So is tobacco ok if it's local? I eat mostly local food and once in a while someone offers me some locally farmed tobacco and I try it. That's not "industry" but it's also probably not great for me.
I've mentioned this before but over 40 years ago the periodical R & D was originally known as Industrial Research, and the R & D 100 was the IR100, showcasing the most promising companies they picked out every year in their opinion.
It wasn't too much like an academic publication, there were plenty of those, but lots of times a breakthrough would be reported anyway, and everything was more commercially oriented by far.
You know how trade publications can be kind of uninteresting for non-insiders, IR could be so boring that college professors wouldn't even read it.
But you could tell when an author had recently left academia and joined industry though because their papers appeared more academic than very seasoned ones.
It's still a challenging transition to make, but I'll never forget how it was addressed one time in the back pages. Where you get the occasional cartoon comic like you would in consumer media.
There's two scientists in lab coats working at their benches, the boss comes on the intercom and they look at each other as he blasts from the overhead speaker:
"Hey you guys in Research, get off your butts and invent something that's habit forming".
If sugar alcohols are causing bowel irritation, it may be worth avoiding all fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. These are known as FODMAPs and are common in may fruits and vegetables which are all healthy foods for those who are able to digest them without issue.
Keeping a healthy diet while avoiding them is extremely difficult, so if they are not causing irritation, avoiding them will likely do more harm than good. Excessive amounts, or a sudden increase in intake, can cause issues for anyone, so changes in diet, especially from an unhealthy diet to one high in fresh fruits and vegetables, may be best done gradually.
"That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy."
My caveman brain was psyched out by the idea of stopping my coke drinking habit. I thought I had a soda addiction. Turns out I didnt, I just didnt drink enough water. After I pulled water bottles instead of coke cans from the fridge, the cravings went away.
Sometimes we don't need cold baths or extreme regimens to fix all the messed up things we're doing to our bodies. Simple changes go far to heal the damage.
I grew up close to Winston Salem, North Carolina. The city with two cigarette brands named after it. Everyone died of emphysema or lung cancer there. As a 10 year old kid, I could buy cigarettes from stores. In the 6th grade, our class took a tour of the RJ Reynolds factory in Tobaccoville, NC (yes that is an actual place) and we watched as our school teachers were given free sample packs of cigarettes.
I tell that story because it is true.
And I wonder... is there a town named Twinkieville in the USA where everyone dies of obesity and/or diabetes and kids can buy pounds of candy at the store without an ID? Or, is every town in America Twinkieville?
This area is very interesting and lots of this is on the money. That said, I think there are some places where it overreaches and possibly verges on fear mongering based on pretty weak evidence.
I'm not sure NSS are necessarily "healthwashing" - they are genuinely a healthier alternative, at least in SSBs. Pointing to some very speculative research about "gut microbiome disruption" as if that somehow means NSS are something we should be concerned about in our diet doesn't seem to reflect the body of evidence on the subject. On balance they seem to be either a neutral or beneficial product, depending on what they replace in the diet.
I think one important distinction between UPF and cigarettes is that we have lots of examples of healthy UPFs. Are there any such examples for cigarettes? Even those researchers who voice concerns about the health impacts of UPFs (Kevin Hall, Samuel Dicken) seem to be largely interested in identifying _which_ UPFs might drive poor health outcomes and why, so we can regulate industry to make their products more health promoting.
My concern with this analogy between cigarettes and UPFs is that we end up with a movement to completely ban UPFs when they have lots of useful properties (can be stored at ambient temperature, long shelf life, reliable quality) that make them very important for people with limited means. The dream scenario, IMO, is that we regulate out the worst of the harmful properties, rather than trying to get rid of them entirely (which I think is the dream scenario with cigarettes).
What a load of crock! People have agency. Free will. So what if McDonalds puts out a cool new toy in their adult happy meal or some special sauce loaded with glutamates. Fuck em! Say that to them right now, in your head or out loud: fuck em!
You can stop this addiction right now by merely doing nothing and not eating "UPFs". You have the power. When you get stressed and want to burn time and energy eating because it's at least eating, how about doing a different thing? Each one of us is powered by a soul that can defy these behavior loops with some self-reflection.
Most food in supermarkets is now just slop. Foam for bread, veggies that have been grown as fast as possible and packaged as fresh despite being weeks or months old, sprayed with chemicals and shipped halfway around the world, meat raised in a shed and fed one food, which is then injected with water to increase it's weight, freerange eggs that were laid 6 weeks ago and have had their protective layer washed off so must be refrigerated...and on it goes.
"UPFs share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation. These parallels should inform how we classify and regulate UPFs."
