7 ms·

Walmart knows it's customers: They sell vast quantities of candy, sugar drinks and food with added sugar, and now insulin.

xeromal 5y ago
We act like humans have no self-control or responsibility. lol
- catillac 5y ago
  It’s not as simple as all of that. With modern marketing and ads, the deck is very much stacked against us.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    Seeing ads doesn't force you to make poor food choices.
    - criddell 5y ago
      Why do you think they advertise?
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        Of course ads exist to increase product sales. That doesn't mean that people are unable to actually look at the product label and make informed choices. Ads don't make you do anything. Thinking that they do is a crutch.
        NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        If advertising works on average, then there is a discussion about ethics that is worth having. Falling back on individual responsibility might be popular but it is absolutely a cop out. We're playing a numbers game with public health in an adversarial environment. Relying absolutely on what individuals could or should do isn't going to help us win that game.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        Why do you say that individual responsibility is a cop out? People can read the labels and ingredients on a package of food. This is true even for those people who never question why they are purchasing food in boxes instead of actual food.
        NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        It's a cop out to defer to individual responsibility and ignore all the other tools that are available to improve public health. We know that there's a rich corpus of psychological research that provides tools that we know can be used to affect behavior and choices. It's being used to sell us things that are bad for us and that same research should be used to inform regulation policy and public health communications.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        Nobody is ignoring the tools that are available to improve public health. Two of those tools, the ingredients list and the nutritional information, are there to support individual responsibility through informed personal choices. It is best to understand that people can make informed choices. It is very shortsighted to think that everyone is subject to the magical sway of marketing without a conscience or decision making abilities. The existence of personal choice and individual responsibility don't make anything else that you mention disappear. Are you saying you want to increase behavior modification of people and somehow rob people of personal choice? That's what your words imply.
        criddell 5y ago
        You seem to be assuming that people are rational.
        NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        My words do not imply that.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      There's many products marketed as being healthy and they aren't
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        That's true, which is why there are food labels and lists of ingredients. However, ads don't make people purchase anything.
    - jowsie 5y ago
      You should inform the companies running the ads, they could save billions!
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        That disingenuous, ignores what I wrote, and compares two different things. Ads may increase sales, but ads don't force people to purchase products.
- comeonseriously 5y ago
  That's not all there is to the story either. Processed food is generally cheaper in the sense of time and money. Most of us HNers are blessed with great salaries and stable (9-5) work. Millions of consumer, of course, are not.
- rafale 5y ago
  I would agree with you if we had a decent education system. I bet the amount of high school students that know how to read and make sense ilof a nutrition facts label is staggering low. Not that those labels are even needed if they were taught to stay away from fast food, sugar drinks and highly processed food. But they are not. There is also the issue of money, because junk food is usually more calorie dense and cheaper per calorie than healthy food. But government corn subsidies are to blame for that I guess.
- nexuist 5y ago
  Self control is irrelevant when your financial situation prevents you from having the opportunity to make choices.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I grew up poor in Appalachia in methsville, georgia and I managed to develop an extremely cheap diet of lentils, oats, cheap chicken, and spinach/broccoli at 16 years old. I definitely understand the allure of cheap, processed foods but it's from willful decisions.
    - kevingadd 5y ago
      The things you describe aren't all cheap in every part of the country. Some parts of the country actually have somewhat limited access to fresh vegetables/meat or have to pay a premium for it.
      - ev1 5y ago
        +1 to this, I'd have to go out of my way, significantly, to find those items for cheap, while fast food is $3 for a calorie-dense burger and easily accessible. Of course, there are nearby supermarkets too, but you'll be paying like $10/lb for raw chicken and everything is "organic"
        refurb 5y ago
        You’re upset that you have to make healthy choices?
        ev1 5y ago
