Regulation through voluntary goodwill never works in aggregate. Blaming actors rather than regulators will always be futile in the end as players in a system will almost always trend towards self interest in the long run, as has been proven time and time again
Of course many would argue there's no need to regulate at all, and that's a fair position to hold too.
There's nothing inherently wrong with providing products that offer a tradeoff between health and enjoyment. As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs
Clearly people are choosing sugary products. The only thing that would be inappropriate for food companies to do would be to lie about the health effects of that sugar. This article seems to imply they're lying (or at least misleading) quite a bit.
Don't forget <s>bribing</s> funding researchers to say fat was worse than sugar [0]
>Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.
Careful though because all that doesn't mean fat isn't a cause of CHD. As far as I can tell the evidence for fat's relation to CHD was not fabricated by teh sugar lobby, it was only drummed up to try and hide the evidence for sugar's role.
I am admittedly not up to date on the latest literature, but my understanding was that sugar was significantly worse than fat. Not necessarily that fat was free of negative health outcomes.
In the US, there are plenty of canned tomato products -- sauce, crushed, puree, whole -- that are pretty much just tomatoes. I find that it's hard to beat canned tomatoes, because the fresh tomatoes available at the supermarket are cardboard. The canned sauces can be canned close to where they're picked, and thus don't have to be optimized for transportation and storage. And they're convenient.
Like the article says, the glass jar stuff is loaded with sugar.
Of course I still enjoy fresh tomatoes from my garden every summer, but am not too disappointed if I don't get enough to freeze or can.
Pretty much just tomatoes, and then loads of salt. I have to hunt around to find some that don’t have 20% of my daily sodium, per serving. It’s fine to eat 20% in one serving of a meal, but tomatoes are always accompanied by other stuff, including ingredients that are always salty, like cheese.
Let's also keep in mind that the folks who are notoriously exposed to sugar also happen to be poor, and those folks may not have the time to prepare meals that they otherwise could if they weren't poor. I grew up in a relatively poor family (five boys, single mom most of the time), and my mom spent a lot of her time struggling with her own issues. She can still cook a mean lasagna, but those dinners were tempered by macaroni and hotdog slices (which I love, btw, and still make). Ketchup (edit: and single packaged cheese) on toast? Yes please!
I make my own tomato sauce. Super easy and freezes well. Tastes better too. There’s also plenty of non-sugary options at the supermarket if you’re pressed for time.
Where do you get good tasting tomatoes though? It’d become increasingly hard and expensive pursuit in the US for example, not sure where you get yours.
I don’t understand this comment at all. Unless you only buy pre-packaged foods, it’s easy to avoid sugary foods at the grocery store. And even pre-packaged foods have nutrition labels.
It’s not a lack of choices; it’s either consumers are unaware or (more likely) knowingly prefer sweeter options. Unless you are of the position those in charge should dictate food choices, the only option is greater consumer education.
I don't think your comment and the parent's comment are at odds.
I agree with your assertion that consumer education is a much more effective and reasonable long term solution than government intervention (I used my own words, please correct me if I've misinterpreted). Likewise, I agree with the commenter whose comment you can't relate with: it really isn't helping that so much food is "fortified" with sugar (used my own words again).
I am totally guessing (as in I could be completely wrong) that the reason this viewpoint doesn't resonate with you is because you are one of the people who has educated themselves about nutrition, and imo even more importantly, it sounds like you may have been introduced to healthy eating (and food preparation) habits early on. I apologize if any of these assumptions are flat out incorrect regarding your upbringing, but I don't think they are too far fetched in any case (i.e. while it may not be true for you, it is reasonable that it may be true for others).
It's not just education about food that makes a difference, it also matters a lot being exposed to healthy eating and food preparation habits.
Both of you can be right in this case without any actual disagreement.
Fair enough, and I am a foodie and scientist to boot. By habit, I almost turn the container over to look at the nutrition label; others probably look at thing’s differently.
I’m not so sure. Placing the blame at regulators would encourage people to vote for politicians that will regulate more effectively. That’s a direct link, versus hoping corporate shame trickles through to regulation.
No it won't. Nobody is going to make something like this the center of their platform, and most voters don't do nuanced appraisals of a candidate's whole platform because it's a waste of time, they go with their gut feeling about 2 or 3 big issues and whether the politician has an appealing personality. If this wasn't true then height wouldn't be so strongly correlated with political success.
Furthermore, look at a recent example of a pro-strong regulation policy: the Obama admin believed in a well run regulatory state, and the first lady led a public health campaign promoting healthier school lunches with more fruits and vegetables as well as exercise. You'd think encouraging kids to eat unprocessed food and exercise would be wholly inoffensive, but the other political party and its media surrogates treated it like the imposition of communism and complained endlessly about 'freedom' and 'waste'.
