> > Big food corporations profit from ultra-processed foods that manipulate our natural systems.
> I've just never bought this
Yours is a rather strange reading if you truly mean to absolve the food of sinister intent. Clearly it has none.
Nor must the corporate entity producing it. That's the nature of moloch. You get bad outcomes even without outright villainy on anyone's part.
The food is being "manipulated" in the same way Grandma manipulates it, sure. Grandma bakes a pie from whole ingredients, sourced perhaps from an area farm or maybe even her backyard, with her bare hands. Show me how a Twinkie is made. The naturalistic fallacy is irrelevant.
It is simply wrong, not to mention naive, to think companies do not optimize their products to maximize impulse/repeat consumption. They are most certainly aware of dopamine pathways. This is one, and indeed a big one, of those
> other things
you mention. Convenience and advertising are big ones too. Why do we need so much convenience, and see so much advertising? Perhaps it has to do with the ordering of our lives around the very sort of institutions that sell us ultra-processed foods.
Food companies maximizing the utility we get from eating their food is a good thing actaully. Im very grateful for all the delicious food on the market. Not the companies fault that some people never learned to consume in moderation.
> > Big food corporations profit from ultra-processed foods that manipulate our natural systems.
> I've just never bought this
Yours is a rather strange reading if you truly mean to absolve the food of sinister intent. Clearly it has none.
Nor must the corporate entity producing it. That's the nature of moloch. You get bad outcomes even without outright villainy on anyone's part.
The food is being "manipulated" in the same way Grandma manipulates it, sure. Grandma bakes a pie from whole ingredients, sourced perhaps from an area farm or maybe even her backyard, with her bare hands. Show me how a Twinkie is made. The naturalistic fallacy is irrelevant.
It is simply wrong, not to mention naive, to think companies do not optimize their products to maximize impulse/repeat consumption. They are most certainly aware of dopamine pathways. This is one, and indeed a big one, of those
> other things
you mention. Convenience and advertising are big ones too. Why do we need so much convenience, and see so much advertising? Perhaps it has to do with the ordering of our lives around the very sort of institutions that sell us ultra-processed foods.