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Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? If they never tasted the food, they would miss out on this "marketing." The fact re

Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? If they never tasted the food, they would miss out on this "marketing." The fact remains, if those manufacturers have always produced their beans with sugar, then they should not be at fault. If those companies changed their recipe to contain sugar after they found people grey addicted to it, there should be a label to warn the consumer that a change has suddenly been made.

cookiecaper 10y ago
>Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? Of course. But the average consumer is not only at a disadvantage, they are regularly deceived into believing that unhealthy foods are in fact healthy. In reality, culpability is a complex calculation that passes through the farmer, the food processor, the manufacturer, the ad firm, the grocer, the consumer, and any other party involved in the transaction. All share some part of the blame. However, the blame game is rarely productive. When something is having a serious negative impact on 50%+ of the population, it's time to stop pushing blame around and start focusing on finding a workable solution. If 50%+ of your website's users were getting lost on your page and having a hard time finding an efficient way to do things, would you spend all your time blaming them for their idiocy, or would you up the ante for your UX people and make it work? (hint for the n00bs out there: in this situation you should up the ante, not sit around and blame your customers) It's society's problem to figure out how to fix this public health crisis, because regardless of our beliefs about whether someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so, and we have to accept that and adjust our processes and habits to accommodate. The goal is not to admonish or uphold anyone, not to protect or liquidate profit, not to see one brand or flavor triumph over others. The goal is simply to cause the obesity rate to rapidly decline and stay declined. That's what we should focus on making happen at the macro level.
- ams6110 10y ago
  The blame also rests with regulators like the FDA, who for decades promoted a food pyramid that was basically upside-down in terms of what was healthy; who for decades promoted that partially-hydroginated oils (trans-fats) were preferable to natural saturated fats; who encouraged a "low fat" diet that prompted food producers to substitute sugar for fat to make foods tasty and consumers to consume an unhealthy high-starch, high-sugar diet and a nearly manic avoidance of fat.
  - escherize 10y ago
    ... while being funded under the threat of force (taxation).
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      There are many ways the government could raise money for a small program like designing the food pyramid. It's really not relevant which one they picked.
  - larubbio 10y ago
    Although the food pyramid as originally designed was modified at the request of food industry lobbyists out of fear it would hurt sales. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/invented-food-pyramid/ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/invented-foo...
  - gumby 10y ago
    Remember the FDA is part of the Department of Agriculture and that the Ag department's responsibility is to simultaneously protect the food supply (i.e. make sure it happens, take the farmers' side etc), manage food safety and support public health. Any surprise these objectives are at odds, and which side has more profit attached? This is like the Department of the Interior whose mission is to protect the environment and to encourage mining. In their case it means oil company employees had did drugs with and had sex with their government regulators (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?...) I am beyond considering this corrupt and simply shake my head that it's fundamentally mis-architected.
- hinkley 10y ago
  And parents. We learn many of our bad food habits when we're under the care of an adult. That's the great thing about marketing a habit forming product. The parents end up doing your advertising for you!
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  >someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so You are conflating people's ability to select healthy foods with their desire to do so. There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy, at least here in the U.S. It's just that people frequently eat what they like and, then, too much of it.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy There's a very high noise-to-signal ratio in information purporting to be about eating healthy, with considerable investment in misinformation by commercially interested parties. So, while it is in one sense true that there is not a lack of information, that should not be taken to mean that it is simple for laypeople to get and identify accurate information on which to make healthy eating decisions.
    - unclebucknasty 10y ago
      That's a bit of a red herring. Sure, misinformation and even disinformation exists, but many people knowingly make choices that are widely and irrefutably known to be poor: fast food, high sugar content, fried and overtly fatty items, processed foods, gross overeating, and on and on. This is overwhelmingly the problem versus health-conscious people being consistently duped into making poor choices. Given this, there's little reason to believe that resolving controversy over "finer points" of misinformation to which you refer would be significantly impactful.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term "maple" (while showing pictures of things usually associated with maple syrup). These products are called "syrup" but they're not related to real syrup in any way. They are literally dyed sugar water. If you look in the rightmost corner of the topmost aisle, you'll find a glass bottle that costs like $8 and contains real maple syrup. The rest is crap that costs $3-4. The people who buy Aunt Jemima's and the other brands of syrup usually believe they are buying maple syrup, a naturally-occurring food that our ancestors successfully consumed without growing into 400 pound hamplanets. But they're not. Now, repeat this for every type of food at Walmart. We need to admit there is a real systemic problem here that is not as simple as individual gluttony. It is not at all true that obese people eat 40 Snickers a day, which is what many fat-person-hate types seem to believe.
gumby 10y ago
> Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? Of course, but nobody has the time to become a domain expert on every subject (consider this a low pass filtering problem). It's reasonable for there to be food safety standards (who has time to investigate the meat packing plant, the mill, etc etc), building codes etc as baseline rules.