Your version is how things ought to work, and how it was more or less assumed it does work for many years, but it's based on an obsolete understanding of political markets. Ubiquitous networking has made it easy for like-minded people to find and coordinate with each other, and some people favor perverse outcomes. Approximately 30% of people are willing to suffer an economic loss in order to inflict a greater loss on their opponents, and that personality type now controls one of the country's two major political parties.
Another example would be Bloomberg as mayor of NYC. A sugar tax was attacked as an attack on the poor, minorities, overreach of government, attack on freedom to name a few. I can’t see it being supported any time soon by another politician as Bloomberg was in a position to be able self fund a campaign and be a bit more drastic in certain areas. You mention Michelle Obama who got more crap as well for trying to get kids to exercise as well.
Good point. I disliked Bloomberg as an individual (although he proves me wrong in that height isn't everything) but thought the sugar tax was a great idea. I was quite depressed by the reaction to it, because a lot of left-leaning people took umbrage at it, citing the popularity of soda among minorities and the poor. I was more into party politics at the time, and was astonished at how intense and sustained the opposition was on Democratic forum sites.
Thoughtful arguments about public health policy, corporate greed, agricultural subsidies, etc. etc. were dismissed with bullshit rhetoric about people's right to enjoy their favorite soda flavor. It was organic too, in the sense of not being astroturfed - I knew the people on the forums quite well, but they just dumped all their regular principles once they felt they were affected b¥ an issue that hit their taste buds.
Just a heads up. I could be wrong, but I believe you meant to say "encourage kids" instead of "enrage kids" lol. I was a bit confused until I worked it out.
Expanding the regulatory state is the last thing we need. Instead we should constrain the power of unelected regulators to set rules in most areas, thus decreasing the impact of regulatory capture.
If restricting sugary foods is a good idea then let the elected politicians do so directly and take the heat for it. Don't allow them to escape responsibility by delegating their authority to bureaucrats.
I don’t know why everyone thinks these things are so black and white.
For example, corn subsidies inevitably lowers the price of sugar, which means — on a micro level - some food engineer might replace some fat with sugar to reduce costs but keep appeal - which, in a macro level, encourages higher sugar content in processed foods.
It can be argued that subsidies are for national security by ensuring there will always be US farmers in case some country cuts imports to us.
But as for heightened sugar problem, you can’t exactly blame the company, food engineer, industry, farmers, Congress or consumers directly. No one intended this side effect — it just kinda happened.
It’s like it’s a complex problem and there’s 1000 angles and you just have to look at these micro-issues individually. You can’t just say “regulate it” or “consumers should be responsible.”
You're the one making up the idea - that's not an idea people have.
Regulators and middle managers provide me with limited options for each of those thousand choices, and I, without having to think much, can pick one of them safely.
For each of my choices, various regulators and managers have all gotten many says already.
Some bureaucrat does manage my diet, and your diet too, but they don't micromanage it, and nobody is saying they should micromanage it
It's perfectly feasible for regulators to identify when companies are adding sugars - look at the recipe, inspect the factory, put things in bomb calorimeters. Thats not at all absurd, and there's already standards maintained for basically everything, including foods like peanut butter (see: https://youtu.be/esQyYGezS7c )
If it was absurd, it would be impossible to do food safety regulation, like ensuring that food doesn't contain toxins or heavy metals
>You're the one making up the idea - that's not an idea people have.
If you look at the other responses, you'll see a number of people who want food pulled from the shelves and their options limited so they don't have to exercise self-control and take responsibility for what they consume or don't consume.
There our hosts calling for a bureaucrats to micromanage diets so that they are more healthy.
There are post claiming that people our powerless to resist advertising, therefore the government should be making the choices for those people
I'm not going to pretend that regulators are perfect, but I simply can't agree that food safety regulation hasn't improved our quality of life compared to 100 years ago. That's just one of many, many ways that industry, regulators, and consumers interact.
And I know the overall topic is about dietary choices, but I'm responding to your blanket anti-regulation statement.
Well, see, the main reason we found ourselves needing large-scale food-safety regulations was because of ballooning large-scale food production, distribution, and restaurant service.
If your society has an agrarian model, where you locally produce, distribute, and serve all the food you need to subsist, and these chains are small-scale and numerous, then there is more trust inherent in that model, and less pressure for profit or growth. Therefore, many of the motives are removed for adulteration or poor-quality food. These can be relatively self-regulating industries as described.
