Is it REALLY that hard for so many people to just stop drinking sugar water? I just don't get it. I can drink a soda or whatever once a year and thats more than enough for me, I usually don't even finish it. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?
Big Food vs. the People
41–50 of 196 posts
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#42I'm about as hippie with my food as you can get, but this "article" is badly written propaganda that conceals more than it reveals. Half way down the article you learn that ~80% (193 out of 239) of the lawsuits are in Mexico and > many of them were against the country’s labelling regulation. Quinto Elemento Lab reveals the companies’ arguments: that the laws were a violation of their constitutional rights But the art…
People have to learn to recognize the patterns. In this case, lighthouse reports is an international NGO which receives on the order of ~1MM in income per year (an extremely common pattern for these NGOs), which was directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors (can see all this in their openly published annual reports). In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid o…
I think you are saying "an NGO probably has an agenda." Ok, sure, they are not robots with no opinions, and if you read even the first few sentences of that report you can see the opinion.
But if you are suggesting that this NGO is carrying water for some unspecified shadowy group that is pulling the strings, you'll need to provide some backing for that. Who has a nefarious motivation to oppose junk food?
Trial lawyers? Misguided do-gooders? Big Celery?
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free markets tend to produce monopolies. You know how economies of scale are a thing? That's another way of saying that small companies lose to large companies at scale. "Disruption" or "agility" is the only thing that small companies have going for them, but once the monopolist gets large enough they can just buy up any upstarts and keep the market all to themselves forever. This is why you require governments to pe…
No, governments tend to produce monopolies. Can you find true monopolies in the free market, in the last 100 years, that have lasted for at least 20 years, without some kind of government backing/suppression of competitors? I only know of one. Things only count as monopolies if they have monopoly pricing power; Google is not a monopoly, they cannot even charge 1 cent per search. In practice, despite economies of scal…
What you are describing sounds great in theory, but the real world doesn’t work like that.
In more and more areas the obstacle to enter a market is not regulations but money.
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
McDonald's might be the largest restaurant chain in Italy but that doesn't really mean much given how many small restaurants the country has with high quality food.
Also due to food standards a random McDonalds in a random village in Italy will have significantly better food than most restaurants in the US. The Italian McDonalds will use locally sourced fresh produce straight from the farm, cooked by high-end chefs to create a very good tasting meal that is super healthy and good for you. There is a reason those Italians live so long. Their McDonalds is better than others. It is…
“ cooked by high-end chefs”
They aren’t high end chefs. They are normal workers that aren’t squeezed by their company to produce food in the cheapest way
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#45america has a monopoly problem
I believe this is the second best time to start a business in America. The first was colonial times.
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#46The measures related to lawsuits are misleading and terrible, because of the way class-action lawsuits have incentivized lawyers to pursue dubious cases against large companies.
I'm not in love with the system, but it does seem like a last resort for imposing discipline on corporations. The dilemma is whether the tort system is preferable to an approach involving more regulation and enforcement.
The tort system is too expensive and favors parties with deep pockets. Regulations and laws are more efficient. Imagine there were no laws about theft so everybody who gets something stolen from them would have to go to court.
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#47Is it REALLY that hard for so many people to just stop drinking sugar water? I just don't get it. I can drink a soda or whatever once a year and thats more than enough for me, I usually don't even finish it. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?
There's a large subsection of people that choose various vices. Gambling, drugs, alcohol (I repeat), soda and junk food. To folks that do not partake in these things, it's bizarre behavior. Literally none of those appeal to me, but there's clearly profit to be made supplying them.
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#48Is it REALLY that hard for so many people to just stop drinking sugar water? I just don't get it. I can drink a soda or whatever once a year and thats more than enough for me, I usually don't even finish it. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?
Free clean water isn’t available many places so would you rather spend your money on water or a sugar hit? I’m with you on water though it’s so delicious.
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#49Is it REALLY that hard for so many people to just stop drinking sugar water? I just don't get it. I can drink a soda or whatever once a year and thats more than enough for me, I usually don't even finish it. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?
Are you asking why people can't seem to stop? Or why you seem to possess that ability? Both are biologically mechanistic like all behavior. Probably similar to why some people will kill for heroine while many don't. Or maybe the same reason your gut bacteria can process certain foods others would die from (peanuts), it's environment plus biology in a complex set of local minima that cause repeated behaviors. Is it surprising a biological system optimized to gorge sugary food as late as 200 years ago struggles to stop now? You may have well starved if you ate just one helping while food was available, discipline around food would be a fools pursuit (like intentionally drinking less water than your fill at an oasis).
Re: Big Food vs. the People
#50"Senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist has of waiting for evidence." - 1977 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c FYI obesity 1977 ~14% 2026 40%+ T2 Diabetes 1977 ~3% 2026 ~12%
McGovern is not someone to hold up, but that's not the quote.
It was: "I would only argue that senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does awaiting until every last shred of evidence is in"