9 ms·

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud. Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect t

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud. Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect their monopoly, and will coerce the government into helping them. I read an article about import taxes on sugar that were created to keep out competition, and as a result everything uses corn syrup. Other examples abound. Unfortunately, the solution of government oversight of itself (such as FBI breathing down the neck of the NSA), has obvious circular drawbacks.

m463 6y ago
I can't help but think of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. During a golf tournament, he gives the officials some money saying "keep it fair, keep it fair!"
Smaug123 6y ago
If you like this writing style, food critic Jay Rayner writes in a way I find pretty similar: https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/jay-rayner-on-restaurants https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/jay-rayner-on-restau...
sunpar 6y ago
I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well. Told another way, a firm in the marketplace for pasta found that a competitor was out of regulation with their product, and they found a person in congress who could press a slow-moving and ineffective agency to do better at doing their job: enforcing said regulations. That's exactly what you want your elected representatives to do: listen to their constituents and act accordingly to ensure a fair outcome according to the law. Note that no laws were changed in this to favor one company over another, if anything the previous state was one in which the company in question was profiting from shipping out-of-regulation product, perhaps at decreased cost compared to in-compliance firms. The rule itself can be debated, but in general I find that a law specifying in exact numbers what a product should contain in order to qualify for a label to be a very good law. It's exact, it's measurable, and it's achievable by all. Fair and equal enforcement should make it a good regulation. If you say "well you don't need this law, it's over-regulation", that's a good argument -- I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. On one hand, I think Standard of Identification make a lot of sense, but I also know that drawing the lines can be a very delicate art form (what makes a pasta noodle vs. a ramen noodle? What makes champagne vs. sparkling wine? And so on) Edit: Also, I think a lot of this could be dealt with better by an FDA that has a good communication arm. "We found this company to not be compliance with existing law and took it off the shelves" sounds a lot better than having the company get to print saying "Seems like a hold up by the FDA"
- kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
  Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and legislators who can legislate or enforce on their behalf. The senior people will know each other and get things moving. Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporates. So when you read a story and think things 'worked quite well'. It's just an example of selectively applying laws & regulations, which were only introduced to keep out competition and protect entrenched interests. That's why large corporates love regulations, it protects their entire business model and imposes significant costs on new entrants.
  - sunpar 6y ago
    I think it's obviously true that monied interests will have greater access to regulators and corporations than smaller operations do. We should seek to limit that advantage when possible, but it's doubtful that we can ever truly eliminate it. Speaking specifically about this case though, it doesn't seem like a big business tossing its weight around, but some large multinational businesses working within existing regulatory and bureaucratic systems to ensure their competitors are not unfairly gaining by flouting the law. It is akin to an auto company finding another company has saved money by not complying with emissions standards.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    What do you think "access" looks like? There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access. What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again. The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be. >Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate. This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative. [1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
The writing was brilliant. Reading it was like quenching a long thirst. It reminds of me reading the New York Times or Financial Times 10 or more years ago.
koheripbal 6y ago
Your sugar example is not a good example because the US setup a mandate to be totally food supply independent after the Dust Bowl/famine in the early part of the last century. So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  That’s not the history I’m familiar with regarding sugar tariffs. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/u-s-sugar-industry-is-exhibit-a-of-tariff-favoritism https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/u-s-su... It’s very amusing to me that the US subsidized domestic sugar production, and then also pays for diabetes and it’s related healthcare costs. I’m confident that the future will look back and determine sugar to be one of the most costly habits of people.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    You linked to an opinion piece that doesn't cite anything. It criticizes that there are broad staple food import tariffs, but does not discuss the purpose of these policies, which is national food security. The US has not experienced a food shortage, despite the normal incidence of crop failures in over a hundred years. The fact that Americans suffer from food oversupply is absolutely a first world problem.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Sorry, I didn’t realize it was an opinion piece. I had just remembered reading multiple times that sugar tariffs were implemented to enrich domestic sugar producers. This seems like a better analysis: https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/03/18/sweet-nothings-the-history-law-and-economics-of-american-sugar-subsidies/ https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/03/18/sweet-nothings-th...
