make manipulating people a crime or at least taxable?

6/27/2013 3:57:25 PM

So.. I've done a bit of mass media research on this topic. [read: watched multiple food documentaries, and read a few books on the topic, but no raw scientific research]

Here's my $.02: The problem is multifaceted.

(1) Americans have a plethora of very high calorie, low nutrient food available at a very low price. We are biologically programmed to eat this stuff, so making "correct" food choices has become difficult.
(2) The US Govt. proposed the Food Pyramid which emphasized a low fat, high carb diet which pretty much confused the crap out of all of us. It also gives quite a bit of money to the Corn industry leading to High-fructous Corn Syrup (read:High density sugar) being in pretty much everything especially products labeled as "low or non-fat". So we've subsidized sugar while giving no incentive to grow healthy foods.
(3) Americans work more, are less physically active, and spend less time preparing food. [Downfall of the american family?] It's simply easier to pick-up Wendy's on the way home vice cooking for the family. (My mom was a single parent... and that's what she did at least twice a week.) And no one wants to be physically active after working a 10 hour shift!
(4) There is very little money in preventative medicine. Drug companies don't make any money keeping diabetes and high blood pressure away. They make quite a bit of money treating the symptoms of obesity, including diabetes and heart disease. [The same holds true for cancer... but I'm not sure that's as directly related to the topic]

To advocate the labeling of "fatty" or "bad for you" foods [the same way we do cigarettes] is to completely ignore the real problem(s). And frankly, to imply that labeling cigarettes has done much to curb tobacco use is equally as ignorant. The FDA used to have a "healthy check" mark they would allow companies to put on their products. And it ended up on Fruit Loops. Also, I've seen gummy bears [correctly] labeled as a fat-free food.

Quote :

"The time has come for action, and we should treat fatty foods for what they are. A literal majority of the US population has been manipulated into obesity by the redefining of what food is. We need strong action to tax and regulate the viability out of products like these"

So to tax this food is to basically tax our own subsidies back. If you really want to change this via regulation (which I'm totally not advocating) you've got to stop corn subsidies and start subsidizing farming real food. (Spinach, peppers, broccoli, squash... etc)


[Edited on June 30, 2013 at 3:22 PM. Reason : OP]

6/30/2013 3:16:39 PM

Not having a farm bill this year would be a great start. If you're really interested in doing something we at least need to decouple farm subsidies from the nutrition assistance programs that are lumped in with them.

6/30/2013 5:33:29 PM

Quote :

"Americans work more, are less physically active, and spend less time preparing food."

I recently read two conflicting accounts of this.

look at second presentation, 3rd to last slide
http://nusi.org/the-science/why-nusi/

Regular exercise has increased since the epidemic started around 1970. Frankly, this makes sense too. There is a huge social awareness of the need for exercise and I believe this has only grown over time. I would believe right away that the total number of trips to the gym in America has increased as the nation has got fatter.

But I've seen other studies that have shown total calories burned by America has declined over time. However, that was attributed to less active jobs. So these are two very different things - we're replacing activity at the job with intentional recreation. But it hasn't been enough, nor should it be enough. You can't make up for the difference between an active job and a sitting job with an hour at the gym easily.

Of course, all indications clearly point to more calories being consumed over time. This is the "explanation" that we should all already know. Fewer calories are burned with more calories being eaten, thus obesity rates are skyrocketing. It's the subsequent "why" that we should be looking into.

Quote :

"The FDA used to have a "healthy check" mark they would allow companies to put on their products. And it ended up on Fruit Loops. Also, I've seen gummy bears [correctly] labeled as a fat-free food."

Well this is an agency argument. If we don't have the ability to change things, then all discussion is strictly observational. But it's not really the case that nutritionists have been deceiving us. A "low fat" label is an appeal to a single-variable view of nutrition. It's mind-blowing to think that was ever effective.

The problem you're describing isn't evaluation, but self-evaluation.

Quote :

" If you really want to change this via regulation (which I'm totally not advocating) you've got to stop corn subsidies and start subsidizing farming real food."

I was looking at the nutrition facts of Vitamin Water. The ingredient list piked my interest...

Quote :

"vapor distilled/deionized water, crystalline fructose, citric acid, vegetable juice (color), natural flavor, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), natural flavor, vitamin E acetate, magnesium lactate (elecrolyte), calcium lactate (electrolyte), zinc picolinate, monopotassium phosphate (electrolyte), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine hydrochloride (B6), cyanocobalamine (B12)"

HFCS has got enough backlash that it's politically unpalatable. So logically, Coke made a new product without HFCS and marketed it to the most well-educated part of the population (the ones with a hatred of HFCS).

