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Yes, these are all fair points, in a nut shell you could blame market forces and say industry behaviour is inevitable, which is what I was alluding to as the co
by tomxor 4y ago
Yes, these are all fair points, in a nut shell you could blame market forces and say industry behaviour is inevitable, which is what I was alluding to as the cost function.
In other areas where this becomes a problem government intervene to change intensives, e.g the total cost of continuous alcohol consumption is not included in the sticker price, so some governments add a tax, same with tobacco... ideally such taxes would be directed to public spending on the medical costs, but that depends on the country.
The same could be done far more broadly with food, not just a mere sugar tax, but taxing foods that are known to be product placements as poor substitutes for a full meal, that are too nutritionally devoid and contain too many substitutes. Just like alcohol, an occasional ready meal or highly refined cake isn't going to kill you or give you chronic disease, in which case it can be expensive to dissuade you from making it a regular thing and disincentivise industry from focusing on producing that type of food..
- devbent 4y ago> Just like alcohol, Alcohol fucks with DNA. It is neurotoxic. Let's not lie to ourselves, the safe amount of booze is 0 booze. I'm not saying don't drink, just that we should be 100% honest with ourselves.
- tomxor 4y agoYes, however it's the consistent consumption of high quantities of alcohol that cause chronic illness, and it's the same behaviour that is problematic in food, this is what diabetes is, sugar ends up being toxic (glucotoxicity). Even short term high sugar intake causes cell stress, it's not as toxic as alcohol, but long term consumption of either is problematic.
- devbent 4y agoYou should clarify, refined sugars. There is also the ongoing debate of why the hell consuming white rice, which is instantly broken down into large amounts of glucose, doesn't have the same negative health impact. Lots of investigations around fructose vs glucose and biological pathways of how straight fructose is processed and so on and so forth, but feel free to visit any SE Asian country where rice is well over 50% of meals by volume and obesity levels are low. I read a good series of investigative articles that posited it is contamination of our food supply from one or more unknown sources that explains why a diet consisting of highly processed food causes more chronic health conditions than a diet consisting of fresh foods even if the macro nutrient content is the same. (Wish I had bookmarked it...)
- esperent 4y ago> feel free to visit any SE Asian country where rice is well over 50% of meals by volume and obesity levels are low. Hello from a SE Asian country. Not much obesity here. Huge amount of diabetes though. I've heard it's genetic - European and African ancestry puts on fat externally, while Asians tend to store fat internally (visceral fat) which is invisible but just as dangerous.