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> The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoc

> The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people. In my case, I'm arguing that doing away with these things, regardless of any health effects they may have, has the effect of eliminating the entire class of foods you have a problem with. > "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages. I'm not arguing that people should drink coke (which is full of all kinds of stuff besides HFCS I doubt people should be consuming), but the obesity epidemic is not well-correlated to soft drink consumption. The latter has been in decline since around the mid-90s.

tptacek 1y ago
My point is that you're arguing for something far outside of the mainstream, but the "UPF" framing makes it hard to tell; it sounds at first like you're saying we should stop subsidizing Takis (fair enough!) but in reality you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be reformulated (not gonna happen). I'm not trying to engage with your theory of health; I'm trying to establish that the UPF thing has Prop 65 vibes. The Prop 65 people make a lot of the same arguments you are --- most especially that we should more formally adopt the precautionary principle. Which is why you get cancer warning labels on bags of organic sweet potato sticks. And so nobody takes those labels seriously anymore.
- Amezarak 1y ago
  OK, so how do you propose we reduce consumption of "packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods"? I thought making them practically unviable was a good route to take. > but in reality you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be reformulated (not gonna happen). It's not "all yogurt" and nobody asked whether we should reformulate it the first time.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    But bans on UPF wouldn't actually do that. Potato chips aren't ultraprocessed, but they sure seem like hyperpalatable low-satiety foods. Pastrami is ultraprocessed but doesn't seem like it is any more hyperpalatable or low-satiety than roast beef.
    - Amezarak 1y ago
      Almost all potato chips are UPF. Even the ones that aren’t so bad would be much more expensive if they had to be fried in olive oil or lard instead of UPF ingredients like canola oil.
      - UncleMeat 1y ago
        It is weird to me that the boundary between seed oil panic and upf panic appears to be so fuzzy. The nova classification has canola oil as Group 2, by the way.
        Amezarak 1y ago
        Canola oil: - is made from a plant historically considered inedible - has a very high input:output ratio - often has extensive processing steps that include industrial solvents like hexane and deodorization steps to make the end product tolerable If that’s not a UPF then I would not regard that definition as useful. Personally I don’t hold to any particular “seed oil” claims, but vegetable oils are a major ingredient in almost all UPFs, are very calorie dense, and canola/soybean oil have risen from near-zero to be one of if not the largest calorie source for Westerners in just the past few decades; canola oil was not even consumed before the 1970s. They would certainly be one of my main suspects in the obesity epidemic. It’s certainly true to talk about how bad chips are we’re talking about what makes them so high calorie is the oil.
        UncleMeat 1y ago
        You can take that up with the nova classification I guess. And... you are absolutely repeating seed oil panic claims in your comment. In another comment you say that chips fried in olive oil would be healthy. But that wouldn't change the calorie content of the final product compared to chips fried in canola or sunflower oil.
        Amezarak 1y ago
