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Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

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Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#21

Post by gnulinux »

cgrand-net wrote: post #9
maxxxxx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market can only work if everybody had perfect information and no secrets. Otherwise whoever has more information can manipulate reality.

Perfect information and unlimited computing power.

I think this is a more important point that is always missed in free market debates. You need not only perfect information, but also unlimited computation power and skill to compute necessary information. If you can get a CSV file of global potato and onion producers with transportation cost, but you have no means of solving this TSP problem, you will not make an optimal decision.

In particular, relevant to this thread, if you have a magical CSV file created by an Oracle associating every food available in US with how "healthy" they are and how much calory they provide, in order to build a 2500 calory diet that maximizes health and minimizes cost, you need to solve a knapsack-like problem. In this environment market will necessarily be a little random not because we don't have enough information but because we don't have enough computational power.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#22

Post by bhousel »

maxxxxx wrote: post #5

It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything. Just looked at my girlfriend's Starbucks Chai tea container. 100g sugar! She would be better off drinking a bottle of Coke. And Starbucks are supposed to be good guys . On a related note: how do they get that much sugar into these drinks? If I made a liter of Chai tea and poured 100g sugar into it I don't think it would be drinkable.

Lots of people don't realize that 1 cup milk has 13g sugar from the lactose.

For comparison, a typical sugar packet is 2-4g.

(This is why cereal + milk is probably just about the unhealthiest thing possible to start your day).

It's a good idea to switch from the sugary/milky Starbucks drinks to anything else - like cold brew, or black coffee where you add trace amounts of sugar/cream yourself, if any.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#23

Post by vertex-four »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14
vertex-four wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks are supposed to be good guys? I thought they were pretty well known as the shop that produces sugary milkshakes with caffeine in them.

I never go there so I don't know their products. But I always had the impression that they are riding on a reputation of being a 'responsible' business compared to for example Coca-Cola. But based on the nutrition label of the Chai I guess Starbucks is really just another sugar water manufacturer.

Hmm. I don’t know what their marketing is like in the US, but it’s certainly nothing close to responsible/healthy where I am. Their thing has always been trying to be the social space of choice for young adults here - i.e. if you want to hang out with friends or kill time you go to Starbucks.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#24

Post by snovv_crash »

paganel wrote: post #19
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t be Germany, natural yoghurt is commonly available here. And yes, US makes it very difficult to buy healthy food.

Glad to hear, that's a plus for me for German foods then. It was actually the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the Coop stores (which is strange because otherwise they sell great cheese). What's even worse is that after two or three days I was getting accustomed to that sweetish yogurt and I was starting to think that that was its natural taste.

I'm sure you can get natural yoghurt from Coop. Maybe they just use a different culture from what you are used to.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#25

Post by skilled »

The crazy part is that a lot of people would go absolutely insane if their sugar was to be cut off all of a sudden.

That's the one thing we don't want to hear. And in doing so, pretend that everything is great. The same goes for canned and long shelf-life food.

If you eat a healthy diet then getting naturally occuring sugars is not a problem.

And I understand the argument that eating 'healthy' might not be possible for everyone. Especially someplace like US where organic food costs ten times more than anything else.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#26

Post by cheald »

gnulinux wrote: post #21
cgrand-net wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect information and unlimited computing power.

I think this is a more important point that is always missed in free market debates. You need not only perfect information, but also unlimited computation power and skill to compute necessary information. If you can get a CSV file of global potato and onion producers with transportation cost, but you have no means of solving this TSP problem, you will not make an optimal decision. In particular, relevant to this thre…

This is generally the argument against command economies, in _favor_ of market economies. It's formally referred to as the Economic Calculation Problem.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#27

Post by oblib »

Sugar, all by itself is bad (awful bad), but when you add "Red 40" to the mix children go into instant hyperactive-overdrive. They start bouncing off the walls and you might as well be feeding them crack cocaine.

I spent a total of 24 days watching our grandkids this year and everyone of them was a battle over what they'd eat. I could not get the oldest (11 years old now) to take a single bite of real food during the course of two 10 day stints or the past four days. I did only slightly better with his younger sister, 5 years old now, and she's getting worse, not better.

Last night we had a huge spread of wonderful homemade food for Christmas Dinner and those two kids didn't taste a bit of it.

It's like watching my grandkids get slowly poisoned. It's insane and there is nothing I can do about it.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#28

Post by jacobolus »

skilled wrote: post #25

The crazy part is that a lot of people would go absolutely insane if their sugar was to be cut off all of a sudden. That's the one thing we don't want to hear. And in doing so, pretend that everything is great. The same goes for canned and long shelf-life food. If you eat a healthy diet then getting naturally occuring sugars is not a problem. And I understand the argument that eating 'healthy' might not be possible f…

What’s wrong with canned food?

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#29

Post by influx »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #16
paganel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything I remember traveling to Western Europe a couple of years ago (I live further East) and trying to buy plain yogurt from a supermarket, I mean yogurt which should have tasted as close as possible to the one my peasant grandma used to make. It was close to impossible to find such a product, as even the yogurt labeled as "plain" had a sweetish taste, you could definite…

Can’t be Germany, natural yoghurt is commonly available here. And yes, US makes it very difficult to buy healthy food.

its Amazing how much less sugar common foods in Germany have than the USA. It took us a bit to adjust but when we got back all the bakery sweets here tasted disgusting. Wish we could change the culture here to be closer to European in that aspect.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#30

Post by Semaphor »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14
vertex-four wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks are supposed to be good guys? I thought they were pretty well known as the shop that produces sugary milkshakes with caffeine in them.

I never go there so I don't know their products. But I always had the impression that they are riding on a reputation of being a 'responsible' business compared to for example Coca-Cola. But based on the nutrition label of the Chai I guess Starbucks is really just another sugar water manufacturer.

I always thought of Starbucks as the store for people who want to drink coffee but don't actually like coffee
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