15 ms·

First of all, diabetes pills are not really 'health products.' They are more like 'you fucked up your health, now try not to die' products. Even Nestle's low-fa

First of all, diabetes pills are not really 'health products.' They are more like 'you fucked up your health, now try not to die' products. Even Nestle's low-fat and low-sugar "foods" are a far cry from "health products." You are being disingenuous by conflating the two, or even for suggesting that Nestle is in the business of selling "health products." Beyond that, however, I see a pretty big flaw in your reasoning here. Given your argument, can you not then extend your theory on guaranteeing future profits to also include the strategy of selling both the problem and the solution? This, too, is a very 'normal' thing for large, multi-national manufacturers of consumer goods to be engaged in. Nestle, along with Coca Cola and Kroger, is a well-known corporate supporter of programs such as SNAP in the US, and is also one of the largest benefactors from said programs. I am a full-on capitalist, but that does not mean that we ought to give a pass to the morally-flawed existences of companies like Nestle, which leverage its influence in the State to reap greater profits.

bduerst 10y ago
How much of the cause of the diabetes endemic is Nestle though? Isn't lack of nutritional education more to blame? It's easy to come down hard on the smoking industry due to the chemically addictive nature and serious health hazards of the product, but there are many consumers who moderate their fat and sugar intake. And then there are diabetics who don't consume any Nestle products - so why can't they be given treatment manufactured from a conglomerate?
- lloyddobbler 10y ago
  Agreed. As someone with Type 1 diabetes (look up the difference if you don't know), I'm always interested in this distinction. Sugary foods neither "give people" nor cause Type 2 diabetes. A person consistently consuming too many sugary foods over a long period of time causes themselves to be at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes. Cigarettes are a different beast, due to the chemically-addictive nature of them (although in this day and age, one could make the argument that people of all ages should know better than to start smoking, and should thus bear responsibility for the outcome - but that's another discussion for another time). Cigarettes != sugar. End of story.
  - throwaway160303 10y ago
    How are the dopamine hits from a nicotine-delivery product different from the dopamine hits from a glucose-delivery product?
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188825/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188825/
  - jakubp 10y ago
    It is possible one day cigarettes will be considered a minor evil in comparison with sugar. Just you wait.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Only if second-hand sugaring becomes a trend and manages to beat out second-hand smoke in the evil dept. It's interesting how hyper-aware western and particularly U.S. cultures are of sugar and fat. From the 1990's there's still the stigma that eating any sugar and fat will make you fat.
  - miles 10y ago
    "Sugary foods neither 'give people' nor cause Type 2 diabetes" High Sugar Consumption Linked To Type 2 Diabetes http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php "For a while the association between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes was thought to solely relate to weight gain, but new research conducted at UC San Francisco indicates that sugar intake may also be directly linked to diabetes. ... "This suggests for the first time that not all calories contribute to diabetes risk in the same way. ... "Diabetes rates increased the longer a population was exposed to excess sugar and it decreased when sugar availability went down. ... "Mation Nestle, PhD, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said: 'As far as I know, this is the first paper that has had data on the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. This has been a source of controversy forever. It's been very, very difficult to separate sugar from the calories it provides. This work is carefully done, it's interesting and it deserves attention.' ... "A previous study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a similar association, revealing that added sugar and high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of obesity and diabetes."
- megablast 10y ago
  > Isn't lack of nutritional education more to blame? This is so easy to blame though, it is a cop out. Yes, lets spend more on education, but lets not raise taxes.
cisstrd 10y ago
What is a "health" product or not is of no value to the discussion here I think, we can debate all day long about what way of eating is correct or not, then let me put it in broader terms: Targeting different groups with different products that actually might have nothing in common or even be antagonists in a way, is nothing immoral or unusual. I used the term "health product" as an antagonist to their sugary products. I did not in any way say Nestle is not selling the cause and the solution, I was trying to make that point that this in itself is meaningless and in no sense immoral. As kazinator brilliantly put it: "Yamaha wants to sell you noise-canceling headphones, and a motorcycle."[1] We can talk about a tax on sugars, we can talk about a different regulatory framework, but I see nothing wrong with what Nestle is doing here given the current legal and regulatory situation. And people make their choices, if Nestle wouldn't sell product x, someone else would in some form, they are trying that you choose their product, that's all, that's called competition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659815
- yomly 10y ago
  Out of interest - if a cigarette company started selling lung cancer treatment, would you still hold this stance? I would hazard to say that the analogy I've chosen aligns more closely with the stance of the article and the posters taking a condemnatory tone than your Yamaha analogy does.
  - yomly 10y ago
    Don't really understand the downvotes here can people explain why they are downvoting? The parent opinion is that Nestle is a large corporation and they are diversifying their revenue streams as every profit-seeking company is entitled to. The other opinion elsewhere on this thread is that sugar is the enemy and therefore Nestle should be held accountable for first causing a problem then charging people for offering the solution. It's probably going to be hard to reconcile either opinion given the subject of sugar in diets is already quite divisive, but is an attempt to illustrate the anti-sugar camp's perspective through an extreme but easily understood example not constructive?
hyperbole 10y ago
> First of all, diabetes pills are not really 'health products.' They are more like 'you fucked up your health, now try not to die' products You can make the same argument about low cost sugary foods that originated from the same conglomerates - trade lower prices & time to avoid starving... if you can't afford to eat healthy you eat what's fast, affordable and tastes good. You can have your cake and eat it too, you just won't live very long... I agree there isn't a 'sickle' marketing department where in the company creates the problem and caters at every stopping point until your ultimate demise - unless of course Nestle owns a collection of funeral homes... Hanlons razor: never assume bad intentions when assuming stupidity is enough
- gerardnll 10y ago
  In Spain we say "Pan para hoy, hambre para mañana". Which literally translated would mean "Bread for today, hunger tomorrow". Eat cheap and in the future your health will be paying for that, and it will be more expensive than eating healthy during your life.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    One argument I read is that when you take profits from the food industry and subtract health care costs due to industrial diets we're (just the US) 1.4 trillion a year in the red.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    This is the kind of advice the rich can follow. For the poor, it's not a choice between cheap/bad and expensive/good, it's the choice between cheap/bad and death from starvation right now.
    - vkou 10y ago
      Death from starvation isn't exactly a widespread problem in the developed world. Homelessness is the more realistic outcome.
      - 10y ago
Kluny 10y ago
There's no conflict in being a capitalist and thinking that Nestle shouldn't get a pass. They are recipients of government welfare in the form of those SNAP subsidies, since the crap they sell is the only thing people on SNAP can afford to buy in bulk. That's not capitalism, it's just theft.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I think you sort of have to look at how SNAP evolved. It was the result of what was deemed to be an iterative series of improvements. Way too low-res, the sequence was "commodities" to food stamps to SNAP, with generics and store brands also evolving out of the same ferment. SFAIK, the principal ... principle driving this was administrative cost reduction on the government side - reuse existing buildings and people. And then it ties into the crop subsidy system, which is generally awesome in that it prices risk from shortage almost to zero at a cost in mild to "OMG!" overproduction.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
But they don't sell "problems" they make and sell food, some of which is good for you and some not so much. The reason why they exist at the level they do is because of the economies of scale you gain from being able to order millions of tons of grain, sugar, milk, etc., then processing them in huge factories, then distributing them to other huge companies that own grocery stores and vending machines, etc. It doesn't strike me as morally questionable to include other products, including medicine (OTC or not) in that process. In fact, if it makes the medicines more affordable it can be more beneficial for the people who need it than not. The reason why activists keep going after them and other large corporations is because getting them to change their behavior, when they're one of the largest purchasers or creators of something, can make more difference than lobbying the government to make every corporation follow suit. Which is why we should try to encourage them to do better about issues that matter, including changing packaging and contents of "junk" food.

