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Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

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Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#111

Post by _bxg1 »

zanny wrote: post #105
_bxg1 wrote: post #58

It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water". I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a…

If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar. It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar. If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats…

And what about a pasta that ends up with some sugars from the process of being made? What's the difference between "natural pasta" and "sugar added pasta"?

> If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything.

Extremely disagree.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#112

Post by cataphract »

jsty wrote: post #57
elorant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.

Would limiting alcohol advertising really have that dramatic an effect on the 'good' wine market? I can't recall the last time I bought a decent bottle of wine because it was advertised.

Do wine tasting events count as advertisements? That's how I and many people try new wines.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#113

Post by jejones3141 »

gist wrote: post #80
umvi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are underestimating the costs of alcohol on society by reducing it to "just" a death count. I won't deny that sugar consumption is a public health crisis. But on the other hand, consuming sugar mainly only harms yourself. People that consume sugar (usually) don't go kill innocent people or tear apart their family or cause all sorts of permanent physical and mental issues in children.

> But on the other hand, consuming sugar mainly only harms yourself. See my comment re: health care costs (which everyone pays for).

Is the next step forbidding dangerous hobbies like mountain climbing? Maybe taking more than one job to support a large family or accumulate college funds for one's children--"you're not getting enough sleep, which increases health care costs that we pay for."

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#114

Post by TomMarius »

kyriakos wrote: post #39
esailija wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar is 50% glucose 50% fructose while white bread is only long chains of glucose, unless sugar was added to it too (only a thing in the US AFAIK).

Sugar is needed for yeast to raise the dough. It's common everywhere not in the US alone. I'm in Europe and most bread has sugar added during preparation. Small amounts but still sugar.

Check out Czech bread. Completely sugarless.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#115

Post by sureaboutthis »

I have a feeling most of the addiction came from the food and drink industry. Perhaps the amount of sugar contained in the industry provided foods should be restricted to some sane amount and not a quantity to induce you to eat it. This way, the home cook can control their sugar intake and the home cook cannot produce the number of available goods one eats by just picking it off the shelf at a store.

Higher end restaurants that cook their own food won't be restricted this way either and that's a good thing because one goes to such places for food you don't normally get at home but fast food restaurants get most of their food from factory stores where sugar content can and should be restricted for the same reason grocery store food should--sweetening foods makes you want them more.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#117

Post by jithesh »

umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

Alcohol consumption is by choice by adults, where as sugar consumption is not - children's food are mostly sugary items today in the market. They get addicted by the time they are teenagers, and for many of them (30% or above of all the kids), due to resulting obesity, rest of their lives are spent fixing/fighting it - depression and health issues.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#118

Post by retiredcoder »

iliaznk wrote: post #108
moroleth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop…

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to – the 1st part of your sentence seems to contradict the 2nd: nowadays people can't think of getting together and not drinking and that's to me exactly because they got addicted to socializing under alcohol so much they can't socialize normally without it.

And that’s reinforced by advertisement over and over again.

While there are so many fun activities not involving alcohol. Seems like most of team building events nowadays boils down to pretentious dinner plus drinking to celebrate?

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#119

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

gregmac wrote: post #60

I started eating keto over a year ago, and found that I totally lost my appetite for sugary and other carb-based foods, so have just kept it up. One thing that was eye opening to me was from paying close attention to food labels. I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. What surprised me was how basically they just substitute fat for sugar. Ceasar dressing normal has 1g car…

I think the demonisation of fat might be partly a linguistic problem. “fat” is a derogatory term for someone who is overweight, but it also happens to describe an important component of food, so the (incorrect) connection forms itself: eating fat = getting fat. This isn't the case in all languages, though I don't know if that actually has meant Germany or wherever cares less about fat content.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#120

Post by arcticfox »

zanny wrote: post #105
_bxg1 wrote: post #58

It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water". I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a…

If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar. It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar. If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats…

What about high-fructose corn syrup soda? You could just say it's a corn-based drink with no 'added sugar'.
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