In an industrial, developed first-world country, you have massive factory farms scaling up, you have ginormous distribution networks on rail, water, tarmac, and asphalt, and they all run with help from the massive oil industry, and finally you have large-scale food service operations and restaurant chains and mega-groceries all over town. So yeah! There's gonna be a lot of motive to mess with food, and there's gonna be a lack of trust in the Big City, because these supply chains are so long and deep, spanning oceans and borders, that it's very impersonal. So those are ripe conditions for adulteration, reductions in quality, false labeling, and all those things the FDA/USDA/FTC have striven to eliminate on the behalf of the consumer, I guess.
Mandatory fortification of milk , flour and other staples has done wonders for reducing malnutrition, massively improving public health in both developed and developing countries.
It's precisely because people have so many choices and possible vendors that regulation is more needed, not less. We can't all be experts in everything. And we all have different levels of self control.
Some producers are becoming so large they can afford to bribe the scientists and regulators. Smaller players are struggling to compete without resorting to adding sugars themselves.
For all these reasons we collectively develop laws and regulations to keep things within some reasonable limits. Considering the obesity epidemic, despite few wanting to be obese, I think tightening the reigns a bit is warranted.
I don't subscribe to the idea that people are too stupid to figure it out.
Nutrition isn't rocket surgery. If you can read numbers, you can discern the calories and sugar content. You even get a recommended daily percent.
If some people feel like they can't control their lives, maybe there should be an option for those people to give the state parental controls over them, telling them what they can and cannot eat. As for myself, I think what foods I choose to consume are none of the government's business
> As for myself, I think what foods I choose to consume are none of the government's business
There is a difference though: it's not about choice as much as it is about "good defaults". As a state you should want your folk to have better food, but if some person wants the choice of micromanaging their diet then sure, go ahead.
I shouldn't be struggling to find non-processed food in a supermarket. This is often the case right now, which is why I would very much welcome some more regulation on this.
> I shouldn't be struggling to find non-processed food in a supermarket. This is often the case right now, which is why I would very much welcome some more regulation on this.
What supermarkets do you go to that don't have a produce section and a meat section? Is there some other form of unprocessed food you expect?
Even something like pasta and bread are technically processed (but maybe not ultraprocessed unless its wonderbread)
Surely don't all supermarkets sell potatoes, carrots, green vegetables, fruit, nuts, minimally processed cereals (husk removal and cleaning), fresh meat, fish, cheese, eggs and dairy products including naturally processed cheeses?
I wonder if the term 'micromanaging [their diet]' is a touch perjorative. Given the prevalence of serious chronic diseases which are reported to be strongly linked to what you eat, shouldn't everyone be encouraged to take a serious look at how to 'macro' manage their diet, an action which is almost certainly likely to improve quality of life and maybe life span?
It's not about being too stupid, it's about having so much else in your life to balance mentally that you don't have the resources to investigate the minutiae of diet science.
I'm not advocating for making consumption illegal. I'm saying regulate the commercial production and sale. In some markets sugary foods must be clearly labeled with scary warnings. That's a step in the right direction.
I would like to live in a world, with very little tempting foods when i walk around.
I would like to live in a world where me and maybe a person i trust, could together limit of the foods i can buy, and than program that into my credit card.
I would like to live in a world, where instead of scienticts and engineersand businessmen working on optimizing the addictiveness of food, which isn't a good social goal, would work on optimizing the long term happiness derived from food.
And sure, while I would lose some freedom and fun in this process, given the role food plays in mood and health, over the long term i would likely be happier, much happier.
The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value.
It doesn't seem that absurd to me. If the government banned the production and import of potato chips, you could still make them at home, but people would probably make a lot less of them. Unlike drugs, food is not conveniently hidden and the value is too low per unit volume to justify illicit production. Therefore food which is banned generally will not be produced at scale.
If the government did set out to materially improve the dietary habits of the citizenry, it would definitely be possible. It would be politically infeasible and possibly tyranny, but it would be very doable.
I meant the word can in the context of a free society, with practical constraints.
I agree that if you ignore the constraints it would be trivial. There are so many brutal and oppressive solutions it isn't even worth listing examples.
I honestly think you're overstating it a little. For example there are places where foie gras is banned. I would not characterize it as brutal and oppressive. I guess there are some libertarians who would say oppressive is the proper word, but surely we can agree that brutal is a step too far?
Such a program could be done as a rachet, similarly to how tobacco use was driven to the margins.
The article isn't talking about niche goods like foie Gras, it is talking about
sugar and salt. Any proposal to control intake of those would have to be much more complex.
Again I'm not saying it would be trivial, but we know how to tax food. It is not as complex as you're making it out to be. Putting a 400% tax (or whatever, not a health economist) on all ready to drink liquids with sugar concentrations greater than X g/L, and banning their sale outside grocery stores, would make a significant dent in overall sugar consumption.
Sometimes there are too many bad choices for consumers to shift through and having a regulator eliminate, discourage or label them is a good thing actually.
