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PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

wsj.com

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Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#21

Post by djrogers »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #7
foota wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to engineer healthy and addictive food?

I like to think diet pop can fit into this category... but then there's the backlash of "unnatural chemicals" which sceptics believe must obviously be bad for you.

> the backlash of "unnatural chemicals" which sceptics (sic.) believe must obviously be bad for you.

You mean like the fact that they inhibit beneficial intestinal flora [1], or that numerous studies have found that people have a higher risk for diabetes if they drink diet soda [2], or that people gain weight when they switch to diet sofa from regular [3]?

Yeah, those wacky skeptics - they'll believe anything...

[1] http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/apnm-2016-0346#....

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23364017/

[3] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#22

Post by bfuller »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #13
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think diet pop can fit into this category... but then there's the backlash of "unnatural chemicals" which sceptics believe must obviously be bad for you.

Diet soda is not healthy. At the very best it's ideally neutral, neither unhealthy or healthy. However, some research has been coming out lately that suggests diet soda (more specifically artificial sweeteners) may have various negative effects on health. Nothing conclusive but enough to make me avoid artificial sweeteners entirely.

sorbitol is a laxative, pretty sure taking a laxative every single day is not great for you

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#23

Post by saidajigumi »

Analemma_ wrote: post #5

It's a little dishonest of this article not to point out that junk food is engineered- I mean literally engineered, by teams of scientists running controlled experiments- to be as addictive as possible. This isn't a question of those wacky consumers and their revealed preference not matching their stated intentions; human willpower should barely enter the conversation when this topic comes up. If PepsiCo is genuinely…

> junk food is engineered

It's worth mentioning that there's a science behind this, called food reward. Stephen Guyenet is a (white-hat) researcher in this area with a fairly interesting blog. A recent post of his[1] is probably one of the better capsule introductions to the topic. He also has a book on the subject, intended for a general audience, in the works.

A caveat: his blog posts vary between widely accessible and commentaries on specific research results that can be hard, frustrating even, to interpret without a lot of additional context. Go easy with what you take in here until you've got enough background.

[1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/11/this-is-your-b...

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#24

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

zeroer wrote: post #18

The WSJ and Pepsi mention " Quaker oatmeal, Naked juice and Sabra hummus" as "good for you" foods. I've never tried Sabra hummus, but the others are super sugary. A couple years ago I made a conscious attempt to eat less salt and sugar, and once you do so it's amazing how much sugar you notice added to virtually every processed food you'll find at a grocery store. Cooking food from scratch is basically the only way t…

I've seen jars of honey-and-mustard and chocolate-chip hummus in the grocery store in the US. Needless to say, this is not how people eat hummus anywhere else in the world.

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#25

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

wincy wrote: post #14
sandworm101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market is incapable, it is time for government to step in. We already have innumerable regulations re food safety and content, would it be inconceivable for us to regulate the salt content of potato chips? Or the calorie content of something labeled a "meal deal"?

This kind of thing scares me. As someone who lost 70 pounds eating bacon and eggs for six months, and eating about 5x the recommended daily amount of salt that whole time, I'm worried the government stepping in will make all our food taste like cardboard. Sugar is the enemy, but so often fat and salt are demonized when in a proper diet these aren't unhealthy at all.

The effects are cumulative, not instant. They only really become obvious in actuarial studies.

Medical cause and effect is a slippery thing. You can't argue from individual experiences because some people are lucky, or they live in a healthier environment or have a healthier lifestyle, or they're less susceptible to certain conditions because of genetics.

Salt and sugar won't kill you instantly. What they actually do is increase the statistical occurrence of common medical conditions across entire populations, in ways that aren't usually obvious until later in life.

You may be lucky. Or you may have undiagnosed high blood pressure and something bad will happen tomorrow. There's no way to be sure. But if you have an interest in longevity, dietary discretion is a wise choice.

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#26

Post by fotbr »

wincy wrote: post #14
sandworm101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market is incapable, it is time for government to step in. We already have innumerable regulations re food safety and content, would it be inconceivable for us to regulate the salt content of potato chips? Or the calorie content of something labeled a "meal deal"?

This kind of thing scares me. As someone who lost 70 pounds eating bacon and eggs for six months, and eating about 5x the recommended daily amount of salt that whole time, I'm worried the government stepping in will make all our food taste like cardboard. Sugar is the enemy, but so often fat and salt are demonized when in a proper diet these aren't unhealthy at all.

As someone who could stand to lose (more than) a few pounds, this bacon and eggs diet sounds interesting. Was this part of a low/no carb diet? Something else?

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#27

Post by nommm-nommm »

bfuller wrote: post #22
nommm-nommm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet soda is not healthy. At the very best it's ideally neutral, neither unhealthy or healthy. However, some research has been coming out lately that suggests diet soda (more specifically artificial sweeteners) may have various negative effects on health. Nothing conclusive but enough to make me avoid artificial sweeteners entirely.

sorbitol is a laxative, pretty sure taking a laxative every single day is not great for you

However, sorbitol isn't an artificial sweetener it's a sugar alcohol and it occurs naturally in food. When most people talk about diet soda they mean artificially sweetened carbonated beverages.

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#28

Post by fotbr »

zeroer wrote: post #18

The WSJ and Pepsi mention " Quaker oatmeal, Naked juice and Sabra hummus" as "good for you" foods. I've never tried Sabra hummus, but the others are super sugary. A couple years ago I made a conscious attempt to eat less salt and sugar, and once you do so it's amazing how much sugar you notice added to virtually every processed food you'll find at a grocery store. Cooking food from scratch is basically the only way t…

I suppose if they include Quaker oats in "oatmeal", then they might count as "good for you" -- but the pre-packaged instant oatmeal is sugar filled and probably shouldn't be included. Too many variations under one brand.

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#29

Post by Avshalom »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #24
zeroer wrote: post #18

The WSJ and Pepsi mention " Quaker oatmeal, Naked juice and Sabra hummus" as "good for you" foods. I've never tried Sabra hummus, but the others are super sugary. A couple years ago I made a conscious attempt to eat less salt and sugar, and once you do so it's amazing how much sugar you notice added to virtually every processed food you'll find at a grocery store. Cooking food from scratch is basically the only way t…

I've seen jars of honey-and-mustard and chocolate-chip hummus in the grocery store in the US. Needless to say, this is not how people eat hummus anywhere else in the world.

instead they just leave out the chickpeas and call it halva...

Re: PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips

#30

Post by TillE »

Spooky23 wrote: post #11
nibs wrote: post #2

It would be easier to make people give up most of their rights and freedoms than it would be to make them stop eating bad food that will make them an expensive burden to the healthcare system. The only solution is to regulate and tax the way cigarettes are. All that Pepsi goes to fund all that diabetes and heart disease. Everyone, including the highly competent managers and researchers at Pepsi, knows it is bad for y…

I never understood why it's ok to tax alcohol, and keep the price of sucrose high for Cuban-American farmers, but anti-freedom to tax it's cousin fructose.

The left criticism of sugar taxes is simply that it's a regressive tax, which disproportionately harms poor people. Forcing only certain people to reduce their sugar consumption like this is a bit repulsive.

A lot of policies would make more sense if we had radically different systems in place to mitigate their side effects, but we simply don't. Until then, things like the trans fat ban are solid, fair policies.

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