      - koheripbal 6y ago
        Sugar, like all crop staples are supported by the government to ensure that crops are overproduced to protect against crop failure and famine. Any article, like the one you just linked, that omits this fact is a horrible source of information. I'm sure you HAVE INDEED read the misinformation about farm subsidies before - it is a popular lie. This article talks a little bit more about current high food prices globally, and how it impacts US food security stockpiles.... https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4770135&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4770135&page=1
jiofih 6y ago
I had the very opposite reaction. The snobbery of “the only pasta worth eating”, which is an insult to the diversity of Italian cuisine, deflated me right at the start. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but also that there is a hint of self-deprecating truth to it... think I’m getting old.
- gambiting 6y ago
  I also hugely disliked the style and tone of the article. I finished it thinking "well, I guess anyone can call themselves a journalist nowadays". The humor was out of place too, just coming across as snobbish most of the time, even though I can tell what the author is doing. It's just....too much. But hey, other people like it so who am I too judge ;-)
  - pivo 6y ago
    For me this had a David Sedaris, obsessive-compulsive writing style that I ended up hugely enjoying, though I admit I didn't get it at first and almost gave up reading. The fact that she opened a Freedom of Information request with the FDA about noodles while acknowledging that the agency was most likely preoccupied with the pandemic made me laugh out loud. If this were just a matter-of-fact reportage on a particular type of pasta shortage I doubt it'd hold much interest for anyone. The whole enjoyment for me was the gonzo reporting style of someone going off the rails about the shortage of a particular type of noodle.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    I don't normally comment on points count, but I've never had a comment go from +12 to 0 before, what a polarising opinion ;-)
    - ChickeNES 6y ago
      Don't worry, you're not alone in thinking this article was trash, I stopped reading after the first paragraph
- Finnucane 6y ago
loblollyboy 6y ago
Gonzo food writing w a sprinkling of twitterhumor
snarfy 6y ago
The sugar tax is pretty simple. Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  > Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't. Sugarcane most definitely grows in North America. Florida alone produces hundreds of thousands of tons of raw sugar annually.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    I dare OP to drive around outside of Lafayette, LA and roll his window down and tell me sugarcane doesn't grow in America
- Exmoor 6y ago
  It'd be more accurate to say that corn grows in many more places in North America than sugar cane. I was surprised to learn that vastly more pounds of sugar from cane is produced in the US (~32 million pounds a year) than corn syrup (~8 million pounds a year). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_States#Sugar_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Unite...
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    The values listed there are the sugar cane harvest, not the sugar produced from it. Per https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.pdf?v=850.9 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.p... the recovery rate varies from 9 to 14 percent. Cane sugar production runs about 4 million short tons, which is about 8 billion pounds. Beets add a similar, somewhat larger amount. HFCS production is also on a similar scale, billions of pounds a year. But then 80% of corn goes to animal feed and ethanol production, so HFCS isn't the major end use.
yowzadave 6y ago
One aspect of the article's chatty style that I liked was that it gave a glimpse into how "reporting" sausage gets made: calling experts up on the phone to try to get them to tell you a story, filing information requests, looking up publicly available (but obscure) information. Even though the author is self-deprecating, by the end I was impressed by her persistence and ability to dig up real new information. I sometimes wish more straight-laced reporting would be more forthcoming with these kinds of details.
danso 6y ago
That's really funny to me. I saw this article yesterday being raved about on foodie Twitter, but didn't try submitting to HN because I figured many users might be a little annoyed by not only a food story, but one that takes 1,200 words (i.e. the length of "Part 1: The Mystery") before getting to the chase. A 1,200 word scene-setting intro is a lot for any kind of reader so it's a testament to the author's skill that it's entertaining enough to keep readers' attention.
- wavefunction 6y ago
  I appreciate these sorts of long-form pieces, personally. I have always been a voracious reader though.
ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
The taxes on sugar were to prop up the (heavily subsidized) US corn industry. Why do you think they even water down the gasoline with it? There's so much of it, and it's so artificially cheap, and they want to keep demand high to keep the farmers happy.
- evgen 6y ago
  The taxes on sugar have nothing to do with corn. Corn producers do not need HFCS to stay in business, they have ethanol when they need a subsidy; less than 5% of US production goes to HFCS, but the rest is basically split 50/50 between animal feed and ethanol. Sugar imports are taxed so that US producers (cane in FL & LA, sugar beets in the upper midwest and upper great plains states) do not have to compete with cane sugar from Brazil and Mexico. It is as simple as that.

m463 6y ago

I can't help but think of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. During a golf tournament, he gives the officials some money saying "keep it fair, keep it fair!"

