It's a little dishonest of this article not to point out that junk food is engineered- I mean literally engineered, by teams of scientists running controlled experiments- to be as addictive as possible. This isn't a question of those wacky consumers and their revealed preference not matching their stated intentions; human willpower should barely enter the conversation when this topic comes up.
If PepsiCo is genuinely serious about encouraging healthy foods, the only way that's ever going to work is if the Lay's and Doritos are re-designed to be less appealing. Putting them in a fight head-to-head with the healthy foods in their current state is a fight the healthy foods are always going to lose, even if Pepsi's intentions were pure as the driven snow. But they can't (again, irrespective of whether they're good or evil) because that would kill the brands and competitors would simply swoop in and take the market share; so once again we have a coordination problem where regulation is realistically the only solution.
It's worth mentioning that there's a science behind this, called food reward. Stephen Guyenet is a (white-hat) researcher in this area with a fairly interesting blog. A recent post of his[1] is probably one of the better capsule introductions to the topic. He also has a book on the subject, intended for a general audience, in the works.
A caveat: his blog posts vary between widely accessible and commentaries on specific research results that can be hard, frustrating even, to interpret without a lot of additional context. Go easy with what you take in here until you've got enough background.
When scientists want to engineer healthy food to be healthier and more inexpensive--a.k.a. genetic modification--they are met with superstition and FUD.
The thing is that such engineering of healthy food is not really needed in developed countries with reasonable income levels.
Yes, if one wants cheap processed food that is healthy, one needs significant engineering.
The raw ingredients that are part of classical preparations are extremely cheap.
For example, in the United States, rice can be had at ~ $0.50-$0.75 a pound, or in my favorite normalization, < $1 per 2000 calories.
Beans can be obtained for ~ $1.00 a pound, or ~ $1.50 per 2000 calories.
On the other hand, bread is far more expensive at standard grocery stores, and typically comes in at ~ $3 per 2000 calories.
The above is an illustration with respect to carbohydrates,
there are similar easy examples with respect to protein/vegetables/fruits that allow significant optimizations as compared to the average diet.
The end result is that (dependent on location) balanced meals requiring a minimum of preparation work out to roughly $2.50-4.50 per adult per day.
As for preparation time, again with some thought one can minimize effort (pressure cooking is one concrete example).
The point is that if people thought a bit more deeply about their food choices and the cost tradeoffs made, healthy food budgets should really be very minimal as compared to far more expensive things, like health insurance, rent, etc.
Most media outlets instead spread a lot of disinformation - the standard "working" assumption is that healthy food is organic, is found in expensive stores like Whole Foods, and that one needs to pay more for healthy food.
A fun experiment that illustrates this point: try looking at the labels of marketed "healthy/organic" stuff at a store geared towards such things and examine the sugar content in them.
And this is why such places get away with ridiculousness regarding their prices on basic items.
I've found that the caloric, ingredient and nutritional breakdown for almost all processed, boxed and frozen foods at Whole Foods are close to or exactly the same as their grocery store counterparts. Nutritionally, produce is produce; so to me the real value of Whole Foods and their ilk are their selection of meats.
It's not superstition or FUD to be concerned that given the long track record of the big food producers prioritizing profit over their customers' health, letting them use even more powerful food engineering techniques than the ones they already have might not be a good idea.
In my view this headline is analogous to "Philip Morris wants to sell running gear, consumers want tobacco." Well duh, of course selling human catnip is more profitable, but you're giving your customers diabetes and heart disease.
Yes, but based off the fact that you visit HN you are an informed and educated consumer. A lot of people (more than many realize) don't even understand how bad a bag of doritos is for their health. "Oh, it's just one bag" is a common saying. You probably will portion control, read the nutrition label, etc and make a decision. Most will see a delicious bag of doritos and eat it.
A bag of Doritos really is just a bad of Doritos. When an average person eats a bag of Doritos, or even eats Doritos habitually, the rest of their life goes on no differently than if they'd never eaten Doritos. I'm sure an overwhelming junkfood addiction will have negative health consequences, but the vast majority of people who occasionally to semi-oftenly eat junk food are just fine.
Most likely not. The unhealthy components are addictive because they were rare in the ancestral environment, and useful, which is also the reason why they're unhealthy in large quantities.
I like to think diet pop can fit into this category... but then there's the backlash of "unnatural chemicals" which sceptics believe must obviously be bad for you.
