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Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

394 points by ValentineC 7y ago

mark_l_watson 7y ago
Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If I were younger I might consider moving there for permanent work.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  There's nothing particularly unusual about being a libertarian in the "what's good for me" sense.
  - baddox 7y ago
    True, pretty much everyone is “for freedom as long as it doesn’t impact other people, except in some cases.”
- smackmybishop 7y ago
  There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large. Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...
  - undefined3840 7y ago
    In SF sugary drinks are taxed extra. There are signs that demand for sugary drinks are on the decline naturally e.g. demand for sparking water has increased as people look for alternatives to drinking a coke. And there was a recent article on how juice consumption has dropped to new lows...
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      One of the unfortunate side effects of the SF tax though is that an $8 canister of sports drink powder (essential to provide calories and minerals during longer periods of exertion) has a $7 tax. I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just.
      - CameronNemo 7y ago
        > I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just. For this specific case, or in general? Because there are certainly externalities that are larger than the internalized cost of a good.
        nitrogen 7y ago
        In this specific case. The drink facilitates athletic activity, and taxing it as if it harms health is ludicrous. Honestly I think the whole sugared drink tax is a bit ridiculous, but taxing a sports drink mix at 90 effing percent when a soda is taxed at a few percent can't be the true intent.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    I'm not sure how banning advertising for something destructive and unhealthy is nearly as much of a slippery slope as you are implying. Does it really seem like someone violating your choices because you aren't being fed certain advertisements? I haven't heard of anyone complaining that they never see ads for cigarettes anymore.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Banning advertising is very different from banning the products themselves. The intent of advertising is to increase consumption so the impact is more widespread than personal choices. It’s in effect a form of meme pollution.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Almost any kind of change starts small and then builds up. I don't see anything to indicate that banning ads isn't just the first step in the process. Cigarettes have become more and more restricted over time and they also started with banning ads. If this doesn't alarm you yet, then will you be alarmed once they start banning ads for meat?
      - furyg3 7y ago
        This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. Cigarettes have been around for a very long time, and the act of smoking them long-term is basically terminal behavior (which we’ve also known about for quite a while). Many countries have banned advertising or limited it, but even in many ‘progressive’ countries (eg Germany) cigarette advertisement is still alive and well. And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. So I don’t see any risk at all of sugary drinks going the way of schedule 1 drugs (which, themselves, are also experiencing international wave of decriminalization). Is it impossible? No; but that’s no reason to fear de-advertising as a step towards a ban.
        Mirioron 7y ago
        >This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. That's the point. Change happens either through a revolution or a "slippery slope". You can call it a fallacy all you want, but think about how successful political change happens. Almost every instance starts small and keeps pushing the boundaries until the political change has happened. This is how you change people's values, so calling it a fallacy as though that's supposed to invalidate it isn't enough. >And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. It has just been made exceedingly expensive, just like alcohol. To the degree that the vast majority of the cost is in taxes. Furthermore, this is a long process. Just because they haven't been banned yet doesn't mean that it's not going to happen in the future. >And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. Bhutan and Turkmenistan have banned the sale of tobacco. The aims of some countries, such as Finland, is to become tobacco free. Countries are also doing things such as banning flavorings of tobacco. So would your argument then be that it's not a slippery slope, because they aren't actually going to ban sugary drinks, they'll just ban sugary drinks with flavorings?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations. The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of course is bad for health in large quantities.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.
      - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
        >I think your concerns are unfounded. > cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.
        jakelazaroff 7y ago
        I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.
    - king_panic 7y ago
      The amount of misinformation surrounding human health is criminal. The restaurant/food industry and "healthcare" industry is a giant scam. The system sells you the problem -- processed food, sugar, alcohol, snacking -- and then sells you the "solution" at exorbitant costs -- doctors appointments, drugs, surgeries. They get you coming and going. The biggest problem is eating frequency, bar none. Humans are not meant to eat 24/7. When the body fasts, it's healing. People are figuring that out. Look up snake_diet_wizard on Instagram. He promotes prolonged fasting. The health and weight loss transformations are amazing. One hundred pounds of body fat lost are standard. We heal when we fast.
  - bbanyc 7y ago
    Singapore is famously the country that banned chewing gum. Personal freedom has never been a priority there. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, or a good thing, it's just different. There are a number of ideas they've successfully implemented there that would never fly in other countries - ethnic housing quotas, for instance. It undoubtedly works in reducing residential segregation, but I don't know if it's worth the cost in not letting people live where they want.
    - avar 7y ago
      They banned the sale of chewing gum, they didn't outright ban it. You can still chew gum there and bring it into the country. It's a useful distinction because they've really banned some other things, and they're much more serious about those.
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
      While the stated goal is indeed reducing residential segregation, it also has the suspiciously convenient side effect of ensuring that every voting district has a Chinese majority.
      - audiometry 7y ago
        The population is something like 70% Chinese. How are you going to randomly assign locations and NOT have a Chinese majority............
  - belorn 7y ago
    Banning advertisement is the nice way to reduce the social costs of universal healthcare as it only act as a industry regulation. What follows is usually not bans but taxes. As an example, Sweden uses a rather significant tobacco tax helps to offset the increased healthcare costs. Same for alcohol and now they are considering the same strategy for sugary drinks and sweets. Once culture has change and almost no one buys it anymore, and the cost makes the product completely uninterested for new customers, then politicians can start to discuss bans of the product itself.
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    Erm, we just killed the food pyramid which was held up as a standard of health for 30 years. Are you sure you want to enact bans on what the government thinks is unhealthy? There are a whole bunch of materials in the natural world that we just assume are safe because they've been around 'forever'. If you're going to use science as your standard for bans, there are billions of dollars of tests to do. There's some dark math to be done on the benefit of a human life vs the cost of saving it. Maybe ten guys drinking infinite soda are keeping 100 at work in soda companies, providing for their families.
    - smackmybishop 7y ago
      Just to be clear, I'm against universal healthcare for this reason. I think we should pay for the consequences of our own choices, and agree the government is terrible at deciding what's unhealthy.
    - soulofmischief 7y ago
      The poster was making a point that this kind of ban is a huge slippery slope. They were not speaking in support of the ban.
      - friendlybus 7y ago
        Ok, fair enough
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  I think this is a good thing but society pays for almost everything. Almost every bad decision a person makes impacts society and someone pays for it.
- undefined3840 7y ago
  It’s a “friendly authoritarian” surveillance state. It’s great if you obey the rules, but you sound like you lean toward libertarianism...Singapore is the complete opposite.
  - trevyn 7y ago
    For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singa...
- squarefoot 7y ago
