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You jest, but I have thought about this. If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste, and also toilet paper consumption? Should we be intro

You jest, but I have thought about this. If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste, and also toilet paper consumption? Should we be introducing these things into the water supply like fluoride? (the answer is no, but would be an interesting exercise to see what impact it could have)

tazjin 5y ago
> Should we be introducing these things into the water supply like fluoride? Absolutely not. Not all types of diets need fiber for your digestive system to function properly.
fortran77 5y ago
Most people in the US -- 66% over eat. Eat less, poop less.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  It’s not just a US problem. Obesity is going up everywhere. Even in pets.
  - p1mrx 5y ago
    Let's stop putting sugar in water; that should solve most of the problem.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      The "sugar in water" is not a problem, rather a symptom: it is a very effective and cheap way to get calories into a human. Way too many people lack a combination of access to fresh groceries (they live in "food deserts" [1]), enough money to afford these groceries [2], enough time to cook healthy food [3], or skills to cook food [4] - and most often these issues collide in poor and otherwise disadvantaged people... which again are at the highest risk of malnutrition, obesity and associated other health problems. The thing to tackle is poverty because it sits at the root of all of these issues, not making sugary drinks more expensive - all this does is punish the poor people yet again for being poor! [1]: https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts [2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/ [3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-multiple-jobs-idUSKBN2AH2PI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-multiple-jobs... [4]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cooking-survey_n_955600 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cooking-survey_n_955600
      - p1mrx 5y ago
        I don't think we should ban cheap sugar, just keep it in solid form. The human brain never evolved in an environment where thirst leads to calories. If you split soda into water and candy, then at least candy intake is visible and controllable.
      - dpark 5y ago
        You’re conflating a bunch of separate concerns. You’re saying that people are drinking soda because they need cheap calories and can’t get them because they live in food deserts and are in poverty and somehow are obese despite insufficient calories. This all does not make sense. Soda is not cheap. A 2-liter bottle of Coca Cola contains 900 calories of corn syrup and costs $2 at my nearest Walmart. For the same $2, you can buy a 4lb bag of sugar and get 3400 calories if you don’t care that your calories are coming from sugar. If you want something that at least kind of looks like food you could get 1200 calories of Chips Ahoy cookies for that $2 and while that’s not good for you, it’s gotta be better for you than soda. $2 will also get you about 1200 calories of Wonder bread or Great Value granola. Or $2 will get you a whopping 1500 calories of Kraft Mac and Cheese. Soda is a shitty deal in terms of calories. Even milk costs less per calorie than Coca Cola. And don’t tell me poor people are mostly buying off-brand cola because it’s not rich people making Coca Cola billions. (And it doesn’t change much because I was mostly comparing equivalent brands. You can get calories from Walmart-branded bread as cheaply as you can from Walmart-branded soda.) People buy soda because it’s tasty, convenient, and widely advertised, not because it’s cheap calories. Obese people are also not in need of more calories so the idea that they are turning to soda because they need cheap calories doesn’t make a bit of sense. > The thing to tackle is poverty because it sits at the root of all of these issues, not making sugary drinks more expensive - all this does is punish the poor people yet again for being poor! These are orthogonal. You can “tackle poverty” and also make soda expensive. This isn’t punishing people for being poor. It’s placing a tax on a very unhealthy habit to make it less appealing, exactly as we do for cigarettes. This argument might be compelling if people actually needed soda for the calories, but they don’t. > skills to cook food [4] This is an odd choice of article. It says literally nothing about poverty or why poor people don’t cook. It’s just some random survey of adults who say they don’t cook and only 23% of them said it was because they don’t know how anyway. Of those, there is some unknown overlap with the 51% who say their spouse does all the cooking and undoubtedly some overlap with other groups such the group who live at home with their parents and the group who have enough money to always eat out.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Obesity is going up everywhere. Even in pets. That's because most pet food is unhealthy crap - the worst offender is food that has sugar added for optics/smell reasons or grains because they are cheaper than meat. Healthy food for pets stinks and looks bad, so manufacturers add sugar that the humans keep on buying it. On top of that, most pets don't get nearly the amount of movement they need - their owners don't have the time to take their dog on the two to three hours (!) a day that energetic, former work dog breeds need, or they are being kept solitary... if there is one thing that adopting a pair of kittens has taught me it is that they contain absurd amounts of energy that they burn through playing, and solitary cats can't release it.
openknot 5y ago
>If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste, and also toilet paper consumption? The problems I see are unintended consequences [0] of the policy. Perverse results could include additional environmental costs to producing and delivering fiber pills and probiotics (there would still be costs if added to the water). Unexpected drawbacks could include side effects from the fiber and probiotics delivered in this way (especially for people with unusual gut microbiomes, or defects in the production of fiber and probiotic supplements), and civil unrest from people who oppose the mandatory additions to the tap water (which may ultimately result in changes in the nation's political power). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences
dpark 5y ago
> If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste Fiber pills do not reduce waste. They increase it. That is the point of fiber. It increases stool. Fiber is also known as “bulk”. > Should we be introducing these things into the water supply like fluoride? This is like asking if we should put protein into the water supply. You can’t just dump a bunch of psyllium husk into the water supply. It won’t make it through the water supply and come out of the tap on customers’ homes. It will just gunk up the city pipes, pumps, etc. If it did somehow work it would make the water supply disgusting to drink and unusable for many domestic purposes.

tazjin 5y ago

> Should we be introducing these things into the water supply like fluoride? Absolutely not. Not all types of diets need fiber for your digestive system to function properly.

fortran77 5y ago

Most people in the US -- 66% over eat. Eat less, poop less.