cookiecaper 10y ago

>Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? Of course. But the average consumer is not only at a disadvantage, they are regularly deceived into believing that unhealthy foods are in fact healthy. In reality, culpability is a complex calculation that passes through the farmer, the food processor, the manufacturer, the ad firm, the grocer, the consumer, and any other party involved in the transaction. All share some part of the blame. However, the blame game is rarely productive. When something is having a serious negative impact on 50%+ of the population, it's time to stop pushing blame around and start focusing on finding a workable solution. If 50%+ of your website's users were getting lost on your page and having a hard time finding an efficient way to do things, would you spend all your time blaming them for their idiocy, or would you up the ante for your UX people and make it work? (hint for the n00bs out there: in this situation you should up the ante, not sit around and blame your customers) It's society's problem to figure out how to fix this public health crisis, because regardless of our beliefs about whether someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so, and we have to accept that and adjust our processes and habits to accommodate. The goal is not to admonish or uphold anyone, not to protect or liquidate profit, not to see one brand or flavor triumph over others. The goal is simply to cause the obesity rate to rapidly decline and stay declined. That's what we should focus on making happen at the macro level.

ams6110 10y ago
The blame also rests with regulators like the FDA, who for decades promoted a food pyramid that was basically upside-down in terms of what was healthy; who for decades promoted that partially-hydroginated oils (trans-fats) were preferable to natural saturated fats; who encouraged a "low fat" diet that prompted food producers to substitute sugar for fat to make foods tasty and consumers to consume an unhealthy high-starch, high-sugar diet and a nearly manic avoidance of fat.
- escherize 10y ago
  ... while being funded under the threat of force (taxation).
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    There are many ways the government could raise money for a small program like designing the food pyramid. It's really not relevant which one they picked.
- larubbio 10y ago
  Although the food pyramid as originally designed was modified at the request of food industry lobbyists out of fear it would hurt sales. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/invented-food-pyramid/ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/invented-foo...
- gumby 10y ago
  Remember the FDA is part of the Department of Agriculture and that the Ag department's responsibility is to simultaneously protect the food supply (i.e. make sure it happens, take the farmers' side etc), manage food safety and support public health. Any surprise these objectives are at odds, and which side has more profit attached? This is like the Department of the Interior whose mission is to protect the environment and to encourage mining. In their case it means oil company employees had did drugs with and had sex with their government regulators (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?...) I am beyond considering this corrupt and simply shake my head that it's fundamentally mis-architected.
hinkley 10y ago
And parents. We learn many of our bad food habits when we're under the care of an adult. That's the great thing about marketing a habit forming product. The parents end up doing your advertising for you!
unclebucknasty 10y ago
>someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so You are conflating people's ability to select healthy foods with their desire to do so. There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy, at least here in the U.S. It's just that people frequently eat what they like and, then, too much of it.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy There's a very high noise-to-signal ratio in information purporting to be about eating healthy, with considerable investment in misinformation by commercially interested parties. So, while it is in one sense true that there is not a lack of information, that should not be taken to mean that it is simple for laypeople to get and identify accurate information on which to make healthy eating decisions.
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    That's a bit of a red herring. Sure, misinformation and even disinformation exists, but many people knowingly make choices that are widely and irrefutably known to be poor: fast food, high sugar content, fried and overtly fatty items, processed foods, gross overeating, and on and on. This is overwhelmingly the problem versus health-conscious people being consistently duped into making poor choices. Given this, there's little reason to believe that resolving controversy over "finer points" of misinformation to which you refer would be significantly impactful.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term "maple" (while showing pictures of things usually associated with maple syrup). These products are called "syrup" but they're not related to real syrup in any way. They are literally dyed sugar water. If you look in the rightmost corner of the topmost aisle, you'll find a glass bottle that costs like $8 and contains real maple syrup. The rest is crap that costs $3-4. The people who buy Aunt Jemima's and the other brands of syrup usually believe they are buying maple syrup, a naturally-occurring food that our ancestors successfully consumed without growing into 400 pound hamplanets. But they're not. Now, repeat this for every type of food at Walmart. We need to admit there is a real systemic problem here that is not as simple as individual gluttony. It is not at all true that obese people eat 40 Snickers a day, which is what many fat-person-hate types seem to believe.

gumby 10y ago

> Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? Of course, but nobody has the time to become a domain expert on every subject (consider this a low pass filtering problem). It's reasonable for there to be food safety standards (who has time to investigate the meat packing plant, the mill, etc etc), building codes etc as baseline rules.