Only problem... they recreated high fructose sugar. btw, I could have sworn that the actual product has sugar listed as well. When you mix crystalline fructose with sugar then chemically you create the same thing as HFCS, aside from the impurities.

They don't give a shit if research implicates fructose as being worse than glucose. That's what they want to get the taste they're selling. Coke really doesn't give a shit about corn farmers. And I think Coke is far more at fault here.

6/30/2013 6:55:17 PM

labeling fatty foods won't make a significant difference. imo. if people really cared, they could look it up online or any number of ways. most food is already pretty well-labeled.

you can get a 2 liter of coke for 99 cents, or pay twice as much for less gatorade, or healthy juice. two bucks will buy you a few organic apples, or a box of little debbies. nutrition comes secondary to actually feeling full, and fatty/fried junk foods are usually the best bang for the buck. it doesn't hurt those foods taste best, too.

6/30/2013 7:48:57 PM

Quote :

"or pay twice as much for less gatorade"

Not necessarily healthier....

Quote :

"Coke really doesn't give a shit about corn farmers. And I think Coke is far more at fault here."

While it's true that Cocacola doesn't care about corm famers [most likely anyway... I don't sit on that board...] I guess I disagree with the fundamental idea that the producer of a product is at fault any more than the consumer.

[Edited on June 30, 2013 at 8:02 PM. Reason : .]

6/30/2013 7:54:00 PM

are you implying that gatorade is healthy? because that's a great example of the problem people are talking about, a bottle of gatorade has over 30g of carbs. its better than coke, sure, but that's still a lot of sugar.

6/30/2013 7:56:50 PM

^^^ I would like to agree, but labels don't make the connection of sugar -> diabetes

There's not clear evidence that people have that information. Americans get 100x more information from ads than they do from news reporting on the subject, which sucks to begin with, and is not there to convey the basics anyway.

[Edited on June 30, 2013 at 7:58 PM. Reason : ^^^]

6/30/2013 7:57:38 PM

Quote :

" nutrition comes secondary to actually feeling full"

disagree, something full in protein and fiber is going to make you feel full before empty carbs. and eating those carbs is going to continue the cycle of craving carbs and craving those fried carb-rich foods. the effect is that you will feel less full as carbs are addicting and you will crave more. and no one will understand any of that because some of those high-carb foods will have "Low Fat!" "Healthy Choice!" "Heart Safe!" branding all over them.

6/30/2013 8:02:32 PM

Quote :

"Americans get 100x more information from ads than they do from news reporting on the subject, which sucks to begin with, and is not there to convey the basics anyway."

That's a whole other problem to begin with. I'm not sure labeling Cheetos with "WARNING: This product may cause significant health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease if consumed in excess" will do much. And a better question is: what foods do you label with this warning? Sure we'll label the obvious but what about less obvious stuff that we don't think of as bad. Do you label Baked Lays? What about Wonder Bread? What about boxed raisins? Where do you draw the line and how do you justify it?

6/30/2013 8:21:12 PM

It would certainly be better than the heart healthy labels on it.

[Edited on June 30, 2013 at 8:55 PM. Reason : draw the line in the same place as the line for nutrition labels]

6/30/2013 8:54:56 PM

One problem is that 0g of fiber is the norm. You could quite reasonably conclude that it's basically impossible to get 100% of your DV of fiber by reading labels alone.

Why? Consumers don't see dietary labels of vegetables.

That, and utter lack of fiber is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic, or at minimum the epidemic of insulin disorders.

When McDonald's added oatmeal to their menu, they reduced fiber and added sugar. This substitution causes obesity. We have many McDonald's and an obesity epidemic. Have I made the point sufficiently?

But people are right, the solution isn't clear. I only see a few things that really need some common sense legislative solutions. Like adding sugar to apple sauce and baby food. Those products sit there, middle shelf. I don't think you should be allowed to market that crap as apple sauce. Those are words that refer to a real thing, and the product is a mush of industrial sugars. It's a system built to convince people that something which isn't apple sauce is apple sauce.

Hell, require labeling of "sweetened". Let fast food sell "sweetened hamburgers". If they want to sell me an unsweetened hamburger, then let the free market rein! But as long as I'm buying a "hamburger", how much is that the free market? A free market where the seller has control over the very definition of words doesn't sound like the regulation-free ideal.