  "This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets." Which is the case in many countries including mine. When they enacted the law I was still a youngster driving his motorcycle, constantly speeding and doing those things people do in their 20s. I hated that law, then a few accidents and fractures later I realized that the "stupid" law probably saved my parents from the horror of outliving me. I'm also for 100% freedom of choice but it must not impact others and must be accompanied by 100% information about the consequences. Back to the topic, if I drink shitty sugary drinks for years becoming fat and one day I get a fatal stroke, that's an error that can't be undone, so I'm all for limitation of freedom in this and similar cases.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    It's weird, I rode motorbikes off road as a teenager and wouldn't have dreamed of not wearing a helmet, heavy boots and gloves etc. Just bought a new bike to commute to new job (starting on a 125 and working my way up since not been on a bike for 20 odd years) and while a helmet was thrown in it'll be the first upgrade after proper jacket/pants. I still don't get why it's even a debate, I've cracked two bicycle helmets from accidents that weren't my faults in impacts that without them would have been vastly worse.
    - throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
      This is like saying you don't get why some men don't always wear condoms. For some, riding without a helmet is vastly more pleasurable and thrilling.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        this is something I don't get. How is getting hit by bugs and rocks more pleasurable?
        cornstalks 7y ago
        My favorite is getting throat-punched by a big juicy bug at 70 miles per hour. But yeah, getting one of those in the face (and near/in the eye especially) is something you do not want to happen.
- tootie 7y ago
  I've spent time there as well. It's a great place but very authoritarian. Also seems to be a lot of endemic racism that is just considered acceptable.
- srl 7y ago
  > This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. Maybe this is a petty, pointless distinction, but I think they're quite different. Singapore banned the ads, not the actual consumption. Not wearing a helmet chiefly harms yourself, and it's hard to argue that it's immoral. Encouraging others not to wear a helmet, though... that seems pretty objectionable, just like ads for tobacco etc. (Of course there are plenty of caveats needed to avoid a slippery slope, like drawing a distinction between advertisements and opinion pieces saying "helmets are bad".)
  - adrr 7y ago
    Helmet laws and seat belt laws cut the supply of organs to those in need.
    - junipertea 7y ago
      They also hopefully decreased the number people that need them
      - philwelch 7y ago
        Nah, organ recipients are usually people with chronic illnesses rather than people who survived traumatic accidents.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    People being injured or killed harms other people. Especially in countries with some form of universal healthcare (i.e most of the developed world).
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Maybe even more in the other countries. Loss of productivity and loved ones is also expensive, albeit harder to directly measure.
    - gdhbcc 7y ago
      By that argument you could justify any restriction of peoples freedom. Ultimately if the state chooses to provide such services, then it must accept the costs that come along with it.
- refurb 7y ago
  Should we stop people from doing high risk activities in general? Mountain climbing? Sky diving? Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.
  - thablackbull 7y ago
    When those start to have a noticeable impact on society, I'd imagine yes, they'd start to do something about it. Right now, diabetes is indeed a serious problem. > The cost burden from diabetes, including medical expenses and productivity loss, is expected to rise from beyond $940 million in 2014 to $1.8 billion in 2050. The prevalence of diabetes among Singapore residents (Singapore citizens and permanent residents) has increased over the decade. [...] Table 2 shows that even after accounting for Singapore's ageing population, the prevalence of diabetes in Singapore (10.5 percent) is higher than the world's average (8.8 percent). Rising obesity is also a significant contributor to the rise in diabetes prevalence. [1] > Diabetes is a serious health concern in Singapore. One in three Singaporeans is at risk of developing diabetes in their lifetime. [...] The Ministry of Health (MOH) launched a War on Diabetes (WoD) in 2016, in response to the significant health and societal burden posed by diabetes, and established the national Diabetes Prevention and Care Taskforce (“Taskforce”) to spearhead a whole-of-nation initiative to tackle diabetes. [2] References: [1] https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/diabetes https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/dia... [2] https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/BR10093093/br-external/MinistryOfHealth-Singapore-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/B...
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    I knew someone was going to push the limit - how about exercise, it kills some people. The bleedin' obvious answer is where the benefits outweight the cost. Benefit obviously extends further than 'can kill with x% probability'. This is a useless post, try answering the question, or giving a framework within which it can be answered, instead of asking it.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      It's not a useless post at all. It's sometimes difficult to quantify the negatives and positives of an activity. For example, eating meat. I have heard a lot about how eating meat is harmful to people's health and our environment. Shouldn't we ban that as well?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Society pays a high cost for eating meat. It takes a lot of resources to grow meat for consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things pointing towards how meat consumption isn't good for our health. So, let's ban advertising for meat products. Next step we levy heavy taxes on meat products and for the final step we outright ban it. After all, it's for your own good. The state knows best.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ben_w 7y ago
    All true. I guess the balance of power doesn’t support that, partly because: 1) there is no memetic equivalent of “sugar => calories => fat and ugly”, indeed rather the opposite because of its association with the Atkins diet. 2) farming is a job everyone seems to support even though it’s a small part of the economy, and meat is a cash crop (or am I misremembering?) > The state knows best. All true except that. We’ve all got our own examples, when I was at school the (UK) government’s poster-child for “drugs are bad” was a girl who actually overdosed on H2O, yet all the people who I should’ve been able to trust to be honest were blaming MDMA.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      >All true except that. It was a jab at authoritarianism. I think that people should be able to consume what they want. I'm okay with warnings and public health campaigns to a degree, but heavy sin taxes go too far. If these sin taxes were there to actually offset the cost to society, then I might consider them, but they almost never do that. At first, maybe, but eventually every sin tax just turns into additional funding for the government.
- 11235813213455 7y ago
  ads sort of control your freedom of choices paradoxically, through subconscious
- leppemd9 7y ago
  Not just health costs, but environment too. Why must we collectively be ok with enabling a profit margin on sugar water that requires factories, immense material resources to transport (cans, bottles) and prioritized placement in global distribution? The entire grift of the last few decades has been “externalize costs of our mess on the next generation for massive profit.” That’s unheard of. Until the last ~100 years the previous generations messes removed themselves in decades. Ours is such that it may wipe out the species I am very OK with the masses having direct control over how the global trade system we collectively build is allowed to impact the one planet humans can survive on. All that production and disposal of aluminum & plastic to carry sugar water one can make at home with simple syrup and flavoring. At some point we have to force ourselves to look beyond the emotional masturbation we’ve all been subjected to by TV & parents if society is going to move along. That’s exactly how’s it’s moved along in the past. A true free market of ideas demands it. We need to get nation states on board and in order to do that must tell aristocrats that the future has no place for them.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Ads are by definition something that impacts other people. They should be heavily regulated, with minimum information, maximum frequency, truth requirements, format restrictions, elimination of confusing language, and anything else that becomes a problem. I'm all for allowing ads and their platforms, but there is no way they can be free.
- Uhuhreally 7y ago
  Although motorcycling is very dangerous, I don't think riders should be forced to wear anything. Instead I think the manatory training should go to a much more advanced level before you can go on the road.
- proc0 7y ago
  Imagine 50 years ago they had passed a law to ban any advertising of products that are not low-fat or non-fat. That research turned out to be wrong and eating fat is good. The problem with this has nothing to do with the freedoms of sugary drink companies, but rather with thinking that controlling EVERYBODY will solve the problem. You can ban all the ads, fat people will still find their soda fix somehow. Protecting children is one thing, but banning them across everything is really more of an exercise of authority, rather than a useful policy.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  I like Singapore too and have lived there. Other countries could learn a lot from how Singapore is run but it has it's own worts. It's very dystopian in certain regards. It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety.
  - dnate 7y ago
