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Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

ucsf.edu

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

#51

Post by Puer »

nradov wrote: post #38
foxfired wrote: post #4

I started to notice that sugar content has increased in sodas. I used to work in a grocery store 12/13 years ago, and I remember stacking sodas on the shelves. The sugar content was 35g. I stacked them everyday so as far as I remember this was the norm at the time for a one serving in California. Only a couple months ago, I started looking at the labels of sodas again. The content varies from 39g to 55g in California…

Are you sure that's adjusted for serving size?

I would also be interested in this. Many soft drink recipes are well-established and rarely adjusted because even small, well-intentioned changes can damage the brand and customer loyalty. Furthermore, it seems counterintuitive that producers would increase sugar content by as much as 1.57 times because that would inherently cost them significantly more money over time.

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

#52

Post by jlawson »

maxxxxx wrote: post #3
kevin_b_er wrote: post #2

How long do we wait for "market forces" to magically correct under the information asymmetry of rich corporations vs the common person which inhibit the public from understanding the danger introduced in order to make more money?

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

The free market can work very well if various individuals are missing a lot of information. In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. Our economy is far more complex than any person or organization can understand. The information, and decision-making, are distributed.

In contrast, socialism can only work if the central planners have perfect information and no secrets. That's why it hasn't ever worked - information can't be centralized like that; the economy is too complex. So it ends up depending on a central actor to manipulate reality (see China today or any other socialist economy ever and the blatant lies in their economic statistics).

The issue with sugary drinks isn't that people lack information. The information is written on the side of every soda can; it is nearly a perfect-information situation. The issue is that people are irrational in other ways (related to time preference and inability to moderate impulses or re-evaluate habits).

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

#53

Post by jlawson »

maxxxxx wrote: post #7
Gibbon1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning the free market doesn't work without strict continual intervention.

Exactly. A truly free market is unstable and will be anarchy. That's not something the typical "free marketer" wants.

You're ascribing extremist anarcho-capitalist views to what you call the 'typical "free marketer"'.

This is false; the typical free market advocate understands there is a limited role for government intervention. Basic examples: Police, fire services, military, currency, lighthouses.

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

#54

Post by _kyran »

nradov wrote: post #45
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…

In general organic food isn't healthier. Healthy foods like potatoes, rice, beans, apples, chicken, and canned vegetables are cheaply available almost everywhere.

Just curious what nutritional value beyond a large amount of carbohydrates do potatoes and rice have?

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

#55

Post by [deleted] »

paganel wrote: post #13
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.

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by maxxxxx »

jlawson wrote: post #53
maxxxxx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. A truly free market is unstable and will be anarchy. That's not something the typical "free marketer" wants.

You're ascribing extremist anarcho-capitalist views to what you call the 'typical "free marketer"'. This is false; the typical free market advocate understands there is a limited role for government intervention. Basic examples: Police, fire services, military, currency, lighthouses.

I think you have misread my comment. I think the typical free marketer wants that companies can do whatever they want while still protected by the state.

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

#57

Post by maxxxxx »

jlawson wrote: post #52
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.

The free market can work very well if various individuals are missing a lot of information. In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. Our economy is far more complex than any person or organization can understand. The information, and decision-making, are distributed. In contrast, socialism can only work if the central planners have…

It's not a perfect information situation. Industry puts out an enourmous amount of misinformation and people who don't do a lot of research can easily be confused (which is the goal). I still remember how long the tobacco industry successfully fought the consensus that smoking is harmful.

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

#58

Post by will_brown »

solveit wrote: post #44

The article, while making copious allusions to damning research, is light on actual damning research and heavy on rhetoric. The linked website ( http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu ) is also full of references to studies that are suggestive but nothing conclusive. What's really worrying is the constant refrain that they just "knew" something had to be wrong. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their research. They then ke…

>They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case

In good faith anyone talking about sugar consumption being the cause of diabeties is obviously talking about type 2. Your linked articles is muddying the waters and introducing type 1 highlighting people are born with type 1...no one thinks type 1 has anything to do with sugar consumption. That is elementary and bad faith discussion.

Type 2 is when the body no longer responds to insulin. What triggers insulin? Types of sugar not processed by the liver, which go into the blood and requirie the body to produce insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. With type 2 the body continues to produce insulin normally but the body no longer responds to the insulin...it’s all triggered by sugar.

To put it another way if you remove sugars requiring insulin production from the diet...100% of type 2 cases can be prevented. Only laymen argue this point as it’s not controversial...all thats needed is a single case of type 2 to disprove that, but none exist to date. Further, many cases of type 2 can actually be reversed through diet (ie avoid sugars that trigger insulin spikes) and lifestyle changes.

How about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease? Do you believe that is not caused by the other types of sugar (ie sugar processed in the liver)?

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

#59

Post by NikolaeVarius »

_kyran wrote: post #54
nradov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general organic food isn't healthier. Healthy foods like potatoes, rice, beans, apples, chicken, and canned vegetables are cheaply available almost everywhere.

Just curious what nutritional value beyond a large amount of carbohydrates do potatoes and rice have?

They're not the most per-calorie dense foods out there but they offer plenty of nutrients. https://www.quora.com/Are-boiled-potatoes-healthier-than-ste...

Nobody is saying make these the primary source of your calories (even though you can as a majority of the world gets by just fine with lots of rice and potatoes)

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

#60

Post by solveit »

will_brown wrote: post #58
solveit wrote: post #44

The article, while making copious allusions to damning research, is light on actual damning research and heavy on rhetoric. The linked website ( http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu ) is also full of references to studies that are suggestive but nothing conclusive. What's really worrying is the constant refrain that they just "knew" something had to be wrong. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their research. They then ke…

>They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case In good faith anyone talking about sugar consumption being the cause of diabeties is obviously talking about type 2. Your linked articles is muddying the waters and introducing type 1 highlighting people are born with type 1...no one thinks type 1 has anything to…

The link I included specifically says:

> With Type 2 diabetes, though we know sugar doesn’t directly cause Type 2 diabetes, you are more likely to get it if you are overweight. You gain weight when you take in more calories than your body needs, and sugary foods and drinks contain a lot of calories.

It's misleading to talk about sugar when the problem is obesity.

I don't have answers to your questions as I am not an expert on nutrition and it would be stupid to hold opinions on what I don't know. However, I don't have to be an expert on nutrition to note that the UCSF link is contradicting other domain experts (may or may not be damning) and is being intellectually dishonest (definitely damning).

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