71–80 of 333 posts
An interesting example of how a completely uninteresting topic can be made interesting by a good writer.
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It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…
Regulation isn't made just by health/safety perspective, but includes cultural, social and others. For example, Katsuobushi is the core part of Japanese food but it seems that exporting to Europe is difficult due to EU regulation. Another example in Japan would be K-car. As a Japanese, I never want to give up Katuobushi for improving health. I suspect that maybe oppositely, European people also has food or culture th…
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The point isn't whether the word "alimentary" means anything. You probably know related words like "alimony." (Tangentially, the humorous novel Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera is a surprising early precursor to Fantastic Voyage and related stories of microscopic explorers inside the human body.) The point is that calling any food product "alimentary paste" is hilariously unappetizing.
Fun fact: "pasta" literally means "paste" in Italian (and most languages from Latin).
At the beginning of the article I was thinking surely there are more important things to write about, but it dives down a pretty absurd rabbit hole. Especially funny is when the pasta spokesperson begins commiserating that the reporter is making more work for them.
It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…
It's true that they don't make much sense and that they often harm the consumer, but I vote in my regional politicians and in theory can vote them out if they impose standards I don't like.
One of the problems with Europe was the perceived lack of democratic control coupled with the dishonesty from anti_EU campaigners about things like straight bananas.
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There are various regulatory trade-offs between safety and cost of compliance. For instance: Cars sold as new in Canada require daytime running lights and yellow rear turn signals, due to extended periods of low visibility. While the running lights are a requirement in Sweden, they aren't in Poland or many other European countries. There's been some effort on standardizing between US and Canada since 2016, which woul…
> over the color of a piece of plastic It isn't even about the colour (which is trivial to control with software and 8 extra cents in LEDs), but about the colour of the plastic. That's the dumb thing that proves it's about protectionism. Same with DRL: it's controllable in software. Meanwhile, Canada lets you import any >17 year old hunk of junk from anywhere and that's somehow safe and okay (because it doesn't harm…
There are far more important reasons to do this than protectionism and it's disingenuous to skip them and jump straight to protectionism.
Banning old cars would harm the parts of the population which can't afford brand new cars (that's a huge chunk) and guarantees that every time regulation demands something new everyone has to buy a new car.
On the other hand not mandating new safety tech harms everyone in general and guarantees that cars new and old will forever be much worse than they need to be since manufacturers won't be in a hurry to spend more money on tech. Keep in mind that a car with DRL and ABS will be an "old car" a few years from now. 10+ year old cars have ABS today because at some point it was mandated on all new cars.
It's a reasonable compromise to let people buy and use the old cars as they are (or anything that uses old, outdated tech - lead based solder in electronics?) but demand that new ones constantly integrate new tech.
I have never had bucatini, but of course thanks to this article now it's all I want.
Very good stealth marketing
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> It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? America has a longstanding tradition of food fortification. Niacin is also used to supplement US diets featuring a corn staple -- corn's niacin is not bioavailable without additional processing traditional to Mesoamerican cultures. Probably more recognized today is iodized salt, which is responsible for perha…
I've no idea how much Niacin is added in America, but you can have too much. Since we don't eat much corn here in Europe, packing food unnecessarily full of this supplement could be dangerous to health: Niacin Toxicity Symptoms of toxicity include: Flushing of the skin, primarily on the face, arms, and chest *This side effect may occur at doses as low as 30 mg/day. Itching. Nausea. Vomiting.
3 oz (85 grams) of "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of the stuff[1], and average adults get about 30mg/day. Best I can tell this is about nicotinic acid specifically, and might be IV rather than ingestion, which is very much an apples and oranges situation.
1: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Niacin-HealthProfessional/Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…
In this particular case it's not even a matter of safety: pasta with 13 mg/lb, and as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans). If anything, mandatory enrichment seems like an arbitrary trade barrier imposed on the US side to protect what the article calls "Big Pasta" from foreign interlopers.
"Iron deficiency isn't an issue, probably because there's lots of enriched foods, so let's stop enriching food!"
I think regulatory analysis requires a little more thought than that.