Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 347 posts

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#161

Post by tremon »

jensen123 wrote: post #89
Nagyman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit harsh to make a blanket statement about intelligence; people just need information which isn't being readily provided or is being drowned out with too much information. The collective actions seem counterintuitive to people paying attention, but paying attention requires time - which doesn't come easily if a swath of the population is busy with two part-time jobs and recovering with reality TV in the meantime.

If you read a few books on nutrition, you will learn that refined sugar is unhealthy. This is not hard for anybody with half a brain to figure out. As for working two part-time jobs etc., many of the people doing this buy status symbols like SUVs, iPhones, big houses etc. If they didn't buy so much unnecessary stuff, they wouldn't need to work so much.

Nutrition is no longer taught in school, so you cannot demand that people know this.

Also, the acknowledgement that sugar is unhealthy beyond children's teeth is relatively new. I don't think you'll find it in nutrition books from over 15 years ago.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#162

Post by cookiecaper »

mulletbum wrote: post #156
dahart wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does this happen? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) > There can be only one explanation Why/how have you arrived at this conclusion? > it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem So, you have evidence of food that shouldn't have sugar in it but does in fact have sugar anyway. And you conclude that it's the consumer's fault, because they're stupid, and not the company t…

Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body? If they never tasted the food, they would miss out on this "marketing." The fact remains, if those manufacturers have always produced their beans with sugar, then they should not be at fault. If those companies changed their recipe to contain sugar after they found people grey addicted to it, there should be a label to warn the consumer that…

>Do you feel that a consumer is responsible for what they put in their body?

Of course. But the average consumer is not only at a disadvantage, they are regularly deceived into believing that unhealthy foods are in fact healthy. In reality, culpability is a complex calculation that passes through the farmer, the food processor, the manufacturer, the ad firm, the grocer, the consumer, and any other party involved in the transaction. All share some part of the blame.

However, the blame game is rarely productive. When something is having a serious negative impact on 50%+ of the population, it's time to stop pushing blame around and start focusing on finding a workable solution. If 50%+ of your website's users were getting lost on your page and having a hard time finding an efficient way to do things, would you spend all your time blaming them for their idiocy, or would you up the ante for your UX people and make it work? (hint for the n00bs out there: in this situation you should up the ante, not sit around and blame your customers)

It's society's problem to figure out how to fix this public health crisis, because regardless of our beliefs about whether someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so, and we have to accept that and adjust our processes and habits to accommodate.

The goal is not to admonish or uphold anyone, not to protect or liquidate profit, not to see one brand or flavor triumph over others. The goal is simply to cause the obesity rate to rapidly decline and stay declined. That's what we should focus on making happen at the macro level.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#163

Post by philh »

viraptor wrote: post #31
blowski wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If I value eating whatever I like above having a small waist, why would it be bad for me to be a blob of fat? The only reason I should lose weight is for health reasons, but if there's a magic pill that would remove that reason, then why should I care? I kind of agree with you, but I don't think it's immediately obvious.

For example design / civil engineering. Unless we can adjust literally everything to be supported by arbitrary-width any-direction conveyor belt system, we'll have issues with transport. Unless we can easily sell devices that are adaptable to any body shape/position (this goes from "screen for fat fingers" to "can't reach the panel on the wall"), we'll have issues with interfaces. And so on - this applies to thousand…

Broadly, your argument sounds like "people shouldn't become voluntarily disabled because society isn't very good at accommodating disabled people".

I feel like we'd become better at accommodating disabled people if there were more of them. And that would be good for people who don't have a choice about their disability.

As an example, "large screens for fat fingers" also sounds good for people with poor motor control.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#165

Post by wnevets »

dahart wrote: post #118
jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

> Why does this happen? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) > There can be only one explanation Why/how have you arrived at this conclusion? > it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem So, you have evidence of food that shouldn't have sugar in it but does in fact have sugar anyway. And you conclude that it's the consumer's fault, because they're stupid, and not the company t…

> That fact is now being used against you, and all of us, in a big conspiracy called "marketing".

addiction would be a better term IMO.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#167

Post by thisjustinm »

There's a lot of discussion on here about stupid consumers vs evil corporations, etc. As is often the case, the blame lies with just about everyone involved to some extent. The US government choose to promote a low fat diet with it's original nutrition guidelines in the 70s [4] which led the public to demand the food companies to produce low fat everything in the 80s and into the 90s. It's now emerged that there was little evidence to support the health benefits of a low fat diet.

When you remove fat from food it becomes unpalatable unless.... you add sugar. Thus the increase in added sugar in just about everything which has helped to contribute to the rise of obesity and metabolic syndrome and all the diseases that come with it from diabetes to fatty livers, heart disease, etc.

So who's to "blame"?

The government in some ways, even though they seemingly meant well when recommending low fat diets (they're just now beginning to recommend reduced sugar and ease up on fat warnings).

Food companies in some ways who seem to have known about sugar's addictive properties and engineered their food to keep you coming back for more rather than keeping you healthy [3].

Consumers in some ways for not reading labels, exercising more, reducing portions, etc. But who could blame you when the government and the food companies were trying to convince you that what you were eating was good for you? (unless you had time to dive into the research yourself but let's face it, that's not an option for 99% of people)

One of the best explanations I've read of not just why sugar (fructose to be specific) is bad for you (in the quantities Americans but also most of the world eats it at) is the book "Fat Chance" by Robert Lustig [1]. You can also get a glimpse into his arguments via his youtube lectures [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Chance-Beating-Against-Processed/d...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/food-cravings-engineered-by-in...

[4] http://time.com/3702058/dietary-guidelines-fat-wrong/

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#168

Post by amelius »

jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

> There can only be one explanation: most consumers are dumb.

Incidentally, this also shows why democracy is flawed.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#169

Post by rlucas »

Erwin wrote: post #107
maus42 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...extra tax for high-sugar products?

We tried a tax on fatty foods in Denmark and it was a huge mess. People would just drive to Germany to get the stuff, and managing it was an administrative nightmare: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/global/fat-tax-in...

Interesting anecdote, but

1. It's quite possible (though it's a huge rabbit hole we shouldn't plumb here) that they were taxing the wrong macronutrient entirely, that is to say, that fat on the body is more a factor of sugar going in than fat going in. So in addition to imposing costs it may have failed to give benefits (whereas had it worked to improve health outcomes maybe it would have been worth the costs of enforcement etc.)

2. The Danes taxing butter?!? That seems extremely odd given the dairy industry and culture. But I suppose major kudos for being able to overcome such prior biases to even run the experiment.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#170

Post by helloguille »

noxToken wrote: post #137
jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

I don't know if dumb is the right word. Ignorant is probably most apt. I want you to think about all of the food that's in your house. Eliminate anything that you would consider intentionally sugary like candy, confection, soda, etc. Now how much of a time consuming task would it be to scrutinize every label for needlessly added sugar? Consider how many people would be willing to do that to check for some extra sugar…

Most of the time is about ignorance, but even if you know Sugar is not good (Parent wrongly assumes just refined sugar is the problem) it will be very difficult to see where is contained. There are many names for "Sugar" and hidden in different ingredients, like HFCS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup
Post reply on HN