        I'm kind of using I in third person - it's cheaper, more accessible, easier, faster to get unhealthy food. For many people it is not possible or feasible to make those healthy choices. For example, extensive - both in time and money - travel time to cheaper supermarkets (vs something like Whole Foods) to be able to afford fresh ingredients. There's also the part where working multiple jobs might make it difficult to make it to a proper market before they close, while fast food is nearly universal and available all day and all night.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  Quite a lot of people do lack self control and it’s controversial to state this. Also, it is time consuming to read every single label on food that one buys. The labels on the front are often misleading. I frequently work at state fairs & arts and crafts festivals on the east coast. The amount of very overweight and obese people is simply astounding. About half of one coke is the average adult’s recommended sugar intake. I know more people than I’d like who have at least one soda every day, and some who have multiple every day. Nearly everything in our supermarkets has a lot of sugar. Including common things like bread and pasta sauce. Last time I checked at publix, I only found -one- type of bread that didn’t have a lot of sugar in it. Finding a protein bar without tons of sugar was rather difficult. Etc. Combine this with sitting all day + driving everywhere and we’ve got a huge problem.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Also, it is time consuming to read every single label on food that one buys. The labels on the front are often misleading. But only in the short term, right? Once you figured out what products are healthy and switched to them, you can rely on prior memory. It's not like you have to look at the labels of every item you're buying for years.
    - eropple 5y ago
      Ingredients change; how often are you checking and updating what you know? Availability changes; what brand is #2 and #3 on your list? Or the time in your day you have to prepare food may suddenly shrink; do you then have the time and spare cognitive cycles to make a good decision under stress? (You probably don't. Not, like, you specifically, but in aggregate.) We make it difficult on purpose to eat healthily in the West because eating less healthily is more profitable. I eat pretty healthy, though I also like cheeseburgers so I'm not thin. But I make a very healthy income and have the time, and the resources, and the education to actually have the time and executive function to have an opinion about ingredients in food. It is difficult for me to know these things, let alone to in all cases exert the self-control to act on them--and I make north of five times the median personal income of the United States with which to do it. I mean, let's think for a second. Blame an Amazon picker or a Wal-Mart cashier or blame the corporate entity with a marketing department designed to overwhelm your attention and to induce the specific action they test and refine for? Gosh. I wonder.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  Reading about all the tricks marketers use to get us to think we need to buy shit we do not need, and honestly I do wonder if self control is an illusion.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I wonder if there are studies looking at whether exposure to advertisements affects self control. I would imagine that certain advertisements reliably decrease self control (as that is their intent). Would be interesting to have data to back this hypothesis up though.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Given that the tech industry is built around making those advertising tricks more effective....
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  At scale though, it's pretty evident that people don't have either of these with respect to their health. Is this an indictment on humanity as a whole, or someone else? Ultimately the answer doesn't matter because when something like this is this widespread, it has serious problems for society as a whole. Do we want to continue to put up our noses at the unwashed masses (which doesn't help anybody or anything), or do we want to do something about it and potentially help out society and start to get those who have erred on the right path?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I appreciate this take and I agree with you to an extent. Humanity benefits when we help each other, but I'm not sure how you pull this off. Do we need intelligence licenses that allow to you to purchase unhealthy foods?
- not_math 5y ago
  Before 18 (or 21, or 16) it's debatable that humans have the capacity to self-control, or make their own decisions understanding the effect on themselves and those surrounding them. I'm not saying that they're completely oblivious, but there is a reason why the law is not applied in the same way for children (non-adults). Now, it's a mix of societal and economical (and more) that's making people eat a certain way. Changing your eating behavior can be difficult, especially if you've eaten a certain way for the past 16-18 years. I'm not saying it's Walmart's fault, but it's also not just an individual willingness to change that's in play here. The United States clearly has a problem of obesity, which is related to Type 2 diabetes.
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  If you mean to say that we should take a libertarian approach and not try to use government for nudging society towards healthier eating and lifestyle standards, you might as well say that we should give up on the health of the US. Because I have 0 faith in purely individual or "grass-roots" societal change fixing our obesity crisis, given the path we're on.
comeonseriously 5y ago
> They sell vast quantities of candy, sugar drinks and food with added sugar As do all but specialized grocery stores because this is the majority of food produced. How about we go after the food producers instead? Or the subsidies that enable this?
- criddell 5y ago
  How much of an impact do the subsidies have?
  - kleer001 5y ago
    A fair bit. Some facts over here : https://economics21.org/html/sugar-subsidies-are-bitter-deal-american-consumers-1007.html https://economics21.org/html/sugar-subsidies-are-bitter-deal... and of course the true scandal of sugar (IMHO the war crime of anti-science) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
    - gruez 5y ago
      That doesn't really answer the question. There's a lot of subsidies going around, but how much difference does it make to foods at the checkout? Does [junk food item] being 10% more expensive cause a meaningful drop in consumption?
      - kleer001 5y ago
        > That doesn't really answer the question. Sure it does. Maybe not to 5 decimal places, but you're not going to get that on an internet forum of non-specialists. You want more? I'm sure there's a dissertation from an economics student or a master's thesis out there for your digestion.
  - connicpu 5y ago
    Corn subsidies have a huge impact on the price of high fructose corn syrup, corn is the US's most subsidized crop