        > And... you are absolutely repeating seed oil panic claims in your comment. Maybe we have different definitions of "seed oils" or "panic claims". Nothing I said is controversial: canola oil as food did not exist before the 1970s, the standard method of creating canola oil involves crushing a massive amount of canola and then using a solvent like hexane to maximize extraction, vegetable oils are one of the primary sources for 21st century calories and are hugely present in UPFs. I would consider a "panic claim" to be something like "seed oils cause cancer", "seed oils cause heart attacks", "seed oils cause inflammation", "the hexane in canola is poisoning people", or even "seed oils are definitely responsible for the obesity epidemic", etc. I am sure there is (limited) evidence for these claims, and that's fine: it's nearly impossible to get high-quality nutritional research showing long-term dietary impacts because of the nature of the problem. What do you do? Interviews are unreliable, you can't feed people controlled diets for a lifetime, population/consumption studies are beset by thousands of confounders. Thus, I don't have any reason to place a lot of belief in any study saying "seed oils bad!"; some other study explaining how they're great is just as likely to be true, in my mind. All I can go by is the simple heuristic I explained earlier. > But that wouldn't change the calorie content of the final product compared to chips fried in canola or sunflower oil. Because I don't think calories are likely to be the real explanation behind the public health problems. Every food item, even 100% unprocessed, has all sorts of pharmacological side effects besides turning into cellular fuel. Most of them are very subtle, have different effects in different populations, etc. Most people have had access to plentiful high-calorie low-satiety foods for a long time and this didn't happen. Perhaps the "hyperpalatable" part is involved, but lots of sugary and high-fat treats fall into this category and we still didn't have this problem. What we didn't have was modern UPFs or vegetable oils. So if the cause is dietary, it seems reasonable to look in askance at these, and it's obvious that we don't "need" flavor enhancers, stabilizers, and the various preservatives we now have except to enhance the profitability of Kraft and General Mills. My second point was that this would have the side effect of rendering uneconomical or unpalatable whole categories of products that presumably tptacek does have a problem with, even if he doesn't align with the reason for doing so. So if he thinks chips are a public health menace, this makes them rarer and more expensive.
jrs235 1y ago
>The latter has been in decline since around the mid-90s. I'm curious about this. Do you have a reference for this? What is in decline specifically? Number of people drinking sugary soda? Number of sugary sodas consumed per person (on average)? Amount of sugar consumed by drinking sugary soda? I'm curious because it seems the amount of sugar per can of soda has drastically increased since the 90's. If my memory serves me well, a can of soda 20 years ago was like 26g of sugar, today they're like 53 g per soda. At least in the United States.
- Amezarak 1y ago
  Gallons of soda per capita. I think what you're observing is larger cans and bottles are available now. I haven't seen an increase. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-drinking-way-less-soda-134233709.html?guccounter=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-drinking-way-less-s...
- nradov 1y ago
  I don't think your memory is serving you very well. A 12oz can of Coca-Cola contains 39g of sugar, which hasn't changed in a long time. (Some people claim that switching the sugar from sucrose to high-fructose corn syrup had harmful effects but there's little evidence for that.) Other brands have a little more or less sugar but that's probably the one most commonly consumed. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/ingredients https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/ingredients Sugar consumption per capita has been trending up slightly in the last few years. But ironically it was actually higher back in the 1970s when the population was less obese. https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/sugar-consumption-per-capita/usa/ https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/sugar-consumption-pe...