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There was a "Nature of Things" episode on this titled, "Foodspiracy". The reason why UPF's have been designed and marketed with many of the same strategies as tobacco is because several big tobacco companies diversified into food. They literally transferred their expertise from marketing cigarettes to marketing junk food.
Companies like Joe Camel started out using cute/cool animal mascots to condition kids so they'd buy Joe Camel cigarettes when they were old enough to smoke (if not sooner). There was a lot of competition for adult smokers, so hooking kids on their brand before any other company got to them was a winning strategy. When they pivoted into UPF's, they immediately put animal mascots and cartoon characters on cereal boxes. They no longer had to wait for their target audience to grow up a bit.
It's sobering to find out that companies specializing in unhealthy addiction have literally gone from cigarettes to potato chips and breakfast cereals without missing a step, and kids are their preferred demographic.
18 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 33.8 ms ] threadIt wasn't too much like an academic publication, there were plenty of those, but lots of times a breakthrough would be reported anyway, and everything was more commercially oriented by far.
You know how trade publications can be kind of uninteresting for non-insiders, IR could be so boring that college professors wouldn't even read it.
But you could tell when an author had recently left academia and joined industry though because their papers appeared more academic than very seasoned ones.
It's still a challenging transition to make, but I'll never forget how it was addressed one time in the back pages. Where you get the occasional cartoon comic like you would in consumer media.
There's two scientists in lab coats working at their benches, the boss comes on the intercom and they look at each other as he blasts from the overhead speaker:
"Hey you guys in Research, get off your butts and invent something that's habit forming".
A list of sugar alcohols including their classification numbers in Europe is:
Sorbitol (E 420)
Mannitol (E 421)
Isomalt (E 954)
Maltitol and Maltitol Sirup (E 965)
Lactitol (E 966)
Maltitol and Maltitol Sirup (E 965)
Xylitol (E 967)
Erythritol (E 967)
Keeping a healthy diet while avoiding them is extremely difficult, so if they are not causing irritation, avoiding them will likely do more harm than good. Excessive amounts, or a sudden increase in intake, can cause issues for anyone, so changes in diet, especially from an unhealthy diet to one high in fresh fruits and vegetables, may be best done gradually.
"That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy."
Unhappy Meals - Michael Pollan https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/
Sometimes we don't need cold baths or extreme regimens to fix all the messed up things we're doing to our bodies. Simple changes go far to heal the damage.
I tell that story because it is true.
And I wonder... is there a town named Twinkieville in the USA where everyone dies of obesity and/or diabetes and kids can buy pounds of candy at the store without an ID? Or, is every town in America Twinkieville?
I'm not sure NSS are necessarily "healthwashing" - they are genuinely a healthier alternative, at least in SSBs. Pointing to some very speculative research about "gut microbiome disruption" as if that somehow means NSS are something we should be concerned about in our diet doesn't seem to reflect the body of evidence on the subject. On balance they seem to be either a neutral or beneficial product, depending on what they replace in the diet.
I think one important distinction between UPF and cigarettes is that we have lots of examples of healthy UPFs. Are there any such examples for cigarettes? Even those researchers who voice concerns about the health impacts of UPFs (Kevin Hall, Samuel Dicken) seem to be largely interested in identifying _which_ UPFs might drive poor health outcomes and why, so we can regulate industry to make their products more health promoting.
My concern with this analogy between cigarettes and UPFs is that we end up with a movement to completely ban UPFs when they have lots of useful properties (can be stored at ambient temperature, long shelf life, reliable quality) that make them very important for people with limited means. The dream scenario, IMO, is that we regulate out the worst of the harmful properties, rather than trying to get rid of them entirely (which I think is the dream scenario with cigarettes).
You can stop this addiction right now by merely doing nothing and not eating "UPFs". You have the power. When you get stressed and want to burn time and energy eating because it's at least eating, how about doing a different thing? Each one of us is powered by a soul that can defy these behavior loops with some self-reflection.
------------
There was a "Nature of Things" episode on this titled, "Foodspiracy". The reason why UPF's have been designed and marketed with many of the same strategies as tobacco is because several big tobacco companies diversified into food. They literally transferred their expertise from marketing cigarettes to marketing junk food.
Companies like Joe Camel started out using cute/cool animal mascots to condition kids so they'd buy Joe Camel cigarettes when they were old enough to smoke (if not sooner). There was a lot of competition for adult smokers, so hooking kids on their brand before any other company got to them was a winning strategy. When they pivoted into UPF's, they immediately put animal mascots and cartoon characters on cereal boxes. They no longer had to wait for their target audience to grow up a bit.
It's sobering to find out that companies specializing in unhealthy addiction have literally gone from cigarettes to potato chips and breakfast cereals without missing a step, and kids are their preferred demographic.