6 ms·

What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time they wanted to, but didn't. Clearly t

What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time they wanted to, but didn't. Clearly these companies are in it to make money, and they will sell the public whatever the public will eat, synthetic ingredients be damned, but maybe.. just maybe the government should be much, much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our foods...

toomuchtodo 1y ago
They don't care until there is some combination of public and government pressure, so you just have to keep pressuring, forever. Corporations are fundamentally unaccountability laundering profit machines (limited liability, nebulous shareholder ownership), and must be treated accordingly.
- Molitor5901 1y ago
  Which is the worst part about all of this: It took government pressure and calling them out to force a change. My anger at government is why they didn't do this SOONER? Why did it take someone like RJF jr. to move this needle? After all the people we've had at Sec. of Agriculture, HHS, and FDA Commissioners.. I don't think this was because people were putting pressure, otherwise the sheer numbers of those communities would have done something by now. It only required one person in power to say enough, fix this.
  - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
    Are you asking why people are more susceptible to demagoguery than science education? History tells us what we need to know about that.
  - thatguy0900 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - carefulfungi 1y ago
    But, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, others have done this before RJF's appointment. During the Obama administration, cherry picking some example: * Food safety regulatory improvement bill: https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-dietary-supplements/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-dietar... * Improved labelling rules: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-labels.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-labe... * EPA water safety rules made stricter, then rolled back by Trump: https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-to-revoke-obama-waters-of-the-united-states-rule/ https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-to-revoke-obama-w.... It isn't correct to see these changes a singular improvement. These rules are constantly being fought over, sometimes becoming stricter, sometimes looser. Another example, NYC has fought to reduce sugary drink serving sizes and to require labels on high sugar foods. (https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-sugars-warning-rule.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-sugar...)
unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
The greater problem is normalization of unhealthy food across an entire supermarket. Then it becomes unavoidable and invisible to consumers. My personal bugaboos are added sugar and generous use of weird preservatives. If your supermarket has 20 aisles, 16 of them are loaded with sugary sulfite-preserved stuff, removing choice and visibility to consumers. And breads fortified with folic acid.
- zeta0134 1y ago
  I'm still upset that I picked up a set of those little fruit cup things advertising "no added sugar", only to be met by intensely bitter and gross flavor. Turns out they added monk fruit extract instead, as an artificial sweetener. To FRUIT. Fruit is naturally sweet!
  - vel0city 1y ago
    Del Monte's No Sugar Added line of canned fruits often has Acesulfame Potassium and Sucralose in it. Similar no sugar added generic/house brands are similar. https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-pears-no-sugar-added https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-pears-...
- leviathant 1y ago
  Re: preservatives, I remember watching a video a few years ago, where a woman decided that she didn't like all the preservatives in store-bought tortillas, so she was going to make them herself at home. It's a really simple thing to make, so why not? They all went stale before the day was out. She compared the ingredients between what she had made and what came out of the box at the grocery store, and the ones that she didn't use? They were all preservatives. Choose your battles wisely. I will concede that the use of sweeteners in everything in the US is unhinged. It's hard to really understand until you've spent enough time out of the country to where you're buying groceries and looking at the ingredients. You come back to the states and everything tastes weirdly sweet. It was a real "fish don't know they're wet" moment for me, which mostly came about from marrying an Australian.
xnx 1y ago
The most harmful ingredient in our foods is sugar. Should the government restrict that?
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Absolutely, stop subsidizing corn and glucose syrup through ag policy, and tax sugar consumption. Mexico taxed sugar to mitigate obesity to great success. GLP-1s destroy demand (Walmart already sees this in their purchasing data for consumers who are on GLP-1s), but we should also restrict supply by not subsidizing it in the first place. Why are we paying both to make the poison and then treat the poison? Not very capital efficient! After Mexico Implemented a Tax, Purchases of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Decreased and Water Increased: Difference by Place of Residence, Household Composition, and Income Level - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ | https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892 https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892 Building upon the sugar beverage tax in Mexico: a modelling study of tax alternatives to increase benefits - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227 USA Facts: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says - https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-data-says/ https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da... (~40 million acres of corn is used for inefficient ethanol biofuels as well, but I will reserve that rant for another thread)
  - xnx 1y ago
    I completely agree with removing subsidies. I'm less convinced that ingredients should be banned. Weirdly the entire "supplement" industry can do whatever they want.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Not banned, taxed. These are behavioral economic nudges to encourage healthier outcomes. You can still get a Coca Cola, but the economics shouldn’t make it your primary source of hydration, right? If you’re expecting “will power” to fix this, the evidence is robust [1] that is not going to happen. We tax alcohol and cigarettes similarly, and I don’t think it’s wild to consider processed sugars close to that same category from a health and reward center perspective. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917096
colechristensen 1y ago
This is accepting the premise that something synthetic is automatically worse than something extracted more directly from nature. I'm all for researching and banning substances which are actually harmful, but not for paranoia and the automatic assumption that a certain amount of chemistry turns something "natural" into something bad. For example carmine is crushed up cactus parasite insects which a very small number of people are vulnerable to extreme allergic reactions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal >much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our food How much human testing of every agricultural product do you want?
HWR_14 1y ago
> What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time they wanted to, but didn't They had replaced a lot of them already. Kraft's most iconic product (Mac & Cheese) replaced the artificial dyes years ago and this is only the last 10% of their products. Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?
- nradov 1y ago
  There are a lot of different artificial dyes. Most of them haven't been extensively studied in a rigorous way. It probably isn't even possible to determine whether they have any negative effects on human health because there's no ethical or affordable way to run that experiment. Since dyes are purely cosmetic and there's no actual need for them then it might be better to just avoid the risk.
- tayo42 1y ago
  If you care about being healthy why are you eating kraft mac and cheese in the first place. People act like taking the food dye out of gushers is suddenly going to fix their problems. You need to avoid this food in the first place.
  - recursive 1y ago
    Good example of perfect being the enemy of good, or less bad.
- klik99 1y ago
  > Are artificial dyes actually bad for you? The fact that this is a legitimate question is very concerning. Some of these dyes are/were ubiquitous and there is very little research about them. IIRC a few have evidence of harm. Nothing should be this widely deployed without understanding them more. If you were more questioning "Is natural actually better for people or just a nice sounding word" which could also be implied by your question, I agree with that, with the caveat that artificial stuff has more potential for surprises since it doesn't have the history of being used safely "natural" stuff does, and should have a higher bar of research.
- 1y ago
standardUser 1y ago
> Clearly these companies are in it to make money, and they will sell the public whatever the public will eat, You are correct, but I find it alarming that anyone would deem this necessary to say out loud. These companies would happily watch us suffer an die from chronic illnesses en masse if it inched up their share value, as would any for-profit enterprise. The phrase "duh" comes to mind. The only thing stopping them is government regulation, though that approach is under perpetual attack by anti-government zealots, the most recent of which being Musk and his child assistants.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

