
Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks - ValentineC
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/health/singapore-sugar-drink-ads-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
======
mark_l_watson
Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact
other people.

I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high
medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use.

This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets.

BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just
seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If I were younger I
might consider moving there for permanent work.

~~~
smackmybishop
There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion:

As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices
become an attack on society at large.

Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a
helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if
medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal
freedom...

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and
I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years.
It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of
locations.

The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society'
first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an
impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of
course is bad for health in large quantities.

~~~
jakelazaroff
The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette
ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that
are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example,
but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to
socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
>I think your concerns are unfounded.

> cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary
> drinks that are too large

It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on
cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's
not banned, but it is controlled already.

~~~
jakelazaroff
I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized
healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.

------
xhruso00
"In addition to an ad ban, the ministry announced that sugary drinks would
also be required to display a color-coded, front-of-pack nutrition label to
list nutritional quality and sugar content." I like Japanese/Taiwanese
approach which list percentage of fruit juice (front-of-pack). And
manufacturers can't cheat with substitutes like apple cause it doesn't count.
This is way more useful for consumers to decide what they want. In countries
like Malaysia I have no idea what i am buying (sugar water vs real fruit
juice)

~~~
Someone1234
The UK has a similar "traffic light" system[0] on their foods. I cannot speak
to everyone, but for me seeing red salt makes me look again at other options.
It is a gentle nudge but helps.

By contrast US food labeling is an anti-pattern. "Serving size" seems
arbitrary and makes it impossible to compare foods even directly next to one
another on the shelf (plus they're intentionally unrealistic, like a single
chocolate bar having two "servings").

[0]
[https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/to...](https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/topics/traffic-
light-info.jpg)

~~~
jakelazaroff
It would be so simple to fix the serving size issue, too: just force labels to
list nutrition information for the whole thing as well as per serving!

~~~
jniedrauer
Arbitrary serving sizes are kind of useless though. In an ideal world, most
foods would list nutrition information in two units: per container, and per
100g. You'd be able to tell at a glance a) what you're buying, and b) how it
compares to similar items. Unfortunately that will not happen in the United
States any time soon.

~~~
philwelch
I dunno. 100g of butter is a lot.

~~~
tpetry
But you could easily compare multiple brands because they will not have
different package or serving sizes to trick the system. Here in germany 100g
nutrition labels have to be added, made-up serving sizes can be used too if
they want, but 100g nutrition tables are enforced.

------
pimmen
I had the pleasure of holding a talk at the same event as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh,
a rockstar entrepreneur and chemist in Sweden, and one of the questions he got
during his talk was how he could reconcile his drive to be an ethical
businessman and supply stuff to the military. His response was pretty long but
it made a comparison with the sugar industry (paraphrasing here, sorry Saeid
if you're reading this and I got something wrong):

"I would never force my ethics on someone else, I will however criticize
someone if they don't think their business model through on an ethical level.
You should be able to live with what you're doing, personally, without
deluding yourself or being in denial. I think Sweden, a democratic country,
has an obligation to make sure that the troops we send for peace keeping
purposes have the right gear to do the job. However, I would never, ever,
supply stuff to the sugar industry. Even though we've found loads of stuff
that could be applied to that field, I just couldn't live with myself. It
serves absolutely no utility to humanity, it kills more people every year than
war and you're primarily marketing stuff to children to form life long habits.
It just doesn't square with my morals but I've met other, smart people who
have thought long and hard about the sugar industry and came to the conclusion
that it's an ethical industry. Whatever floats their boat, but I don't want to
make money that way."

~~~
refurb
That’s a pretty self-serving attitude.

He sells weapons used to kill people, but is disgusted with the sugar
industry?

~~~
pimmen
I think he produces ceramic plates for body armor, but he could very well be
making weapons too. Either way, he profits off of war.

So, yes, he sees the sugar industry as worse and as something without any sort
of utility. Militaries bring security and are necessary, at least in his view,
and thus he sees them as a net benefit. Personally, as a software developer, I
would not build software for the military especially not anything based off of
machine learning because it would be against _my_ ethics, and I think that was
his point too; don’t ape his morals, but do at least think whatever you choose
to do through.

