6 ms·

They had better change the messaging. I'm in favor of common-sense regulation of mass-production food ingredients, and "sugar is toxic" even rubs me the wrong

by 3am 14y ago

They had better change the messaging. I'm in favor of common-sense regulation of mass-production food ingredients, and "sugar is toxic" even rubs me the wrong way.

kansface 14y ago
We need to tax sugar like we tax tobacco for the same reasons. It will decrease consumption. Those taxes will pay for the medical expenses of people with diabetes.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  An apple a day is the doctor's pay?
- TDL 14y ago
  So we should be taxing fruits then, right?
  - themgt 14y ago
    No, it would be worth your time to read/listen to Robert Lustig. He explains how and why consuming natural sources like fruit where fructose is encased in digestion-slowing cellulose is normally fine, while extracting the fructose and adding it to other products like soda (and huge amounts of American processed foods) leads to toxicity and liver and metabolic damage. You can make jokes, but cutting excess fructose from American diets would probably be the #1 easiest thing to do for millions of people to live longer, healthier lives. And Bittman is correct that the FDA should get involved. It's actually difficult to buy "Healthy, Good for You™!" yogurt in an American supermarket that doesn't contain toxic amounts of added fructose - that is just crazy.
    - TDL 14y ago
      Educate then, don't attempt to socially engineer. Smoking was reduced through education, not taxation. The more people understood the long term consequences of smoking the less people smoked. I share the views of those who are not fans of processed sugars or fructose, but I am entirely opposed to social engineering.
      - gnaritas 14y ago
        > Educate then, don't attempt to socially engineer. Education is social engineering.
        TDL 14y ago
        Nonsense. Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors. You can say forced education is social engineering, but the act of educating or learning is not social engineering.
        gnaritas 14y ago
        > Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors. You may think that, but that isn't what it means. Look it up Wikipedia: Social engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. Google: The application of sociological principles to specific social problems. Dictionary.com: the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems. So whatever you're talking about, social engineering isn't the phrase you're looking for.
        TDL 14y ago
        In the political sense I am using the term appropriately. You want to get into semantic debate and I am not really interested.
        gnaritas 14y ago
        Words have meaning, I'm not "wanting" a semantic debate, I'm simply telling you that the way you're using the term is bound to be misunderstood because it doesn't mean that. Take it how you will, but no you didn't use the term correctly even in the political sense as I gave you the political science definition from Wikipedia, that is the political sense.
  - roc 14y ago
    Is there a societal problem of people having massive fruit intake? It seems both logical and effective to just worry about the 'added' sugars in processed foods.
- deelowe 14y ago
  When is this going to stop? Endless government regulation is not the solution to everything. Look, there's a huge health movement going on in the country right now. Just like there was an anti-smoking movement starting up before the government ever got involved with that. The people who fund this crap aren't looking to do good, they just want more tax revenue (or more grant dollars from those who want more tax revenue). That's what they've always wanted. Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it. Vitamin water, coke zero, pepsi one/0, izze, baked chips, etc... etc... etc.. take up much more room in the grocery stores than they used to. Trader joes and whole foods are massive businesses now and threatening the big boys like kroger. I'm not saying obesity isn't a problem, but I do think we'll see the trend start changing for the better soon. There's no need for regulation. The public will shift on it's own. All we need is better education. Almost everyone I know(in my age group and younger) eat much more healthily than their parents do/did simply because they are better informed. Contrary to popular belief, people do make rational decisions when it comes to eating (excluding socioeconomic factors).
  - __david__ 14y ago
    > Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it. Actually, if you are in California then it's more likely because of a 2009 law[1]: "Putting our heads in the gastronomic sand became a bit harder starting July 1, 2009, when a new law went into effect making California the first state to mandate that chain restaurants--those with 20 or more locations--provide a calorie count for everything on the menu." [1] http://www.examiner.com/article/calorie-count-california-restaurant-law-urges-restraint http://www.examiner.com/article/calorie-count-california-res...
