
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
======
ericabiz
It amazes me that this article _still_ pushes the agenda that "fat makes us
fat." If there's one thing that hasn't proven out _at all_ , it's that fat
makes us fat!

The NY Times has even run other articles saying as much:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-
really...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-
us-fat.html) (by Gary Taubes, whose book "Why We Get Fat" is a must-read.)

The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is
often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains
are more problematic than fat consumption. Hence skyrocketing obesity.

Eating a low-carb diet and easing off grains (particularly "white" grains) and
sugars will help you lose weight. From the article I linked above: "On the
very low-carbohydrate diet, Dr. Ludwig’s subjects expended 300 more calories a
day than they did on the low-fat diet and 150 calories more than on the low-
glycemic-index diet. As Dr. Ludwig explained, when the subjects were eating
low-fat diets, they’d have to add an hour of moderate-intensity physical
activity each day to expend as much energy as they would effortlessly on the
very-low-carb diet. And this while consuming the same amount of calories."

I can also speak from personal experience: I went gluten-free after being
diagnosed with gluten intolerance in 2009. In three weeks, I effortlessly shed
12 pounds--12 pounds that had refused to come off previously no matter how
much exercise I was doing or how religiously I tracked my caloric intake. I
wasn't doing gluten-free to lose weight; I got dragged into it by a diagnosis,
so this was a wholly unexpected yet awesome side benefit.

I've since noticed that if I slide back into eating too many carbs and sugars
(even gluten-free ones), I start to gain weight again, and I feel groggy and
disoriented. As a side effect of this diet^Wlifestyle change, I've also
completely been able to drop caffeine consumption--something I never expected.
Put simply, I didn't feel like I had been hit by a train when I woke up.
Caffeine and energy drink consumption has spiked right along with "low-fat",
high-carb diets. Something to consider.

~~~
Goladus
_It amazes me that this article still pushes the agenda that "fat makes us
fat." If there's one thing that hasn't proven out at all, it's that fat makes
us fat!_

Overeating makes us fat. Caloric surplus makes us fat. It's pretty trivial to
consume a caloric surplus eating lots of fatty foods. In that sense: fat makes
us fat and it's silly to try denying it. It doesn't mean a low-fat diet will
make you lose weight, it just means that high-fat diets are going to make you
fat.

Excellent refutation of Taubes hypothesis:

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-
hypothesis-of-obesity.html)

Insulin does not regulate fat storage, leptin does. Obesity is a complex state
and there are no simple answers. A diet that may be best for weight loss in
one individual may not be the same diet that is best for another. This seems
particularly likely if one of the two individuals is not obese.

 _The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is
often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains
are more problematic than fat consumption._

They aren't more problematic. Aside from the relationship to cholesterol
levels, they are the same problem.

The problems are:

    
    
        1.  High caloric density.
        2.  *Vanishing* caloric density-- foods that prevent satiation.
        3.  Addictive flavors and sensations that cause cravings.
    

Calorie surplus makes you gain weight, and unless you're building muscle it's
going to be fat. All Ludwig's experiments suggest (as reported by Taubes, with
lazy citation[1]) is that obese people who have just lost 10-15% of their
weight tend to have a higher daily metabolism without conscious addition of
physical exercise on a low-carb diet, compared to a low-fat diet or a low-GI
diet. This in turn suggests it might be easier to maintain calorie balance on
a low-carb diet than a low-fat diet (for formerly obese people who have just
dieted to lose 10-15% of their body weight).

postcript:

I would also add that lifestyle changes are a factor as well as diet.
Addictive foods are more dangerous to someone who has a snacking/forager
mentality than someone who plans and eats fixed meals every day.

[1] This appears to be the study referenced in the NY Times article:
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154>

~~~
schoper
I'm not too impressed by Stephan Guyenet's article. He is wrong about one of
his main points that fat is completely regulated by the brain and that insulin
does not cause fat gain. You can Google for photographs of people who have
done insulin injections in a single place over many years (rather than moving
the injection point around) and see huge fat deposits at the injection site.
That has got to be tissue regulation. Further, lipodystrophy is hard to
explain by only invoking brain regulation.