bduerst 10y ago

How much of the cause of the diabetes endemic is Nestle though? Isn't lack of nutritional education more to blame? It's easy to come down hard on the smoking industry due to the chemically addictive nature and serious health hazards of the product, but there are many consumers who moderate their fat and sugar intake. And then there are diabetics who don't consume any Nestle products - so why can't they be given treatment manufactured from a conglomerate?

lloyddobbler 10y ago
Agreed. As someone with Type 1 diabetes (look up the difference if you don't know), I'm always interested in this distinction. Sugary foods neither "give people" nor cause Type 2 diabetes. A person consistently consuming too many sugary foods over a long period of time causes themselves to be at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes. Cigarettes are a different beast, due to the chemically-addictive nature of them (although in this day and age, one could make the argument that people of all ages should know better than to start smoking, and should thus bear responsibility for the outcome - but that's another discussion for another time). Cigarettes != sugar. End of story.
- throwaway160303 10y ago
  How are the dopamine hits from a nicotine-delivery product different from the dopamine hits from a glucose-delivery product?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188825/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188825/
- jakubp 10y ago
  It is possible one day cigarettes will be considered a minor evil in comparison with sugar. Just you wait.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Only if second-hand sugaring becomes a trend and manages to beat out second-hand smoke in the evil dept. It's interesting how hyper-aware western and particularly U.S. cultures are of sugar and fat. From the 1990's there's still the stigma that eating any sugar and fat will make you fat.
- miles 10y ago
  "Sugary foods neither 'give people' nor cause Type 2 diabetes" High Sugar Consumption Linked To Type 2 Diabetes http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php "For a while the association between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes was thought to solely relate to weight gain, but new research conducted at UC San Francisco indicates that sugar intake may also be directly linked to diabetes. ... "This suggests for the first time that not all calories contribute to diabetes risk in the same way. ... "Diabetes rates increased the longer a population was exposed to excess sugar and it decreased when sugar availability went down. ... "Mation Nestle, PhD, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said: 'As far as I know, this is the first paper that has had data on the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. This has been a source of controversy forever. It's been very, very difficult to separate sugar from the calories it provides. This work is carefully done, it's interesting and it deserves attention.' ... "A previous study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a similar association, revealing that added sugar and high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of obesity and diabetes."
megablast 10y ago
> Isn't lack of nutritional education more to blame? This is so easy to blame though, it is a cop out. Yes, lets spend more on education, but lets not raise taxes.