Smaug123 6y ago

If you like this writing style, food critic Jay Rayner writes in a way I find pretty similar: https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/jay-rayner-on-restaurants https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/jay-rayner-on-restau...

sunpar 6y ago

I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well. Told another way, a firm in the marketplace for pasta found that a competitor was out of regulation with their product, and they found a person in congress who could press a slow-moving and ineffective agency to do better at doing their job: enforcing said regulations. That's exactly what you want your elected representatives to do: listen to their constituents and act accordingly to ensure a fair outcome according to the law. Note that no laws were changed in this to favor one company over another, if anything the previous state was one in which the company in question was profiting from shipping out-of-regulation product, perhaps at decreased cost compared to in-compliance firms. The rule itself can be debated, but in general I find that a law specifying in exact numbers what a product should contain in order to qualify for a label to be a very good law. It's exact, it's measurable, and it's achievable by all. Fair and equal enforcement should make it a good regulation. If you say "well you don't need this law, it's over-regulation", that's a good argument -- I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. On one hand, I think Standard of Identification make a lot of sense, but I also know that drawing the lines can be a very delicate art form (what makes a pasta noodle vs. a ramen noodle? What makes champagne vs. sparkling wine? And so on) Edit: Also, I think a lot of this could be dealt with better by an FDA that has a good communication arm. "We found this company to not be compliance with existing law and took it off the shelves" sounds a lot better than having the company get to print saying "Seems like a hold up by the FDA"

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and legislators who can legislate or enforce on their behalf. The senior people will know each other and get things moving. Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporates. So when you read a story and think things 'worked quite well'. It's just an example of selectively applying laws & regulations, which were only introduced to keep out competition and protect entrenched interests. That's why large corporates love regulations, it protects their entire business model and imposes significant costs on new entrants.
- sunpar 6y ago
  I think it's obviously true that monied interests will have greater access to regulators and corporations than smaller operations do. We should seek to limit that advantage when possible, but it's doubtful that we can ever truly eliminate it. Speaking specifically about this case though, it doesn't seem like a big business tossing its weight around, but some large multinational businesses working within existing regulatory and bureaucratic systems to ensure their competitors are not unfairly gaining by flouting the law. It is akin to an auto company finding another company has saved money by not complying with emissions standards.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  What do you think "access" looks like? There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access. What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again. The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be. >Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate. This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative. [1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

The writing was brilliant. Reading it was like quenching a long thirst. It reminds of me reading the New York Times or Financial Times 10 or more years ago.

koheripbal 6y ago

Your sugar example is not a good example because the US setup a mandate to be totally food supply independent after the Dust Bowl/famine in the early part of the last century. So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
That’s not the history I’m familiar with regarding sugar tariffs. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/u-s-sugar-industry-is-exhibit-a-of-tariff-favoritism https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/u-s-su... It’s very amusing to me that the US subsidized domestic sugar production, and then also pays for diabetes and it’s related healthcare costs. I’m confident that the future will look back and determine sugar to be one of the most costly habits of people.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  You linked to an opinion piece that doesn't cite anything. It criticizes that there are broad staple food import tariffs, but does not discuss the purpose of these policies, which is national food security. The US has not experienced a food shortage, despite the normal incidence of crop failures in over a hundred years. The fact that Americans suffer from food oversupply is absolutely a first world problem.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Sorry, I didn’t realize it was an opinion piece. I had just remembered reading multiple times that sugar tariffs were implemented to enrich domestic sugar producers. This seems like a better analysis: https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/03/18/sweet-nothings-the-history-law-and-economics-of-american-sugar-subsidies/ https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/03/18/sweet-nothings-th...
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      Sugar, like all crop staples are supported by the government to ensure that crops are overproduced to protect against crop failure and famine. Any article, like the one you just linked, that omits this fact is a horrible source of information. I'm sure you HAVE INDEED read the misinformation about farm subsidies before - it is a popular lie. This article talks a little bit more about current high food prices globally, and how it impacts US food security stockpiles.... https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4770135&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4770135&page=1

jiofih 6y ago

I had the very opposite reaction. The snobbery of “the only pasta worth eating”, which is an insult to the diversity of Italian cuisine, deflated me right at the start. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but also that there is a hint of self-deprecating truth to it... think I’m getting old.