We know that artificial insulin is a great way to gain weight. But is that
only for diabetics? Hardly. It works just as well on athletes. Stop by your
local gym and ask any of the chemically-assisted bodybuilders there for
details. Insulin injections are a very common way to put on weight while
bulking.

The idea that the body is "confused" by food density, which seems to underlie
many of your ideas, is simply unsupported. The brain is very good at measuring
calorie intake irrespective of density. I could point you to rat studies to
confirm this, but I'd rather propose the following experiment that you can try
in your own kitchen: Try making cream of cauliflower soup tonight, one with
skim milk and the other with heavy cream. Measure how many spoonfuls of each
that you can eat before getting full. Your brain does _not_ get fooled by food
density.

~~~
Goladus
_Try making cream of cauliflower soup tonight, one with skim milk and the
other with heavy cream. Measure how many spoonfuls of each that you can eat
before getting full._

The important question is not _how many spoonfulls_ it's, _how many calories_?

1 cup of skim milk is 86 calories. 1 cup of heavy cream is 821 calories.

Let's imagine something a little more simple than cauliflower soup:
strawberries and cream. 50 calories of strawberries + 1/2 cup of heavy cream
would be 460 calories. An easy, common dessert. You could also eat those 50
calories of strawberries along with 5 cups of skim milk. Or maybe eat a whole
pound of strawberries (150 calories) and only need 3.6 cups of skim milk. Or
maybe 50 cals of strawberries, 100 calories of shortcake, and 3.6 cups of skim
milk.

Which eater is more likely to overshoot their ideal caloric intake by a bit?
Which eater is more likely to stop eating the moment they get full?

The brain isn't fooled, but it doesn't have to be. The person who gorged on
the shortcake knows they overate, but they still took on more calories than
they're going to burn. And of course-- if the brain can be fooled, being
fooled by high-calorie foods is going to be worse than being fooled by low-
calorie foods, on average. Which is more likely to result in a calorie
surplus: Salt on your mashed potatoes or salt on your buttered, cheese-
smothered mashed potatoes?

That is why I listed calorie-dense foods as #1. Without understanding caloric
density, it's very hard for anyone to know (without outside guidance) when or
how they are being fooled.

~~~
dredmorbius
Are you really putting a full cup of cream into a serving of cauliflower soup?

For your strawberries and cream example, I'm known to have blueberries with
cream from time to time. Which ends up typically being a half cup or so of
blueberries, and a tablespoon or two of cream. Much more than that is far too
much (and that's from someone who's got an appetite).

~~~
Goladus
Your appetite sounds much smaller than mine. But the examples are mostly a
waste of time. Either you accept my premise or not, which is:

    
    
        You're more likely to get fat eating calorie-dense foods.
    

There are many mechanisms to regulate calorie intake. The fullness feeling is
just one of them. If you are only relying the fullness mechanism to regulate
calories and every meal is loaded with high-calorie foods like butter, olive
oil, gravy, fatty meat, eggs and the like, odds are higher that you're going
to be running a surplus more often than not. And thus: gaining weight.

Yes, not all weight gain is bad and there is more to body composition than
weight. But weight was the topic under discussion for this thread.

~~~
dredmorbius
I largely don't accept the premise in favor of: you're more likely to get fat
eating foods that promote overeating,, and partitioning those calories into
fat, while failing to burn off the excess calories.

That's a large part of the salt, sugar, fat trifecta. It stimulates
overeating, it spikes insulin at the same time that you're dumping large
quantities of fats directly (dietary fat) and indirectly (triglycerides from
fructose) into the body, while depressing inclinations toward activity.a

As to my diet, intake typically ranges ~3500-4500 cal/day. I eat consciously
and exercise portion control according to my goals.

~~~
Goladus
_I largely don't accept the premise in favor of: you're more likely to get fat
eating foods that promote overeating_

My argument is that the factors are not mutually exclusive.

Huh and yeah, 4000 calories per day would constitute an absolutely enormous
intake, consistent with a professional athlete (marathon runner, NFL
linebacker, etc).