------
kaffeemitsahne
Just ban all ads and be done with it. Really don't understand why it's taking
us (collectively) so long to get there.

~~~
easytiger
The site you are commenting on is effectively an Ad for yc. Should that be
banned?

~~~
blub
It's not "effectively" an ad for anything, it's a discussion forum. The fact
that it _also_ offers some publicity to YC's business is an additional aspect,
but not the main one.

~~~
easytiger
It's an "ad" in as much as anything. Not to mention it sells job advertisement
space. It brings goodwill to the brand. A core tennant of advertising.

Such a weak minded assertion as "ban all advertising" without considering how
that impacts freedom of speech is unbelievable.

------
Uhuhreally
I would like to see a ban on all ads. I am sick of them. I resent with all my
heart that wherever I go I'm bombared with propaganda for products. Nobody
should have the right to hijack other peoples attention.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Banning all ads is wrong. Ads help promoting good products and services. If
you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and
that will make our economy less effective.

~~~
blub
"If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services,
and that will make our economy less effective."

That's a strange conclusion, since all products, including terrible ones are
advertised. In fact ads are essentially content-free and don't help people
decide if a product is good or not. They have zero correlation with the
quality of a product.

Some countries like France and Germany have independent organizations that buy
almost anything that one can think of, test it and make a list of quality
products. _That_ ensures people buy good products and services.

You've made me see once again that ads are essentially worthless for
individuals.

~~~
em-bee
but they also allow the advertisers to use the test results in their ads. and
that's effective. if i see a test-result in an ad i do pay attention (if i am
in the market for that kind of product)

~~~
blub
That would work just as well if they print the results on the packaging (which
they do).

------
greggman2
In 2010-11 Singapore there used to be close to zero non-sugary drinks at
convenience stores. Even all the teas used to be sweet. Lately they started
carrying Japanese brands of non-sweetened tea but for a while if you wanted
non-sweet tea you had to make it yourself. Which of course is probably better
for the planet but if you're just out and about and wanted a drink from a 7/11
your options were pretty slim.

The big thing lately in Singapore, Tokyo, Malaysia is "brown sugar milk tea".
I think it's hit NYC and LA but basically you take a tapoica milk tea but
before you put the milk and tea in you coat the sides of the plastic cup with
brown sugar syrup. Then, instead of the old tea + milk it's now like tea +
cream and far more cream than tea such that it's more like sweetened tea
flavored milk than milk flavored tea.

Search for "Tiger Sugar" for I guess the brand the started the new style?

[https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=isch)

There are apparently the equivilant of 20 teaspoons of sugar in 1 drink.
Compare to 330ml of Coke which is about 7 teaspoons of sugar. The Malaysian
government put out a warning as they got super popular.

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-
mi...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-ministry-
urges-malaysians-to-shun-sickly-sweet-bubble-tea/1774661)

I'm curious why now in Tokyo. Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the
90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for
years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese
tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to
a ridiculous level. It's like every spare store front has started selling.

~~~
ValentineC
> _Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles
> in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and
> I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it 's even sweeter
> and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level._

I believe it was around 2011 that the more premium bubble tea vendors in
Singapore started offering a choice of how much syrup to add to one's drink
(Koi Cafe, which may or may not have originated from Taiwan, might have
started this trend).

I'm surprised that this particular service hasn't made its way to Japan.

~~~
greggman2
Koi Cafe and Tiger Sugar are both in Tokyo now as are about 40 other brands,
all within the last year or so.

------
jingfire
Bravo for Singapore govs! Instead of relying on people not digesting too much
sugars, they make the policy surveyed on people to discourage the sugar
access, reducing the diabetes risks.

------
aussieguy1234
I'd go further than this. Here in Australia, cigarette packets are forced to
use bland, non branded packaging. It should be the same for these drinks.
They'll be less attractive if they all look the same.

~~~
ImaCake
I think we are many many years away from the plain packaging dream. Cigarettes
were first plain packaged in 2012 in Australia[0], but doctors and researchers
have been drawing links between tobacco and disease pretty much as long as
we've had epidemiological tools available to do so [1].

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging)
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History)

------
karmakaze
By only targeting sugar, Singapore will become the test area for what happens
when a population converts to artificial sweeteners.

I'm both curious and afraid for the results to come in.