Yes I do want a bureaucrat back by the best nutritional science available to nudge the market to provide me with better, healthier options.
The danger is, of course, that the agency gets captured by the AG industry. Such as the old "food pyramid" that suggested a quarter of your diet should be straight carbs. Or the "fat free" movement that was really just replacing fats with sugars.
> The danger is, of course, that the agency gets captured by the AG industry
While I wouldn’t dispute the undue influence of corporate interests on lawmakers, I would bet that the bigger factor is the tax revenue that the government collects from increased corporate profits. It is int eg government’s interest for companies to thrive because then it gets more funds via taxation.
The trouble is that most nutritional "science" is bunk, or at least rather low quality. We would be better off without the government making nutritional recommendations or food pyramids or anything like that. There is zero reliable scientific evidence that that stuff produces better public health outcomes. It's a huge waste of tax dollars.
> Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.
In an ideal world that would be the case. But in an era of mass media, consumers really aren't making the choice. The choice is being made for them by ads.
> I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens.
Pretty much everything a supermarket, restaurant, etc sells is regulated by the government. Whether you like it or not, government is involved in our diets.
> Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?
A geniunely independent bureacrat? Maybe. On the other hand, do you want a world where corporations with their ads control your diet? It's a complex question.
Advertising doesn’t replace human agency, only—at most—informs the choices that people make.
The choices others make that inform (but do not decide) someone’s diet are the following:
1. Congress or an agency empowered by Congress choosing to prohibit certain crops. Note: not choosing to allow, unless they previously prohibited it.
2. Private farms and businesses choosing which crops to farm and livestock to raise.
2b. Controls on the handling and raising of crops and livestock may have an effect on the profitability of those choices, so legislation can also inform this choice at this level, but again, doesn’t decide it.
3. What farm products distributors and manufacturers choose to purchase for resell.
4. What stores and supermarkets choose to purchase for sale.
5. What the customer chooses to purchase for their own consumption, which is the ultimate test for the market viability of crops and livestock if there is no other commercial use for them.
You don't think food companies can control what goes into their food? If that were true how are they able to label food with the grams of sugar it has and how is liquor able to have exactly the alcohol labeled? I can't believe someone would actually argue this.
Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works.
> Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?
Absolutely. My direct personal life and the world around me would be better if there were less sugar available (especially for children and teens, as with alcohol and tobacco for example), it were more expensive, and/or it were better labeled.
I would be ok with your opinion if we made advertising for food illegal. As it is now, we have a massive onslaught of marketing for unhealthy foods that's designed to exploit every weakness of the human psyche. It's a massive imbalance.
> Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works. Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.
It's all of this, all at once, millions of times over.
We're an ant colony solving a problem we don't really grok as individuals.
It's even bigger than just these choices. Sugar subsidies. You know what else sugar is used for? Ethanol. Fuel. Transportation. Trade. National defense. You name it, these decisions are intertwined at scale.
If some negative externality grows to great, the system will rebalance. It does so almost thermodynamically.
Depends on how you define the system. Unregulated markets can get so far up their own ass they destroy the health and lives of their own consumers. Then just shift marketing to target younger and younger demographics. The end game looks like Wall-E, where everyone is obese, even kids. All kinds of health issues. Shorter and less fulfilling lives. Yet skyhigh profits for a few.
Maybe I'm letting my own existential dread and depression into the policy debate, but I've often made short-sighted decisions because there's not much else to live for and little hope for the long-term in general. Why drink water instead of soda if you'll never be able to retire? Perhaps we should look for a political solution to this problem first. Anyone else ever felt this way, or am I just depressed?
"As long as consumers are aware" is important, yet insufficient. Those consumers must also have alternative options available in the market. Competition isn't just on price, but on features.
Consumers, aware, are pissed, but if a boycott means they starve, an agro company can just wait for the next season of insulin consumers.
> As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs
I'm OK as long as consumers rather than society are expected to bear the longer term costs. There is nothing worse than hearing "legalize hard drugs!" followed by "let's sink billions of dollars into treatment for those poor drug addicts!"
It depends on your countries health system of course. If that one is sponsored by the government, it's only fair to tax the shit out of unhealthy food.
I'm from Belgium, and it's actually pretty great here to go to the docter, dentist, surgeon or pharmacy. Not the craziness of US. To each their own I guess.
As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation.
Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.
To be fair, it might not be the same people on HN saying those two things.
However it is just bizarre to see the social trends on this. On one hand tobacco has been stigmatized, and on the other pot is legalized. On one hand legislators propose banning sugary foods or taxing them, and on the other hand they legalize smartphone sports betting.
Of course many would argue there's no need to regulate at all, and that's a fair position to hold too.
There's nothing inherently wrong with providing products that offer a tradeoff between health and enjoyment. As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs