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From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease
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- h33t-l4x0r 8mo agoSo is tobacco ok if it's local? I eat mostly local food and once in a while someone offers me some locally farmed tobacco and I try it. That's not "industry" but it's also probably not great for me.
- 4gotunameagain 8mo agoYeah, local organic cyanide is good as well.
- gostsamo 8mo agokill this strawman! don't let it hit back at you.
- h33t-l4x0r 8mo agoNo, the strawman's ok. Anyway he only comes once a month, and I only feed his goods to my goat.
- teekert 8mo agoIt's definitely "not great" for you. But there is also not an entire industry spending big bucks trying to get you addicted (and it sounds you do it every now and then, so that's not so bad). So there is a difference imho.
- unglaublich 8mo agoPlain tobacco leaves are much less dangerous for your health than the highly engineered commercial cigarettes that have additives that increase addictiveness, inhibit coughing, "improve taste", improve shelf life, etc.
- smt88 8mo agoThis is absolutely wrong[1]. Please don't spread dangerous falsehoods without researching first. Even American Spirit's website denies that "organic" or natural tobacco is any safer. 1. https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-ingredients-components/chemicals-every-tobacco-plant https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-ingredients-co...
- h33t-l4x0r 8mo agoThat article suggests that toxic chemicals are sometimes found where tobacco grows, but that would not be the case for my neighbor (I hope).
- cobblestone32 8mo agoWell... > In pure form, nicotine is a colorless to yellowish, oily liquid that readily penetrates biological membranes and acts as a potent neurotoxin in insects, where it serves as a antiherbivore toxin.
- deaux 8mo agoCan't similar be said for capsaicin?
- shawabawa3 8mo agoNote that it doesn't deny that it's _any safer_. It says it's still not safe These are not the same thing It's likely safer but not meaningfully enough to make much difference, as it's still obviously very bad for you
- smt88 8mo ago> It's likely safer but not meaningfully enough to make much difference, as it's still obviously very bad for you There's no evidence that it's safer at all. Reynolds lost a big lawsuit over its American Spirit brand implying that their cigarettes are safer. If they could have provided evidence to the contrary, they would have. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2000/04/ftc-accepts-settlements-charges-alternative-cigarette-ads-are-deceptive https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2000/04/...
- smt88 8mo agoThe problem is when someone makes a profit from your use of that tobacco, especially if they aren't covering the enormous costs of your premature illness or death
- nkrisc 8mo agoSmoking anything is bad for you.
- _heimdall 8mo agoIf you were to grow, dry, and roll your own tobacco it absolutely would be better for you than cigarettes. "Ok" is a judgment call so that's up to you.
- blackbear_ 8mo agoThere is no escaping the fact that feeding addictions is a great business model.
- teekert 8mo agoIt's a real challenge for a society based around personal freedom. Same goes for addictive apps. I feel the conflict within me.
- kuerbel 8mo agoRegulating predatory business models is not in conflict with personal freedom
- p-e-w 8mo agoThere is no definition of “predatory business model” that isn’t simply a reflection of the majority’s values, so there absolutely is a conflict between the two. Are churches a predatory business? If the answer is no, then why are sugar manufacturers? If the answer is tradition etc., then that basically proves my point.
- Arkhaine_kupo 8mo ago> Are churches a predatory business? the institution that invented Tithes? The institution that if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people? Which will take old women aside and talk about getting into heaven and helping missions in poor countries full of poor little children? That institution might have a predatory business model? The threat of hell is certainly very uncoercive yeah
- cobblestone32 8mo agoWhile I don't disagree with the assertion that churches are somewhat "predatory" with the threat of hell etc., this statement isn't really supporting that thesis: > if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people So basically you're paying for a service? Your argument would be much better if they didn't actually help people with important stuff.
