It's "interesting" to see the same methods that the tabacco lobby used are used again. We as a society haven't spent the past time in defending ourselves or our institutions any better then back in those days. Sad Indeed...
I wonder what point of view libertarians have on issues like this one. How can we regulate this without government intervention? what can we do to counter-balance the marketing power of those corporations?
Without a government, a corporation can only be strong, when their customers are spending enough money. With a government a corporation can grow out by regulations/subsidies. Regulations are destroying small competitors, not the big corps themselves.
So go out and promote again big corps. Only education and enlightenment can build up a better world. Governments won't, governments are going to be bought by big corps.
No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. Just live healthy and promote your lifestyle to other persons, that is the best thing you can do for yourself and for any other person without harm.
> You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them
It's not that simple. For instance, kids aren't free to choose what they eat or drink and they can't make rationale decisions. Many adults lack the proper information and so on...
I don't think promoting your lifestyle to others is something that has any force, even if any of us were interested in evangelism. People pick up their everyday behaviour largely from what they perceive as normal, and mass media, which is filled with adverts and even the programming heavily decided by commercial factors, has enormous power to dictate what is normal. At the grass-roots, parents have a degree of power to set a concept of normality for their kids, but that's also strongly driven by peer-pressure which is in turn driven by mass media.
Your alternative with regulations requires politicians to be perfectly rational. Checkmate.
The argument that people can't be rational and think for themselves, therefore they need other people (a political class) to decide for them, is, frankly, disgusting. No thanks.
They just need to be more rational than the general population. Usually politicians don't really decide things though, but they're putting the stuff experts tell them into laws and arbiter between interests.
You'll need governments deciding things anyway. Otherwise you can't come up with fair contracts when there's a difference of power in the parties of the contract (think e.g. costumer and manufacturer and food safety regulations), even when both sides are rational.
A part of the publication explained how large lobbying efforts are made to make labeling systems less accurate or get rid of them altogether. So, in short, the industry spends a lot of money so consumers don't even know which foods are "suger foods" and which aren't.
How could we not buy "sugar products" when it is added without knowledge everywhere? Wouldn't your point of view also require removing labels; after all gov. regulation put them there. Sugar corp would sell to ag corp, with no transparency. How would we know how much sugar and compare? I know that humans over the past 50 years have been terrible judges on their own.
Yes, this is a big problem, but if you're waiting for the government to solve this problem, you'll wait a long time.
The humanity have to build new organizations that help the masses in picking up the right choices and we need new corporations that we can trust. Just have a look at the open source movement, where even commercial companies are opening their source code to improve to build up on trust. We need corporations that put labels of ingredients on their products. But if we force companies to do so, we're destroying the start up resources a new company needs to grow.
By forcing accurate labels we are disadvantaging small companies?
I am quite sure that, in a month of work, a well intentioned NGO with 1 or 2 people could develop a hand-holding website that every company could follow, for labelling.
No it isn't added everywhere. Not to fruit, vegetables, raw cereals, dairy products, meat or fish. If you feel you have to buy food industry products (those that undergo some kind of processing) then don't most of them offer low sugar or sugar free options? Finally it comes down to industry meeting human preferences. Change those and the industry will change.
I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.
A 'lens requirement' cuts the effectiveness of any information in a package. I'd wager to less than a tenth of readers, compared with readable packages.
Yes, it is added everywhere, by often by methods you cannot tell. Fruit for example, is selected and bred for more sugar. Cows can be manipulated for more sugar, then dairy products. And again, since no government regulation was allowed, there will be no labels to even read, in that world. And I kindly disagree you can change human, innate, preferences on the whole. Unless you regulate them, which I understand is an anathema.
Without a government, there can be no corporations. A corporation is a creature of regulation. You can already operate a business under fewer regulations by forming a sole proprietorship or general partnership. Why don't people do that? The entitlement of liability limitation afforded by corporate regulation is what makes it possible for businesses to be bigger than a certain nominal size. Something like the "sugar industry" might not exist at all without that entitlement.
Likewise, if the individuals forming a sugar industry marketing or lobbying entity could be held personally liable for the actions of that entity, it probably wouldn't exist. That's the closest thing I can think of to a concept of business law in a libertarian sense: If you own a certain fraction of General Motors, then you're responsible for a fraction of GM's debts, if those debts exceed its assets.
no, but the concept of marketing still makes sense. We know that corporations devote a lot of resources in marketing. Is it ok to "brainwash" people into buying stuff that harm them?
What is dishonest marketing? for instance, using various tricks to make people smoke cigarettes or drink coke (that is bad for them), is that dishonest?
Dishonest marketing does not infringe upon your property rights. I've never heard any libertarian claim that limiting speech, for any purpose, is justifiable base on libertarian ideals.
I've read a ton of libertarian stuff, and my impression is that they generally oppose dishonesty from one party in a commercial transaction.
It's not very different for a cigarette manufacture to claim their product is healthy than it is for a construction company to agree to build you a house but then stop halfway through despite receiving payment. I think it's pretty clear that both would be opposed by most or all prominent forms of libertarianism.
Exactly, libertarianism cuts both ways. The protective regulations that the companies lobby for wouldn't exist in the first place in a system like that.
I'm very libertarian, but I view "liberty" primarily as an individual thing; I don't subscribe to the notion that corporations are people or have human rights. I think it's most certainly in the interest of us all that the governments enforce certain rules and protect us in some ways, as long as there are ways to avoid the rules.
For example, killing is forbidden, except euthanasia (in certain countries). Hedge funds can exist, but they can't do any marketing and can only have "sophisticated" investors. In Sweden, alcohol is only sold by special stores.
I'd advocate the same approach to health & food safety. Businesses can sell everything, but there should be limits on (1) marketing (can't market sugar to kids, if at all), (2) taxes (more sugar, more tax - similar to tobacco), (3) general availability (can't buy cigarettes under 18), and (4) labeling (I support labeling of GMOs and of even trace amounts of trans fat).
Edit: especially number 4 above - I see no reason that a honest business would ever see information disclosure regulation as a negative thing; in addition, availability of (trustworthy) information will only increase the economic activity and decrease economic waste (again, only applies to honest companies and products).
If I were trying to run a small bakery or confectionary under all the terms (and more, presumably) of your last paragraph, I'd have a hard time believing you took my individual liberty (or that of my customers) very seriously.
Again, something that is solvable with smart regulation. E.g. some rules apply only for businesses with more than $100k turnover, or $1M or whatever. Alternatively, your customers need to sign a statement that they will pay out of pocket for any medical costs resulting from eating your sugar (similar to "sophisticated investors" and hedge funds).
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right. After all, you could also say that your individual liberty is being infringed by taxes - but you can always move to a deserted island, stop using the services provided by the governments, and pay no tax!
A libertarian scheme would usually be like 'certification should be a business, and foods should be certified sugar free by a specific certification company, and bear that company's sugar-free logo'.
Again, something that is solvable with smart regulation.
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right.
Wow. Stop considering yourself a libertarian, seriously. This is authoritarian talk. All I see you arguing for is rules, and if somone points out their flaws, more and 'smarter' rules. This is the exact opposite of libertarianism.
Maybe... But it's way more libertarian than any of today's societies... I mean, we still have so many prohibitions - drugs, prostitution, euthanasia, freedom of speech, ...
My libertarian view: Let companies add as much sugar as they like and consumers shall decide what tastes and feels best. If there's too much sugar inside your food, nobody's gonna buy it. Not the government should decide how much sugar I eat, I should decide that. Everything else infantilizes the people. The only thing that should be illegal is actually lying about sugar content.
I'm not sure if there should be a tax on sugar. But I definitely think that products should have a large visible colorful graphic on the front showing the amount of sugar content.. separate from the basic black and white nutritional info label.
In the US sugar is listed without a DV% as well. People might reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of your daily recommended added sugar intake (per the article's 45g).
No one would reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of the recommended daily sugar intake. The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already.
IMO one great labeling victory has been restaurants that put calorie info on menus. Some of that has been by regulation, but regardless it's a good move.
> The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already.