~~~
dredmorbius
Male, 6'2", 250#, athletic, weightlifting and rowing.

------
crazygringo
It's so funny how, over the past couple of years, good-tasting food is now a
"conspiracy".

When a Michelin chef meticulously constructs a dish to give you pleasure, he's
a creative genius whose dedication to his art is applauded.

But when the people behind Snickers do it to give you pleasure, they're
nefarious conspirators trying to manipulate you and keep you addicted.

Yes, people who make food are trying to make it taste better, minimize their
own costs, and keep you coming back. Why is this suddenly considered "news"?

(I mean, the article is plenty interesting, it's just the sensationalism of
calling it "food engineering", "addiction", etc. that bothers me.)

~~~
DanBC
Take a chicken. Roast it, with vegetables. Include some lightly steamed
vegetables. Have some kind of gravy. If you really want it have some kind of
honey glazing for the carrots.

That's a reasonably healthy meal.

Take the same chicken. Take as much meat off it as you can, and sell that as
chicken breast etc. Mechanically recover other bits of meat from the carcass.
Shape it into a tiny mouthsize bite, with salt and spices and fat and filler.
Then cover it in a breadcrumb coating. Deep fry it. (That crumb coating soaks
up the oils.) Serve it with a sugary-sauce. You now have something which is
much cheaper than the roast chicken; it's much easier to eat; it's weirdly
tasty; but it's also weirdly not satisfying.

And the reason this is done is not to create the best tasting food possible
(the motivation behind Michelin starred chefs) but to cuts costs while getting
people to buy more. They don't care about the pleasure you get - they only
want your money.

~~~
NoPiece
Or take the same chicken, cover it in salt, buttermilk, and highly processed
white flour, then fry it in duck fat like the New York Times does in this
recipe:

[http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/good-
techn...](http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/good-technique-
means-great-fried-chicken/)

Is it conspiracy that they use some of the same techniques as the processed
food industry, or is it just those are some of the basic techniques to make
food taste good.

~~~
DanBC
There are a couple of differences.

Look at that recipe - you have big bits of meat, with bones, and some salt /
fat coating. You take a bite, and you chew it, and then you have to fiddle
about getting bits off the bone.

Popcorn chicken is tiny. You pop one in, and you're reaching for the next one
as you're chewing the first.

The recipe uses big bits of chicken. Popcorn chicken uses the bits of the
carcass that would normally have been used for soup.

There are different ratios of fat to meat content - popcorn chicken has a lot
more fat, because it has a lot more coating.

Both of them are tasty, but one has been engineered to be maximally tasty at
minimal cost.

~~~
NoPiece
Those are good points. The confluence of maximally tasty and minimal cost can
leads to very unhealthy food. I just don't like the intent that is implied
when the article uses inflammatory phrases like science of addiction or
designed to addict.

~~~
DanBC
I agree that the language is really poor. It's a shame that it sells papers
and documentaries.

Food could be a fascinating documentary. Instead we get "supersize me", which
is fun but not rigorous.

------
drostie
I do occasionally enjoy pointing out to people that the soda/pop/cola they've
bought is a drink designed to disappear. The water is carbonated, so that you
do not savour the drink but immediately try to gulp it down. There is
phosphoric acid and a surprising amount of sodium, which both make you
salivate, so that you briefly feel that you're refreshed -- and then your
saliva is depleted so that your mouth goes dry. The other ingredients --
sugar, flavorings, and caffeine -- are essentially the same mixture which
makes coffee so popular. The huge difference from coffee is that cola's design
allows you to not merely sip at it as part of your morning routine, but gulp
it down while you're not even paying attention, then reach thirstily for...
presumably another cola.

~~~
pm90
Exactly. Whenever I see an ad for cola with some variant of 'delicious and
refreshing' I feel 'Well, why don't you just drink water? Sure its not
delicious but certainly refreshing'. One thing that genuinely does refresh is
lemonade; I wonder why that hasn't caught up though.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>One thing that genuinely does refresh is lemonade; I wonder why that hasn't
caught up though.