- michalxnet 8mo agoSabine Hossenfelder has a video on - Sugar Alcohols Ruined My Health: Learn from My Mistakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5v61YtDYo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5v61YtDYo4 A list of sugar alcohols including their classification numbers in Europe is: Sorbitol (E 420) Mannitol (E 421) Isomalt (E 954) Maltitol and Maltitol Sirup (E 965) Lactitol (E 966) Maltitol and Maltitol Sirup (E 965) Xylitol (E 967) Erythritol (E 967)
- Semaphor 8mo agoAs someone who adds several of those by himself (instead of buying products with them already included), the stomach irritating effects of too much of those (with "too much", as usual, varying from person to person) are well known. That does make me wonder (Sorry, not watching videos) how much she consumed with sugar alcohols, or if she is just extraordinarily sensitive. Seems to me that it would require quite a lot of sweets, frequently.
- Luc 8mo agoA substantial percentage of the population (10% to 15%) has IBS-like symptoms, and would be sensitive to even small amounts of polyols (another name for sugar alcohols). Hence why they are excluded in a low-FODMAP diet (the P stands for polyols).
- Semaphor 8mo agoWow, WP has 10-15 in the developed world and 15-45% globally. I never knew it was such a widespread thing. Crazy, yeah, that would certainly change it for them.
- iammrpayments 8mo agoXylitol is great for teeth, just make sure you spit it out
- lotsofpulp 8mo agoDo you have a Youtube link for how I can perform experiments to determine complex biological processes with sample size 1?
- slowhadoken 8mo agoSomeone the other day told me that THC cures cancer so it’s okay to smoke pot indoors. We’re cooked.
- reverius42 8mo agoPotheads have always said stuff like that. You might have been talking to a pothead.
- slowhadoken 8mo agoI grew up around hippies and potheads but this new legal-weed brand of normie pothead is different. It’s depressing.
- reverius42 8mo agoI haven't encountered that; back when it was illegal I still heard lots of claims like it cures cancer, or is completely healthy with no negative effects, or that it's not addictive. I haven't noticed an increase in those sorts of claims with legalization and I assume it's all still the same people making them.
- slowhadoken 8mo agoI can’t stop hearing them after visiting Denver, CO.
- fastThinking 8mo agoThis reads less like nutrition science and more like addiction engineering. The tobacco analogy isn’t rhetorical, it’s structural.
- Citizen_Lame 8mo agoWhy have people adopted ChatGPt lingo.
- grahamnorton39 8mo agoActually, sounds like it’s written entirely by an LLM, and so do their other comments
- fastThinking 8mo agoIf well-formed sentences now read as LLM output, that’s unfortunate. If you disagree with the point(s) I’m happy to discuss that instead.
- bruce343434 8mo agoBecause lots of people use it a lot, they subconsciously pick up on the language that surrounds them I.e. ai language
- fastThinking 8mo agoNo LLM here, just a habit from academic writing. The reason the tobacco analogy works for me is that both cases optimize around reinforcement, not outcomes.
- testhest 8mo agoAddition has always been very profitable, why we allow it to be done out in the open is beyond me.
- cobblestone32 8mo agoAre you suggesting pushing it underground (e.g. prohibition or modern marijuana trade in many countries) is better in any way?
- neogodless 8mo agoCapitalism is highly addictive.
- jcynix 8mo ago"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." "That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy." Unhappy Meals - Michael Pollan https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/ https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/
- virgildotcodes 8mo agoBut but but the influencers are telling me to put nothing but cheeseburgers and testosterone in my body and that just coincidentally reinforces with what I want to do anyway!
- XorNot 8mo agoI love how this gets presented as obvious advice, yet explains nothing and introduces an even less well defined thing it will do: "be maximally healthy".
- KempyKolibri 8mo agoIt's just a dietary heuristic, why would it have to explain everything? If you want that, just go and look at the literature on overweight and obesity or, say, substitution of animal protein for plant protein. It's all there.
- dwaite 8mo agoIt isn't a dietary heuristic, because there's little advice provided. The extreme is that it is advising people to seek treatment if they suffer from pica or bulimia.
- KempyKolibri 8mo agoBy heuristic, I just mean “a rule used in decision making”. Under that usage, the fact that the rule doesn’t provide fine-grained advice doesn’t disqualify it from being a heuristic. Eating mostly plants is a rule used in decision making when considering what to eat. > The extreme is that it is advising people to seek treatment if they suffer from pica or bulimia. How is that entailed?
