 100% of grain products to remove any claims to be 'natural 'or face a lawsuit, that is exactly what it will do.  The 16,000 legal actions that helped zero people in California are a drop in the bucket when the entire food chain of those who grow, process or sell food are a prime target.   The people who will be impacted the most are those who already have a large part of their incomes devoted to food.

Who will be helped?  Just the lawyers and the homeopathy and organic soap companies funding them.