    > It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety. Do you mean an example of being very far on the safety side, sacrificing freedom?
    - rorykoehler 7y ago
      Correct
- andrepd 7y ago
  The argument is that "freedom of choice" is a slippery concept, when you have massified advertisement, which targets people basest neurological triggers to make them more likely to drink soda/drink beer/stuff their face with hamburgers/buy weight loss products/vote for candidate X.
- hellofunk 7y ago
  > People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. Wow, honestly you didn't stay long enough if this was your lasting impression.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  FWIW, Singapore gained some notoriety a few years back for being the least happy country in the world, worse than eg. Syria, Haiti and Afghanistan: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-least-happy/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-leas... This seems a bit extreme, but neither would I describe it as a utopia. Life is great if you're rich, and noticeably better than most of neighbors if you're not, but there's an awful lot of pressure on all levels of the pyramid except maybe the very top.
  - budabudimir 7y ago
    This pool seems to be completely out of touch with reality. Venezuela in the top 10 happiest countries?
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  You weren’t there when Malaysia was ruining the air then?
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  Everyone’s life affects other people by a measurable amount, this is why talk of freedom gets complicated.
- mFixman 7y ago
  This is not like forcing motorcycle rivers to wear helmets. This is like banning cigarette ads on public spaces. Cheap sugary food, like cigarettes, get most of their buyers from addicts getting dopamine hits from the ads. This is specially bad because of the unhealthiness of this food, and was definitely the right choice.
mellosouls 7y ago
I'm not opposed to this but it strikes me as somewhat weak - if you think something is bad enough to ban visibility of it, why not just go all the way and ban the thing itself. Same with smoking, alcohol, etc. Of course, prohibition doesn't have a terribly successful history but the whole approach seems odd and inconsistent to me. I guess the rationale is a pragmatic de-normalising of toxic and addictive but currently fully normalised foods and substances over the long term.
- scarmig 7y ago
  Banning advertising here just restricts the freedom of corporations. Banning the item itself means individuals who want it can't get it.
  - mellosouls 7y ago
    And corporations can't vote .. :)
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      Corporations are a centralization of power that has obligations to money above all else. Also if you give me the choice between being able to vote and being to to hire a lobbying firm, I know which would have more influence.
      - anticensor 7y ago
        Would you admit the corporation one vote or as many votes as total number of shares divided by number of shares held by smallest shareholder?
        BubRoss 7y ago
        Is this a serious question? Are you talking about voting for politicians? Anyone can start as many corporations as they want. Also corporations have roughly 100 million shares and anyone can buy a single share, so your formula would give one corporation more votes than the number of people who participated in the 2016 US election. Do you really think corporations are under represented in the political process?
fake_satire 7y ago
everybody knows that diabetes is simply put caused by poor life-style descisions. why not just outright ban fun. 26% is barely even statistically significant... >:(
pro_scrunchies 7y ago
everybody knows that diabetes is simply put caused by poor life-style descisions. why not just outright ban fun. 26% is barely even statistically significant... >:(
williesleg 7y ago
Of course Sugar is bad news, it destroys focus in boys and makes them more aggressive. That's been proven scientifically for years going back decades.
bad_user 7y ago
I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity. But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns. First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1], even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome, see for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581 You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2 diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them going up. People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will get a non-alcoholic fatty liver. Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And sugary drinks are among the worst. But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate-insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3]. The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior. So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients. [1] https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-guideline-recommendations-sugar-intake-systematic-review https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-... [2] https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-cafeteria-diet.html https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-caf... [3] http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-gary-taubes-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/ http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-...
xhruso00 7y ago
Singapore goes opposite direction as most countries. Personally I think sugar tax is way powerful. Those money can be used to educate people. Banning ads is not going to educate people.
- greggman2 7y ago
  Does it work? I think I'm mostly for the ban but as for a tax... Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'd prefer a world where people choose to smoke less and eat healthier. I'm curious what methods are most effective. I believe it was going lower in the USA for a while but then blew up again with vaping? And you only have to visit almost any place in the USA to see we're failing at convincing people to eat healthy.
  - ValentineC 7y ago
    > Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm wrong). Singaporean here. I can get my $2 beers and $12 bottles of wine at the supermarket, so alcohol isn't that expensive. On the other hand, drinking at a restaurant or bar is expensive, but moreso because rent in Singapore is crazy. I'm not sure about the smoking rates, but I reckon that it has gone down among the younger generation because there's so much else to spend their money on these days — and smoking was recently banned on Orchard Road, which is the main shopping district.
xhruso00 7y ago
"In addition to an ad ban, the ministry announced that sugary drinks would also be required to display a color-coded, front-of-pack nutrition label to list nutritional quality and sugar content." I like Japanese/Taiwanese approach which list percentage of fruit juice (front-of-pack). And manufacturers can't cheat with substitutes like apple cause it doesn't count. This is way more useful for consumers to decide what they want. In countries like Malaysia I have no idea what i am buying (sugar water vs real fruit juice)
- Someone1234 7y ago
  The UK has a similar "traffic light" system[0] on their foods. I cannot speak to everyone, but for me seeing red salt makes me look again at other options. It is a gentle nudge but helps. By contrast US food labeling is an anti-pattern. "Serving size" seems arbitrary and makes it impossible to compare foods even directly next to one another on the shelf (plus they're intentionally unrealistic, like a single chocolate bar having two "servings"). [0] https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/topics/traffic-light-info.jpg https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/to...
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    It would be so simple to fix the serving size issue, too: just force labels to list nutrition information for the whole thing as well as per serving!
    - jniedrauer 7y ago
      Arbitrary serving sizes are kind of useless though. In an ideal world, most foods would list nutrition information in two units: per container, and per 100g. You'd be able to tell at a glance a) what you're buying, and b) how it compares to similar items. Unfortunately that will not happen in the United States any time soon.
      - philwelch 7y ago
        I dunno. 100g of butter is a lot.
jingfire 7y ago
Bravo for Singapore govs! Instead of relying on people not digesting too much sugars, they make the policy surveyed on people to discourage the sugar access, reducing the diabetes risks.
qwerty456127 7y ago
They should also penalize gluten-containing products (and that's not just foods, e.g. shampoo may contain gluten too). Google zonulin, leaky gut, wheat belly and microbiome diet to find out why.
- jedimastert 7y ago
  I get that you're being sarcastic, but can you expound on why? This isn't a ban on the sale of sugary drinks, just the advertisement of such.
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    I believe (given the information you can find by googling the subjects I've listed, it is scientifically-backed in reasonable degree, you will find references to scientific papers in the books too) gluten is the second if not the first cause of the obesity epidemic. TL/DR: besides being very bad for people with genuine celiac disease gluten (via zonulin) disregulates intestinal wall tight junctions in generally healthy people causing systematic inflammation, immune system problems (including weak immunity, allergies and autoimmune diseases) and metabolic syndrome (which means obesity and increased risk of diabetes as well as cardiovascular and endocrine diseases). Meanwhile, you can find gluten everywhere, not only in wheat products. Added gluten increases groceries and cosmetics shelf life. If I were the one in charge I would order more thorough research and consider ban on advertisements for both sugary and gluten-rich foods + additional taxation on these goods sales.