- prodigycorp 8mo agoMy caveman brain was psyched out by the idea of stopping my coke drinking habit. I thought I had a soda addiction. Turns out I didnt, I just didnt drink enough water. After I pulled water bottles instead of coke cans from the fridge, the cravings went away. Sometimes we don't need cold baths or extreme regimens to fix all the messed up things we're doing to our bodies. Simple changes go far to heal the damage.
- embedding-shape 8mo agoI think what you experienced was behavioral addiction, tends to be a lot easier to overcome than chemical/physical addiction, often enough by just replacing the habit/behavior with something else. Most people fighting addiction and having a hard time is fighting a chemical dependency, which is a lot harder and when people start looking beyond "Just do X instead".
- prodigycorp 8mo agoYou're probably right. It seems like there's not a hard line between behavior and chemical addiction, because of how the chemicals create reward signals to reinforce certain behavior. From the article: > Basic science models show that liquid sugar concentrations around 10% by weight—comparable with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew—can reliably trigger addictive behaviors in animals, including bingelike consumption, withdrawal, and dopamine system alterations. But yeah, it's obviously nothing close to a nicotine.
- seethishat 8mo agoI grew up close to Winston Salem, North Carolina. The city with two cigarette brands named after it. Everyone died of emphysema or lung cancer there. As a 10 year old kid, I could buy cigarettes from stores. In the 6th grade, our class took a tour of the RJ Reynolds factory in Tobaccoville, NC (yes that is an actual place) and we watched as our school teachers were given free sample packs of cigarettes. I tell that story because it is true. And I wonder... is there a town named Twinkieville in the USA where everyone dies of obesity and/or diabetes and kids can buy pounds of candy at the store without an ID? Or, is every town in America Twinkieville?
- nebula8804 8mo agoTwinkies are just a simple yellow spongecake filled with cream. They are so unhealthy because in the quest to keep the price something that people can afford (or for greed in profits) companies are forced to turn it into processed zombie garbage but if you break it down, a Twinkie was only just originally a simple yellow spongecake with some cream. A treat served to guests during coffeetime. Its financialization of everything including food, government tipping the scales against peoples well being and a declining purchasing power of the average american that has resulted in this awful reality where food isn't food.
- yowayb 8mo agoI read there was an actual original Hostess bakery. Imagine a fresh all-natural Twinkie. Mmmmm
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- nebula8804 8mo agoSo there isn't a free lunch in life but you can fight back against financialization. In the case of a Twinkie follow this guide to make a proper twinkie at home: https://youtu.be/lD2OOTx2G9k?t=592 https://youtu.be/lD2OOTx2G9k?t=592 You will be spending your time but you basically "reverse" the financialization of the product in a way. You could also pay someone to make it for you but then you'd be spending more money (again no free lunch so you have to pick what you want to sacrifice: your time or more money) I've been trying to do more of this at home to cut out anything processed at home but I have to accept that given limited time I have to let some food items I used to enjoy just go by the wayside. I've also been trying to do this elsewhere such as "home cooked software" thats tailored to me only and does not include ever increasing junk I dont want.
- KempyKolibri 8mo agoThis area is very interesting and lots of this is on the money. That said, I think there are some places where it overreaches and possibly verges on fear mongering based on pretty weak evidence. I'm not sure NSS are necessarily "healthwashing" - they are genuinely a healthier alternative, at least in SSBs. Pointing to some very speculative research about "gut microbiome disruption" as if that somehow means NSS are something we should be concerned about in our diet doesn't seem to reflect the body of evidence on the subject. On balance they seem to be either a neutral or beneficial product, depending on what they replace in the diet. I think one important distinction between UPF and cigarettes is that we have lots of examples of healthy UPFs. Are there any such examples for cigarettes? Even those researchers who voice concerns about the health impacts of UPFs (Kevin Hall, Samuel Dicken) seem to be largely interested in identifying _which_ UPFs might drive poor health outcomes and why, so we can regulate industry to make their products more health promoting. My concern with this analogy between cigarettes and UPFs is that we end up with a movement to completely ban UPFs when they have lots of useful properties (can be stored at ambient temperature, long shelf life, reliable quality) that make them very important for people with limited means. The dream scenario, IMO, is that we regulate out the worst of the harmful properties, rather than trying to get rid of them entirely (which I think is the dream scenario with cigarettes).