    - breckinloggins 14y ago
      I moved from Texas to California and I can confirm that, while there does seem to be a trend toward more and more restaurants voluntarily including this information, you don't really SEE it until you cross the border into California. This is an example of a business regulation that has had a directly positive impact on my daily food choices... I find that I automatically choose lower calorie foods just because the calorie numbers guilt me into doing so. In fact, this one thing led to a general softening of my hard-core libertarian "no regulations ever let the market decide" stance of the past.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Would taxes on sugary things actually decrease consumption? I doubt you would actually be able to tax a 50 cent drink enough to make anyone reconsider purchasing it, particularly considering people will pay up to several dollars for that same beverage in other contexts. Nobody is going to be doing the "can I afford this, with the tax price included" calculus with things that cheap. (The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this)
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    (The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this) I find this practice of American retailers incredibly pernicious. I really think displayed prices should be out-the-door on everything - you can still put the tax data on the receipt. When I moved to the US from Europe, I found it very difficult to manage my grocery bill for the first year or so until I got used to adding 8% to everything.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  No, we need to stop subsidizing sugar and flour production. I'm visiting the US after living elsewhere, and the #1 thing I notice about the meals is how carbo-loaded and sugar-loaded they are -- including most people's home cooking! Not to say I don't enjoy some of the sugar-loading, but the carbo-loading is just annoying. When I help friends make a vegetable stir-fry with noodles, I don't want a bowl that's 75% rice noodles. I don't want to feel hungry again 3 hours later despite eating a large meal, because the large meal had little in it other than kilocalories from simple carbohydrates. I want the kind of veg-and-protein filled meals I've gotten more used to, in which I can measure sugar levels by whether something tastes sweet and I feel full all day/evening because most of the meal's content was "thick" stuff like vegetables, legumes, eggs, meat, cheese, olive oil and/or fish rather than "thin" foods like milk or sauce, or "very thin" foods like bread, pasta, or rice.
josefresco 14y ago
Agreed. Using the same logic, they could wage the same campaign against water.
- themgt 14y ago
  Because your chance of diabetes goes up 1.1% for every glass of water you drink?
  - mpyne 14y ago
    Consumption of dihydrogen monoxide correlates perfectly with onset of diabetes. In fact there is not one single person who has developed diabetes who hasn't ingested DHMO at some point in their life.
    - sophacles 14y ago
      Nope, its actually a correlation of 0. All the people who didn't get diabetes had the same DHMO consumption. If you want to be snarky, do try to at least make sense.
      - mpyne 14y ago
        No, the R^2 is 1.0 between (dhmo-exposure,got-diabetes). You're talking about (dhmo-exposure,!got-diabetes) which turns out to also have a 1.0 correlation, which was kind of the point of my snark in the first place. Those who don't understand even the basics of correlation are doomed to be led astray by statistics. The authors of the paper in question seem to understand it just fine, it would be nice if we could expect even minimal statistic comprehension from those making follow-on claims using the paper as supporting evidence.
        gamblor956 14y ago
        No, your snark fails because you picked the wrong variables. Got Diabetes necessarily implies a population of Did Not Get Diabetes, so the r^2 would not be 1.0. On the other hand, the r^2 between Have Diabetes and Water Exposure would be 1.0.
stretchwithme 14y ago
Yes, its an indiscriminate expression. Sort of like saying metal can kill you when its actually bullets. Its isolating fructose from its natural packaging that is the problem. Metabolizing large amounts of it must be done by the liver and it has side effects. The other half of table sugar is glucose and it is handled by releasing insulin. Insulin releases leptin as a side effect, which makes you feel satisfied. Starches break down into glucose. And glucose can be used by every cell in the body. Lustig's video on this goes through all the biochemistry.