This may be true, but this statement is also missing the (possibly large?) group of people that simply have no benchmark in their mind for how much sugar is acceptable.
I've read several competing articles about daily limits to added sugar, and the number I have in my mind is 80g/day max. Given that a teaspoon of sugar is roughly 4g, this amounts to 20 teaspoons of sugar per day! I've wondered if nutrition labels listing sugar in terms of teaspoons instead of grams would help people visualize exactly how much sugar they are consuming.
I would agree that those who care about sugar intake probably will avoid Milky Ways, but I'm also concerned that if we don't have a % DV on sugar, people will perhaps assume that there is no ceiling. Why do we have % DV for fat, carbs, etc., but not sugar? Hmm, well maybe it's that no amount of sugar you eat today will harm you.
As a curious experiment, walk down the street and randomly survey people for how many grams of sugar they think they should limit themselves to.
They don't exactly lie. This is the tricky thing with candy: it's damn hard to eat just one. Everyone (except possilby diabetics, I don't know) would be fine with eating a milky way every 2-3 days, but that's not how the brain works on sugar. I can and do rarely eat 300g of chocolate inside an hour. I'm pretty sure that's a little bit dangerous, but the only way to avoid it is to not buy the chocolate in the first place. Once I've given myself permission to start eating it's all gone real quick.
What part of claiming to be able to enjoy a chocolate bar if you eat otherwise healthy is a "lie"? It's only "unhealthy" in the context of your overall diet.
Would you say marmalade is healthy? It's certainly tasty. It has calories so in the context of starvation, it's absolutely healthy. What's so tacky about this is that there are only cynical reasons to discuss manifestly unhealthy candy in the context of a balanced diet. A candy bar has zero value in a balanced diet, like marmalade.
I think there should be in Canada because we have a public health care system and the effects of sugar intake puts stresses on public health care, and those that who binge on sugar should be forced to pay for their higher costs on public health - I should not be subsiding their preventable issues.
I agree very much with that. But what if food manufacturers come up with new ingredients that escape the tax legally and those ingredients are actual worse for you?
what about athletes and body builders who do carb/sugar loading?
What about ppl who eat greasy food and don't exercise?
Als, Wouldn't this merely penalize poor people with long hours and long commutes, poor people who are forced to live in food desserts, poor people who only have enough cash to buy bad food, poor people who have to feed a family of 5 on minimum wage.
1. I think most athletes who purposely ingest a lot of carbs are probably not using sugar to accomplish this.
2. Greasy food is not actually bad for you. Grease is essentially fat, which is about as healthy as you can get. In a typical fast food meal, the greasy burger is the healthy part (minus the bun). It's the fries and soft drink which are the unhealthy part.
3. Grains are an incredibly affordable source of calories (it depends on the grain, but for the most part they are all upwards of 2,000 calories for $1). I don't think anybody's in danger of starving if sugar is more expensive.
I don't feel very comfortable with this "anti-sugar" campaign. In a recent past, the villain was fat, now is sugar. I don't think both of them is the problem, the problem is a life without sports and workout. And sugar is the best energy source for the brain, as far as I know.
The funny part is the best dietary advice is just "eat a good variety of things and don't eat too much". Going in to Whole Foods makes me want to blow my brains out.
The amount of marketing designed to just confuse people about what's good for them. Organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, all natural, it's like a temple for upper middle class white people to reject 50 years of food science.
Why? Whole Foods is great. For example, if you're too busy to pack your lunch, there is a great cafeteria where you can get simple food with lots of veggie options at whatever portions you want. The quality of the meat, bread, and produce is a cut above (though I hear it's just par for course in terms of what you can get in "normal" EuropeN grocery stores).
I think the complaint is that Whole Foods is selling you the idea that the small subset of "healthy" brands they are promoting is what you should be exclusively eating. They're a great store as far as options, but the Kool-aid they're pouring can be a little annoying at times.
You know, even oxygen in excess quantities is poisonous to us.
I wouldn't say that sugar is a bad thing on its own, but the people who use it to enhance their products are not doing so to help our brains work better. They are doing that because they know that our species has an appreciation for this stuff and in their quest for short term profits they can externalize the long term costs associated with the effects of sugar overload which we ourselves do not have a way of detecting until it is too late.
Let me try to make you more comfortable with it: it is all about food corporations trying to block scientific studies and consumers' rights for fair package labeling, etc. also, do some reading on the harmful Candida bacteria in our guts. Some Candida is natural but too much sugar, as we see in processed foods, causes a harmful level of Candida. And Candida itself has quickly evolved to affect brain chemistry to induce people to eat more sugar.
I believe that people should keep track of what food they eat and depending how they feel, modify their particular diets accordingly.
My wife and I have reduced the processed foods we eat, and try to avoid sugar, and it seems to have had a great effect on how we feel and general health.
If you are a skeptic that is fine, skepticism should be the default, but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
There's a lot written on astrology as well. Volume doesn't mean it's true.
I wasn't able to find anything in PubMed on the causal connection as you describe, though I did find papers like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684604/ on "Archaea and Fungi of the Human Gut Microbiome: Correlations with Diet and Bacterial Residents" which describes the correlation.
> Methanobrevibacter and Candida were positively associated with diets high in carbohydrates, but negatively with diets high in amino acids, protein, and fatty acids. A previous study emphasized that bacterial population structure was associated primarily with long-term diet, but high Candida abundance was most strongly associated with the recent consumption of carbohydrates. Methobrevibacter abundance was associated with both long term and recent consumption of carbohydrates.
How do you know it's Candida and not Methanobrevibacter?
I think I might be wrong about this, so apologies, I stand corrected. For myself, staying away from processed foods (which means eating less sugar), has made me feel much better. As a result, when I read about the problems with Candida and it resonated with my own experiences and I came to biased conclusions.
I do take supplements specifically to reduce the amount of Candida in my gut (probiotics and caprylic acid) so my feeling of better heath in the last 4 or 5 years of avoiding processed foods might also be a result of these supplements and not just avoiding processed foods. I feel better, but I can't pinpoint why.
It's a flawed experiment, though. Literally the smallest possible sample size, extremely susceptible to the placebo effect, no controls.
I'd be interested in a large, rigorously controlled study on this, where the control group is fed convincing imitations of sweet (via artificial sweeteners) and processed (via presentation) foods. A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable.
I would argue, and I could be wrong about this, but there is so much diversity in the human population that people really need to do "self experimentation" and go for a diet and lifestyle that maximises how good they feel.
re: "A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable." I was not asking the other poster to accept my results, but rather suggesting that it would be worth the effort to do the experiment themselves.
Yes, there has been a lot written. And there is no evidence.
>but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
95%+ of the food I eat comes from my property. There's nothing processed to cut out. I feel no different than I did when I was eating little ceasars pizza and coke every day for a year. This "experiment" is not an actual experiment, and would not support the claim in question even if it were.
Sugar, on the other hand, is very obviously bad for you. It causes type 2 diabetes, it causes caries, and it also suppresses the feeling of satiety. Reducing your sugar intake is the easiest way to get into better shape.
Exercise is important, but it won't undo all the damage. E.g. if you heavily drink and smoke, no amount of exercise will undo that. It's the same with sugar. Exercise won't undo all those insulin spikes.
It's true that we need glucose, but we need it at a slow and steady rate. We don't need it at a rate which causes a massive insulin response. If your body actively combats the amount of sugar in your bloodstream, you apparently overdid it.
Non-processed food without added sugars is a good way to get a little bit of sugar over the course of several hours. The absorption rate is delayed by fibers. That's why fruits are fine while juice isn't.
The big problem with avoiding processed food is that it's really inconvenient. Cooking, just like exercise, takes time and effort.
A nitpick of this comment would be that caries are an autoimmune response caused by the acids that sugars (and some other foods) induce in your saliva. When you eat sugar, your body creates acid to break it down, and the presence of the acid in your mouth after the sugar is gone results in an autoimmune-style attack on your enamel.
Given that it's so easy to overshoot your daily sugar budget, you should just try to avoid sugar in general.