> the backlash of "unnatural chemicals" which sceptics (sic.) believe must obviously be bad for you.
You mean like the fact that they inhibit beneficial intestinal flora [1], or that numerous studies have found that people have a higher risk for diabetes if they drink diet soda [2], or that people gain weight when they switch to diet sofa from regular [3]?
Yeah, those wacky skeptics - they'll believe anything...
It's literally impossible to gain weight from drinking diet soda. It doesn't have food energy. It can't break thermodynamics. It can only be explained by other factors like people over compensating with other calorie consumption.
On the other hand, I stopped drinking all diet sodas and just drank water / carbonated water the last year. Absolutely no difference. Didn't even notice the lack of caffeine going from 6 diet dr peppers per day down to 0.
If you switch to diet soda from regular soda because of weight issues or diabetes risk, that seems like a pretty serious self-selection bias for later weight issues or diabetes risk.
Number 1: humans are not mice, the research cited does not even suggest that mice gain weight or how large dose is required.
(BTW circumventing paywalls sucks)
Number 2: major confounder is that people who eat unhealthy or are already obese drink those diet drinks. People who aren't drink normal ones. Needs interventional study not dumb epidemiology.
These experiments are mainly just correlational, they do not control the usage of diet sodas. So, of course, people who drink diet sodas are going to be heavier: they're the ones trying to loose weight and hence the ones who will gain the most weight! There's no reason to drink diet soda if your body doesn't have any problems with weight.
Diet soda is not healthy. At the very best it's ideally neutral, neither unhealthy or healthy.
However, some research has been coming out lately that suggests diet soda (more specifically artificial sweeteners) may have various negative effects on health. Nothing conclusive but enough to make me avoid artificial sweeteners entirely.
However, sorbitol isn't an artificial sweetener it's a sugar alcohol and it occurs naturally in food. When most people talk about diet soda they mean artificially sweetened carbonated beverages.
> there's absolutely no evidence at all that it helps with weight loss
I didn't claim this. "Healthy" food is a subjective term, and to most people does not mean "something that makes you loose weight". Compared to non-diet pop, it is a healthy alternative.
If you're trying to loose weight, stick with water. If you are managing your weight fine and enjoy pop, diet is better than non-diet. The studies you linked to support this.
Root cause vs. proximate cause. If artificial sweeteners prime the body to expect calories that it doesn't receive, and (or by some other mechanism) this causes later overeating, then it's fair to say that diet soda does cause weight gain.
As an aside, I have a hypothesis that naturally focusing on proximate vs. root causes is actually a big contributor to the divide between major segments of the population.
If the market is incapable, it is time for government to step in. We already have innumerable regulations re food safety and content, would it be inconceivable for us to regulate the salt content of potato chips? Or the calorie content of something labeled a "meal deal"?
This kind of thing scares me. As someone who lost 70 pounds eating bacon and eggs for six months, and eating about 5x the recommended daily amount of salt that whole time, I'm worried the government stepping in will make all our food taste like cardboard.
Sugar is the enemy, but so often fat and salt are demonized when in a proper diet these aren't unhealthy at all.
The effects are cumulative, not instant. They only really become obvious in actuarial studies.
Medical cause and effect is a slippery thing. You can't argue from individual experiences because some people are lucky, or they live in a healthier environment or have a healthier lifestyle, or they're less susceptible to certain conditions because of genetics.
Salt and sugar won't kill you instantly. What they actually do is increase the statistical occurrence of common medical conditions across entire populations, in ways that aren't usually obvious until later in life.
You may be lucky. Or you may have undiagnosed high blood pressure and something bad will happen tomorrow. There's no way to be sure. But if you have an interest in longevity, dietary discretion is a wise choice.
As someone who could stand to lose (more than) a few pounds, this bacon and eggs diet sounds interesting. Was this part of a low/no carb diet? Something else?
Indeed what he described sounds a lot like low/no-carb diet, also known as ketogenic diet. While lots of people have success on it, it isn't a panacea: the closer you get to "normal" BMI, the more you will have to manage caloric intake, and for a minority who attempt it, ketogenic doesn't work for them at all. Lots of caveats, but one I see increasingly as more people pick up ketogenic dieting: many go overboard on the protein part, which metabolizes into carbohydrates and defeats the intent. Very, very roughly about 80% of your caloric intake will be comprised of fats, 15% protein, 5% carbs (if any appreciable amount; some will restrict down to 20g or less per day). Go slow, modify one variable at a time, focus on long-term (3+ year) consistent weight loss, accept your lapses with grace, and good luck.