xeromal 5y ago

We act like humans have no self-control or responsibility. lol

catillac 5y ago
It’s not as simple as all of that. With modern marketing and ads, the deck is very much stacked against us.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  Seeing ads doesn't force you to make poor food choices.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Why do you think they advertise?
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      Of course ads exist to increase product sales. That doesn't mean that people are unable to actually look at the product label and make informed choices. Ads don't make you do anything. Thinking that they do is a crutch.
      - NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        If advertising works on average, then there is a discussion about ethics that is worth having. Falling back on individual responsibility might be popular but it is absolutely a cop out. We're playing a numbers game with public health in an adversarial environment. Relying absolutely on what individuals could or should do isn't going to help us win that game.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        Why do you say that individual responsibility is a cop out? People can read the labels and ingredients on a package of food. This is true even for those people who never question why they are purchasing food in boxes instead of actual food.
        NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        It's a cop out to defer to individual responsibility and ignore all the other tools that are available to improve public health. We know that there's a rich corpus of psychological research that provides tools that we know can be used to affect behavior and choices. It's being used to sell us things that are bad for us and that same research should be used to inform regulation policy and public health communications.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        Nobody is ignoring the tools that are available to improve public health. Two of those tools, the ingredients list and the nutritional information, are there to support individual responsibility through informed personal choices. It is best to understand that people can make informed choices. It is very shortsighted to think that everyone is subject to the magical sway of marketing without a conscience or decision making abilities. The existence of personal choice and individual responsibility don't make anything else that you mention disappear. Are you saying you want to increase behavior modification of people and somehow rob people of personal choice? That's what your words imply.
        criddell 5y ago
        You seem to be assuming that people are rational.
        NoSorryCannot 5y ago
        My words do not imply that.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    There's many products marketed as being healthy and they aren't
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      That's true, which is why there are food labels and lists of ingredients. However, ads don't make people purchase anything.
  - jowsie 5y ago
    You should inform the companies running the ads, they could save billions!
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      That disingenuous, ignores what I wrote, and compares two different things. Ads may increase sales, but ads don't force people to purchase products.
comeonseriously 5y ago
That's not all there is to the story either. Processed food is generally cheaper in the sense of time and money. Most of us HNers are blessed with great salaries and stable (9-5) work. Millions of consumer, of course, are not.
rafale 5y ago
I would agree with you if we had a decent education system. I bet the amount of high school students that know how to read and make sense ilof a nutrition facts label is staggering low. Not that those labels are even needed if they were taught to stay away from fast food, sugar drinks and highly processed food. But they are not. There is also the issue of money, because junk food is usually more calorie dense and cheaper per calorie than healthy food. But government corn subsidies are to blame for that I guess.
nexuist 5y ago
Self control is irrelevant when your financial situation prevents you from having the opportunity to make choices.
- xeromal 5y ago
  I grew up poor in Appalachia in methsville, georgia and I managed to develop an extremely cheap diet of lentils, oats, cheap chicken, and spinach/broccoli at 16 years old. I definitely understand the allure of cheap, processed foods but it's from willful decisions.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    The things you describe aren't all cheap in every part of the country. Some parts of the country actually have somewhat limited access to fresh vegetables/meat or have to pay a premium for it.
    - ev1 5y ago
      +1 to this, I'd have to go out of my way, significantly, to find those items for cheap, while fast food is $3 for a calorie-dense burger and easily accessible. Of course, there are nearby supermarkets too, but you'll be paying like $10/lb for raw chicken and everything is "organic"
      - refurb 5y ago
        You’re upset that you have to make healthy choices?
        ev1 5y ago
        I'm kind of using I in third person - it's cheaper, more accessible, easier, faster to get unhealthy food. For many people it is not possible or feasible to make those healthy choices. For example, extensive - both in time and money - travel time to cheaper supermarkets (vs something like Whole Foods) to be able to afford fresh ingredients. There's also the part where working multiple jobs might make it difficult to make it to a proper market before they close, while fast food is nearly universal and available all day and all night.
andrewzah 5y ago