6/30/2013 9:02:01 PM

[quote]I only see a few things that really need some common sense legislative solutions. Like adding sugar to apple sauce and baby food. Those products sit there, middle shelf. I don't think you should be allowed to market that crap as apple sauce.[quote]

Again.. where do you draw the line? Are you going to put that label on 2% milk?? What about bread?

6/30/2013 9:15:08 PM

Sugar is not added to milk. If they did, and still called it "milk", then yes, that would be abhorrent.

7/1/2013 7:19:13 AM

^okay, you're right... I was sure it was, but I can't find anything to support Sugar added to milk. But there are quite a few articles to support that they're adding artificial sweeteners to it... but nothing definitive.

But my point still stands, that IF we start labeling anything with added sugars and sweeteners we're going to have to put that label on just about everything in the grocery store or we're going to have to draw the line somewhere with some amount of added sugar, or calories from sugar. Which is how Froot Loops ended up with the FDA Healthy Check in the first place, because it had <[some number] of calories from Fat.

7/2/2013 9:14:48 AM

Nutrition labeling laws allow the dairy industry to add nutritive sweeteners without labeling. I have no idea if they add sugar to your milk, but they can. But school kids are not drinking white milk anyways, they grab the delicious chocolate milk instead (or get a juice or soda!).

edit: I think they can also add non-nutritive sweeteners without labeling, i know that at least they were lobbying for permission to.

[Edited on July 2, 2013 at 10:41 AM. Reason : .]

7/2/2013 10:39:05 AM

There was a proposal to let diet milk have sugar added to it. It made the rounds on Facebook some time ago. I can't find an article on it now. We're probably remembering the same thing.

As it stands, chocolate milk has added sugar. I guess that's reasonable, since chocolate = coco + sugar in the common vernacular. If you see something labeled "diet milk", then you should obviously be suspicious. But is that suspicion enough? Diet milk will probably make you fatter than milk.

An average American can make a decision in order to be more healthy, and wind up accomplishing the opposite, due to the status quo with labeling. At least things "sweet tea" and "candy" have honest labels. But a part of the problem is that there's a perfectly intermixed gradient between the traditional "bad stuff" and the normal healthy foods. And thank god for "coke" and "cola", because at least people know it's sugar water.

The corporations sensed a desire to eat more healthy. They marketed things like
- fruit drinks
- energy drinks
- sports drinks
- soda
- iced tea
- flavored water

by doing so, they keep the exact same model as cola. They sold to the intention without providing the product. Isn't this the dream of every large company? To get money from the consumer without delivering anything?

Modern food products are arbitrary amalgamations of ingredients. It's hard to fault a product that falls under some brand name. Then that word defines the product, so there's no possibility of false labeling. This is a valid reason for the "whole foods" movement - because by only eating products that existed before a corporation named it, you eat healthier.

Sure, it's overboard (and kind of crazy) to require Quaker to sell "sweet oatmeal" instead of "oatmeal". But then again, I think to myself... in the grand scheme of things, we wouldn't be any worse off because of it.

7/2/2013 10:53:14 AM

Quote :

"At least things "sweet tea" and "candy" have honest labels. "

lots of candy has "Nonfat!" labels since its basically all sugar

7/2/2013 11:40:26 AM

Quote :

"They sold to the intention without providing the product."

There's my fundamental disagreement with you again.... It takes TWO (2) parties to make a sale. A seller, and a buyer. I argue about this with people a lot. You can't blame the seller without making the statement (implicitly or otherwise) that the buyer is too dumb to think for himself.

They sold to the CONSUMER! If people really wanted and would pay for healthy salads for lunch, guess what McDonalds would sell!?!? These companies aren't stupid.... they sell what people buy.
[this argument also holds true for Walmart selling cheep goods made overseas]

7/2/2013 12:21:56 PM

That's fine as long as they don't put "diet" on something that causes obesity. Or for that matter, what in the hell should be the requirements to use certain words when selling stuff anyway? I can't sell you "beef dogs" that are made of pork, even if the nutritional label faithfully lists the ingredients.

Quote :

"You can't blame the seller without making the statement (implicitly or otherwise) that the buyer is too dumb to think for himself."

What about for selling Radium?



When scientists found out that internal radiation dose leads to increase risk of cancer, should we have just said "okay, we'll let the info trickle through the media to the consumer".


You can't even say the Radium marketing is lying or otherwise misrepresenting anything. I can't prove that their Radium water doesn't agree with nature's law, in the same way that I can't prove that those diet and low fat foods aren't healthy. The ad basically goes:


Healthy bull-crap.