pimmen 7y ago
I had the pleasure of holding a talk at the same event as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, a rockstar entrepreneur and chemist in Sweden, and one of the questions he got during his talk was how he could reconcile his drive to be an ethical businessman and supply stuff to the military. His response was pretty long but it made a comparison with the sugar industry (paraphrasing here, sorry Saeid if you're reading this and I got something wrong): "I would never force my ethics on someone else, I will however criticize someone if they don't think their business model through on an ethical level. You should be able to live with what you're doing, personally, without deluding yourself or being in denial. I think Sweden, a democratic country, has an obligation to make sure that the troops we send for peace keeping purposes have the right gear to do the job. However, I would never, ever, supply stuff to the sugar industry. Even though we've found loads of stuff that could be applied to that field, I just couldn't live with myself. It serves absolutely no utility to humanity, it kills more people every year than war and you're primarily marketing stuff to children to form life long habits. It just doesn't square with my morals but I've met other, smart people who have thought long and hard about the sugar industry and came to the conclusion that it's an ethical industry. Whatever floats their boat, but I don't want to make money that way."
- refurb 7y ago
  That’s a pretty self-serving attitude. He sells weapons used to kill people, but is disgusted with the sugar industry?
  - pimmen 7y ago
    I think he produces ceramic plates for body armor, but he could very well be making weapons too. Either way, he profits off of war. So, yes, he sees the sugar industry as worse and as something without any sort of utility. Militaries bring security and are necessary, at least in his view, and thus he sees them as a net benefit. Personally, as a software developer, I would not build software for the military especially not anything based off of machine learning because it would be against my ethics, and I think that was his point too; don’t ape his morals, but do at least think whatever you choose to do through.
Uhuhreally 7y ago
I would like to see a ban on all ads. I am sick of them. I resent with all my heart that wherever I go I'm bombared with propaganda for products. Nobody should have the right to hijack other peoples attention.
- dennisgorelik 7y ago
  Banning all ads is wrong. Ads help promoting good products and services. If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective.
  - Uhuhreally 7y ago
    No. Everything we see advertised is crap. All of it. The more it's advertised the worse the product.
    - easytiger 7y ago
      That's just ridiculous.
      - Uhuhreally 7y ago
        have you forgotten the context of this thread ? Sugar water! One of the most advertised products of all time is sugar water. A useless product that makes people sick.
        smhost 7y ago
        wow, dude. what do you have against african unity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyT_bYUUG6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyT_bYUUG6o
        easytiger 7y ago
        Are you defending the statement... "Ban all advertising" ?
    - 7y ago
greggman2 7y ago
In 2010-11 Singapore there used to be close to zero non-sugary drinks at convenience stores. Even all the teas used to be sweet. Lately they started carrying Japanese brands of non-sweetened tea but for a while if you wanted non-sweet tea you had to make it yourself. Which of course is probably better for the planet but if you're just out and about and wanted a drink from a 7/11 your options were pretty slim. The big thing lately in Singapore, Tokyo, Malaysia is "brown sugar milk tea". I think it's hit NYC and LA but basically you take a tapoica milk tea but before you put the milk and tea in you coat the sides of the plastic cup with brown sugar syrup. Then, instead of the old tea + milk it's now like tea + cream and far more cream than tea such that it's more like sweetened tea flavored milk than milk flavored tea. Search for "Tiger Sugar" for I guess the brand the started the new style? https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=... There are apparently the equivilant of 20 teaspoons of sugar in 1 drink. Compare to 330ml of Coke which is about 7 teaspoons of sugar. The Malaysian government put out a warning as they got super popular. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-ministry-urges-malaysians-to-shun-sickly-sweet-bubble-tea/1774661 https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-mi... I'm curious why now in Tokyo. Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level. It's like every spare store front has started selling.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  > Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level. I believe it was around 2011 that the more premium bubble tea vendors in Singapore started offering a choice of how much syrup to add to one's drink (Koi Cafe, which may or may not have originated from Taiwan, might have started this trend). I'm surprised that this particular service hasn't made its way to Japan.
  - 7y ago
eikenberry 7y ago
I'm curious if they already have bans on adds for candy? It seems like if you are going to ban ads for one kind of candy, you'd ban them for all.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  By most objective determinations of what is "candy", "cereal" such as Froot Loops would qualify. (And I'm fully down for banning ads for candy cereal.)
kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
Just ban all ads and be done with it. Really don't understand why it's taking us (collectively) so long to get there.
- easytiger 7y ago
  The site you are commenting on is effectively an Ad for yc. Should that be banned?
  - blub 7y ago
    It's not "effectively" an ad for anything, it's a discussion forum. The fact that it also offers some publicity to YC's business is an additional aspect, but not the main one.
    - easytiger 7y ago
      It's an "ad" in as much as anything. Not to mention it sells job advertisement space. It brings goodwill to the brand. A core tennant of advertising. Such a weak minded assertion as "ban all advertising" without considering how that impacts freedom of speech is unbelievable.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - alexandercrohde 7y ago
    How about - Banning all color in ads, all images/videos in ads, all ads in public (busses, billboards, etc), music in ads. Simply black and white text information (which is what YC adheres to). Any step in that direction I support.
    - easytiger 7y ago
      Government dictated shop fronts for all. Death to design.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
tus88 7y ago
Why not do something that might actually work, like ban the sale of high-sugar carbonated drinks?
- lemmsjid 7y ago
  Banning products that a sub-population of people are effectively addicted to has a long, multi-instance history of not working and instead contributing to crime (see various drug prohibitions). A product being banned can actually be a form of advertising (or at least production of demand) by suggesting it is risky, cool, or potent in some way. On the other hand, banning advertising for a category of products, or restricting the advertising to fact-based, or forcing risk factor inclusion, can help produce or accelerate cultural shifts that reduce the demand for the product.
  - tus88 7y ago
    Banning the sale of != banning the thing itself. If the goal was a massive reduction, not total elimination, I think it would work. Would many people really go to the black market to get sugary Coke when the supermarket has shelves of Diet Coke available?
    - lemmsjid 7y ago
      Ah, I see what you're saying, thanks!
- abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
  Why do you say it doesnt work?
  - tus88 7y ago
    Because advertising is about the cool factor, that's not why people drink soft drink. Conversely it is why tobacco advertising bans did work.
aussieguy1234 7y ago
I'd go further than this. Here in Australia, cigarette packets are forced to use bland, non branded packaging. It should be the same for these drinks. They'll be less attractive if they all look the same.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  I think we are many many years away from the plain packaging dream. Cigarettes were first plain packaged in 2012 in Australia[0], but doctors and researchers have been drawing links between tobacco and disease pretty much as long as we've had epidemiological tools available to do so [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist...
- rgoulter 7y ago
  Cigarette packets have graphic images of damage caused by smoking. I think people would be upset if the equivalent were put for sugary drinks.
NoPicklez 7y ago
I think this would be great to actually demonstrate what drinks are actually "sugary" and I mean it against drinks that market themselves to be healthy but are very high in sugar
exabrial 7y ago
How adout we stop arresting non violent offenders? Then I'll be impressed. This is fake crap news and hn upvoters should be ashamed of themselves. Furthermore, in Seattle, the sugar tax doesn't apply to the home town hero, further sealing their monopoly as they hand wave through social issues.
karmakaze 7y ago
By only targeting sugar, Singapore will become the test area for what happens when a population converts to artificial sweeteners. I'm both curious and afraid for the results to come in.
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  Don't we have stable populations of people consuming artificial sweeteners for like 50 years now?