~~~
therealdrag0
Don't we have stable populations of people consuming artificial sweeteners for
like 50 years now?

------
NoPicklez
I think this would be great to actually demonstrate what drinks are actually
"sugary" and I mean it against drinks that market themselves to be healthy but
are very high in sugar

------
xhruso00
Singapore goes opposite direction as most countries. Personally I think sugar
tax is way powerful. Those money can be used to educate people. Banning ads is
not going to educate people.

~~~
greggman2
Does it work? I think I'm mostly for the ban but as for a tax... Alcohol is 4x
the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage
of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have
those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on
every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm
wrong).

I'd prefer a world where people choose to smoke less and eat healthier. I'm
curious what methods are most effective. I believe it was going lower in the
USA for a while but then blew up again with vaping? And you only have to visit
almost any place in the USA to see we're failing at convincing people to eat
healthy.

~~~
ValentineC
> _Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered
> the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe
> and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from
> smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG
> (please correct me if I 'm wrong)._

Singaporean here. I can get my $2 beers and $12 bottles of wine at the
supermarket, so alcohol isn't that expensive. On the other hand, drinking at a
restaurant or bar is expensive, but moreso because rent in Singapore is crazy.

I'm not sure about the smoking rates, but I reckon that it has gone down among
the younger generation because there's so much else to spend their money on
these days — and smoking was recently banned on Orchard Road, which is the
main shopping district.

------
mellosouls
I'm not opposed to this but it strikes me as somewhat weak - if you think
something is bad enough to ban visibility of it, why not just go all the way
and ban the thing itself. Same with smoking, alcohol, etc.

Of course, prohibition doesn't have a terribly successful history but the
whole approach seems odd and inconsistent to me.

I guess the rationale is a pragmatic de-normalising of toxic and addictive but
currently fully normalised foods and substances over the long term.

~~~
scarmig
Banning advertising here just restricts the freedom of corporations. Banning
the item itself means individuals who want it can't get it.

~~~
mellosouls
And corporations can't vote .. :)

~~~
BubRoss
Corporations are a centralization of power that has obligations to money above
all else.

Also if you give me the choice between being able to vote and being to to hire
a lobbying firm, I know which would have more influence.

~~~
anticensor
Would you admit the corporation one vote or as many votes as total number of
shares divided by number of shares held by smallest shareholder?

~~~
BubRoss
Is this a serious question? Are you talking about voting for politicians?
Anyone can start as many corporations as they want.

Also corporations have roughly 100 million shares and anyone can buy a single
share, so your formula would give one corporation more votes than the number
of people who participated in the 2016 US election.

Do you really think corporations are under represented in the political
process?

~~~
anticensor
I wanted to illustrate sillyness of the idea. Partners of a corporation are
already represented, no need to represent the whole partnership.

~~~
BubRoss
That seems like a rehash of what I was already saying, I'm not sure what point
you are trying to make.

------
eikenberry
I'm curious if they already have bans on adds for candy? It seems like if you
are going to ban ads for one kind of candy, you'd ban them for all.

~~~
Marsymars
By most objective determinations of what is "candy", "cereal" such as Froot
Loops would qualify.

(And I'm fully down for banning ads for candy cereal.)

------
tus88
Why not do something that might actually work, like ban the sale of high-sugar
carbonated drinks?

~~~
lemmsjid
Banning products that a sub-population of people are effectively addicted to
has a long, multi-instance history of not working and instead contributing to
crime (see various drug prohibitions). A product being banned can actually be
a form of advertising (or at least production of demand) by suggesting it is
risky, cool, or potent in some way.

On the other hand, banning advertising for a category of products, or
restricting the advertising to fact-based, or forcing risk factor inclusion,
can help produce or accelerate cultural shifts that reduce the demand for the
product.

~~~
tus88
Banning the sale of != banning the thing itself.

If the goal was a massive reduction, not total elimination, I think it would
work.