- walthamstow 8mo ago> The dream scenario, IMO, is that we regulate out the worst of the harmful properties, rather than trying to get rid of them entirely (which I think is the dream scenario with cigarettes). Isn't that basically vapes? A nicotine delivery mechanism without the most harmful properties, created by regulation on tobacco. The thing with tobacco is it doesn't really have any benefit. It isn't a social lubricant like alcohol and doesn't have medical use like opiates. Old World societies managed fine before tobacco.
- deaux 8mo ago> It isn't a social lubricant like alcohol It is, and I'm not a smoker. Ironically mainly because of the indoor smoking bans.
- midtake 8mo agoWhat a load of crock! People have agency. Free will. So what if McDonalds puts out a cool new toy in their adult happy meal or some special sauce loaded with glutamates. Fuck em! Say that to them right now, in your head or out loud: fuck em! You can stop this addiction right now by merely doing nothing and not eating "UPFs". You have the power. When you get stressed and want to burn time and energy eating because it's at least eating, how about doing a different thing? Each one of us is powered by a soul that can defy these behavior loops with some self-reflection.
- _factor 8mo agoAwesome! Let me introduce you to our latest menu item! Heroin chips with meth dipping sauce. One bite and your agency will have you coming back for seconds, then minutes, then a lifetime (however short). I hope you enjoy spending all of your mental energy self-reflecting to kick the addiction.
- ImPleadThe5th 8mo agoA lot of these UPFs are targeted at young people who don't have the same ability to think of long term consequences. If you start young, it's a much harder habit to break later in life. And in many places UPFs are cheaper and more widely available than unprocessed food. If you're worried about paying rent, you're not questioning cheap calories for your family. Even if we can agree that people should exercise more willpower, isn't there something wrong with companies weaponizing science to make food as addictive as possible?
- cobblestone32 8mo agoGreat analysis, let's also solve smoking and alcohol over-consumption by some self-reflection. No need for any regulations, people are always perfectly rational and have perfect information about any health implications of what they consume. Addicted to gambling? Just stop it. (For the record my only vice is coffee.)
- fatherwavelet 8mo agoExactly. I have stopped eating out almost completely because it is addictive. Forget McDonalds, almost any Italian or Thai restaurant to me is like a drug dealer. There is no amount of chicken alfredo that is satisfying to me. It doesn't matter how it is made, the poison is in the dosage and I am going to eat way too much.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoMost food in supermarkets is now just slop. Foam for bread, veggies that have been grown as fast as possible and packaged as fresh despite being weeks or months old, sprayed with chemicals and shipped halfway around the world, meat raised in a shed and fed one food, which is then injected with water to increase it's weight, freerange eggs that were laid 6 weeks ago and have had their protective layer washed off so must be refrigerated...and on it goes.
- randomNumber7 8mo agoI don't understand the downvotes. This is an accurate description of the food I get in german supermarkets at least.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoSame here in the UK. Being downvoted for stating the facts is very common on HN.
- anArbitraryOne 8mo agoI'm glad consumers have a choice. Unlike the ultraprocessed crap they fed us in school.
- beloch 8mo ago"UPFs share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation. These parallels should inform how we classify and regulate UPFs." ------------ There was a "Nature of Things" episode on this titled, "Foodspiracy". The reason why UPF's have been designed and marketed with many of the same strategies as tobacco is because several big tobacco companies diversified into food. They literally transferred their expertise from marketing cigarettes to marketing junk food. Companies like Joe Camel started out using cute/cool animal mascots to condition kids so they'd buy Joe Camel cigarettes when they were old enough to smoke (if not sooner). There was a lot of competition for adult smokers, so hooking kids on their brand before any other company got to them was a winning strategy. When they pivoted into UPF's, they immediately put animal mascots and cartoon characters on cereal boxes. They no longer had to wait for their target audience to grow up a bit. It's sobering to find out that companies specializing in unhealthy addiction have literally gone from cigarettes to potato chips and breakfast cereals without missing a step, and kids are their preferred demographic.