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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?

#201

Post by elorant »

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.

Yes because I don't trust reviews. I do on the other hand trust specific brands that I've tried before. So if they have a new label I'd like to know it. And the best way to know that is from ads on printed magazines.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#202

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

nv-vn wrote: post #93

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? As a kid my parents didn't care too much about what I ate. I regularly had sweets of any kind as a kid. I certainly have no addiction to sugar because of that. I probably drink soda less than once a month and have cake/ice cream/chocolate/candy at about the same frequency. Meanwhile, people I grew up with who were never allowed sugar seem much more addic…

The problem with this approach is, the vast majority of people pick the default option when presented with it (e.g., states that, by default, mark you as an organ donor have proportionally more organ donors).

Public policy has real, measurable implications. We don't need to treat sugar like smoking or alcohol, but when you find a way to move people away from it as their "default" setting, you will find, in aggregate huge savings in health care expenses and better outcomes (a sizable amount of health care spending is due to preventable conditions, like Type II diabetes).

I agree, in principle, people can still consume sugar, if they want. The occasional slice of birthday cake is not the problem with sugar. It's the consumption of a 2-liter of soda, multiple times per week, that's the problem (regular consumption). But we need to make it easier for people to avoid processed, simple carbohydrates.

One possible solution is increasing the ubiquity and ease-of-access to whole foods. Eating healthy needs to have the convenience of going to a fast food restaurant -- they're everywhere, they're cheap, and it's fast. We desperately need this as a society. Consider it more as a preventative, or we can pay for it on the other end (higher health care costs).

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#203

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

swsieber wrote: post #31
ex3ndr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is banned in Russia, zero effect.

Then it should be fine to ban it, right?

No, the government shouldn't be restricting behavior unless there is a good reason to do so.

German constitutional principles only permit restricting basic rights (this seems to affect free speech, at least in its US definition) if it is "proportional" (verhältnismäßig) - restricting only what is absolutely necessary to reach a legitimate goal.

More specifically, it has to be suitable, necessary, and appropriate/non-excessive ("geeignet, erforderlich und angemessen").

A law that doesn't achieve the stated goal would fail the "suitable" test.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#204

Post by jakeogh »

Xylakant wrote: post #126
ardit33 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of "Obese People" far outweighs the number of chronic alcoholics... we are talking about almost 1/3rd of the population being obese (i.e. not just a bit fat, or chubby, just straight out obese).

I’d question if this is purely the result of a sugar addiction. This is a very American figure, other countries have less problems, even though sugar is widely available. Obesity has a variety of contributing factors, (lack of) access to actual healthy food, lack of physical exercise, high calorie intake (certainly aided by sugar), ...

There appears to be a positive (bad) feedback loop many people hit involving gut bacteria.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#205

Post by p1mrx »

llamathrowaway wrote: post #144
ardit33 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of "Obese People" far outweighs the number of chronic alcoholics... we are talking about almost 1/3rd of the population being obese (i.e. not just a bit fat, or chubby, just straight out obese).

Is obesity a sign of sugar addiction? I don’t think so. People addicted to substances like alcohol and heroin will go out of their way to obtain these substances breaking laws and ruining others’ lives if necessary. While obese people are just... obese, not crazy nor dangerous. Their mind don’t get wired by sugar to put sugar in front of decency and laws. Not to mention sugar is not the only cause of obesity anyway.…

> While obese people are just... obese, not crazy nor dangerous.

If you could wave a magic wand, wouldn't most obese people prefer a healthy weight? In aggregate, we can add up individual decisions and call the average "human nature." The actions of society have forced individuals to live with bodies that don't function as well as they could, so it makes sense for us to do something about the problem.

How well do we understand the causes of the obesity epidemic? Is sugar responsible for, say, 10% or 90% of the total? If we wish to progress toward a low-sugar future, then it would be good to have an estimate of how much good it would do.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#206

Post by darkpuma »

lawl wrote: post #83
bunderbunder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

{ "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demons…

Isn't a third option for advertising simply to increase brand awareness? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but I remember ads for laundry detergent for example. Is it reasonable to say that people wash their clothes more often because there's ads for laundry detergent on tv? I think these ads were designed to make you grab their product when you're in the super market because you've seen their brand before.…

Alcohol as a party drug now competes with other party drugs in many markets. Particularly cannabis. This is one reason performance of advertising bans might differ from region to region. Cannabis as a party drug has a pretty broad advertising ban in most places, but alcohol does not. If it's a matter of convincing consumers to buy one party drug instead of the other, an alcohol advertising ban could be highly effective in these particular regions.