Drink Radium.

[Edited on July 2, 2013 at 12:43 PM. Reason : ]

7/2/2013 12:37:11 PM

Yes the line is somewhere below radium and above fatty foods.

7/2/2013 1:02:58 PM

The problem is the balance of exposure and impact.

Everyone eats fatty foods. The cost to society is probably even greater than smoking now, but we can't treat it the same way because it's high-dose and high-consequence. It's easy to attack low-dose, high-consequence things.

But high-consequence is still high-consequence.

7/2/2013 1:19:07 PM

I only drink Marie Curie brand Radium. Insist on the best!

7/2/2013 2:35:28 PM

how else you gonna turn into spiderman?

7/2/2013 2:58:44 PM

2 good articles about food labels.

Label Makeover: http://www.upworthy.com/hey-wouldn-t-it-be-nice-if-you-know-we-could-actually-understand-our-food-labels

Wow, these small changes would make them so much more useful.





Supplementary Labels: http://www.upworthy.com/the-food-label-that-has-kraft-nestle-and-coca-cola-shaking-in-their-boots

These would IMO go a long way in helping people make better choices for their and the planet's health.

7/2/2013 11:34:30 PM

^ I like the proposed change to the label a lot.

I guess I like the supplementary label a lot less.

I always had wished that they gave %DV of calories. Nothing else makes sense without this context. In fact, it would be a better metric to give %DV of the nutrient / %DV of the calories. Again, that's the only type of metric that makes sense.

If you're advertising that your product is a good source of Calcium, then the %DV of Calcium should be higher than the %DV of calories. There is no other context in which that matters. You need nutrients in proportion to your food, not in some kind of vacuum.

7/3/2013 8:28:30 AM

The only reason I don't like the supplementary label is because it relies on scoring in a 1-5 scale, and I know that lobbying will twist the formula to the point where those Chocolate Frosted Super Krispy Krunchies got scored high and it became just another way to misrepresent foods as being healthier than they are. I like the revised nutrition label a lot.

7/3/2013 9:09:35 AM

The "20% or more of the DA is HIGH" is wrong though. It depends on how many calories the serving is.

7/3/2013 9:13:33 AM

Quote :

"The only reason I don't like the supplementary label is because it relies on scoring in a 1-5 scale, and I know that lobbying will twist the formula to the point where those Chocolate Frosted Super Krispy Krunchies got scored high and it became just another way to misrepresent foods as being healthier than they are."

THIS. Also, "welfare" is so arbitrary "a measure of the impact of the foods production on the overall welfare of everything involved" I feel like this would be a great book a long the lines of Eat this, not that but as a government required label, it's entirely impossible to ensure accuracy.

7/3/2013 5:17:56 PM

Maybe instead of labeling fatty foods, rich people/investors should open green grocers in the country instead of convenience stores full of junk food, alcohol, and tobacco?

No wonder there is so much obesity.

9/30/2013 8:29:04 PM

In the world's largest producer of food, this (food deserts) is nothing short of a terrible tragedy and a serious flaw in how the country is being run.

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201310010104-0023077

Quote :

"The idea of abundance in the US is more of a mirage than a reality. Although it is one of the largest food producing countries in the world, food deserts have become a real urban problem. This means a little more than a quarter of the country’s 311 million people live in an area with low or no access to fresh fruits and vegetables. On the next Stream we look at the politics and social injustice behind food deserts. How do they occur in a land of such plenty? Read more: How to find a food desert near you - NPR http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/13/174112591/how-to-find-a-food-desert-near-you Time to revisit food deserts - The New York Times Opinionator http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/time-to-revisit-food-deserts "

On a related note, it is also the world's greatest waster of food. Around 40% of all food produced or imported into the US ends up in landfills. That is nothing short of criminal on its own, but very shocking considering that almost 20% of US children under 18 live in "food insecure" households, that's 16 million children. The rate is 30% or close to 30% in several states. Almost 50 million adults are in the same boat.

Such wastage of food is another serious flaw in how the country is being run, and nobody gives a shit among the big people in government, business, finance, or law.

10/1/2013 1:33:20 PM

Personally, I love dessert foods.

10/1/2013 1:40:36 PM

I'd rather eat real food than sugary shit.

10/1/2013 2:36:02 PM

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/

the new pyramid is better. also why the hell was the food industry able to manipulate the old pyramid over the recommendations of the scientists?