Would many people really go to the black market to get sugary Coke when the
supermarket has shelves of Diet Coke available?

~~~
lemmsjid
Ah, I see what you're saying, thanks!

------
bad_user
I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they
get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree
with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of
obesity.

But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am
increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on
weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in
favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns.

First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1],
even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome,
see for example:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581)

You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for
T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2
diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for
that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start
indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them
going up.

People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that
they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic
fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when
consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's
glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And
if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will
get a non-alcoholic fatty liver.

Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads
for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it
has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will
make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what
researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food
is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And
sugary drinks are among the worst.

But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in
nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories
in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into
the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate-
insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3].

The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim
however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be
explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our
satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a
food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior.

So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white
bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars
or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients.

[1] [https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-
basis-...](https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-
guideline-recommendations-sugar-intake-systematic-review)

[2] [https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-
caf...](https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-cafeteria-
diet.html)

[3] [http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-
with-...](http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-gary-
taubes-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/)

~~~
kgwgk
Food consumption is a leading cause of obesity so maybe all the food,
beverages and restaurants ads should be banned.

~~~
yifanl
Why would food or drinks need advertisement? These are products that have
literally infinite demand, nobody can live without them.

~~~
kgwgk
Demand for food is not infinite (maybe the word you were looking for was
inelastic?). And even if you don’t need ads to create demand for “food” that
is a broad category with many competing products from many competing
providers.

~~~
bad_user
Interestingly the food industry has perverse incentives ... because humans
have a maximum limit of food eaten during the day, big companies like Coca
Cola can only grow by encouraging people to eat more.

Since the more people eat, the more they spend on food, the more revenue
generated.

Therefore food companies are incentivized to produce highly palatable food
that trick the brain into overeating. One common strategy is to combine sugar
with fat (think donuts), bonus points if it has caffeine too (chocolate with
milk). Such combinations are not very natural. You won't find in nature foods
that are high in both sugar and fat. And this kind of processing matters.
Think of the difference between cocoa leaves and crack cocaine.

And now that we have an obesity problem, the same companies also sell products
for diabetics, or diet products with "zero calories" that are highly processed
and may contain substances that are damaging to our gut or general health.
It's very profitable to create a problem and then to provide the solution too.

And unfortunately you won't see ads for whole foods.

But you will see whole foods vilified periodically (e.g. starchy plants, meat,
etc), with ingenuous food companies jumping to the rescue with highly
processed stuff. The ongoing race for "fake meat" makes me cringe.

~~~
kgwgk
> And unfortunately you won't see ads for whole foods.

“Whole Foods” does definitely run ads :—)

------
exabrial
How adout we stop arresting non violent offenders? Then I'll be impressed.
This is fake crap news and hn upvoters should be ashamed of themselves.
Furthermore, in Seattle, the sugar tax doesn't apply to the home town hero,
further sealing their monopoly as they hand wave through social issues.

------
qwerty456127
They should also penalize gluten-containing products (and that's not just
foods, e.g. shampoo may contain gluten too). Google zonulin, leaky gut, wheat
belly and microbiome diet to find out why.

~~~
jedimastert
I get that you're being sarcastic, but can you expound on why? This isn't a
ban on the sale of sugary drinks, just the advertisement of such.

~~~
qwerty456127
I believe (given the information you can find by googling the subjects I've
listed, it is scientifically-backed in reasonable degree, you will find
references to scientific papers in the books too) gluten is the second if not
the first cause of the obesity epidemic.

TL/DR: besides being very bad for people with genuine celiac disease gluten
(via zonulin) disregulates intestinal wall tight junctions in generally
healthy people causing systematic inflammation, immune system problems
(including weak immunity, allergies and autoimmune diseases) and metabolic
syndrome (which means obesity and increased risk of diabetes as well as
cardiovascular and endocrine diseases). Meanwhile, you can find gluten
everywhere, not only in wheat products. Added gluten increases groceries and
cosmetics shelf life.

If I were the one in charge I would order more thorough research and consider
ban on advertisements for both sugary and gluten-rich foods + additional
taxation on these goods sales.