When was the last time you saw a lemonade ad?

~~~
NoPiece
Lemonade tastes great fresh, but it very noticeably tastes worse when
canned/bottled. I think that disparity keeps it from being able to challenge
carbonated sodas on a large scale.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY_JKz9detM>

~~~
justincormack
In France you can get citron pressee in any bar, they just take a fresh lemon,
ice, water and sugar (mix yourself how you like). Just keep some lemons in the
fridge... it takes seconds.

~~~
NoPiece
Some big sit down chain restaurants in the US do a good fresh lemonade.
California Pizza Kitchen comes to mind, and I'll often order it. But there is
still all that fast food and canned/bottled/vending machine consumption to
deal with.

~~~
justincormack
Can we not build a robot real lemonade dispenser?

~~~
NoPiece
Do you live near a Hot Dog on a Stick? I don;t think a robot could compete.
And if it did it would be sad for the lemonade stompers...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=unYgoUF-
pdQ#t=29s)

------
127001brewer
_... "As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to
children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing.
..."_

Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?

As a parent myself, I know how damn hard it is for kids to eat anything
consistently, especially "healthy" foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.
And our kids have snacks in moderation.

It seems to me that if parents were more "responsible", which is a horribly
generalized term, then the food executives wouldn't have private meetings to
discuss how to deal with obesity - their products would have adapted to the
healthy market.

Parenting is hard. Being a "responsible" parent is harder. Tough shit.

~~~
jmj42
I've not found it difficult to get my kids (2 teenage daughters) to
consistently eat healthy foods. Hell, we can't keep fresh fruits and
vegetables in the house. A one pound bag of baby carrots lasts about a week,
one pound bunch of bananas: about 3 days, a pint of blue berries: About an
hour (blue berries never last long at our house). The list goes on, but that's
not the point.

I don't think it's really a responsibility thing. I don't know any parent that
_want_ their kids eating junk, but fresh fruit and vegetables are actually
quite expensive and far more difficult to keep than your average junk snack.
That's the hard part: justifying the higher cost and spoilage when you're just
barely making the bills.

Most of my childhood was spent right at the government assistance threshold.
During the down times, our health increased, and our dit included more fresh
fruit and vegetables. During the times above that line, with no assistance,
the high cost of fresh produce meant meant that it wasn't around.

So, to answer your question, "Why aren't parents more responsible for their
children's health?" Because they can't afford to be. Though there are many
factors that contribute to the obesity problem, claiming it's poor parental
responsibility is a useless over-simplification.

Btw, I've been parenting for 18 years now. When is it supposed to get hard?

~~~
teyc
I've two teenage kids albeit a little younger than yours.

I found one way to hack their stomach share is to stick cut fruits/carrots on
the table when they're doing homework. Another technique is to introduce
subtle variety into the shapes, kind of like how pop songs have the same tune
but a lot of work goes into varying the accompaniment. With carrots, give them
a mix varying thickness, length, tapers etc. Observe how they eat. They'll
start to play with the shapes etc.

Since you have daughters and they'd listen if you knew something tricks that'd
help with weight. Talk to them about set points.

The level of sugar, salt and fat we prefer depend on what our "set point" is.
A set point is like a thermostat. It determines what we feel is comfortable or
not.

If you go to developing countries, you will find cakes and biscuits that are
very plain tasting. It isn't because they don't know how to make cakes and
biscuits. It is because the people have a different preferred set point. If
you serve them typical American desert, they will actually react in disgust
because it is overpowering.

The same with soft drinks. A person who consumes soft drinks regularly raise
their set point for sugars. To the extent they will no longer drink plain
water. One only has to look around at their friends to realize this is going
on.

The trick though, is this - the set point can be altered. There are two parts
to this - water, and attention.

Drinking plain water regularly will, after six to 12 months, increase your
preference for water. It will also alter your set point that after a while,
you will find rich foods a little too rich for your liking. Going cold turkey
for two weeks can be very helpful when starting out. Initially, water will
taste disgusting. But your ancestors have been drinking water for millennias.
Put up with it for a while and your set point has to be down-regulated. I
personally know of someone who lost 15 kgs from just changing their water-
drinking habit alone.

Paying attention is another method. One of the common problems is food
manufacturers have flavored their food to suit inattentive eating. Paying
attention to the sugars in your foods will cause you to notice how
overpowering it is. The same with salt.