>You probably don't go out with friends for a beer more often because you saw an ad for a particular brand of beer.

That's an unjustified assumption. It may very well be the case that "go out with friends for a beer" is such a popular default because it's depicted in advertising and media so often. If your only choice was to drink, then it's easy to see that advertising for alcohol is solely about influencing which alcohol you pick. But that's not the real world, where drinking does compete for attention with other activities.

Alcohol consumption is primarily a cultural phenomena (consumption rates vary GREATLY from country to country. In France people drink 12.2 liters of pure alcohol a year, while in Turkey they drink 2 per year. Neither of these countries are even on either extreme...) Cultures can be changed; history has shown that there is no such thing as an immutable culture. Advertising impacts culture, that is well documented. All of these things we should know. So to suggest that demand for alcohol is immutable seems quite absurd.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#207

Post by rtyuiop »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #196
jniedrauer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be made clear that we simply don't know enough about keto yet to call it "healthy." More healthy than sugar over-consumption? Almost certainly. I will say that it allowed me to cut to under 10% bodyfat with almost no effort, so for that I think it is a valuable tool. But I also found that I was not making progress in my athletic hobbies until I stopped eating keto. My progress visibly accelerated af…

After some back-and-forth, I've found that Keto is best for short periods of time, e.g., 1-3 month periods. Physical activity can feel quite strenuous, especially when you first start Keto, and your body isn't adapted to using fat as a fuel source. It's an incredibly effective tool to help you re-imagine the composition of your diet. For example, after my first time doing Keto, I seriously considered which carb sourc…

Isnt it obvious, Keto in the cold months and carbs in the hot months. Eating seasonally is key and you cant chase much or do much exercise in the dead of winter with snow and ice lying around. Its also why the Inuits have a keto diet and can survive the extreme cold.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#208

Post by lawl »

darkpuma wrote: post #206
lawl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a third option for advertising simply to increase brand awareness? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but I remember ads for laundry detergent for example. Is it reasonable to say that people wash their clothes more often because there's ads for laundry detergent on tv? I think these ads were designed to make you grab their product when you're in the super market because you've seen their brand before.…

Alcohol as a party drug now competes with other party drugs in many markets. Particularly cannabis. This is one reason performance of advertising bans might differ from region to region. Cannabis as a party drug has a pretty broad advertising ban in most places, but alcohol does not. If it's a matter of convincing consumers to buy one party drug instead of the other, an alcohol advertising ban could be highly effecti…

> So to suggest that demand for alcohol is immutable seems quite absurd.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I suggested this. I'm also not interested in an emotional discussion on alcohol advertisement bans, because I frankly don't care.

Please don't put words in my mouth though.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#209

Post by jacobolus »

jejones3141 wrote: post #113
gist wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

Yes, if people need to work multiple jobs that is an indication of a huge societal problem. The workers in those jobs are being abused by the society and collectively we should fix it.

We should change the law to make sure that every job pays a living wage, so that people are not forced to work 60+ hours per week at irregular hours plus commute time etc. just to survive. We should increase social support for families and children. We should strive to reduce the cost of housing, transportation, healthcare, and education.

Our society is rich enough to dramatically increase public funding for primary and secondary education and adequately train and support career teachers, dramatically increase funding for social workers, mental health professionals, etc.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#210

Post by omnimus »

rtyuiop wrote: post #207
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After some back-and-forth, I've found that Keto is best for short periods of time, e.g., 1-3 month periods. Physical activity can feel quite strenuous, especially when you first start Keto, and your body isn't adapted to using fat as a fuel source. It's an incredibly effective tool to help you re-imagine the composition of your diet. For example, after my first time doing Keto, I seriously considered which carb sourc…

Isnt it obvious, Keto in the cold months and carbs in the hot months. Eating seasonally is key and you cant chase much or do much exercise in the dead of winter with snow and ice lying around. Its also why the Inuits have a keto diet and can survive the extreme cold.

But healthy keto is lot of veggies no? So winter keto is harder wouldnt it make sense eat carbs in winter?
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