E.g. if you eat some premade pasta sauce and some slices of toast, you're probably very close to exceeding your budget. So, it would be a good idea to not have a can of pop or some cookies.
Anyhow, if you only eat veggies and meat, you'll do just fine. The big problem is the added sugar found in most processed foods.
Diet and exercise play different roles in keeping us healthy. You can be fairly overweight with a sugary diet while still being pretty active, just as you can lose weight by monitoring diet alone. Some of the problem of the changing villians is that we are still learning, and some of the problem of us not knowing more is pushback from sweetening industries.
I don't agree with all of the anti-sugar things. Probably shouldn't tax sugar itself, and in moderation it isn't a bad thing. Most folks don't have a lot of candy in their diet (because there are limits). But they do drink a good deal of sugary coffees and drinks when it would be better to eat a handful of fruit and drink some water. Most folks don't need the added sugar to feed their brain - fruit and vegetables and some grains wind up as that anyway.
It isn't sugar in and of itself that is such an issue, but that we tend to put it in everything, so our consumption is really high.
Sauces and prepackaged foods have an amazing amount of added sugar. The typical american breakfast is nearly a dessert. Cranberry juice, pushed as healthy, is generally sweetened, even if it is with concentrated fruit juice. All of these things add up especially when combined with lack of reasonable choices near you and large portion sizes. And trying to figure out what has added sugar and other such things has been proven difficult. And this is a major problem for folks trying to have some sort of balance in addition to being a problem for folks that are low-to-mid income and/or have little time to cook their own food as it gets harder to limit such things even in supposedly healthy food.
I despise the corn lobby more. They ensure the high tariffs on imported sugar in order to protect the corn prices to produce corn syrup instead of using raw sugar. Only the US has soft drinks made with HFCS simply because of the tariff on imported sugar.
Accord to the movie Sugar Coated (on Netflix here in Canada) and Dr. Lustig there is no meaningful difference between HFCS and normal sugar -- they are equally quite bad for you. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar will achieve nothing I believe if you keep the sugar intake the same.
What I believe happened is that at the same time HFCS came on the market there was also a larger push to put sugar into a lot of things in place of fat.
Thus the introduction of HFCS seems to correlate with the North America weight problem but the North American weight problem also correlates with the increase in sugar in our diet -- and I understand from Sugar Coated and Dr. Lustig that is the causitive correlation.
weight-wise sugar has only half of fructose, and fructose is main offender. So yes, too much sugar is bad, but if you compare gram to gram, fructose is worse.
As far as I understood, "high fructose" in HFCS is only high relative to the corn syrup that was hydrolyzed, but not processed with isomerase, i.e. essentially compared to corn syrup with no fructose at all.
Most commonly used HFCS varieties contains 42% or 55% fructose [1], which compares well with 50% in sucrose.
This also shows the true evil of the TTP and TTIP trade deals: corporations can sue any government if their laws affect the corporation's profits. Pure evil. The article has the example of Mexico being sued for their protective laws.
I'm cutting past the corporation talk and going straight to the premise. It's one that we need to reject.
The article starts off with the premise that we are currently suffering a health crisis. This is insane. It's an extreme, hyper-negative point of view. We live in the safest times in all of human history. If you're not living in a shanty town without running water and suffering from dysentery, you're doing pretty well. If your sitting in your climate-controlled house in suburbia, sipping your soda thinking "Man, I'm killing myself with this sugary drink", you are choosing to be miserable. You have decided not to enjoy the wonderful world in which we live. You have decided to focus on an oblique health threat that starving humans through out history have dreamed about. Exporting that self-imposed misery to others is impolite at best if not pure evil.
With this kind of hyper-negative thinking, we could advance medicine to the point that we become immortal with eternally youthful regenerating bodies, but we would go hunting for a way for french fries and sodas to still be evil somehow. Like these things are some sort of modern day werewolf.
The premise is laughable at best. Dangerous at worst. It's neither sane nor healthy to think like this.
You mention civil war. The war here would boil down to the noble cause of killing people to protect us from the health threats of sugar. That's insane! We must reject this thinking.
As for the idea of civil war: obvious hyperbole is obvious. Democracy needs fixing, or much larger problems -- but if there is no fixing, corporate corruption might ensure the problems.
It's practically modern culture to be negative about everything. When there are two equally probable outcomes I've noticed that people tend to lavish on the negative one to exclusion and treat people with positive outlooks as annoying, chipper, ignorant, or immature. It's odd. My theory is that positivity requires some claim of responsibility over the outcome while negatively allows one to divorce themselves from it.
I also think it's human nature. Humans are always looking to better themselves. Take someone from 1900 and bring them to 2016. They would think they are living in paradise...for a while. Then they would get used to it and start thinking about everything that's wrong and how to fix it.
Now, on the plus side it's that drive that improves the human condition. But it comes with a lot of negatives too.
I mentioned civil war because the people will see that the government who is supposed to be there for them is powerless. Combine that with the economic conditions (job shortages, which will even rise with automation), loss of middle class and higher taxes for pensions/welfare (add the uncontrolled immigration to the mix). The history has shown where all this ends.
Mexico was sued because they effectively installed a tariff, not just because the law affected the profits of multinationals. They had agreed not to install such tariffs.
The impacts of trade are complex and I don't think we need to run headlong towards laws favoring large corporations, but it's a little over the top to say that it is obvious evil to agree to treat foreign companies equally to native companies. In many situations, trade will benefit everyone. It's not evil to enable and encourage that trade.
>Mexico was sued because they effectively installed a tariff, not just because the law affected the profits of multinationals. They had agreed not to install such tariffs.
That agreement is still for not affecting the profits of multinationals...
(Though of course there is no shortage of "free-market-trumps-all" advocates to point out that such tarrifs hurt the local economy etc).
Sure, big companies are best positioned to take advantage of trade agreements. So what. It still makes sense to examine the totality of the impacts.
For example, I'm pretty curious about what impact NAFTA has had on illegal immigration from Mexico. Who knows if it has been significant, but surely it isn't zero (the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico is down substantially since it passed).
Not enabling sovereign countries to protect industry of their choosing is a form of corporate protectionism. The established companies are protected from future competitors. Example: south koreas industry was bootstrapped by the government using every mean at their disposal - using methods that would probably be improbable in our present form global market. No Samsung, Lg or any of that could arise in current global market. Capitalism and free market are not the only methods to improve economic status - very much like protein is not the only form of food people need to eat.
So could South Korea use protectionism to build up internal industries today? Sure. But it might not want to, if a different set of choices were more likely to favor South Korea.
I provided as an example a specific case where a country was able to bootstrap its industry using policies favoring national entities, thus creating national wealth and serving all current consumers globally by creating more companies to compete in the global marketplace. The point is, the question about how free some markets should be and for what time - it's not just cronyism vs. healthy competition, or that in every case just serving the most efficient products is a universally best solution, for all time. Economic strategy can use any number of methods, but the current discussion often labels those not respecting the status quo as 'bad players'. But mostly, I was supporting the notion that there can be succesfull or failing national non-conforming strategies. I brought up South Korea as a positive example since there are incompetent renegades - like Venezuela which has achieved an astounding zimbabwe impersonation - that maybe first comes to mind when discussing policies of this sort.
> Trade agreements are voluntary. If a country thinks it's better off outside a given trade agreement, it can just leave it behind.
Completely dismisses the complex reality of how decisions are made within a country. It's possible, even likely, that a system exists that represents the will of a few who benefit over the majority who suffer.
I don't believe there's anything in TTIP that shall directly relate to profits. ISDS schemes are about enforcing adherence to the treaty at hand and ensuring there's no legal/regulatory discrimination of foreign entities. If past agreements are any indication - NAFTA has clear exceptions [0] for measures that are "necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health" as long as it's applied uniformly.
To me, the acts of legally constructed fictitious persons are amoral not evil [or good]. The legally constructed fictitious person is just a messier meat space version of the Etherium fueled Dao. A legally constructed fictitious person has marching orders and those orders are an ends justify the means mandate...as I was writing that I was thinking "constrained only by law" but that's some utopia we don't have.