[Edited on October 1, 2013 at 7:13 PM. Reason : add pic]

10/1/2013 7:07:15 PM

They should remove the bread entirely from whole grain, most bread is not whole grain and its easy to eat too much regardless

10/1/2013 7:45:14 PM

Even when whole grain, most food items made from (wholegrain) flour are bad because they have a high glycemic index. Even though they have the fiber, pulverizing grains makes them release sugar into the bloodstream too quickly. If you want to eat grain products, eat grains, not grain products. Cook intact grains (wheat, oats, barley, quinoa, spelt, rye, etc), cracked grains, or crushed grains. Don't powderize them and then make food out of them, as that's whats bad.

10/1/2013 8:05:07 PM

Quote :

"bad because they have a high glycemic index."

Having a high glycemic index doesn't make a food choice "bad", it's just an effect of the food. If everything you eat has a high glycemic index, that probably indicates that you're eating a lot of carbs and not a lot of fiber, so yeah, that can have negative consequences. If 20% of your calories come from high GI foods, there's nothing inherently unhealthy about that.

10/1/2013 8:42:15 PM

pretty sure fruit and veggies should be the base of that pyramid, 'as nature intended'. our guts are specialized to digest fiber and carbohydrates, not animal protein.

10/6/2013 1:06:15 PM

Quote :

"our guts are [not] specialized to digest animal protein."

evidence to back that up.

early humans (before farming and gardening) ate a lot of meat, or so they say. probably meat and plant matter in equal amounts. if you look at the pyramid, the base is meat, and the rest is all plant matter all the way to the top. that's good, isn't it? it is like a 50-50 split.

10/6/2013 2:41:47 PM

man is this thread filled with broscience

10/6/2013 4:25:43 PM

Regarding that graphic, I don't think the "shrimp" you can buy in stores today is anything like the seafood our ancestors ate.

They're grown in giant pools in China, nearly drowning in their own shit. This is the stuff we buy at the store.

10/6/2013 9:58:11 PM

simple, don't buy shrimp and other farmed meat as much as possible. lots of non-intensively farmed options are available for most types of meat.

and why did you mention the shrimp only? what about poultry and red meat? interesting that many people happily eat intensively farmed poultry and red meat, but when fish and shrimp are farmed, they get all up in arms over it. (not specifically pointing at you)

i know all about farmed fish and shrimp being full of all sorts of chemicals from antibiotics to food dyes, and that's why i don't buy them. if i buy fish, i get wild caught fish, not farmed fish. shrimp is difficult to find wild caught.

10/6/2013 10:06:12 PM

Quote :

"and why did you mention the shrimp only? what about poultry and red meat? interesting that many people happily eat intensively farmed poultry and red meat, but when fish and shrimp are farmed, they get all up in arms over it. (not specifically pointing at you)"

I don't think that the public is all-that irrational if you look at the entire issue.

Think about what happened. We increased consumption of chicken in the last 30 years, quite dramatically. It didn't used to be like this. We used to eat lots of beef, but little chicken in comparison.

If you have a choice between an irresponsibly farmed chicken, and an irresponsibly farmed cow, I think the chicken is probably the better choice. It would be better to get responsibly farmed meat, but that's kind of irrational if you think about it. Even if the price premium was worth it to the consumer (and usually it's not), we never started out with any verification method, and even today it's a dicey proposition. Why would the producer not just slap the label on it while using the quick and dirty practices?

In a world where the quality of animal husbandry is declining drastically, the best approach is to eat the animal which is the most difficult to screw up. In the future I think this will be grasshoppers.

10/7/2013 10:46:03 PM

^ if it came to that, they would intensively breed those little critters too, and stuff them full of all sorts of fucking chemicals. big companies don't care. they just care about their bottom line.

10/7/2013 10:58:30 PM

Personally I only eat food full of chemicals. Have not found a good anti matter supermarket yet.

10/7/2013 11:37:03 PM

10/22/2013 1:12:43 PM

Quote :

"man is this thread filled with broscience"

10/25/2013 12:03:27 PM

http://www.wral.com/nyc-moves-closer-to-tobacco-buying-age-of-21/13057739/

10/31/2013 11:15:06 AM

http://www.wral.com/fda-to-ban-artery-clogging-trans-fats/13084605/

11/7/2013 10:41:51 AM

Lol.

Let us allow tobacco...a substance that we have 100% proof that it causes health problems, but we'll ban trans fat. Because you know, transfat is worse for you than cigarettes.

11/7/2013 2:39:25 PM