They don't care until there is some combination of public and government pressure, so you just have to keep pressuring, forever. Corporations are fundamentally unaccountability laundering profit machines (limited liability, nebulous shareholder ownership), and must be treated accordingly.

Molitor5901 1y ago
Which is the worst part about all of this: It took government pressure and calling them out to force a change. My anger at government is why they didn't do this SOONER? Why did it take someone like RJF jr. to move this needle? After all the people we've had at Sec. of Agriculture, HHS, and FDA Commissioners.. I don't think this was because people were putting pressure, otherwise the sheer numbers of those communities would have done something by now. It only required one person in power to say enough, fix this.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Are you asking why people are more susceptible to demagoguery than science education? History tells us what we need to know about that.
- thatguy0900 1y ago
  [flagged]
- carefulfungi 1y ago
  But, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, others have done this before RJF's appointment. During the Obama administration, cherry picking some example: * Food safety regulatory improvement bill: https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-dietary-supplements/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-regulation-food-and-dietar... * Improved labelling rules: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-labels.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/health/fda-nutrition-labe... * EPA water safety rules made stricter, then rolled back by Trump: https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-to-revoke-obama-waters-of-the-united-states-rule/ https://www.sgrlaw.com/epa-announces-plans-to-revoke-obama-w.... It isn't correct to see these changes a singular improvement. These rules are constantly being fought over, sometimes becoming stricter, sometimes looser. Another example, NYC has fought to reduce sugary drink serving sizes and to require labels on high sugar foods. (https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-sugars-warning-rule.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/added-sugar...)

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago

The greater problem is normalization of unhealthy food across an entire supermarket. Then it becomes unavoidable and invisible to consumers. My personal bugaboos are added sugar and generous use of weird preservatives. If your supermarket has 20 aisles, 16 of them are loaded with sugary sulfite-preserved stuff, removing choice and visibility to consumers. And breads fortified with folic acid.