To me, anthropomorphizing fictitious persons is an intellectual landmine. A fictitious person is an 'it', no more a moral or ethical agent than a rock. A mountain of rock isn't evil when a slide buries a party of hikers. Gravity is a law of natural systems. The behaviors of legally constructed fictitious persons are in accord with the "laws" of those systems.
If a tobacco company say starts giving cigarettes to 5 year olds to get them hooked you don't think that's evil? What difference does it make that a company is a bunch of people rather than one?
I'll give you that it's trickier to deal with bad stuff done by a corporation. With an individual you can jail them but less so with a corp unless you can pin it on an individual.
Such a scenario might well involve individuals engaged in banal evil and because individuals are moral agents, that's where blame and praise may accrue.
Anthropomorphizing a tobacco company muddies our thinking. A trade agreement is a document. The consequences of following the ideas in that document may be detrimental. But it is not a moral agent.
Not very useful definitions are by definition more useful than useless definitions.
If a person lobs avalanche prevention ordinance upon an unstable mountain slope thereby preventing the demise of the hikers I invented earlier, that person's actions might be said to have affected the behavior of the mountain.
If the person lobs ordinance after the invented hikers have met their fate, that person may well change the mountain slope geometry in such a manner that unique unstable accumulations are no longer physically possible [while others may be].
Clearly neither seems like a case where there is moral agency in the mountain. We get moral agency when the person lobbing ordinance onto the mountain slope is doing or forgoing the activity in the presence of hikers.
Interesting position. This implies that corporations, by default, have no social rights or interests at all -- while humans, by default, have all human rights and interests.
I kind of like this. No free speech or even property ownership rights for corporations, unless we decide it is in our interest. Only humans can be the source of rights or interests.
It will involve a pretty big reworking of the laws, however. Let's get started!
For example since corporations (etc.) have no interests, if their behavior impinges on the interests of even one person that behavior has to be stopped, unless someone can show that that more peoples' interests are served by that behavior than are harmed.
In the case of TPP the attempts to show how it benefits individuals rely on a lot of hypotheticals which doesn't wash if we take this stance. Everyone gains standing to stop corporations if their interests are affected, and the burden of proof is on those who want to permit some corporate behavior that anyone opposes.
The fictitious person legal construct has legal rights and institutional interests. I'm not sure how that maps to social rights and interests.
In any events, rights seem orthogonal to morality. At least if morality constrains some portion of the acts that a moral agent could do because a right is a license for a particular course of action.
Anyway, while changing the laws might produce the greatest benefit and utilitarianism might be a good basis for rational moral action, that's not really my immediate intent. My goal is more pragmatic discussion and less sloganeering.
>The dispute centered on Mexico's adoption of a 20 percent tax on the use of high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks, Mayer Brown said. The financial impact was significant because Mexico is the world's second-largest market for soft drinks.
>The tax illegally favored Mexico's domestic sugar producers over U.S.-owned producers of high-fructose corn syrup, the firm said.
Wouldn't that tax also favor U.S. sugar producers over Mexican producers of HFCS, and favor Mexican sugar producers over Mexican HFCS producers, and favor U.S. sugar producers over U.S. HFCS producers?
It does unlevel the playing field, but the tilt is on the sugar/HFCS axis, not the US/Mexico axis. I don't see why that should not be allowed, unless it can be shown that the US has more HFCS producers and Mexico more sugar producers so that it will disproportionately favor Mexicans AND it was enacted to accomplish that rather for some geographically neutral purpose.
Would you care to elaborate on that? Googling "dr lustig fraud" brings up mostly what looks like fabricated "debunking" articles from things like "The Scam Report".
There is no difference between glucose in sugar and glucose in starch, except that starch molecules are useless to the body when they get into the blood.
People whose livers are damaged have some difficulty processing fructose, but that is not the sugar's fault.
Dr. Lustig has made a name for himself by demonizing sugar. I do not believe that sugar is the demon it's commonly made out to be.
"Googling it brings up things I don't like so I'll call them fabricated". What is fabricated about it exactly? This is a man who directly lies all the time. He claims "sugar is toxic" and "sugar is poison". These are both outright lies, and not claims any respected scientist would make. The data doesn't even support his modest claims, much less his poison lies. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...
Throwaway because I don't like posting about medical conditions.
So, I'm a diabetic. It means I have to check everything and you know, 5-15g of extra sugar isn't something I can't just take into account I have to at least know.
As such I'm always surprised at all the things that 'happen to' have 50% by weight in sugar (HFCS etc). I know that stuff like stevia exist @ 0 calories, and may taste a little bit worse but in my case it's something delicious with stevia or maybe no dessert - then it's fine if it's not perfect, you know?
So what I don't get is since taste-wise cutting to 0 sugars and all stevia retains like 70%-80% of taste (with the exception of when the sugar is an important structural ingredient as with a meringue), why basically every product doesn't come in stevia and normal versions?
Like, honey nut cheerios? Fine, stevia or artificial sugar version / normal version. They don't even need price parity or anything like that.
I just don't get it.
Coke and Pepsi do this right. I drink lots and lots of coke!
always diet or zero, or pepsi max.
I don't really get why something like, say, breakfast cereals, don't have "coke zero / diet coke" versions where it's artificial. I know it can be done, since I can do that myself from a box of artificial sweetener. It can't be a lack of demand - since by that metric, diet coke wouldn't exist.
so I just don't get it. Take something like peanut butter, super healthy except for the added sugar which means I can't just eat it with abandon. Why wouldn't Jif peanut butter make a crappy version with artificial sugar. It's sugar-Jif or nothing for me (and many other people.) Same goes for like every second item in a store.
why aren't there stevia Oreos, etc. these things just don't exist. why not? I can't eat oreos but I'd eat the shit out of stevia oreos and so would a ton of people.
a lot of people just wanna eat sweets. they don't care just how good it tastes. You ever seen a fat guy turn down a donut because it didn't look good? Nobody cares about the taste... it's the taste of sweetness that we crave. . . .
there must be a conspiracy of some kind here too. (I say this tongue in cheek, I don't actually see any conspiracy I'd just like to understand it better.)
About 6 weeks ago I stopped ingesting sugar, to the extent that is practically possible. No candy & cakes, no sweet drinks and very diligent reading of labels on the non-obvious stuff. I do eat fruit but not processed into juice.
Dropped 4 kg, everything tastes better, no energy drop at 4pm and the cravings disappeared within first two days. Friends report similar results.
This was also much easier than my previous attempts at "cutting down" sugar.
I think this should be the most obvious dietary advice for the overweight. Cut out entire classes of sugar intake such as soda and candy, except perhaps once per month or week.
I think sugar is additive, like tobacco, and with lots of bad health outcomes and because it is additive that is why it is hard to cut it out. Watch the movie Sugar Coated for one take on this line of reasoning.
It likely is as easy as cutting sugar out, just like smokers should cut cigarettes out, it is just hard to do because of the additives qualities of the drugs.
And like cigarettes, cutting down isn't really as effective as cutting it out nearly entirely, because a little bit of an additive drugs primes you for more.
For example, suppose the conversation were about entrepreneurship, and your parent comment maintained that anybody coudl start a corporation "easily" and for about $100.
Now, suppose you replied:
>If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 97% of US adults have never owned a company.
>It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice.
First, why am I using this example. Because we can all agree that actually, yes, anyone can pretty much start a corporation for $100. It's true. It's also true that 99% of people don't.
That doesn't make starting a corporation 'harder'. It takes certain steps, and you have to go through with it.
Whether 1%, 5%, 10%, or 75% of people have tried starting companies, has no impact on its difficulty.
Likewise, whether 20%, 30%, 50%, or 90% of people are obese, does not influence the dfificulty of not being obese.
Perhaps in the future only 1/10 people will be able to maintain an athletic, fit, weight. Perhaps they will have to throw away 80% of what they're served at restaurants, because they simply cannot order anything that does not have 2500 calories, whereas they want to eat 500.
This is not far from the status quo in America.
So, while it is certainly "easy" in a sense not to overeat, it's only "easy" in the same way as starting a corporation is "easy".