394 points by ValentineC 7y ago

Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If I were younger I might consider moving there for permanent work.

maxerickson 7y ago
There's nothing particularly unusual about being a libertarian in the "what's good for me" sense.
- baddox 7y ago
  True, pretty much everyone is “for freedom as long as it doesn’t impact other people, except in some cases.”
smackmybishop 7y ago
There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large. Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...
- undefined3840 7y ago
  In SF sugary drinks are taxed extra. There are signs that demand for sugary drinks are on the decline naturally e.g. demand for sparking water has increased as people look for alternatives to drinking a coke. And there was a recent article on how juice consumption has dropped to new lows...
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    One of the unfortunate side effects of the SF tax though is that an $8 canister of sports drink powder (essential to provide calories and minerals during longer periods of exertion) has a $7 tax. I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just.
    - CameronNemo 7y ago
      > I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just. For this specific case, or in general? Because there are certainly externalities that are larger than the internalized cost of a good.
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        In this specific case. The drink facilitates athletic activity, and taxing it as if it harms health is ludicrous. Honestly I think the whole sugared drink tax is a bit ridiculous, but taxing a sports drink mix at 90 effing percent when a soda is taxed at a few percent can't be the true intent.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  I'm not sure how banning advertising for something destructive and unhealthy is nearly as much of a slippery slope as you are implying. Does it really seem like someone violating your choices because you aren't being fed certain advertisements? I haven't heard of anyone complaining that they never see ads for cigarettes anymore.
- Retric 7y ago
  Banning advertising is very different from banning the products themselves. The intent of advertising is to increase consumption so the impact is more widespread than personal choices. It’s in effect a form of meme pollution.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Almost any kind of change starts small and then builds up. I don't see anything to indicate that banning ads isn't just the first step in the process. Cigarettes have become more and more restricted over time and they also started with banning ads. If this doesn't alarm you yet, then will you be alarmed once they start banning ads for meat?
    - furyg3 7y ago
      This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. Cigarettes have been around for a very long time, and the act of smoking them long-term is basically terminal behavior (which we’ve also known about for quite a while). Many countries have banned advertising or limited it, but even in many ‘progressive’ countries (eg Germany) cigarette advertisement is still alive and well. And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. So I don’t see any risk at all of sugary drinks going the way of schedule 1 drugs (which, themselves, are also experiencing international wave of decriminalization). Is it impossible? No; but that’s no reason to fear de-advertising as a step towards a ban.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        >This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. That's the point. Change happens either through a revolution or a "slippery slope". You can call it a fallacy all you want, but think about how successful political change happens. Almost every instance starts small and keeps pushing the boundaries until the political change has happened. This is how you change people's values, so calling it a fallacy as though that's supposed to invalidate it isn't enough. >And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. It has just been made exceedingly expensive, just like alcohol. To the degree that the vast majority of the cost is in taxes. Furthermore, this is a long process. Just because they haven't been banned yet doesn't mean that it's not going to happen in the future. >And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. Bhutan and Turkmenistan have banned the sale of tobacco. The aims of some countries, such as Finland, is to become tobacco free. Countries are also doing things such as banning flavorings of tobacco. So would your argument then be that it's not a slippery slope, because they aren't actually going to ban sugary drinks, they'll just ban sugary drinks with flavorings?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations. The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of course is bad for health in large quantities.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.
    - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      >I think your concerns are unfounded. > cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.
  - king_panic 7y ago
    The amount of misinformation surrounding human health is criminal. The restaurant/food industry and "healthcare" industry is a giant scam. The system sells you the problem -- processed food, sugar, alcohol, snacking -- and then sells you the "solution" at exorbitant costs -- doctors appointments, drugs, surgeries. They get you coming and going. The biggest problem is eating frequency, bar none. Humans are not meant to eat 24/7. When the body fasts, it's healing. People are figuring that out. Look up snake_diet_wizard on Instagram. He promotes prolonged fasting. The health and weight loss transformations are amazing. One hundred pounds of body fat lost are standard. We heal when we fast.
- bbanyc 7y ago
  Singapore is famously the country that banned chewing gum. Personal freedom has never been a priority there. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, or a good thing, it's just different. There are a number of ideas they've successfully implemented there that would never fly in other countries - ethnic housing quotas, for instance. It undoubtedly works in reducing residential segregation, but I don't know if it's worth the cost in not letting people live where they want.
  - avar 7y ago
    They banned the sale of chewing gum, they didn't outright ban it. You can still chew gum there and bring it into the country. It's a useful distinction because they've really banned some other things, and they're much more serious about those.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    While the stated goal is indeed reducing residential segregation, it also has the suspiciously convenient side effect of ensuring that every voting district has a Chinese majority.
    - audiometry 7y ago
      The population is something like 70% Chinese. How are you going to randomly assign locations and NOT have a Chinese majority............
- belorn 7y ago
  Banning advertisement is the nice way to reduce the social costs of universal healthcare as it only act as a industry regulation. What follows is usually not bans but taxes. As an example, Sweden uses a rather significant tobacco tax helps to offset the increased healthcare costs. Same for alcohol and now they are considering the same strategy for sugary drinks and sweets. Once culture has change and almost no one buys it anymore, and the cost makes the product completely uninterested for new customers, then politicians can start to discuss bans of the product itself.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Erm, we just killed the food pyramid which was held up as a standard of health for 30 years. Are you sure you want to enact bans on what the government thinks is unhealthy? There are a whole bunch of materials in the natural world that we just assume are safe because they've been around 'forever'. If you're going to use science as your standard for bans, there are billions of dollars of tests to do. There's some dark math to be done on the benefit of a human life vs the cost of saving it. Maybe ten guys drinking infinite soda are keeping 100 at work in soda companies, providing for their families.
  - smackmybishop 7y ago
    Just to be clear, I'm against universal healthcare for this reason. I think we should pay for the consequences of our own choices, and agree the government is terrible at deciding what's unhealthy.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    The poster was making a point that this kind of ban is a huge slippery slope. They were not speaking in support of the ban.
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      Ok, fair enough
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I think this is a good thing but society pays for almost everything. Almost every bad decision a person makes impacts society and someone pays for it.
undefined3840 7y ago
It’s a “friendly authoritarian” surveillance state. It’s great if you obey the rules, but you sound like you lean toward libertarianism...Singapore is the complete opposite.
- trevyn 7y ago
  For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singa...
squarefoot 7y ago
"This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets." Which is the case in many countries including mine. When they enacted the law I was still a youngster driving his motorcycle, constantly speeding and doing those things people do in their 20s. I hated that law, then a few accidents and fractures later I realized that the "stupid" law probably saved my parents from the horror of outliving me. I'm also for 100% freedom of choice but it must not impact others and must be accompanied by 100% information about the consequences. Back to the topic, if I drink shitty sugary drinks for years becoming fat and one day I get a fatal stroke, that's an error that can't be undone, so I'm all for limitation of freedom in this and similar cases.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  It's weird, I rode motorbikes off road as a teenager and wouldn't have dreamed of not wearing a helmet, heavy boots and gloves etc. Just bought a new bike to commute to new job (starting on a 125 and working my way up since not been on a bike for 20 odd years) and while a helmet was thrown in it'll be the first upgrade after proper jacket/pants. I still don't get why it's even a debate, I've cracked two bicycle helmets from accidents that weren't my faults in impacts that without them would have been vastly worse.
  - throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
