>I think most of it is actually obvious. I somewhat disagree. It may be "obvious" to well-informed HN readers. However, I don't think food nutrition is obvio

>I think most of it is actually obvious. I somewhat disagree. It may be "obvious" to well-informed HN readers. However, I don't think food nutrition is obvious to a significant portion of the population. Proof of this is how the food industry advertises and labels their products to take advantage of buyers' ignorance: -- orange juice with labels saying that it's "fortified with extra vitamins and calcium". (Many people will associate oj with positive connotations of "fruit", and the vitamin supplement is a bonus. Result: unsophisticated buyers think of oj as "healthy" when it's really concentrated sugar water that will contribute to obesity and tooth decay.) -- lean cuisine "low-fat" microwave dinners with a "heart healthy" icon on the box. (Naive buyers see the "low fat" as a signal for "healthy" but don't realize that manufacturers have to amplify the taste by adding lots of salt. The heavy carbs in those meals are also controversial.) -- granola bars and "energy" bars. (The packaging has pictures of active hikers, bicycle riders, mountain climbers, etc. Some granola bars even prominently feature "fiber" as a benefit. The ignorant don't realize that these snacks are really glorified "candy bars" with clever marketing to lessen the guilt trip of eating a stick of sugar.) -- fat free yogurt. (They took out the fat but now the yogurt has lots of sugar, which is another form of calories, which most people won't burn off, which then gets stored as fat anyway.) -- photographs of celebrities with milk mustaches shown on billboards and magazine ads and associated slogans like "milk does a body good!". (Those ads are promoted by the dairy industry and it's questionable whether it's healthy for adults to drink milk.) -- USDA food pyramid. (The uneducated don't realize that the USDA (and hence the chart) is influenced and manipulated by the meat & dairy industries. Because the nutrition advice is officially published by the government and plastered all over school walls, it feels authoritative. Naive consumers don't realize that if the food pyramid was designed by nutritionists not financially linked to meat & dairy, they would place vegetables as highest priority.) For the consumers that get exposed to nutrition information in a passive way, they really don't know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. There's so much misinformation and manipulation that the American consumer is less knowledgeable about what's healthy than the African bushmen eating wild berries and hunting antelope.