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

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

#71

Post by toasty228 »

jsharpe wrote: post #62
toasty228 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being simple doesn't mean it's incomplete or wrong. Health/nutrition is a spectrum but no one will tell you to eat a bag of chips a day and rinse your mouth with coke

Of course it's incomplete. Any explanation of nutrition that doesn't include mention of at least calories, macronutrients and micronutrients isn't useful for understanding what's actually going on or being able to make an effective nutrition plan.

There are hundreds and hundreds of studies linking ultra processed food to all kind of health issues, and not a single one linking ultra processed food to any kind of benefits, not a single one praising their nutritious values.

The only benefits ever listed are shelf life, convenience, better margins for the producers, etc.

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

#72

Post by red-iron-pine »

4rtem wrote: post #45

What's so wrong to produce snacks and canned fruits?

"snacks" is so broad of a term as to be useless for discussion

dried bananas chips as a snack? fine. potato chips cooked mostly in palm oil? not so great.

both "snacks"

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

#74

Post by herbst »

toasty228 wrote: post #27
breezybottom wrote: post #6

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

> Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. Yes, and cigarettes cure cancer amirite ? We all know what they mean by ultra processed food, it's 75% of your supermarkets. 45% of the US is obese, the rest is overweight, food is one of the main factor in the top 2 leading causes of death in the US, if you can't see the problem you're blind There is a very good definition on wikipedia btw, and yes…

People are pissed because they don't want to accept that a) most of supermarkets food is bad and b) you need to cook yourself in order to eat properly.

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

#75

Post by toasty228 »

cm2012 wrote: post #61
toasty228 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah right... so obesity, diabetes, etc. skyrocketed in the US from the mid 80s because before the 80s americans were calorie constrained ? Really ? We're talking 1980s, not 1880s by the way

Yes not gonna pull it but there's data that shows calories got meaningfully cheaper and easier to access in the United States and more plentiful from the 1980s to the 2020s.

Oh yeah, the same exact period during which ultra processed food was introduced to the mass... interesting...

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

#76

Post by francisofascii »

JButtermilk wrote: post #64
shrubby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think marketing is fine until it turns into lies. Reaching people to sell them your product should not be an issue. That, with misrepresentation and misleading claims is an issue.

"Men of America smoke Chesterfields" Is that a lie?

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

#77

Post by jnovek »

cm2012 wrote: post #37
geye1234 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's astonishing to me that advertising and marketing is accepted as normal. The majority of B2C marketing is designed to manipulate people's emotions so that they act against their interests, in order to make you money. It's really disgusting.

I don't know if you know this, but all Facebook ads as well as TikTok ads and so on are public on the internet. You can go to Facebook Ads Library. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a... And in doing so you can see that what you're saying is actually not true. Look up any random advertiser and you'll see that it's pretty uncommon for ads to be based around insecurity. Almost always it's on ba…

There are entire categories of ads that operate on insecurity, they just don’t come out and scream “this is because you’re insecure” as that would make for bad copy. E.g. you think adult diapers advertise on anything other than insecurity (even if that insecurity is well-founded)?

Also, GP was talking about enterprise (B2C) and ads for B2C are pretty scarce in consumer-focused spaces. Insecurity, FOMO, etc is absolutely used to advertise to people in middle management on up.

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

#78

Post by jmyeet »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #23

I wonder about the folks who work for tobacco and industrial food conglomerates. Are they not aware of the part they play? Do they rationalize it somehow? Do they just not care? Did they end up there through mergers? Cynical arguments are facile. I'm not interested in hearing that people are dumb or evil. I am genuinely curious how these companies attract talent.

How? The banality of evil, cognitive dissonance and violence.

The "banality of evil" [1] is term coined by Hannah Arendt when covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann who killed over a million Jews in the HOlocaust. She described Eichmann as an ordinary, bland bureaucrat who was (in his mind) advancing himself in the Nazi Party. The term has been exapnded to describe how disconnected most jobs are from their outcomes through complexity. You might be working on an AI feature that just identifies from external phone activity when someone is home or not. Sounds harmless right? What if you knew it was used by militaries to assassinate journalists while they were home so they got their families as well?

This also feeds into the concept of "social murder" [2].

Cognitive dissonance was best described by Upton Sinclair [3]:

> It is difficult to get anybody to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.

Even if you, as a tobacco employee, realized the connection between what you were doing and selling more cigarettes, you'd find people rationalizing it by saying things like "I'm selling to willing buyers" or you'd couch it in terms of personal freedom.

Lastly, violence, specifically state violence. We (generally) have a skewed view of what constitutes "violence". We all understand that if you get attacked by someone in the street it's violence. Where it gets more contentious is for something like eviction. Many will say "well that's protecting somebody's asset". Others will argue that putting people out on the street, particularly in a wealthy country, is state violence [4].

I bring this up because we live in a society that doesn't guarantee basic necessities. So you need a job to pay for those things. Well, that's putting a proverbial gun to people's heads. If someone is selling tobacco, are you going to tell them they should risk homeless for that moral stance? Would you? I don't mean that as a provocation. It's a thought experiment. How much would you give up for a moral stance personally? What if it impacted your spouse? Your children? There was a time when certain jobs exempted you from the draft. What if you had one of those jobs and it was immoral? Would you go to Vietnam instead?

[1]: https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder

[3]: https://rowansimpson.com/quotes/salary/

[4]: https://hnmcp.law.harvard.edu/hnmcp/news/evictions-can-kill-...

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

#79

Post by Forgeties79 »

wossab wrote: post #68
seethishat wrote: post #53

The newer synthetic nicotine pouches (Zyn, On, Velo) are everywhere in the USA and are being used by kids as young as 13. They are ruining the gut health of an entire generation of kids. Edit: Both boys and girls are dependent on these things now and they seem socially acceptable (no smoke, no spit, just swallow the chemical nicotine). Get ready for a huge wave of GI problems due to this.

And teeth. This stuff will do nasty things to your gums. And receded gums never recover.

Unless you do an incredibly painful graft right? I have a buddy who had to do that in college and man it seemed incredibly unpleasant. They harvested the skin from the roof of his mouth IIRC

Edit: yikes sounds like it gets worse and might not even work

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

#80

Post by margalabargala »

cm2012 wrote: post #56
bandofthehawk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is true, do you have a source for this? What does it even mean that he constantly marketed himself, is doing lots of shows considered "marketing yourself"?

Comedy is about putting butts in seats. No comedian can be successful without promoting themselves to get attendees at their shows, and Bill Hicks was no exception. Bill Hicks clearly did the normal career-promotion work of a comedian: he auditioned, performed constantly, toured, did TV spots, recorded specials/albums, cultivated UK audiences, and made repeated appearances on shows like Letterman. He opened for Jay L…

That's performing, not marketing.

The analogy would be if whatever company releases a product that people see out in the wild and it's so good at what it does that they want more of it based on word of mouth.

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