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Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

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11–20 of 304 posts

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#11

And this is different from all other marketing how? If tobacco style marketing is a problem that needs to be solved, then 95% of marketing needs to be banned.

It’s more than marketing, they’re applying cigarette processing principles to food processing: choosing specific flavor chemicals and additives to produce maximum addiction within the varied neurophysiological profiles of different consumer cohorts

They’re essentially engineering food to produce subtly mind-altering effects.

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#12

Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.

the one is a result of the other; but thats because nutrition seems like it should have objective measures but ultimately has a lot of sources and sinks that only on the fringes is it obvious when things are bad.

but then theres RFK nuttery, so its not that stupid.

but yeah, ultra processes has no functional science behind it even though we still know cheap food is typically unhealthy and addictive

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#15

Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.

No it isn’t. The advice on nutrition is abundantly clear and has been for a long time: eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

That science has pushed GRAS as “food” is abysmal. Lots of you have just been punked.

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#17

They learned addiction and exploited sugar, fat, and salt with the rest of them.

I wonder if they go at it from that angle ("let's make these kids addicts for money!"), or if they gaslit themselves into something else. It's probably the latter, just like the tech companies did - they looked at just the numbers and analytics, did some tests, saw that if they do X then numbers Y and Z go up, rinse and repeat across decades.

This is why Google no longer has just some unobtrusive text ads to the side. At the time it was great because it wasn't annoying, but then the analytics came in and showed that more prominent and better camouflaged ads had higher conversion and revenue. And people grumbling aside, their revenue multiplied over and over again.

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#18

Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.

I've heard this objection a lot, even from folks I respect. Its ubiquity makes me wonder it is astroturfed.

The definition I have heard is "food made with ingredients or processes not commonly used in ghome Unfortunately, when I looked to leading scientific orgs, they are dithering on releasing formal definitions, but all say something like what I'd heard.

Conflicting information doesn't mean an abysmal situation. I'd argue the opposite. Everyone "knew" the sun orbited Earth.

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#19

Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.

No it isn’t. The advice on nutrition is abundantly clear and has been for a long time: eat food, mostly plants, not too much. That science has pushed GRAS as “food” is abysmal. Lots of you have just been punked.

> eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

If the state of physics was "stuff falls, heat sticks around, light goes fast" I think it'd be fair to describe that as "abysmal".

Re: Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

#20
post #7

And this is different from all other marketing how? If tobacco style marketing is a problem that needs to be solved, then 95% of marketing needs to be banned.

Bill Hicks had a good advice to the marketing guys: "kill yourself" so I you're onto something here!

I know its just a joke, but Bill Hicks also constantly marketed himself and branded himself as an anti-marketing comedian. In his mind it was okay to promote yourself as a comedian but not promote your own business.
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