It's easy on paper.
If your parent argues that people should 'just do it' -- he's probably right.
That 36% of US adults are considered obese does not make it obvious that losing weight is any more complicated than cutting sugar & carbs.
First, "common sense" dietary advise is that fats are bad. That's why you see foods marketed as low-fat. Because common sense dietary advice has been focused on the wrong thing (fat instead of sugar/carbs), most people's conception of "eating healthy" is wrong.
Second, the route to being financially healthy and stable is incredibly simple: spend significantly less that you make. Yet some how a huge percentage of people in the US spend beyond their means. Could it not also be the case with cutting sugar & carbs that even if people actually knew what they needed to do, they still would not do it?
You probably just reduced your calorie intake. There is scant evidence that those sources of carbs matters at all in the sense that they are somehow worse than other sources of calories. But fair play to you for doing something. It's genuinely admirable.
As far as I'm aware there are no studies that clearly show that replacing potatoes bread etc with equivalent calories in other forms results in weight loss.
One type of macro food group affects insulin resistance. Carbs. All calories are not created equal, just ask any diabetic (and there are many many of them to ask).
We're talking about cutting out a food category and presumably replacing it with another. I don't know of any convincing evidence this results in weight loss. Open to information of course!
> We're talking about cutting out a food category
> and presumably replacing it with another.
Pretty much, yes, depending on how you categorise foods.
> I don't know of any convincing evidence this
> results in weight loss. Open to information of
> course!
Plenty of evidence exists - where have you already looked?
Atkins - probably the most famous. Tim Ferris - relatively recent. Both good starting points for some large (though in some cases you'll find some insufficiently formal) studies.
The 2014 US film 'Fed Up' goes into some good detail about why this particular food category is bad for you - including a lovely animated graphic about a half hour in.
The actual article (did you read it?) this story points to has a box on p24 that describes this too - the 'a calorie is not a calorie'. That box includes several links to some more scientific research on the subject.
The underlying problem is that the sentiment you've expressed - replacing one food category with another can't possibly be effective at reducing weight / risk of disease, improving well-being, etc - is one that the sugar industry is very happy with, and regrettably is very widely held.
To many people it's intuitive that all energy is equal in terms of what your body does with it. Unfortunately there's no evidence that this is the case, and plenty of evidence that it isn't.
Do some searches on things like 'evidence of weight loss with low-carbohydrate diets' maybe append 'high fat' for some interesting variants.
You'll find some good studies, plus an abundance of anecdotes (blogs basically :) of people who've maintained or increased their raw energy input, while reducing their weight, through dietary changes alone.
>I've cut out 90% of my sugar intake (no more soda)
Soda if just one of things with sugar (and diet soda has none anyway).
Most food, from McDonalds burgers to Chinese has loads of sugar.
And of course, losing weight is mostly a matter of reducing caloric intake. If you compensated for the sugar in sodas with extra food, you'll stay the same weight.
I always get thrown off that plan by things like yogurt. Even plain yogurt lists a ton of sugar. I can't wait for the new labels that show added sugar.
There has been new legislation passed that starting..next year?..labels will have to show total sugar and added sugar, so you can realistically get a sense of how much is original vs. additive.
Yeah I get that, it's just that you can already tell if something like plain yogurt has added sugar or not. In my experience, most brands list milk and the bacteria cultures.
I guess varying the preparation of the yogurt can still result in a wide range of sugar content.
The natural sugar that is in milk is lactose and that is not really a problem (as long as you are not lactose intolerant of course).
The problematic sugar is refined fructose. That is the stuff cannot be properly processed by the body and causes all kinds of chaos for your metabolism.
Even naturally occurring fructose, such as in fruit, is ok. But once you concentrate it into crystallized sugar or HFCS, it becomes a slow acting poison.
Yes dropping sugar is the first step. But then after a while, you want to take it further, and you start exercising. And suddenly, you need sugars again!
Anecdotally, I completely disagree. I've been eating a ketogenic diet (less than ~20 net grams per day) almost exclusively since May 2013 and have been lifting for the last 8 months and haven't needed for any carbs. While it's possible after a certain level some well-timed carbs can help you lift heavier than without, those won't be the kinds of sugars most people are eating. But, since I'm not looking to become a body builder I'll probably never need to worry about that.
Well, you have to admit that a ketogenic diet is something else entirely. That is impressive, I personally don't know any people who could stick to it for such a long time.
Good question. I did not track the intake but it was dessert after lunch, something sweet to soften the 4pm energy low, something sweet to go with morning coffee, sweetened muesli or jam for breakfast. Small things that probably added to unhealthy amounts.
Last year, I started taking LCHF lifestyle [0] seriously. The primary influence was Prof Tim Noakes [1] and his relentless tweets about how sugar is at the root of widespread obesity, and the diseases associated with obesity. I stopped having sugar and carbohydrate rich food, and my weight dropped rapidly. I went from being heaviest in my life to 10kg lighter in a span of 6 months. And I felt great.
Now I know the secret sauce of weight loss, and feeling great at the same time, but the only thing that knocks me off this diet and lifestyle is stress. When under work related stress, I end up eating carbohydrate rich food which results in quick weight gain. I am in the process of figuring out a way to stay on LCHF because I long to going back to the feeling that I have experienced while on LCHF.
I cut back my sugar intake for half a year (bread, chocolate, sodas, etc.) and felt worse, my digestion becoming more erratic and irregular. Right now, I am enjoying a couple of pieces of delicious chocolate while laughing about the people who demonize certain classes of food. We know embarrassingly little about our digestion. Who knows, in 30 years we will say proteins are the devil and then we go back to hating fats. You have to go absolutely crazy on sugars to cause diabetes. We are talking about 'regularly skipping meals and then compensating by eating a couple of chocolate bars' crazy.
White sugar is crack. Highly addictive, creating fidgets who can't focus for 5 minutes chasing the next instant gratification. White sugar and wheat shake up one's blood sugar like no other.
On the one side, I am wondering that people are still consuming sugar—the last years more and more news/facts/studies pop up putting sugar in the right light. On the other side, addicted people usually say about their drugs that they make them feel good and that they are not addicted and keep consuming. But one big problem that it's quite hard to resist sugar. It's key ingredient of most products in a super market.
The purpose of sugar is to have a spoilage-resistant renewable commodity capable of filling and refilling cargo ships to a net wealth density greater than most any choice having similar features at the time, over three hundred years ago.
To put this in perspective, that was about the same time that colonies in North America were being founded also by multinational corporations for the benefit of multinational corporations, often funded by venture capitalists among the royalty of Europe.
Sugar is a truly fungible material, exchangable at prevailing rates in any port. A single type of cargo that could pay its own way just about anywhere, allowing relatively greater voyage flexibility, in a world where logistics has always played a significant part.
While being the trader's or marketer's dream; concentrated chemical crystals which are habit forming in some way, with everyone everywhere being a potential repeat retail customer for "life".
The enthusiasm for this wealth from many different directions would be expected to have yielded very effective lobbyists to officials around the world for many generations by now. Once consumption has leveled to the sustainable growth rate, excess gains can more likely be made through manipulation.
Centuries of that has ended up supporting very strong plantation-type economies, often to the destruction of large numbers of a variety of different species, with human suffering very prominently included.
Continuous removal of wealth from Haiti, mandated long term US-Cuban non-relationship, and loss of Everglades wildlife by the millions are just some of the obvious casualties.
You, the consumer make it all possible.
It's not just for sweetening your coffee in the morning.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadWithout a government, a corporation can only be strong, when their customers are spending enough money. With a government a corporation can grow out by regulations/subsidies. Regulations are destroying small competitors, not the big corps themselves.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
It's not that simple. For instance, kids aren't free to choose what they eat or drink and they can't make rationale decisions. Many adults lack the proper information and so on...
Forced for humans is not just "gun in the head", and it's not a binary either.
E.g. constant hammering with advertising on TV and internet can be an effective force for forcing people into stuff they wouldn't otherwise do.
The argument that people can't be rational and think for themselves, therefore they need other people (a political class) to decide for them, is, frankly, disgusting. No thanks.