tptacek 1y ago

My point is that you're arguing for something far outside of the mainstream, but the "UPF" framing makes it hard to tell; it sounds at first like you're saying we should stop subsidizing Takis (fair enough!) but in reality you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be reformulated (not gonna happen). I'm not trying to engage with your theory of health; I'm trying to establish that the UPF thing has Prop 65 vibes. The Prop 65 people make a lot of the same arguments you are --- most especially that we should more formally adopt the precautionary principle. Which is why you get cancer warning labels on bags of organic sweet potato sticks. And so nobody takes those labels seriously anymore.

Amezarak 1y ago
OK, so how do you propose we reduce consumption of "packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods"? I thought making them practically unviable was a good route to take. > but in reality you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be reformulated (not gonna happen). It's not "all yogurt" and nobody asked whether we should reformulate it the first time.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  But bans on UPF wouldn't actually do that. Potato chips aren't ultraprocessed, but they sure seem like hyperpalatable low-satiety foods. Pastrami is ultraprocessed but doesn't seem like it is any more hyperpalatable or low-satiety than roast beef.
  - Amezarak 1y ago
    Almost all potato chips are UPF. Even the ones that aren’t so bad would be much more expensive if they had to be fried in olive oil or lard instead of UPF ingredients like canola oil.
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
      It is weird to me that the boundary between seed oil panic and upf panic appears to be so fuzzy. The nova classification has canola oil as Group 2, by the way.
      - Amezarak 1y ago
        Canola oil: - is made from a plant historically considered inedible - has a very high input:output ratio - often has extensive processing steps that include industrial solvents like hexane and deodorization steps to make the end product tolerable If that’s not a UPF then I would not regard that definition as useful. Personally I don’t hold to any particular “seed oil” claims, but vegetable oils are a major ingredient in almost all UPFs, are very calorie dense, and canola/soybean oil have risen from near-zero to be one of if not the largest calorie source for Westerners in just the past few decades; canola oil was not even consumed before the 1970s. They would certainly be one of my main suspects in the obesity epidemic. It’s certainly true to talk about how bad chips are we’re talking about what makes them so high calorie is the oil.
        UncleMeat 1y ago
        You can take that up with the nova classification I guess. And... you are absolutely repeating seed oil panic claims in your comment. In another comment you say that chips fried in olive oil would be healthy. But that wouldn't change the calorie content of the final product compared to chips fried in canola or sunflower oil.
        Amezarak 1y ago
        > And... you are absolutely repeating seed oil panic claims in your comment. Maybe we have different definitions of "seed oils" or "panic claims". Nothing I said is controversial: canola oil as food did not exist before the 1970s, the standard method of creating canola oil involves crushing a massive amount of canola and then using a solvent like hexane to maximize extraction, vegetable oils are one of the primary sources for 21st century calories and are hugely present in UPFs. I would consider a "panic claim" to be something like "seed oils cause cancer", "seed oils cause heart attacks", "seed oils cause inflammation", "the hexane in canola is poisoning people", or even "seed oils are definitely responsible for the obesity epidemic", etc. I am sure there is (limited) evidence for these claims, and that's fine: it's nearly impossible to get high-quality nutritional research showing long-term dietary impacts because of the nature of the problem. What do you do? Interviews are unreliable, you can't feed people controlled diets for a lifetime, population/consumption studies are beset by thousands of confounders. Thus, I don't have any reason to place a lot of belief in any study saying "seed oils bad!"; some other study explaining how they're great is just as likely to be true, in my mind. All I can go by is the simple heuristic I explained earlier. > But that wouldn't change the calorie content of the final product compared to chips fried in canola or sunflower oil. Because I don't think calories are likely to be the real explanation behind the public health problems. Every food item, even 100% unprocessed, has all sorts of pharmacological side effects besides turning into cellular fuel. Most of them are very subtle, have different effects in different populations, etc. Most people have had access to plentiful high-calorie low-satiety foods for a long time and this didn't happen. Perhaps the "hyperpalatable" part is involved, but lots of sugary and high-fat treats fall into this category and we still didn't have this problem. What we didn't have was modern UPFs or vegetable oils. So if the cause is dietary, it seems reasonable to look in askance at these, and it's obvious that we don't "need" flavor enhancers, stabilizers, and the various preservatives we now have except to enhance the profitability of Kraft and General Mills. My second point was that this would have the side effect of rendering uneconomical or unpalatable whole categories of products that presumably tptacek does have a problem with, even if he doesn't align with the reason for doing so. So if he thinks chips are a public health menace, this makes them rarer and more expensive.

jrs235 1y ago

>The latter has been in decline since around the mid-90s. I'm curious about this. Do you have a reference for this? What is in decline specifically? Number of people drinking sugary soda? Number of sugary sodas consumed per person (on average)? Amount of sugar consumed by drinking sugary soda? I'm curious because it seems the amount of sugar per can of soda has drastically increased since the 90's. If my memory serves me well, a can of soda 20 years ago was like 26g of sugar, today they're like 53 g per soda. At least in the United States.

Amezarak 1y ago
Gallons of soda per capita. I think what you're observing is larger cans and bottles are available now. I haven't seen an increase. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-drinking-way-less-soda-134233709.html?guccounter=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-drinking-way-less-s...
nradov 1y ago
I don't think your memory is serving you very well. A 12oz can of Coca-Cola contains 39g of sugar, which hasn't changed in a long time. (Some people claim that switching the sugar from sucrose to high-fructose corn syrup had harmful effects but there's little evidence for that.) Other brands have a little more or less sugar but that's probably the one most commonly consumed. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/ingredients https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/ingredients Sugar consumption per capita has been trending up slightly in the last few years. But ironically it was actually higher back in the 1970s when the population was less obese. https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/sugar-consumption-per-capita/usa/ https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/sugar-consumption-pe...