Scoundreller 5y ago
It’s not just a US problem. Obesity is going up everywhere. Even in pets.
- p1mrx 5y ago
  Let's stop putting sugar in water; that should solve most of the problem.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    The "sugar in water" is not a problem, rather a symptom: it is a very effective and cheap way to get calories into a human. Way too many people lack a combination of access to fresh groceries (they live in "food deserts" [1]), enough money to afford these groceries [2], enough time to cook healthy food [3], or skills to cook food [4] - and most often these issues collide in poor and otherwise disadvantaged people... which again are at the highest risk of malnutrition, obesity and associated other health problems. The thing to tackle is poverty because it sits at the root of all of these issues, not making sugary drinks more expensive - all this does is punish the poor people yet again for being poor! [1]: https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts [2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/ [3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-multiple-jobs-idUSKBN2AH2PI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-multiple-jobs... [4]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cooking-survey_n_955600 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cooking-survey_n_955600
    - p1mrx 5y ago
      I don't think we should ban cheap sugar, just keep it in solid form. The human brain never evolved in an environment where thirst leads to calories. If you split soda into water and candy, then at least candy intake is visible and controllable.
    - dpark 5y ago
      You’re conflating a bunch of separate concerns. You’re saying that people are drinking soda because they need cheap calories and can’t get them because they live in food deserts and are in poverty and somehow are obese despite insufficient calories. This all does not make sense. Soda is not cheap. A 2-liter bottle of Coca Cola contains 900 calories of corn syrup and costs $2 at my nearest Walmart. For the same $2, you can buy a 4lb bag of sugar and get 3400 calories if you don’t care that your calories are coming from sugar. If you want something that at least kind of looks like food you could get 1200 calories of Chips Ahoy cookies for that $2 and while that’s not good for you, it’s gotta be better for you than soda. $2 will also get you about 1200 calories of Wonder bread or Great Value granola. Or $2 will get you a whopping 1500 calories of Kraft Mac and Cheese. Soda is a shitty deal in terms of calories. Even milk costs less per calorie than Coca Cola. And don’t tell me poor people are mostly buying off-brand cola because it’s not rich people making Coca Cola billions. (And it doesn’t change much because I was mostly comparing equivalent brands. You can get calories from Walmart-branded bread as cheaply as you can from Walmart-branded soda.) People buy soda because it’s tasty, convenient, and widely advertised, not because it’s cheap calories. Obese people are also not in need of more calories so the idea that they are turning to soda because they need cheap calories doesn’t make a bit of sense. > The thing to tackle is poverty because it sits at the root of all of these issues, not making sugary drinks more expensive - all this does is punish the poor people yet again for being poor! These are orthogonal. You can “tackle poverty” and also make soda expensive. This isn’t punishing people for being poor. It’s placing a tax on a very unhealthy habit to make it less appealing, exactly as we do for cigarettes. This argument might be compelling if people actually needed soda for the calories, but they don’t. > skills to cook food [4] This is an odd choice of article. It says literally nothing about poverty or why poor people don’t cook. It’s just some random survey of adults who say they don’t cook and only 23% of them said it was because they don’t know how anyway. Of those, there is some unknown overlap with the 51% who say their spouse does all the cooking and undoubtedly some overlap with other groups such the group who live at home with their parents and the group who have enough money to always eat out.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Obesity is going up everywhere. Even in pets. That's because most pet food is unhealthy crap - the worst offender is food that has sugar added for optics/smell reasons or grains because they are cheaper than meat. Healthy food for pets stinks and looks bad, so manufacturers add sugar that the humans keep on buying it. On top of that, most pets don't get nearly the amount of movement they need - their owners don't have the time to take their dog on the two to three hours (!) a day that energetic, former work dog breeds need, or they are being kept solitary... if there is one thing that adopting a pair of kittens has taught me it is that they contain absurd amounts of energy that they burn through playing, and solitary cats can't release it.

openknot 5y ago

>If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste, and also toilet paper consumption? The problems I see are unintended consequences [0] of the policy. Perverse results could include additional environmental costs to producing and delivering fiber pills and probiotics (there would still be costs if added to the water). Unexpected drawbacks could include side effects from the fiber and probiotics delivered in this way (especially for people with unusual gut microbiomes, or defects in the production of fiber and probiotic supplements), and civil unrest from people who oppose the mandatory additions to the tap water (which may ultimately result in changes in the nation's political power). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

dpark 5y ago

> If we all take fiber pills and probiotics will that reduce waste Fiber pills do not reduce waste. They increase it. That is the point of fiber. It increases stool. Fiber is also known as “bulk”. > Should we be introducing these things into the water supply like fluoride? This is like asking if we should put protein into the water supply. You can’t just dump a bunch of psyllium husk into the water supply. It won’t make it through the water supply and come out of the tap on customers’ homes. It will just gunk up the city pipes, pumps, etc. If it did somehow work it would make the water supply disgusting to drink and unusable for many domestic purposes.