You'll need governments deciding things anyway. Otherwise you can't come up with fair contracts when there's a difference of power in the parties of the contract (think e.g. costumer and manufacturer and food safety regulations), even when both sides are rational.
A part of the publication explained how large lobbying efforts are made to make labeling systems less accurate or get rid of them altogether. So, in short, the industry spends a lot of money so consumers don't even know which foods are "suger foods" and which aren't.
The humanity have to build new organizations that help the masses in picking up the right choices and we need new corporations that we can trust. Just have a look at the open source movement, where even commercial companies are opening their source code to improve to build up on trust. We need corporations that put labels of ingredients on their products. But if we force companies to do so, we're destroying the start up resources a new company needs to grow.
By forcing accurate labels we are disadvantaging small companies?
I am quite sure that, in a month of work, a well intentioned NGO with 1 or 2 people could develop a hand-holding website that every company could follow, for labelling.
Can you clarify?
I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.
A 'lens requirement' cuts the effectiveness of any information in a package. I'd wager to less than a tenth of readers, compared with readable packages.
Likewise, if the individuals forming a sugar industry marketing or lobbying entity could be held personally liable for the actions of that entity, it probably wouldn't exist. That's the closest thing I can think of to a concept of business law in a libertarian sense: If you own a certain fraction of General Motors, then you're responsible for a fraction of GM's debts, if those debts exceed its assets.
Unfortunately, I can't sue.
Dishonest marketing does not infringe upon your property rights. I've never heard any libertarian claim that limiting speech, for any purpose, is justifiable base on libertarian ideals.
Where do you get that idea?
It's not very different for a cigarette manufacture to claim their product is healthy than it is for a construction company to agree to build you a house but then stop halfway through despite receiving payment. I think it's pretty clear that both would be opposed by most or all prominent forms of libertarianism.
For example, killing is forbidden, except euthanasia (in certain countries). Hedge funds can exist, but they can't do any marketing and can only have "sophisticated" investors. In Sweden, alcohol is only sold by special stores.
I'd advocate the same approach to health & food safety. Businesses can sell everything, but there should be limits on (1) marketing (can't market sugar to kids, if at all), (2) taxes (more sugar, more tax - similar to tobacco), (3) general availability (can't buy cigarettes under 18), and (4) labeling (I support labeling of GMOs and of even trace amounts of trans fat).
Edit: especially number 4 above - I see no reason that a honest business would ever see information disclosure regulation as a negative thing; in addition, availability of (trustworthy) information will only increase the economic activity and decrease economic waste (again, only applies to honest companies and products).
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right. After all, you could also say that your individual liberty is being infringed by taxes - but you can always move to a deserted island, stop using the services provided by the governments, and pay no tax!
One of the most statist phrases ever.
But that is not usually considered libertarian.
A libertarian scheme would usually be like 'certification should be a business, and foods should be certified sugar free by a specific certification company, and bear that company's sugar-free logo'.
Which I think is highly impractical
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right.
Wow. Stop considering yourself a libertarian, seriously. This is authoritarian talk. All I see you arguing for is rules, and if somone points out their flaws, more and 'smarter' rules. This is the exact opposite of libertarianism.
Without the government enforcing this perversion we might not be in this situation (probably in some other situation but who knows).
of just lying?
because every sugar product conceivable can be 'part of a nutritious breakfast' without any lying (but misleading a lot of people)
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/18/article-2344177-1A...
Also have a standard more detailed breakdown on the back.
It works well.
I LOLed at https://www.milkywaybar.com/nutrition
> MILKY WAY® is a delicious and indulgent treat that can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.
Why lie? It's heavily-processed, high-fat, high-sugar candy. Of course it's unhealthy, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
IMO one great labeling victory has been restaurants that put calorie info on menus. Some of that has been by regulation, but regardless it's a good move.
This may be true, but this statement is also missing the (possibly large?) group of people that simply have no benchmark in their mind for how much sugar is acceptable.
I've read several competing articles about daily limits to added sugar, and the number I have in my mind is 80g/day max. Given that a teaspoon of sugar is roughly 4g, this amounts to 20 teaspoons of sugar per day! I've wondered if nutrition labels listing sugar in terms of teaspoons instead of grams would help people visualize exactly how much sugar they are consuming.
I would agree that those who care about sugar intake probably will avoid Milky Ways, but I'm also concerned that if we don't have a % DV on sugar, people will perhaps assume that there is no ceiling. Why do we have % DV for fat, carbs, etc., but not sugar? Hmm, well maybe it's that no amount of sugar you eat today will harm you.
As a curious experiment, walk down the street and randomly survey people for how many grams of sugar they think they should limit themselves to.
What part of claiming to be able to enjoy a chocolate bar if you eat otherwise healthy is a "lie"? It's only "unhealthy" in the context of your overall diet.
I think there should be in Canada because we have a public health care system and the effects of sugar intake puts stresses on public health care, and those that who binge on sugar should be forced to pay for their higher costs on public health - I should not be subsiding their preventable issues.
What about ppl who eat greasy food and don't exercise?
Als, Wouldn't this merely penalize poor people with long hours and long commutes, poor people who are forced to live in food desserts, poor people who only have enough cash to buy bad food, poor people who have to feed a family of 5 on minimum wage.
1. I think most athletes who purposely ingest a lot of carbs are probably not using sugar to accomplish this.
2. Greasy food is not actually bad for you. Grease is essentially fat, which is about as healthy as you can get. In a typical fast food meal, the greasy burger is the healthy part (minus the bun). It's the fries and soft drink which are the unhealthy part.
3. Grains are an incredibly affordable source of calories (it depends on the grain, but for the most part they are all upwards of 2,000 calories for $1). I don't think anybody's in danger of starving if sugar is more expensive.
I wonder what you mean by that...
Those designations (organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, natural) have their place. The practice of it is where consumers get cheated.
I wouldn't say that sugar is a bad thing on its own, but the people who use it to enhance their products are not doing so to help our brains work better. They are doing that because they know that our species has an appreciation for this stuff and in their quest for short term profits they can externalize the long term costs associated with the effects of sugar overload which we ourselves do not have a way of detecting until it is too late.
There is no evidence to support this sort of chemtrail level conspiracy theory nonsense.
I believe that people should keep track of what food they eat and depending how they feel, modify their particular diets accordingly.
My wife and I have reduced the processed foods we eat, and try to avoid sugar, and it seems to have had a great effect on how we feel and general health.
If you are a skeptic that is fine, skepticism should be the default, but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
I wasn't able to find anything in PubMed on the causal connection as you describe, though I did find papers like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684604/ on "Archaea and Fungi of the Human Gut Microbiome: Correlations with Diet and Bacterial Residents" which describes the correlation.
> Methanobrevibacter and Candida were positively associated with diets high in carbohydrates, but negatively with diets high in amino acids, protein, and fatty acids. A previous study emphasized that bacterial population structure was associated primarily with long-term diet, but high Candida abundance was most strongly associated with the recent consumption of carbohydrates. Methobrevibacter abundance was associated with both long term and recent consumption of carbohydrates.
How do you know it's Candida and not Methanobrevibacter?
I do take supplements specifically to reduce the amount of Candida in my gut (probiotics and caprylic acid) so my feeling of better heath in the last 4 or 5 years of avoiding processed foods might also be a result of these supplements and not just avoiding processed foods. I feel better, but I can't pinpoint why.
It's a flawed experiment, though. Literally the smallest possible sample size, extremely susceptible to the placebo effect, no controls.
I'd be interested in a large, rigorously controlled study on this, where the control group is fed convincing imitations of sweet (via artificial sweeteners) and processed (via presentation) foods. A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable.
re: "A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable." I was not asking the other poster to accept my results, but rather suggesting that it would be worth the effort to do the experiment themselves.
Yes, there has been a lot written. And there is no evidence.
>but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
95%+ of the food I eat comes from my property. There's nothing processed to cut out. I feel no different than I did when I was eating little ceasars pizza and coke every day for a year. This "experiment" is not an actual experiment, and would not support the claim in question even if it were.