~~~
kamaal
>>It is because the people have a different preferred set point. If you serve
them typical American desert, they will actually react in disgust because it
is overpowering.

As a Indian I realize how true this is. People from my workplace generally
bring chocolates when they come back from the US work assignment. I find it
strange that chocolates are so cheap and easily accessible in the US.

I find that as an over dose of sugar. I mean one chocolate down and I don't
feel like I need sugar for the next 2 days. That is how much I feel full and
yet I see kids in US munching them all the time.

Its just how you are seasoning your body to it.

------
kibwen
_"The snack that Dunn was proposing to sell: carrots. Plain, fresh carrots. No
added sugar. No creamy sauce or dips. No salt. Just baby carrots, washed,
bagged, then sold into the deadly dull produce aisle."_

Ha, I've actually been doing this since I was a teenager. It's really
fantastic for managing junk food cravings, which arise not because I'm
_hungry_ , but because I just like to have something to chew on while I work
(especially while programming). A one-pound bag lasts me about three hours and
is more-or-less guilt-free.

~~~
logn
I'm curious how many pounds per sq. inch carrots require to chew. The article
pointed to 4 as the magic number.

I wonder if there's a way to engineer healthy food to taste better without
actually adding any ingredients. Maybe through bio-engineering or the like. Or
maybe injecting them with air or drilling out little holes.

------
dreamdu5t
People want to blame others for their problems. Whether it's junk food, drugs,
joblessness, etc. The fact is you can't get fat if you don't consume the
calories. _Everyone_ I know who has restricted calories has lost weight.

I was 210, and lost 70 lbs by restricting my caloric intake (by eating vegan).
I ate sugar during this time. I ate carbs.

Every single person I know who's overweight simply eats too much. They also
are the first to tell you that its not as simple as eating too much. It is.

~~~
omegaworks
The human body has mechanisms for making you Hurt Real Bad when you don't have
more calories coming in then going out. Maybe your ancestors had more reliable
access to food resources and didn't have to develop these responses. The human
population on this planet is incredibly varied. Good for you that you and the
people in your social network do well following what you describe as a
calorie-restricted diet.

The self-satisfied responses to your N=1 sample size study, just because it
validates the commonly accepted nutritional orthodoxy is what makes me fear
for the public policies that come out of this debate.

~~~
dreamdu5t
The science is pretty basic. It's the law of thermodynamics. Your body can't
magically create fat or other weight from calories you don't have.

~~~
grhino
The number of calories are measured in a food using a bomb calorimeter can be
different from how many calories of the digested food are available for use to
the human body. Also, some foods require more energy to be broken down. Some
foods can trigger secondary effects that change behavior which could alter
metabolism.

Now, I think those secondary considerations have a small impact on overall
calorie consumption. For just about any food, a calorie measured by a bomb
calorimeter is probably just about a calorie available to move the body,
maintain the body, or stored in fat for later.

The body is a tough thing to study objectively.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't think that's really OP's point. The point isn't that 1 calorie for me
= 1 calorie for you. We know for a fact that the digestive performance of
people can vary greatly, and caloric use varies greatly also depending on
person and activity level.

The high variance is really besides the point, which is that if you are
gaining weight, _you are consuming too much for your current situation_. You
can either work to expend more, or reduce your intake, both of which are
perfectly reasonable options.