Quite a lot of people do lack self control and it’s controversial to state this. Also, it is time consuming to read every single label on food that one buys. The labels on the front are often misleading. I frequently work at state fairs & arts and crafts festivals on the east coast. The amount of very overweight and obese people is simply astounding. About half of one coke is the average adult’s recommended sugar intake. I know more people than I’d like who have at least one soda every day, and some who have multiple every day. Nearly everything in our supermarkets has a lot of sugar. Including common things like bread and pasta sauce. Last time I checked at publix, I only found -one- type of bread that didn’t have a lot of sugar in it. Finding a protein bar without tons of sugar was rather difficult. Etc. Combine this with sitting all day + driving everywhere and we’ve got a huge problem.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Also, it is time consuming to read every single label on food that one buys. The labels on the front are often misleading. But only in the short term, right? Once you figured out what products are healthy and switched to them, you can rely on prior memory. It's not like you have to look at the labels of every item you're buying for years.
  - eropple 5y ago
    Ingredients change; how often are you checking and updating what you know? Availability changes; what brand is #2 and #3 on your list? Or the time in your day you have to prepare food may suddenly shrink; do you then have the time and spare cognitive cycles to make a good decision under stress? (You probably don't. Not, like, you specifically, but in aggregate.) We make it difficult on purpose to eat healthily in the West because eating less healthily is more profitable. I eat pretty healthy, though I also like cheeseburgers so I'm not thin. But I make a very healthy income and have the time, and the resources, and the education to actually have the time and executive function to have an opinion about ingredients in food. It is difficult for me to know these things, let alone to in all cases exert the self-control to act on them--and I make north of five times the median personal income of the United States with which to do it. I mean, let's think for a second. Blame an Amazon picker or a Wal-Mart cashier or blame the corporate entity with a marketing department designed to overwhelm your attention and to induce the specific action they test and refine for? Gosh. I wonder.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jabroni_salad 5y ago
Reading about all the tricks marketers use to get us to think we need to buy shit we do not need, and honestly I do wonder if self control is an illusion.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I wonder if there are studies looking at whether exposure to advertisements affects self control. I would imagine that certain advertisements reliably decrease self control (as that is their intent). Would be interesting to have data to back this hypothesis up though.
- mcguire 5y ago
  Given that the tech industry is built around making those advertising tricks more effective....
JohnWhigham 5y ago
At scale though, it's pretty evident that people don't have either of these with respect to their health. Is this an indictment on humanity as a whole, or someone else? Ultimately the answer doesn't matter because when something like this is this widespread, it has serious problems for society as a whole. Do we want to continue to put up our noses at the unwashed masses (which doesn't help anybody or anything), or do we want to do something about it and potentially help out society and start to get those who have erred on the right path?
- xeromal 5y ago
  I appreciate this take and I agree with you to an extent. Humanity benefits when we help each other, but I'm not sure how you pull this off. Do we need intelligence licenses that allow to you to purchase unhealthy foods?
not_math 5y ago
Before 18 (or 21, or 16) it's debatable that humans have the capacity to self-control, or make their own decisions understanding the effect on themselves and those surrounding them. I'm not saying that they're completely oblivious, but there is a reason why the law is not applied in the same way for children (non-adults). Now, it's a mix of societal and economical (and more) that's making people eat a certain way. Changing your eating behavior can be difficult, especially if you've eaten a certain way for the past 16-18 years. I'm not saying it's Walmart's fault, but it's also not just an individual willingness to change that's in play here. The United States clearly has a problem of obesity, which is related to Type 2 diabetes.
jakeinspace 5y ago
If you mean to say that we should take a libertarian approach and not try to use government for nudging society towards healthier eating and lifestyle standards, you might as well say that we should give up on the health of the US. Because I have 0 faith in purely individual or "grass-roots" societal change fixing our obesity crisis, given the path we're on.

comeonseriously 5y ago

> They sell vast quantities of candy, sugar drinks and food with added sugar As do all but specialized grocery stores because this is the majority of food produced. How about we go after the food producers instead? Or the subsidies that enable this?

criddell 5y ago
How much of an impact do the subsidies have?
- kleer001 5y ago
  A fair bit. Some facts over here : https://economics21.org/html/sugar-subsidies-are-bitter-deal-american-consumers-1007.html https://economics21.org/html/sugar-subsidies-are-bitter-deal... and of course the true scandal of sugar (IMHO the war crime of anti-science) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
  - gruez 5y ago
    That doesn't really answer the question. There's a lot of subsidies going around, but how much difference does it make to foods at the checkout? Does [junk food item] being 10% more expensive cause a meaningful drop in consumption?
    - kleer001 5y ago
      > That doesn't really answer the question. Sure it does. Maybe not to 5 decimal places, but you're not going to get that on an internet forum of non-specialists. You want more? I'm sure there's a dissertation from an economics student or a master's thesis out there for your digestion.
- connicpu 5y ago
  Corn subsidies have a huge impact on the price of high fructose corn syrup, corn is the US's most subsidized crop