by 3am 14y ago

They had better change the messaging. I'm in favor of common-sense regulation of mass-production food ingredients, and "sugar is toxic" even rubs me the wrong way.

kansface 14y ago

We need to tax sugar like we tax tobacco for the same reasons. It will decrease consumption. Those taxes will pay for the medical expenses of people with diabetes.

dangrossman 14y ago
An apple a day is the doctor's pay?
TDL 14y ago
So we should be taxing fruits then, right?
- themgt 14y ago
  No, it would be worth your time to read/listen to Robert Lustig. He explains how and why consuming natural sources like fruit where fructose is encased in digestion-slowing cellulose is normally fine, while extracting the fructose and adding it to other products like soda (and huge amounts of American processed foods) leads to toxicity and liver and metabolic damage. You can make jokes, but cutting excess fructose from American diets would probably be the #1 easiest thing to do for millions of people to live longer, healthier lives. And Bittman is correct that the FDA should get involved. It's actually difficult to buy "Healthy, Good for You™!" yogurt in an American supermarket that doesn't contain toxic amounts of added fructose - that is just crazy.
  - TDL 14y ago
    Educate then, don't attempt to socially engineer. Smoking was reduced through education, not taxation. The more people understood the long term consequences of smoking the less people smoked. I share the views of those who are not fans of processed sugars or fructose, but I am entirely opposed to social engineering.
    - gnaritas 14y ago
      > Educate then, don't attempt to socially engineer. Education is social engineering.
      - TDL 14y ago
        Nonsense. Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors. You can say forced education is social engineering, but the act of educating or learning is not social engineering.
        gnaritas 14y ago
        > Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors. You may think that, but that isn't what it means. Look it up Wikipedia: Social engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. Google: The application of sociological principles to specific social problems. Dictionary.com: the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems. So whatever you're talking about, social engineering isn't the phrase you're looking for.
        TDL 14y ago
        In the political sense I am using the term appropriately. You want to get into semantic debate and I am not really interested.
        gnaritas 14y ago
        Words have meaning, I'm not "wanting" a semantic debate, I'm simply telling you that the way you're using the term is bound to be misunderstood because it doesn't mean that. Take it how you will, but no you didn't use the term correctly even in the political sense as I gave you the political science definition from Wikipedia, that is the political sense.
- roc 14y ago
  Is there a societal problem of people having massive fruit intake? It seems both logical and effective to just worry about the 'added' sugars in processed foods.
deelowe 14y ago
When is this going to stop? Endless government regulation is not the solution to everything. Look, there's a huge health movement going on in the country right now. Just like there was an anti-smoking movement starting up before the government ever got involved with that. The people who fund this crap aren't looking to do good, they just want more tax revenue (or more grant dollars from those who want more tax revenue). That's what they've always wanted. Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it. Vitamin water, coke zero, pepsi one/0, izze, baked chips, etc... etc... etc.. take up much more room in the grocery stores than they used to. Trader joes and whole foods are massive businesses now and threatening the big boys like kroger. I'm not saying obesity isn't a problem, but I do think we'll see the trend start changing for the better soon. There's no need for regulation. The public will shift on it's own. All we need is better education. Almost everyone I know(in my age group and younger) eat much more healthily than their parents do/did simply because they are better informed. Contrary to popular belief, people do make rational decisions when it comes to eating (excluding socioeconomic factors).
- __david__ 14y ago
  > Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it. Actually, if you are in California then it's more likely because of a 2009 law[1]: "Putting our heads in the gastronomic sand became a bit harder starting July 1, 2009, when a new law went into effect making California the first state to mandate that chain restaurants--those with 20 or more locations--provide a calorie count for everything on the menu." [1] http://www.examiner.com/article/calorie-count-california-restaurant-law-urges-restraint http://www.examiner.com/article/calorie-count-california-res...
  - breckinloggins 14y ago
    I moved from Texas to California and I can confirm that, while there does seem to be a trend toward more and more restaurants voluntarily including this information, you don't really SEE it until you cross the border into California. This is an example of a business regulation that has had a directly positive impact on my daily food choices... I find that I automatically choose lower calorie foods just because the calorie numbers guilt me into doing so. In fact, this one thing led to a general softening of my hard-core libertarian "no regulations ever let the market decide" stance of the past.
jlgreco 14y ago
Would taxes on sugary things actually decrease consumption? I doubt you would actually be able to tax a 50 cent drink enough to make anyone reconsider purchasing it, particularly considering people will pay up to several dollars for that same beverage in other contexts. Nobody is going to be doing the "can I afford this, with the tax price included" calculus with things that cheap. (The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this)
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  (The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this) I find this practice of American retailers incredibly pernicious. I really think displayed prices should be out-the-door on everything - you can still put the tax data on the receipt. When I moved to the US from Europe, I found it very difficult to manage my grocery bill for the first year or so until I got used to adding 8% to everything.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
No, we need to stop subsidizing sugar and flour production. I'm visiting the US after living elsewhere, and the #1 thing I notice about the meals is how carbo-loaded and sugar-loaded they are -- including most people's home cooking! Not to say I don't enjoy some of the sugar-loading, but the carbo-loading is just annoying. When I help friends make a vegetable stir-fry with noodles, I don't want a bowl that's 75% rice noodles. I don't want to feel hungry again 3 hours later despite eating a large meal, because the large meal had little in it other than kilocalories from simple carbohydrates. I want the kind of veg-and-protein filled meals I've gotten more used to, in which I can measure sugar levels by whether something tastes sweet and I feel full all day/evening because most of the meal's content was "thick" stuff like vegetables, legumes, eggs, meat, cheese, olive oil and/or fish rather than "thin" foods like milk or sauce, or "very thin" foods like bread, pasta, or rice.

josefresco 14y ago

Agreed. Using the same logic, they could wage the same campaign against water.

themgt 14y ago
Because your chance of diabetes goes up 1.1% for every glass of water you drink?
- mpyne 14y ago
  Consumption of dihydrogen monoxide correlates perfectly with onset of diabetes. In fact there is not one single person who has developed diabetes who hasn't ingested DHMO at some point in their life.
  - sophacles 14y ago
    Nope, its actually a correlation of 0. All the people who didn't get diabetes had the same DHMO consumption. If you want to be snarky, do try to at least make sense.
    - mpyne 14y ago
      No, the R^2 is 1.0 between (dhmo-exposure,got-diabetes). You're talking about (dhmo-exposure,!got-diabetes) which turns out to also have a 1.0 correlation, which was kind of the point of my snark in the first place. Those who don't understand even the basics of correlation are doomed to be led astray by statistics. The authors of the paper in question seem to understand it just fine, it would be nice if we could expect even minimal statistic comprehension from those making follow-on claims using the paper as supporting evidence.
      - gamblor956 14y ago
        No, your snark fails because you picked the wrong variables. Got Diabetes necessarily implies a population of Did Not Get Diabetes, so the r^2 would not be 1.0. On the other hand, the r^2 between Have Diabetes and Water Exposure would be 1.0.

stretchwithme 14y ago

Yes, its an indiscriminate expression. Sort of like saying metal can kill you when its actually bullets. Its isolating fructose from its natural packaging that is the problem. Metabolizing large amounts of it must be done by the liver and it has side effects. The other half of table sugar is glucose and it is handled by releasing insulin. Insulin releases leptin as a side effect, which makes you feel satisfied. Starches break down into glucose. And glucose can be used by every cell in the body. Lustig's video on this goes through all the biochemistry.