zeta0134 1y ago
I'm still upset that I picked up a set of those little fruit cup things advertising "no added sugar", only to be met by intensely bitter and gross flavor. Turns out they added monk fruit extract instead, as an artificial sweetener. To FRUIT. Fruit is naturally sweet!
- vel0city 1y ago
  Del Monte's No Sugar Added line of canned fruits often has Acesulfame Potassium and Sucralose in it. Similar no sugar added generic/house brands are similar. https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-pears-no-sugar-added https://www.delmonte.com/products/fruits/pears/sliced-pears-...
leviathant 1y ago
Re: preservatives, I remember watching a video a few years ago, where a woman decided that she didn't like all the preservatives in store-bought tortillas, so she was going to make them herself at home. It's a really simple thing to make, so why not? They all went stale before the day was out. She compared the ingredients between what she had made and what came out of the box at the grocery store, and the ones that she didn't use? They were all preservatives. Choose your battles wisely. I will concede that the use of sweeteners in everything in the US is unhinged. It's hard to really understand until you've spent enough time out of the country to where you're buying groceries and looking at the ingredients. You come back to the states and everything tastes weirdly sweet. It was a real "fish don't know they're wet" moment for me, which mostly came about from marrying an Australian.

xnx 1y ago

The most harmful ingredient in our foods is sugar. Should the government restrict that?

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Absolutely, stop subsidizing corn and glucose syrup through ag policy, and tax sugar consumption. Mexico taxed sugar to mitigate obesity to great success. GLP-1s destroy demand (Walmart already sees this in their purchasing data for consumers who are on GLP-1s), but we should also restrict supply by not subsidizing it in the first place. Why are we paying both to make the poison and then treat the poison? Not very capital efficient! After Mexico Implemented a Tax, Purchases of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Decreased and Water Increased: Difference by Place of Residence, Household Composition, and Income Level - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525113/ | https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892 https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.117.251892 Building upon the sugar beverage tax in Mexico: a modelling study of tax alternatives to increase benefits - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10649495/ | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012227 USA Facts: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says - https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-data-says/ https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da... (~40 million acres of corn is used for inefficient ethanol biofuels as well, but I will reserve that rant for another thread)
- xnx 1y ago
  I completely agree with removing subsidies. I'm less convinced that ingredients should be banned. Weirdly the entire "supplement" industry can do whatever they want.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Not banned, taxed. These are behavioral economic nudges to encourage healthier outcomes. You can still get a Coca Cola, but the economics shouldn’t make it your primary source of hydration, right? If you’re expecting “will power” to fix this, the evidence is robust [1] that is not going to happen. We tax alcohol and cigarettes similarly, and I don’t think it’s wild to consider processed sugars close to that same category from a health and reward center perspective. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917096

colechristensen 1y ago

This is accepting the premise that something synthetic is automatically worse than something extracted more directly from nature. I'm all for researching and banning substances which are actually harmful, but not for paranoia and the automatic assumption that a certain amount of chemistry turns something "natural" into something bad. For example carmine is crushed up cactus parasite insects which a very small number of people are vulnerable to extreme allergic reactions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal >much more restrictive on the ingredients that goes into our food How much human testing of every agricultural product do you want?

HWR_14 1y ago

> What bugs me the most about companies like Kraft is that they could have replaced artificial dyes and ingredients any time they wanted to, but didn't They had replaced a lot of them already. Kraft's most iconic product (Mac & Cheese) replaced the artificial dyes years ago and this is only the last 10% of their products. Are artificial dyes actually bad for you?

nradov 1y ago
There are a lot of different artificial dyes. Most of them haven't been extensively studied in a rigorous way. It probably isn't even possible to determine whether they have any negative effects on human health because there's no ethical or affordable way to run that experiment. Since dyes are purely cosmetic and there's no actual need for them then it might be better to just avoid the risk.
tayo42 1y ago
If you care about being healthy why are you eating kraft mac and cheese in the first place. People act like taking the food dye out of gushers is suddenly going to fix their problems. You need to avoid this food in the first place.
- recursive 1y ago
  Good example of perfect being the enemy of good, or less bad.
klik99 1y ago
> Are artificial dyes actually bad for you? The fact that this is a legitimate question is very concerning. Some of these dyes are/were ubiquitous and there is very little research about them. IIRC a few have evidence of harm. Nothing should be this widely deployed without understanding them more. If you were more questioning "Is natural actually better for people or just a nice sounding word" which could also be implied by your question, I agree with that, with the caveat that artificial stuff has more potential for surprises since it doesn't have the history of being used safely "natural" stuff does, and should have a higher bar of research.
1y ago

standardUser 1y ago

> Clearly these companies are in it to make money, and they will sell the public whatever the public will eat, You are correct, but I find it alarming that anyone would deem this necessary to say out loud. These companies would happily watch us suffer an die from chronic illnesses en masse if it inched up their share value, as would any for-profit enterprise. The phrase "duh" comes to mind. The only thing stopping them is government regulation, though that approach is under perpetual attack by anti-government zealots, the most recent of which being Musk and his child assistants.