    This is like saying you don't get why some men don't always wear condoms. For some, riding without a helmet is vastly more pleasurable and thrilling.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      this is something I don't get. How is getting hit by bugs and rocks more pleasurable?
      - cornstalks 7y ago
        My favorite is getting throat-punched by a big juicy bug at 70 miles per hour. But yeah, getting one of those in the face (and near/in the eye especially) is something you do not want to happen.
tootie 7y ago
I've spent time there as well. It's a great place but very authoritarian. Also seems to be a lot of endemic racism that is just considered acceptable.
srl 7y ago
> This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. Maybe this is a petty, pointless distinction, but I think they're quite different. Singapore banned the ads, not the actual consumption. Not wearing a helmet chiefly harms yourself, and it's hard to argue that it's immoral. Encouraging others not to wear a helmet, though... that seems pretty objectionable, just like ads for tobacco etc. (Of course there are plenty of caveats needed to avoid a slippery slope, like drawing a distinction between advertisements and opinion pieces saying "helmets are bad".)
- adrr 7y ago
  Helmet laws and seat belt laws cut the supply of organs to those in need.
  - junipertea 7y ago
    They also hopefully decreased the number people that need them
    - philwelch 7y ago
      Nah, organ recipients are usually people with chronic illnesses rather than people who survived traumatic accidents.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  People being injured or killed harms other people. Especially in countries with some form of universal healthcare (i.e most of the developed world).
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Maybe even more in the other countries. Loss of productivity and loved ones is also expensive, albeit harder to directly measure.
  - gdhbcc 7y ago
    By that argument you could justify any restriction of peoples freedom. Ultimately if the state chooses to provide such services, then it must accept the costs that come along with it.
refurb 7y ago
Should we stop people from doing high risk activities in general? Mountain climbing? Sky diving? Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.
- thablackbull 7y ago
  When those start to have a noticeable impact on society, I'd imagine yes, they'd start to do something about it. Right now, diabetes is indeed a serious problem. > The cost burden from diabetes, including medical expenses and productivity loss, is expected to rise from beyond $940 million in 2014 to $1.8 billion in 2050. The prevalence of diabetes among Singapore residents (Singapore citizens and permanent residents) has increased over the decade. [...] Table 2 shows that even after accounting for Singapore's ageing population, the prevalence of diabetes in Singapore (10.5 percent) is higher than the world's average (8.8 percent). Rising obesity is also a significant contributor to the rise in diabetes prevalence. [1] > Diabetes is a serious health concern in Singapore. One in three Singaporeans is at risk of developing diabetes in their lifetime. [...] The Ministry of Health (MOH) launched a War on Diabetes (WoD) in 2016, in response to the significant health and societal burden posed by diabetes, and established the national Diabetes Prevention and Care Taskforce (“Taskforce”) to spearhead a whole-of-nation initiative to tackle diabetes. [2] References: [1] https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/diabetes https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/dia... [2] https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/BR10093093/br-external/MinistryOfHealth-Singapore-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/B...
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  I knew someone was going to push the limit - how about exercise, it kills some people. The bleedin' obvious answer is where the benefits outweight the cost. Benefit obviously extends further than 'can kill with x% probability'. This is a useless post, try answering the question, or giving a framework within which it can be answered, instead of asking it.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    It's not a useless post at all. It's sometimes difficult to quantify the negatives and positives of an activity. For example, eating meat. I have heard a lot about how eating meat is harmful to people's health and our environment. Shouldn't we ban that as well?
Mirioron 7y ago
Society pays a high cost for eating meat. It takes a lot of resources to grow meat for consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things pointing towards how meat consumption isn't good for our health. So, let's ban advertising for meat products. Next step we levy heavy taxes on meat products and for the final step we outright ban it. After all, it's for your own good. The state knows best.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 7y ago
  All true. I guess the balance of power doesn’t support that, partly because: 1) there is no memetic equivalent of “sugar => calories => fat and ugly”, indeed rather the opposite because of its association with the Atkins diet. 2) farming is a job everyone seems to support even though it’s a small part of the economy, and meat is a cash crop (or am I misremembering?) > The state knows best. All true except that. We’ve all got our own examples, when I was at school the (UK) government’s poster-child for “drugs are bad” was a girl who actually overdosed on H2O, yet all the people who I should’ve been able to trust to be honest were blaming MDMA.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >All true except that. It was a jab at authoritarianism. I think that people should be able to consume what they want. I'm okay with warnings and public health campaigns to a degree, but heavy sin taxes go too far. If these sin taxes were there to actually offset the cost to society, then I might consider them, but they almost never do that. At first, maybe, but eventually every sin tax just turns into additional funding for the government.
11235813213455 7y ago
ads sort of control your freedom of choices paradoxically, through subconscious
leppemd9 7y ago
Not just health costs, but environment too. Why must we collectively be ok with enabling a profit margin on sugar water that requires factories, immense material resources to transport (cans, bottles) and prioritized placement in global distribution? The entire grift of the last few decades has been “externalize costs of our mess on the next generation for massive profit.” That’s unheard of. Until the last ~100 years the previous generations messes removed themselves in decades. Ours is such that it may wipe out the species I am very OK with the masses having direct control over how the global trade system we collectively build is allowed to impact the one planet humans can survive on. All that production and disposal of aluminum & plastic to carry sugar water one can make at home with simple syrup and flavoring. At some point we have to force ourselves to look beyond the emotional masturbation we’ve all been subjected to by TV & parents if society is going to move along. That’s exactly how’s it’s moved along in the past. A true free market of ideas demands it. We need to get nation states on board and in order to do that must tell aristocrats that the future has no place for them.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Ads are by definition something that impacts other people. They should be heavily regulated, with minimum information, maximum frequency, truth requirements, format restrictions, elimination of confusing language, and anything else that becomes a problem. I'm all for allowing ads and their platforms, but there is no way they can be free.
Uhuhreally 7y ago
Although motorcycling is very dangerous, I don't think riders should be forced to wear anything. Instead I think the manatory training should go to a much more advanced level before you can go on the road.
proc0 7y ago
Imagine 50 years ago they had passed a law to ban any advertising of products that are not low-fat or non-fat. That research turned out to be wrong and eating fat is good. The problem with this has nothing to do with the freedoms of sugary drink companies, but rather with thinking that controlling EVERYBODY will solve the problem. You can ban all the ads, fat people will still find their soda fix somehow. Protecting children is one thing, but banning them across everything is really more of an exercise of authority, rather than a useful policy.
rorykoehler 7y ago
I like Singapore too and have lived there. Other countries could learn a lot from how Singapore is run but it has it's own worts. It's very dystopian in certain regards. It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety.
- dnate 7y ago
  > It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety. Do you mean an example of being very far on the safety side, sacrificing freedom?
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    Correct
andrepd 7y ago
The argument is that "freedom of choice" is a slippery concept, when you have massified advertisement, which targets people basest neurological triggers to make them more likely to drink soda/drink beer/stuff their face with hamburgers/buy weight loss products/vote for candidate X.
hellofunk 7y ago
> People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. Wow, honestly you didn't stay long enough if this was your lasting impression.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
FWIW, Singapore gained some notoriety a few years back for being the least happy country in the world, worse than eg. Syria, Haiti and Afghanistan: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-least-happy/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-leas... This seems a bit extreme, but neither would I describe it as a utopia. Life is great if you're rich, and noticeably better than most of neighbors if you're not, but there's an awful lot of pressure on all levels of the pyramid except maybe the very top.
- budabudimir 7y ago
  This pool seems to be completely out of touch with reality. Venezuela in the top 10 happiest countries?
mensetmanusman 7y ago
You weren’t there when Malaysia was ruining the air then?
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Everyone’s life affects other people by a measurable amount, this is why talk of freedom gets complicated.
mFixman 7y ago
This is not like forcing motorcycle rivers to wear helmets. This is like banning cigarette ads on public spaces. Cheap sugary food, like cigarettes, get most of their buyers from addicts getting dopamine hits from the ads. This is specially bad because of the unhealthiness of this food, and was definitely the right choice.