Sugar, on the other hand, is very obviously bad for you. It causes type 2 diabetes, it causes caries, and it also suppresses the feeling of satiety. Reducing your sugar intake is the easiest way to get into better shape.
Exercise is important, but it won't undo all the damage. E.g. if you heavily drink and smoke, no amount of exercise will undo that. It's the same with sugar. Exercise won't undo all those insulin spikes.
It's true that we need glucose, but we need it at a slow and steady rate. We don't need it at a rate which causes a massive insulin response. If your body actively combats the amount of sugar in your bloodstream, you apparently overdid it.
Non-processed food without added sugars is a good way to get a little bit of sugar over the course of several hours. The absorption rate is delayed by fibers. That's why fruits are fine while juice isn't.
The big problem with avoiding processed food is that it's really inconvenient. Cooking, just like exercise, takes time and effort.
No, excess sugar is bad for you.
E.g. if you eat some premade pasta sauce and some slices of toast, you're probably very close to exceeding your budget. So, it would be a good idea to not have a can of pop or some cookies.
Anyhow, if you only eat veggies and meat, you'll do just fine. The big problem is the added sugar found in most processed foods.
I don't agree with all of the anti-sugar things. Probably shouldn't tax sugar itself, and in moderation it isn't a bad thing. Most folks don't have a lot of candy in their diet (because there are limits). But they do drink a good deal of sugary coffees and drinks when it would be better to eat a handful of fruit and drink some water. Most folks don't need the added sugar to feed their brain - fruit and vegetables and some grains wind up as that anyway.
It isn't sugar in and of itself that is such an issue, but that we tend to put it in everything, so our consumption is really high.
Sauces and prepackaged foods have an amazing amount of added sugar. The typical american breakfast is nearly a dessert. Cranberry juice, pushed as healthy, is generally sweetened, even if it is with concentrated fruit juice. All of these things add up especially when combined with lack of reasonable choices near you and large portion sizes. And trying to figure out what has added sugar and other such things has been proven difficult. And this is a major problem for folks trying to have some sort of balance in addition to being a problem for folks that are low-to-mid income and/or have little time to cook their own food as it gets harder to limit such things even in supposedly healthy food.
People want to be victims rather than taking responsibility for themselves. They need something to blame.
Unless I'm imposing costs on others (which, admittedly, sugar can do), don't tell me what I should or shouldn't eat.
What I believe happened is that at the same time HFCS came on the market there was also a larger push to put sugar into a lot of things in place of fat.
Thus the introduction of HFCS seems to correlate with the North America weight problem but the North American weight problem also correlates with the increase in sugar in our diet -- and I understand from Sugar Coated and Dr. Lustig that is the causitive correlation.
Most commonly used HFCS varieties contains 42% or 55% fructose [1], which compares well with 50% in sucrose.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup#Compo...
The article starts off with the premise that we are currently suffering a health crisis. This is insane. It's an extreme, hyper-negative point of view. We live in the safest times in all of human history. If you're not living in a shanty town without running water and suffering from dysentery, you're doing pretty well. If your sitting in your climate-controlled house in suburbia, sipping your soda thinking "Man, I'm killing myself with this sugary drink", you are choosing to be miserable. You have decided not to enjoy the wonderful world in which we live. You have decided to focus on an oblique health threat that starving humans through out history have dreamed about. Exporting that self-imposed misery to others is impolite at best if not pure evil.
With this kind of hyper-negative thinking, we could advance medicine to the point that we become immortal with eternally youthful regenerating bodies, but we would go hunting for a way for french fries and sodas to still be evil somehow. Like these things are some sort of modern day werewolf.
The premise is laughable at best. Dangerous at worst. It's neither sane nor healthy to think like this.
You mention civil war. The war here would boil down to the noble cause of killing people to protect us from the health threats of sugar. That's insane! We must reject this thinking.
Now, what is laughable is this idea of corporations suing governments because of lost profits from legislation.
Happened with cigarettes too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVe8wwNMh24
As for the idea of civil war: obvious hyperbole is obvious. Democracy needs fixing, or much larger problems -- but if there is no fixing, corporate corruption might ensure the problems.
Now, on the plus side it's that drive that improves the human condition. But it comes with a lot of negatives too.
The impacts of trade are complex and I don't think we need to run headlong towards laws favoring large corporations, but it's a little over the top to say that it is obvious evil to agree to treat foreign companies equally to native companies. In many situations, trade will benefit everyone. It's not evil to enable and encourage that trade.
That agreement is still for not affecting the profits of multinationals...
(Though of course there is no shortage of "free-market-trumps-all" advocates to point out that such tarrifs hurt the local economy etc).
For example, I'm pretty curious about what impact NAFTA has had on illegal immigration from Mexico. Who knows if it has been significant, but surely it isn't zero (the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico is down substantially since it passed).
So, tremendous stealing of resources from the economy at large, increasing inequality and deterioration of society?
They usually even have an explicit provision for withdrawal. For instance:
http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/chap-22.asp
So could South Korea use protectionism to build up internal industries today? Sure. But it might not want to, if a different set of choices were more likely to favor South Korea.
Completely dismisses the complex reality of how decisions are made within a country. It's possible, even likely, that a system exists that represents the will of a few who benefit over the majority who suffer.
[0] http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/chap-111.asp
To me, anthropomorphizing fictitious persons is an intellectual landmine. A fictitious person is an 'it', no more a moral or ethical agent than a rock. A mountain of rock isn't evil when a slide buries a party of hikers. Gravity is a law of natural systems. The behaviors of legally constructed fictitious persons are in accord with the "laws" of those systems.
I'll give you that it's trickier to deal with bad stuff done by a corporation. With an individual you can jail them but less so with a corp unless you can pin it on an individual.
Such a scenario might well involve individuals engaged in banal evil and because individuals are moral agents, that's where blame and praise may accrue.
Anthropomorphizing a tobacco company muddies our thinking. A trade agreement is a document. The consequences of following the ideas in that document may be detrimental. But it is not a moral agent.
For me, a moral agent is not one that can 'feel responsible', but one that I can affect, by changing my own behavior, when it does 'something bad'.
The discussion of internal states is less useful. Also, the discussion of morality of people I can't affect is less useful.
If a person lobs avalanche prevention ordinance upon an unstable mountain slope thereby preventing the demise of the hikers I invented earlier, that person's actions might be said to have affected the behavior of the mountain.
If the person lobs ordinance after the invented hikers have met their fate, that person may well change the mountain slope geometry in such a manner that unique unstable accumulations are no longer physically possible [while others may be].
Clearly neither seems like a case where there is moral agency in the mountain. We get moral agency when the person lobbing ordinance onto the mountain slope is doing or forgoing the activity in the presence of hikers.
I kind of like this. No free speech or even property ownership rights for corporations, unless we decide it is in our interest. Only humans can be the source of rights or interests.
It will involve a pretty big reworking of the laws, however. Let's get started!
In the case of TPP the attempts to show how it benefits individuals rely on a lot of hypotheticals which doesn't wash if we take this stance. Everyone gains standing to stop corporations if their interests are affected, and the burden of proof is on those who want to permit some corporate behavior that anyone opposes.
In any events, rights seem orthogonal to morality. At least if morality constrains some portion of the acts that a moral agent could do because a right is a license for a particular course of action.
Anyway, while changing the laws might produce the greatest benefit and utilitarianism might be a good basis for rational moral action, that's not really my immediate intent. My goal is more pragmatic discussion and less sloganeering.
>The dispute centered on Mexico's adoption of a 20 percent tax on the use of high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks, Mayer Brown said. The financial impact was significant because Mexico is the world's second-largest market for soft drinks.
>The tax illegally favored Mexico's domestic sugar producers over U.S.-owned producers of high-fructose corn syrup, the firm said.
It doesn't seem totally unreasonable. One of the principles of trade deals is there is a level playing field rather than passing laws to advantage the locals. http://www.law360.com/articles/123636/cargill-wins-77m-from-...