It sounds like a keto diet, which I adopted about a year ago and have lost about 50 pounds on (from ~185 to ~135). I learned about it most from /r/keto on reddit.
Bacon and eggs diet sounds very much like keto. If you don't have already critically high blood pressure and your kidneys aren't damaged for some reason, do try it out.
I'd recommend you read Reddit's /r/keto, specially its side bar, and make sure you always meet water intake goals and take your electrolytes.
I've consistently lost weight on the diet, and consistently gained it back when I abandoned it because Doritos.
But are you scared by all the current regulations?
When they banned alum in flour, industry and customers did scream. Today we find it very normal that our flour not contain alum. Alum makes whiter bread and consumers wanted whiter bread, paralleling what Pepsi is saying today.
Atkins-style diets have their downsides. especially in regards to blood pressure. Eating paleo sounds great, but remember that few of our ancestors expected to live past 30.
> Eating paleo sounds great, but remember that few of our ancestors expected to live past 30.
Life expectancy in pre-modern eras may have been around 30-ish years, but that mostly reflects extremely high levels of infant mortality. If you could reach adulthood, you usually expected to die around 50-60.
>Atkins-style diets have their downsides. especially in regards to blood pressure.
Only at the beginning if you already had big, BIG troubles with blood pressure. The salt intake required might take you over the edge before your body adapts to ketosis. But only in those extreme situations and at the beginning; after keto adaptation you will excrete a huge amount of your salt intake rather than absorb it like you would otherwise.
I was able to quit blood pressure meds after using a paleo diet. I'm more relaxed about it now, but honestly it's looking like sugar is way worse than fat for health.
Problem is, paid lobbyists have the patience and insidiousness to sabotage regulation time and again (and have done so). Which isn't so much an argument against government regulation as an argument that the current system is rather broken.
It would be easier to make people give up most of their rights and freedoms than it would be to make them stop eating bad food that will make them an expensive burden to the healthcare system. The only solution is to regulate and tax the way cigarettes are. All that Pepsi goes to fund all that diabetes and heart disease. Everyone, including the highly competent managers and researchers at Pepsi, knows it is bad for you. That does not mean no one should work for Philip Morris - it just means there are probably more virtuous ways to spend your time. Ultimately, society will give the people what they want, so we should tax the bad wants.
I never understood why it's ok to tax alcohol, and keep the price of sucrose high for Cuban-American farmers, but anti-freedom to tax it's cousin fructose.
The left criticism of sugar taxes is simply that it's a regressive tax, which disproportionately harms poor people. Forcing only certain people to reduce their sugar consumption like this is a bit repulsive.
A lot of policies would make more sense if we had radically different systems in place to mitigate their side effects, but we simply don't. Until then, things like the trans fat ban are solid, fair policies.
The WSJ and Pepsi mention " Quaker oatmeal, Naked juice and Sabra hummus" as "good for you" foods.
I've never tried Sabra hummus, but the others are super sugary. A couple years ago I made a conscious attempt to eat less salt and sugar, and once you do so it's amazing how much sugar you notice added to virtually every processed food you'll find at a grocery store.
Cooking food from scratch is basically the only way to have control over your diet.
I suppose if they include Quaker oats in "oatmeal", then they might count as "good for you" -- but the pre-packaged instant oatmeal is sugar filled and probably shouldn't be included. Too many variations under one brand.
I've seen jars of honey-and-mustard and chocolate-chip hummus in the grocery store in the US. Needless to say, this is not how people eat hummus anywhere else in the world.
They do sell just plain oats with no other ingredients, but the instant oatmeal has a whole bunch of added sugar and the marketing deliberately conflates the two.
If PepsiCo is genuinely serious about encouraging healthy foods, the only way that's ever going to work is if the Lay's and Doritos are re-designed to be less appealing. Putting them in a fight head-to-head with the healthy foods in their current state is a fight the healthy foods are always going to lose, even if Pepsi's intentions were pure as the driven snow. But they can't (again, irrespective of whether they're good or evil) because that would kill the brands and competitors would simply swoop in and take the market share; so once again we have a coordination problem where regulation is realistically the only solution.