mellosouls 7y ago

I'm not opposed to this but it strikes me as somewhat weak - if you think something is bad enough to ban visibility of it, why not just go all the way and ban the thing itself. Same with smoking, alcohol, etc. Of course, prohibition doesn't have a terribly successful history but the whole approach seems odd and inconsistent to me. I guess the rationale is a pragmatic de-normalising of toxic and addictive but currently fully normalised foods and substances over the long term.

scarmig 7y ago
Banning advertising here just restricts the freedom of corporations. Banning the item itself means individuals who want it can't get it.
- mellosouls 7y ago
  And corporations can't vote .. :)
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Corporations are a centralization of power that has obligations to money above all else. Also if you give me the choice between being able to vote and being to to hire a lobbying firm, I know which would have more influence.
    - anticensor 7y ago
      Would you admit the corporation one vote or as many votes as total number of shares divided by number of shares held by smallest shareholder?
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        Is this a serious question? Are you talking about voting for politicians? Anyone can start as many corporations as they want. Also corporations have roughly 100 million shares and anyone can buy a single share, so your formula would give one corporation more votes than the number of people who participated in the 2016 US election. Do you really think corporations are under represented in the political process?

fake_satire 7y ago

everybody knows that diabetes is simply put caused by poor life-style descisions. why not just outright ban fun. 26% is barely even statistically significant... >:(

pro_scrunchies 7y ago

everybody knows that diabetes is simply put caused by poor life-style descisions. why not just outright ban fun. 26% is barely even statistically significant... >:(

williesleg 7y ago

Of course Sugar is bad news, it destroys focus in boys and makes them more aggressive. That's been proven scientifically for years going back decades.

bad_user 7y ago

I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity. But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns. First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1], even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome, see for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581 You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2 diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them going up. People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will get a non-alcoholic fatty liver. Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And sugary drinks are among the worst. But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate-insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3]. The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior. So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients. [1] https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-guideline-recommendations-sugar-intake-systematic-review https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-... [2] https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-cafeteria-diet.html https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-caf... [3] http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-gary-taubes-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/ http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-...

xhruso00 7y ago

Singapore goes opposite direction as most countries. Personally I think sugar tax is way powerful. Those money can be used to educate people. Banning ads is not going to educate people.

greggman2 7y ago
Does it work? I think I'm mostly for the ban but as for a tax... Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'd prefer a world where people choose to smoke less and eat healthier. I'm curious what methods are most effective. I believe it was going lower in the USA for a while but then blew up again with vaping? And you only have to visit almost any place in the USA to see we're failing at convincing people to eat healthy.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  > Alcohol is 4x the price in SG vs the USA because of taxes. Has that lowered the percentage of drinkers? SG also has a high tax on cigarettes I believe and they have those really disgusting images of disfigured people from smoking issues on every package yet I believe smoking is growing in SG (please correct me if I'm wrong). Singaporean here. I can get my $2 beers and $12 bottles of wine at the supermarket, so alcohol isn't that expensive. On the other hand, drinking at a restaurant or bar is expensive, but moreso because rent in Singapore is crazy. I'm not sure about the smoking rates, but I reckon that it has gone down among the younger generation because there's so much else to spend their money on these days — and smoking was recently banned on Orchard Road, which is the main shopping district.

xhruso00 7y ago

"In addition to an ad ban, the ministry announced that sugary drinks would also be required to display a color-coded, front-of-pack nutrition label to list nutritional quality and sugar content." I like Japanese/Taiwanese approach which list percentage of fruit juice (front-of-pack). And manufacturers can't cheat with substitutes like apple cause it doesn't count. This is way more useful for consumers to decide what they want. In countries like Malaysia I have no idea what i am buying (sugar water vs real fruit juice)

Someone1234 7y ago
The UK has a similar "traffic light" system[0] on their foods. I cannot speak to everyone, but for me seeing red salt makes me look again at other options. It is a gentle nudge but helps. By contrast US food labeling is an anti-pattern. "Serving size" seems arbitrary and makes it impossible to compare foods even directly next to one another on the shelf (plus they're intentionally unrealistic, like a single chocolate bar having two "servings"). [0] https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/topics/traffic-light-info.jpg https://assets.bupa.co.uk/~/media/images/healthmanagement/to...
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  It would be so simple to fix the serving size issue, too: just force labels to list nutrition information for the whole thing as well as per serving!
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    Arbitrary serving sizes are kind of useless though. In an ideal world, most foods would list nutrition information in two units: per container, and per 100g. You'd be able to tell at a glance a) what you're buying, and b) how it compares to similar items. Unfortunately that will not happen in the United States any time soon.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      I dunno. 100g of butter is a lot.

jingfire 7y ago

Bravo for Singapore govs! Instead of relying on people not digesting too much sugars, they make the policy surveyed on people to discourage the sugar access, reducing the diabetes risks.

qwerty456127 7y ago

They should also penalize gluten-containing products (and that's not just foods, e.g. shampoo may contain gluten too). Google zonulin, leaky gut, wheat belly and microbiome diet to find out why.

jedimastert 7y ago
I get that you're being sarcastic, but can you expound on why? This isn't a ban on the sale of sugary drinks, just the advertisement of such.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  I believe (given the information you can find by googling the subjects I've listed, it is scientifically-backed in reasonable degree, you will find references to scientific papers in the books too) gluten is the second if not the first cause of the obesity epidemic. TL/DR: besides being very bad for people with genuine celiac disease gluten (via zonulin) disregulates intestinal wall tight junctions in generally healthy people causing systematic inflammation, immune system problems (including weak immunity, allergies and autoimmune diseases) and metabolic syndrome (which means obesity and increased risk of diabetes as well as cardiovascular and endocrine diseases). Meanwhile, you can find gluten everywhere, not only in wheat products. Added gluten increases groceries and cosmetics shelf life. If I were the one in charge I would order more thorough research and consider ban on advertisements for both sugary and gluten-rich foods + additional taxation on these goods sales.

pimmen 7y ago

I had the pleasure of holding a talk at the same event as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, a rockstar entrepreneur and chemist in Sweden, and one of the questions he got during his talk was how he could reconcile his drive to be an ethical businessman and supply stuff to the military. His response was pretty long but it made a comparison with the sugar industry (paraphrasing here, sorry Saeid if you're reading this and I got something wrong): "I would never force my ethics on someone else, I will however criticize someone if they don't think their business model through on an ethical level. You should be able to live with what you're doing, personally, without deluding yourself or being in denial. I think Sweden, a democratic country, has an obligation to make sure that the troops we send for peace keeping purposes have the right gear to do the job. However, I would never, ever, supply stuff to the sugar industry. Even though we've found loads of stuff that could be applied to that field, I just couldn't live with myself. It serves absolutely no utility to humanity, it kills more people every year than war and you're primarily marketing stuff to children to form life long habits. It just doesn't square with my morals but I've met other, smart people who have thought long and hard about the sugar industry and came to the conclusion that it's an ethical industry. Whatever floats their boat, but I don't want to make money that way."