gambiting 6y ago
I also hugely disliked the style and tone of the article. I finished it thinking "well, I guess anyone can call themselves a journalist nowadays". The humor was out of place too, just coming across as snobbish most of the time, even though I can tell what the author is doing. It's just....too much. But hey, other people like it so who am I too judge ;-)
- pivo 6y ago
  For me this had a David Sedaris, obsessive-compulsive writing style that I ended up hugely enjoying, though I admit I didn't get it at first and almost gave up reading. The fact that she opened a Freedom of Information request with the FDA about noodles while acknowledging that the agency was most likely preoccupied with the pandemic made me laugh out loud. If this were just a matter-of-fact reportage on a particular type of pasta shortage I doubt it'd hold much interest for anyone. The whole enjoyment for me was the gonzo reporting style of someone going off the rails about the shortage of a particular type of noodle.
- gambiting 6y ago
  I don't normally comment on points count, but I've never had a comment go from +12 to 0 before, what a polarising opinion ;-)
  - ChickeNES 6y ago
    Don't worry, you're not alone in thinking this article was trash, I stopped reading after the first paragraph
Finnucane 6y ago

loblollyboy 6y ago

Gonzo food writing w a sprinkling of twitterhumor

snarfy 6y ago

The sugar tax is pretty simple. Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't.

vonmoltke 6y ago
> Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't. Sugarcane most definitely grows in North America. Florida alone produces hundreds of thousands of tons of raw sugar annually.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  I dare OP to drive around outside of Lafayette, LA and roll his window down and tell me sugarcane doesn't grow in America
Exmoor 6y ago
It'd be more accurate to say that corn grows in many more places in North America than sugar cane. I was surprised to learn that vastly more pounds of sugar from cane is produced in the US (~32 million pounds a year) than corn syrup (~8 million pounds a year). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_States#Sugar_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Unite...
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The values listed there are the sugar cane harvest, not the sugar produced from it. Per https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.pdf?v=850.9 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.p... the recovery rate varies from 9 to 14 percent. Cane sugar production runs about 4 million short tons, which is about 8 billion pounds. Beets add a similar, somewhat larger amount. HFCS production is also on a similar scale, billions of pounds a year. But then 80% of corn goes to animal feed and ethanol production, so HFCS isn't the major end use.

yowzadave 6y ago

One aspect of the article's chatty style that I liked was that it gave a glimpse into how "reporting" sausage gets made: calling experts up on the phone to try to get them to tell you a story, filing information requests, looking up publicly available (but obscure) information. Even though the author is self-deprecating, by the end I was impressed by her persistence and ability to dig up real new information. I sometimes wish more straight-laced reporting would be more forthcoming with these kinds of details.

danso 6y ago

That's really funny to me. I saw this article yesterday being raved about on foodie Twitter, but didn't try submitting to HN because I figured many users might be a little annoyed by not only a food story, but one that takes 1,200 words (i.e. the length of "Part 1: The Mystery") before getting to the chase. A 1,200 word scene-setting intro is a lot for any kind of reader so it's a testament to the author's skill that it's entertaining enough to keep readers' attention.

wavefunction 6y ago
I appreciate these sorts of long-form pieces, personally. I have always been a voracious reader though.

ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago

The taxes on sugar were to prop up the (heavily subsidized) US corn industry. Why do you think they even water down the gasoline with it? There's so much of it, and it's so artificially cheap, and they want to keep demand high to keep the farmers happy.

evgen 6y ago
The taxes on sugar have nothing to do with corn. Corn producers do not need HFCS to stay in business, they have ethanol when they need a subsidy; less than 5% of US production goes to HFCS, but the rest is basically split 50/50 between animal feed and ethanol. Sugar imports are taxed so that US producers (cane in FL & LA, sugar beets in the upper midwest and upper great plains states) do not have to compete with cane sugar from Brazil and Mexico. It is as simple as that.