There is no objective measure for eating too much, but it's also trivially
easy to find out if you're eating too much _for you_.

~~~
omegaworks
>You can either work to expend more, or reduce your intake, both of which are
perfectly reasonable options.

Perhaps I should be more clear: Your body has mechanisms for defeating your
ability to work to expend more (fatigue), and driving you to eat (cravings,
hunger pangs). I'm not arguing with your basic premise: you must consume less
then you expend. I'm arguing with your "calorie is a calorie" dogma. For
insulin insensitive people (read: overweight people), 1 calorie of fat will
satisfy you more (turning on the satiety mechanism) better then 1 calorie of
sugar will.

------
Sumaso
Out of all of the articles that I've read regarding weight loss, none seem to
refute that: lowering calorie intake, and some moderate exercise will result
in healthier body.

If you want to reach a certain aesthetic then that's fine, but as far as I
know the "obesity problem" is more about a persons health and well being, not
being aesthetically pleasing.

So we can sit here and point fingers at what diet is best or whether or not we
should cut fats out of our diet, but at the end of the day the true issue is
simply people do not have the will to exercise, and they either do not have
funds or the will to eat a healthy amount of calories.

~~~
wpietri
I love that you say some anodyne things and then, with no actual facts or
reasoning, conclude that the "true issue" is something that fixes blame and
dodges the issues raised in the article. And, naturally, is a classic example
of the fundamental attribution error at work.

As somebody who has gone over the past decade from no exercise to running 15+
races and is now training for my first triathlon I am happy to say that "will
to exercise" is not actually the problem for anybody I know. That certainly
wasn't my problem.

The good news is that people actually study this for a living. If you want a
readable introduction to the limits and uses of willpower, McGonigal's _The
Willpower Instinct_ is a fine place to start understanding why, "Oh, those
people are just weak," is a lazy and wrong answer.

~~~
Sumaso
My questions are:

a) Were you considered obese or over weight before you started training for
these races?

b) If exercising wasn't the problem, then was it food choices? Did you have to
resort to something other than simply lowering calorie intake to reach (and
maintain) a healthy weight.

Your also correct I haven't posted any references, my exposure to
dieting/lifestyle changes and weight loss is little more than what I hear from
colleague, what few articles pop up on hacker news, CBC radio and the little
research I've done myself.

Also thank you for the book recommendation, I'll be sure to check it out.

------
JoeAltmaier
Silly: spoonfeeding junk-food CEOs facts about obesity, in the vain hope
they'll take their share of responsibility. What, did anybody imagine they
didn't know they sell the food equivalent of crack to our kids? They're not
idiots; they make money doing this, and are responsible to shareholders.

~~~
justincormack
Responsible to their shareholders to avoid the deluge of lawsuits that will
come; it will be like tobacco, you can see the tide turning. That was their
chance to change course.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They've had that info on their desks for a decade. They've had a chance every
single day to do the right thing.

------
networked
When designed in the way described in the article junk food is pretty much a
superstimulus. Those are problematic not just among food:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_western/).

------
ams6110
Where is any mention of the disastrous consequences of the USDA "food pyramid"
which has been drummed into children at school for decades, perfectly tracking
the obesity "epidemic", and which promotes an obesity-causing high-carb, low
fat diet.

------
angelocoppola
Here's an article I wrote about this that contains an embedded video of 60
Minutes' "The Flavorists" which is closely related.
[http://www.humansarenotbroken.com/the-extraordinary-
manipula...](http://www.humansarenotbroken.com/the-extraordinary-manipulation-
of-human-beings-via-food)

------
acheron
Company finds out what people want and offers to sell it to them: News at 11!

Seriously, this hand-wringing is ridiculous. Excellent article here:
[http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/25/frito-lay-wont-make-
yo...](http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/25/frito-lay-wont-make-you-eat-
chips-at-gun)

~~~
svachalek
Would you make the same argument about cigarettes? Heroin?

~~~
goostavos
How is that relevant? This discussion is over junk _food_ , a human fuel, a
caloric substance.