It does unlevel the playing field, but the tilt is on the sugar/HFCS axis, not the US/Mexico axis. I don't see why that should not be allowed, unless it can be shown that the US has more HFCS producers and Mexico more sugar producers so that it will disproportionately favor Mexicans AND it was enacted to accomplish that rather for some geographically neutral purpose.
People whose livers are damaged have some difficulty processing fructose, but that is not the sugar's fault.
Dr. Lustig has made a name for himself by demonizing sugar. I do not believe that sugar is the demon it's commonly made out to be.
So, I'm a diabetic. It means I have to check everything and you know, 5-15g of extra sugar isn't something I can't just take into account I have to at least know.
As such I'm always surprised at all the things that 'happen to' have 50% by weight in sugar (HFCS etc). I know that stuff like stevia exist @ 0 calories, and may taste a little bit worse but in my case it's something delicious with stevia or maybe no dessert - then it's fine if it's not perfect, you know?
So what I don't get is since taste-wise cutting to 0 sugars and all stevia retains like 70%-80% of taste (with the exception of when the sugar is an important structural ingredient as with a meringue), why basically every product doesn't come in stevia and normal versions?
Like, honey nut cheerios? Fine, stevia or artificial sugar version / normal version. They don't even need price parity or anything like that.
I just don't get it.
Coke and Pepsi do this right. I drink lots and lots of coke!
always diet or zero, or pepsi max.
I don't really get why something like, say, breakfast cereals, don't have "coke zero / diet coke" versions where it's artificial. I know it can be done, since I can do that myself from a box of artificial sweetener. It can't be a lack of demand - since by that metric, diet coke wouldn't exist.
so I just don't get it. Take something like peanut butter, super healthy except for the added sugar which means I can't just eat it with abandon. Why wouldn't Jif peanut butter make a crappy version with artificial sugar. It's sugar-Jif or nothing for me (and many other people.) Same goes for like every second item in a store.
why aren't there stevia Oreos, etc. these things just don't exist. why not? I can't eat oreos but I'd eat the shit out of stevia oreos and so would a ton of people.
a lot of people just wanna eat sweets. they don't care just how good it tastes. You ever seen a fat guy turn down a donut because it didn't look good? Nobody cares about the taste... it's the taste of sweetness that we crave. . . .
there must be a conspiracy of some kind here too. (I say this tongue in cheek, I don't actually see any conspiracy I'd just like to understand it better.)
A spoonful of sugar: How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU
Dropped 4 kg, everything tastes better, no energy drop at 4pm and the cravings disappeared within first two days. Friends report similar results.
This was also much easier than my previous attempts at "cutting down" sugar.
Sadly, people can't take simple advice.
If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 36% of US adults are considered obese.
It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice.
It likely is as easy as cutting sugar out, just like smokers should cut cigarettes out, it is just hard to do because of the additives qualities of the drugs.
And like cigarettes, cutting down isn't really as effective as cutting it out nearly entirely, because a little bit of an additive drugs primes you for more.
For example, suppose the conversation were about entrepreneurship, and your parent comment maintained that anybody coudl start a corporation "easily" and for about $100.
Now, suppose you replied:
>If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 97% of US adults have never owned a company.
>It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice.
First, why am I using this example. Because we can all agree that actually, yes, anyone can pretty much start a corporation for $100. It's true. It's also true that 99% of people don't.
That doesn't make starting a corporation 'harder'. It takes certain steps, and you have to go through with it.
Whether 1%, 5%, 10%, or 75% of people have tried starting companies, has no impact on its difficulty.
Likewise, whether 20%, 30%, 50%, or 90% of people are obese, does not influence the dfificulty of not being obese.
Perhaps in the future only 1/10 people will be able to maintain an athletic, fit, weight. Perhaps they will have to throw away 80% of what they're served at restaurants, because they simply cannot order anything that does not have 2500 calories, whereas they want to eat 500.
This is not far from the status quo in America.
So, while it is certainly "easy" in a sense not to overeat, it's only "easy" in the same way as starting a corporation is "easy".
It's easy on paper.
If your parent argues that people should 'just do it' -- he's probably right.
First, "common sense" dietary advise is that fats are bad. That's why you see foods marketed as low-fat. Because common sense dietary advice has been focused on the wrong thing (fat instead of sugar/carbs), most people's conception of "eating healthy" is wrong.
Second, the route to being financially healthy and stable is incredibly simple: spend significantly less that you make. Yet some how a huge percentage of people in the US spend beyond their means. Could it not also be the case with cutting sugar & carbs that even if people actually knew what they needed to do, they still would not do it?
what about glycemic index? Surely foods with high GI are demonstrably worse?
Atkins - probably the most famous. Tim Ferris - relatively recent. Both good starting points for some large (though in some cases you'll find some insufficiently formal) studies.
The 2014 US film 'Fed Up' goes into some good detail about why this particular food category is bad for you - including a lovely animated graphic about a half hour in.
The actual article (did you read it?) this story points to has a box on p24 that describes this too - the 'a calorie is not a calorie'. That box includes several links to some more scientific research on the subject.
The underlying problem is that the sentiment you've expressed - replacing one food category with another can't possibly be effective at reducing weight / risk of disease, improving well-being, etc - is one that the sugar industry is very happy with, and regrettably is very widely held.
To many people it's intuitive that all energy is equal in terms of what your body does with it. Unfortunately there's no evidence that this is the case, and plenty of evidence that it isn't.
Do some searches on things like 'evidence of weight loss with low-carbohydrate diets' maybe append 'high fat' for some interesting variants.
You'll find some good studies, plus an abundance of anecdotes (blogs basically :) of people who've maintained or increased their raw energy input, while reducing their weight, through dietary changes alone.
Soda if just one of things with sugar (and diet soda has none anyway).
Most food, from McDonalds burgers to Chinese has loads of sugar.
And of course, losing weight is mostly a matter of reducing caloric intake. If you compensated for the sugar in sodas with extra food, you'll stay the same weight.
But it starts from milk, so there is lots of sugar it in.
I guess varying the preparation of the yogurt can still result in a wide range of sugar content.
The problematic sugar is refined fructose. That is the stuff cannot be properly processed by the body and causes all kinds of chaos for your metabolism.
Even naturally occurring fructose, such as in fruit, is ok. But once you concentrate it into crystallized sugar or HFCS, it becomes a slow acting poison.
Now I know the secret sauce of weight loss, and feeling great at the same time, but the only thing that knocks me off this diet and lifestyle is stress. When under work related stress, I end up eating carbohydrate rich food which results in quick weight gain. I am in the process of figuring out a way to stay on LCHF because I long to going back to the feeling that I have experienced while on LCHF.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet
[1]: https://twitter.com/ProfTimNoakes
On the one side, I am wondering that people are still consuming sugar—the last years more and more news/facts/studies pop up putting sugar in the right light. On the other side, addicted people usually say about their drugs that they make them feel good and that they are not addicted and keep consuming. But one big problem that it's quite hard to resist sugar. It's key ingredient of most products in a super market.
To put this in perspective, that was about the same time that colonies in North America were being founded also by multinational corporations for the benefit of multinational corporations, often funded by venture capitalists among the royalty of Europe.
Sugar is a truly fungible material, exchangable at prevailing rates in any port. A single type of cargo that could pay its own way just about anywhere, allowing relatively greater voyage flexibility, in a world where logistics has always played a significant part.
While being the trader's or marketer's dream; concentrated chemical crystals which are habit forming in some way, with everyone everywhere being a potential repeat retail customer for "life".
The enthusiasm for this wealth from many different directions would be expected to have yielded very effective lobbyists to officials around the world for many generations by now. Once consumption has leveled to the sustainable growth rate, excess gains can more likely be made through manipulation.
Centuries of that has ended up supporting very strong plantation-type economies, often to the destruction of large numbers of a variety of different species, with human suffering very prominently included.
Continuous removal of wealth from Haiti, mandated long term US-Cuban non-relationship, and loss of Everglades wildlife by the millions are just some of the obvious casualties.
You, the consumer make it all possible.
It's not just for sweetening your coffee in the morning.
Now don't get me started on coffee . . .