cisstrd 10y ago

What is a "health" product or not is of no value to the discussion here I think, we can debate all day long about what way of eating is correct or not, then let me put it in broader terms: Targeting different groups with different products that actually might have nothing in common or even be antagonists in a way, is nothing immoral or unusual. I used the term "health product" as an antagonist to their sugary products. I did not in any way say Nestle is not selling the cause and the solution, I was trying to make that point that this in itself is meaningless and in no sense immoral. As kazinator brilliantly put it: "Yamaha wants to sell you noise-canceling headphones, and a motorcycle."[1] We can talk about a tax on sugars, we can talk about a different regulatory framework, but I see nothing wrong with what Nestle is doing here given the current legal and regulatory situation. And people make their choices, if Nestle wouldn't sell product x, someone else would in some form, they are trying that you choose their product, that's all, that's called competition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659815

yomly 10y ago
Out of interest - if a cigarette company started selling lung cancer treatment, would you still hold this stance? I would hazard to say that the analogy I've chosen aligns more closely with the stance of the article and the posters taking a condemnatory tone than your Yamaha analogy does.
- yomly 10y ago
  Don't really understand the downvotes here can people explain why they are downvoting? The parent opinion is that Nestle is a large corporation and they are diversifying their revenue streams as every profit-seeking company is entitled to. The other opinion elsewhere on this thread is that sugar is the enemy and therefore Nestle should be held accountable for first causing a problem then charging people for offering the solution. It's probably going to be hard to reconcile either opinion given the subject of sugar in diets is already quite divisive, but is an attempt to illustrate the anti-sugar camp's perspective through an extreme but easily understood example not constructive?

hyperbole 10y ago

> First of all, diabetes pills are not really 'health products.' They are more like 'you fucked up your health, now try not to die' products You can make the same argument about low cost sugary foods that originated from the same conglomerates - trade lower prices & time to avoid starving... if you can't afford to eat healthy you eat what's fast, affordable and tastes good. You can have your cake and eat it too, you just won't live very long... I agree there isn't a 'sickle' marketing department where in the company creates the problem and caters at every stopping point until your ultimate demise - unless of course Nestle owns a collection of funeral homes... Hanlons razor: never assume bad intentions when assuming stupidity is enough

gerardnll 10y ago
In Spain we say "Pan para hoy, hambre para mañana". Which literally translated would mean "Bread for today, hunger tomorrow". Eat cheap and in the future your health will be paying for that, and it will be more expensive than eating healthy during your life.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  One argument I read is that when you take profits from the food industry and subtract health care costs due to industrial diets we're (just the US) 1.4 trillion a year in the red.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  This is the kind of advice the rich can follow. For the poor, it's not a choice between cheap/bad and expensive/good, it's the choice between cheap/bad and death from starvation right now.
  - vkou 10y ago
    Death from starvation isn't exactly a widespread problem in the developed world. Homelessness is the more realistic outcome.
    - 10y ago

Kluny 10y ago

There's no conflict in being a capitalist and thinking that Nestle shouldn't get a pass. They are recipients of government welfare in the form of those SNAP subsidies, since the crap they sell is the only thing people on SNAP can afford to buy in bulk. That's not capitalism, it's just theft.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

I think you sort of have to look at how SNAP evolved. It was the result of what was deemed to be an iterative series of improvements. Way too low-res, the sequence was "commodities" to food stamps to SNAP, with generics and store brands also evolving out of the same ferment. SFAIK, the principal ... principle driving this was administrative cost reduction on the government side - reuse existing buildings and people. And then it ties into the crop subsidy system, which is generally awesome in that it prices risk from shortage almost to zero at a cost in mild to "OMG!" overproduction.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

But they don't sell "problems" they make and sell food, some of which is good for you and some not so much. The reason why they exist at the level they do is because of the economies of scale you gain from being able to order millions of tons of grain, sugar, milk, etc., then processing them in huge factories, then distributing them to other huge companies that own grocery stores and vending machines, etc. It doesn't strike me as morally questionable to include other products, including medicine (OTC or not) in that process. In fact, if it makes the medicines more affordable it can be more beneficial for the people who need it than not. The reason why activists keep going after them and other large corporations is because getting them to change their behavior, when they're one of the largest purchasers or creators of something, can make more difference than lobbying the government to make every corporation follow suit. Which is why we should try to encourage them to do better about issues that matter, including changing packaging and contents of "junk" food.