refurb 7y ago
That’s a pretty self-serving attitude. He sells weapons used to kill people, but is disgusted with the sugar industry?
- pimmen 7y ago
  I think he produces ceramic plates for body armor, but he could very well be making weapons too. Either way, he profits off of war. So, yes, he sees the sugar industry as worse and as something without any sort of utility. Militaries bring security and are necessary, at least in his view, and thus he sees them as a net benefit. Personally, as a software developer, I would not build software for the military especially not anything based off of machine learning because it would be against my ethics, and I think that was his point too; don’t ape his morals, but do at least think whatever you choose to do through.

Uhuhreally 7y ago

I would like to see a ban on all ads. I am sick of them. I resent with all my heart that wherever I go I'm bombared with propaganda for products. Nobody should have the right to hijack other peoples attention.

dennisgorelik 7y ago
Banning all ads is wrong. Ads help promoting good products and services. If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective.
- Uhuhreally 7y ago
  No. Everything we see advertised is crap. All of it. The more it's advertised the worse the product.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    That's just ridiculous.
    - Uhuhreally 7y ago
      have you forgotten the context of this thread ? Sugar water! One of the most advertised products of all time is sugar water. A useless product that makes people sick.
      - smhost 7y ago
        wow, dude. what do you have against african unity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyT_bYUUG6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyT_bYUUG6o
      - easytiger 7y ago
        Are you defending the statement... "Ban all advertising" ?
  - 7y ago

greggman2 7y ago

In 2010-11 Singapore there used to be close to zero non-sugary drinks at convenience stores. Even all the teas used to be sweet. Lately they started carrying Japanese brands of non-sweetened tea but for a while if you wanted non-sweet tea you had to make it yourself. Which of course is probably better for the planet but if you're just out and about and wanted a drink from a 7/11 your options were pretty slim. The big thing lately in Singapore, Tokyo, Malaysia is "brown sugar milk tea". I think it's hit NYC and LA but basically you take a tapoica milk tea but before you put the milk and tea in you coat the sides of the plastic cup with brown sugar syrup. Then, instead of the old tea + milk it's now like tea + cream and far more cream than tea such that it's more like sweetened tea flavored milk than milk flavored tea. Search for "Tiger Sugar" for I guess the brand the started the new style? https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=tiger+sugar&tbm=... There are apparently the equivilant of 20 teaspoons of sugar in 1 drink. Compare to 330ml of Coke which is about 7 teaspoons of sugar. The Malaysian government put out a warning as they got super popular. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-ministry-urges-malaysians-to-shun-sickly-sweet-bubble-tea/1774661 https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/25/health-mi... I'm curious why now in Tokyo. Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level. It's like every spare store front has started selling.

ValentineC 7y ago
> Tapioca Milk Tea was popular in Taiwan in the 90s and made it Los Angeles in the late 90s early 2000s. People tried for years to bring it to Japan and I was told it was too sweet for Japanese tastes. But, now it's even sweeter and has some how exploded in popularity to a ridiculous level. I believe it was around 2011 that the more premium bubble tea vendors in Singapore started offering a choice of how much syrup to add to one's drink (Koi Cafe, which may or may not have originated from Taiwan, might have started this trend). I'm surprised that this particular service hasn't made its way to Japan.
- 7y ago

eikenberry 7y ago

I'm curious if they already have bans on adds for candy? It seems like if you are going to ban ads for one kind of candy, you'd ban them for all.

Marsymars 7y ago
By most objective determinations of what is "candy", "cereal" such as Froot Loops would qualify. (And I'm fully down for banning ads for candy cereal.)

kaffeemitsahne 7y ago

Just ban all ads and be done with it. Really don't understand why it's taking us (collectively) so long to get there.

easytiger 7y ago
The site you are commenting on is effectively an Ad for yc. Should that be banned?
- blub 7y ago
  It's not "effectively" an ad for anything, it's a discussion forum. The fact that it also offers some publicity to YC's business is an additional aspect, but not the main one.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    It's an "ad" in as much as anything. Not to mention it sells job advertisement space. It brings goodwill to the brand. A core tennant of advertising. Such a weak minded assertion as "ban all advertising" without considering how that impacts freedom of speech is unbelievable.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  How about - Banning all color in ads, all images/videos in ads, all ads in public (busses, billboards, etc), music in ads. Simply black and white text information (which is what YC adheres to). Any step in that direction I support.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    Government dictated shop fronts for all. Death to design.
- Marsymars 7y ago

tus88 7y ago

Why not do something that might actually work, like ban the sale of high-sugar carbonated drinks?

lemmsjid 7y ago
Banning products that a sub-population of people are effectively addicted to has a long, multi-instance history of not working and instead contributing to crime (see various drug prohibitions). A product being banned can actually be a form of advertising (or at least production of demand) by suggesting it is risky, cool, or potent in some way. On the other hand, banning advertising for a category of products, or restricting the advertising to fact-based, or forcing risk factor inclusion, can help produce or accelerate cultural shifts that reduce the demand for the product.
- tus88 7y ago
  Banning the sale of != banning the thing itself. If the goal was a massive reduction, not total elimination, I think it would work. Would many people really go to the black market to get sugary Coke when the supermarket has shelves of Diet Coke available?
  - lemmsjid 7y ago
    Ah, I see what you're saying, thanks!
abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
Why do you say it doesnt work?
- tus88 7y ago
  Because advertising is about the cool factor, that's not why people drink soft drink. Conversely it is why tobacco advertising bans did work.

aussieguy1234 7y ago

I'd go further than this. Here in Australia, cigarette packets are forced to use bland, non branded packaging. It should be the same for these drinks. They'll be less attractive if they all look the same.

ImaCake 7y ago
I think we are many many years away from the plain packaging dream. Cigarettes were first plain packaged in 2012 in Australia[0], but doctors and researchers have been drawing links between tobacco and disease pretty much as long as we've had epidemiological tools available to do so [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_tobacco_packaging 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist...
rgoulter 7y ago
Cigarette packets have graphic images of damage caused by smoking. I think people would be upset if the equivalent were put for sugary drinks.

NoPicklez 7y ago

I think this would be great to actually demonstrate what drinks are actually "sugary" and I mean it against drinks that market themselves to be healthy but are very high in sugar

exabrial 7y ago

How adout we stop arresting non violent offenders? Then I'll be impressed. This is fake crap news and hn upvoters should be ashamed of themselves. Furthermore, in Seattle, the sugar tax doesn't apply to the home town hero, further sealing their monopoly as they hand wave through social issues.

karmakaze 7y ago

By only targeting sugar, Singapore will become the test area for what happens when a population converts to artificial sweeteners. I'm both curious and afraid for the results to come in.

therealdrag0 7y ago
Don't we have stable populations of people consuming artificial sweeteners for like 50 years now?