Are you really asking why chips and snacks are thought of differently than a
drug like heroin, or a drug delivery system like a cigarette? I'd say you're
playing your hyperbole card a little too strong if so.

~~~
greatzebu
There's no bright line between food and drugs. Alcohol is a caloric substance,
and also an addictive one. That's not to say that we shouldn't distinguish
between potato chips and heroin, but it's not clear to me that foods are
unproblematic by virtue of the fact that they're foods.

------
lnanek2
" small but crucial move: the industry should use the expertise of scientists
— its own and others — to gain a deeper understanding of what was driving
Americans to overeat. "

LMAO, they probably employ dozens of scientists trying to figure how to get
people to eat more. Could the speaker have been any more clueless? He would
have been better off pushing some solution that had been user tested not to
hurt sales. E.g. use Stevia instead of sugar, cost goes up 5%, but sales rise
to match as you capture some dieters you wouldn't otherwise or something.
Instead he told them to research getting people to want less of their product.

~~~
ams6110
Yes, they sit around in smoke-filled rooms scheming about how to make kids
fatter and fatter. They in fact would like nothing better than if all children
died of diabetes before they reach puberty.

They do like we all do. Try to develop a product, test it, refine it, in order
to sell more of it. One of the common mantras here is that its good to do A/B
testing to get better conversion. But when General Mills does it, it's somehow
evil?

~~~
pessimizer
When _we_ do it, it's sometimes evil - see <http://darkpatterns.org/>.

But we're not poisoning people, even in the worst case. All we can do is screw
up the internet.

~~~
dfxm12
Food companies aren't poisoning people either. People are poisoning
themselves.

You can make the case that these "poisonous" snack foods are so appealing
because they are cheap, because the government only gives subsidies to
agriculture used in making junk food, but that's a stretch & still assumes
there are no other options (like eating healthier or eating less).

~~~
wpietri
Your implied intellectual model here is that people are entirely in control of
their actions and are (or at least can be) perfectly rational about them.

That's far from the truth. These junk food brands spend enormous amount of
money on advertising, product placement, and other ways to influence
consumers. Why? Because it works to manipulate them.

See, for example:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cognitive_biases>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics>

Or talk to anybody who works in mass-market advertising. Or hell, just visit
Vegas. If people were rational actors, Las Vegas would still just be a place
where the Hoover Dam workers lived.

------
forgotAgain
Previously posted <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5250587>

~~~
bostonvaulter2
There were only 2 comments on it then, barely worth linking to.

------
EA
The food that is most readily available to us is the food that is most
profitable.

------
kkuduk
but NYT, why some stupid equation on the top?
[http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2010/08/know-your-
science....](http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2010/08/know-your-science.html)

------
vevillas
If restrict the tone of dicussion to calories, fat, carbs and proteins, it is
just not going to work out.

If something has been learned in the last 10 years is that whole foods matter
and that you cannot reduce them to their macronutrient profile. Two foods with
identical profile yield totally different results.I recommend to read Willet
book on eat, drink and be healthy. [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eat-drink-
and-be-healthy-wal...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eat-drink-and-be-
healthy-walter-md-willett-md/1102499520)

------
rickdale
1 second on the lips, for a lifetime on the hips.

Doing the slow carb diet for over a year now. Lost over 50lbs. With the 1 day
to cheat rule, I definitely ended up eating more candy, sweets, cake,
chocolate, etc. than I would have at any other point in my life. Crazy as it
seems, I developed a sweet tooth while on this diet! But it just goes to show,
a calorie isn't a calorie because our body has functions and reacts
differently at different times.

------
damian2000
Soft drinks are one of the biggest offenders. Kids never fail to be amazed
that there are the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar in one can of coke.

------
cabalamat
pg wrote on this some time ago: <http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html>

------
SonicSoul
love articles on this subject.

somewhat related there is a great lecture about Sugar (sucrose vs fructose vs
ethanol) and some history on HFCS in America
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

------
larrywright
I read this last week when it was posted the first time (or maybe linked to on
Twitter by pg). It reminded me of the details we heard about the cigarette
manufacturers in the 80s and 90s. The junk food makers are operating in much
the same manner.

------
mhb
Mediterranean Diet Can Cut Heart Disease, Study Finds:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/health/mediterranean-
diet-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/health/mediterranean-diet-can-cut-
heart-disease-study-finds.html?hp)

------
camkego
Hacking the consumer.

------
borgchick
you know the first thing I did upon loading this page is to go buy a bag of
Doritos... thanks HN! It was very tasty!

