How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth • Hacker News Board

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#41

Post by refurb » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

task_queue wrote: post #28

refurb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vegatables, and fruit to a lesser extend, is much cheaper than junk food. Why isn't that encouraging healthy eating? I believe junk food is like smoking. Everyone knows it's not a healthy choise, but they do it anyways. People are choosing to eat unhealthy food because they want to, it tastes good.

That's a nice belief, but evidence shows people choose junk food because of availability, price, associated preparation time and a lack of nutritional education. The further down the income ladder you go the more those factors come into play rather than the simplistic "it tastes good" conclusion.

evidence shows people choose junk food because of availability, price, associated preparation time and a lack of nutritional education.

Oh I believe it. I would just phrase it as: people take the easy way out when it comes to eating. They prefer something that is front of them, cheap and they don't need to cook.

You can't ignore personal responsibility. Plenty of poor folks eat health meals.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#42

Post by lumpypua » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #31

rickdale wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. A few years ago I became convinced that any well known brand name toothpaste was doing more damage to my teeth than help. I switched to using clay based tooth pastes as well as some other powders, and sometimes Ill take some tea spoons of cod liver oil. I grew up with cavities every visit and now it seems like going to the dentist is pointless. They tell me my teeth look great and I must be brush…

I stopped eating all sugar for 3 years (all carbs actually). My dentist loved me. My dental visits consisted of me walking in, getting briefly looked at, the dental hygienist doing a quick go over my teeth, complementing me on how clean they are, and sending me on my way. When I want back to eating sugar, my dental visits suddenly got a lot longer. The cleaning of plaque alone is now at least twice as long.

Why did you go back to eating sugar?

Dropping the low carb thing I can understand. I do low carb paleo on and off as my fiscal and lifestyle circumstances dictate... but I keep my sugar intake low regardless.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#43

Post by logfromblammo » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

mhb wrote: post #16

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the more bizarre artifacts of our system. And it took the concentrated efforts of almost everyone involved to make it this way. But in a way , cheaper is always better. Nutritious food is also cheap, relatively, unless the "nutritiousness" of it is also a price differentiator. Frozen veggies are pretty easy to get, IMO - but it seems there usually has to be a largish supermarket to buy them in. And tha…

Whole Foods is kinda creepy to me to shop in. I can't say exactly why. Namaste: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-maclean/surviving-whole-...

For me, it's the paradoxical idea that not only do some dirty hippies have enough money to shop there, but also that there are enough of them to actually keep the company in business. Nationwide.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#44

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #3

mcbetz wrote: post #2

Listening excessively to one lobby group is as hazardous as eating excessively exactly one staple - be it sugar or wheat. Moderation is important, both in politics and nutrition.

In general, not so simple. The industry shapes the culture, but worse, the law and the market. Very typical example is the corn lobby group, whose result on the market is to cause junk food to be much cheaper than nutritious food, thanks to perverse subsidization. In turn this makes much more difficult for a relatively large part of the population to eat correctly - practically difficult.

> Very typical example is the corn lobby group, whose result on the market is to cause junk food to be much cheaper than nutritious food

Junk food is cheap because it is engineered to be cheap (particularly, to have a long shelf-life to avoid losses which drive up the price of what actually does get sold to the customer to subsidize the costs of what doesn't do to losses.) The effect of the corn lobby and the resulting subsidization isn't to make junk food cheaper than nutritious food so much as to encourage the use of corn products in junk food by making corn products cheap compared to other alternatives to corn products for making junk food.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#45

Post by gmarx » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:27 PM UTC

figure8 wrote: post #40

gmarx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You implicitly assume that the research that shows red meat is bad for you is correct.

Interesting research in this direction is making progress, helping to explain WHY red meat may be dangerous: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141229152226.ht...

Sure, it may be dangerous. Here's the thing- I've been around for a while and read a lot of stuff in the mainstream media about which combinations of foods will kill you and which will make you immortal. As these have changed over the years and as I have failed to see convincing evidence in the medical literature I have concluded that people have a strong urge to believe that doing something mildly unpleasant (not eating something delicious) now can somehow prevent much worse things in the future. Its the same mechanism and magical thinking that inspired our ancestors to sacrifice goats to appease the gods and assure a great harvest. Wrapping the explanation in scientific jargon is just the latest iteration of a priest in shiny robes.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#46

Post by eru » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 11:39 PM UTC

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #9

pizza234 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, not so simple. The industry shapes the culture, but worse, the law and the market. Very typical example is the corn lobby group, whose result on the market is to cause junk food to be much cheaper than nutritious food, thanks to perverse subsidization. In turn this makes much more difficult for a relatively large part of the population to eat correctly - practically difficult.

This is one of the more bizarre artifacts of our system. And it took the concentrated efforts of almost everyone involved to make it this way. But in a way , cheaper is always better. Nutritious food is also cheap, relatively, unless the "nutritiousness" of it is also a price differentiator. Frozen veggies are pretty easy to get, IMO - but it seems there usually has to be a largish supermarket to buy them in. And tha…

Have you tried Aldi?

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#47

Post by crusso » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 12:46 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #8

crusso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry shapes the culture, but worse, the law and the market. As you say, it's not so simple. Industry is just a part of a cycle of perversion of the goal of effective government. Industry isn't forcing politicians to create or execute bad legislation. Industry isn't forcing voters to ignore the voting records of politicians who demonstrate poor integrity. Ultimately, the driver of everything in a democratic re…

Even more fundamental than the voter is information itself. Voters would be the ultimate drivers if they had perfect information. Since they do not, their choices are limited by their access to information (as well as their ability to process it).

Well, we don't have perfect information - but I think it's pretty obvious that we have abundant information that voters don't avail themselves of. The drive to use even the information available seems to be lacking.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#48

Post by crusso » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

aethertap wrote: post #13

crusso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry shapes the culture, but worse, the law and the market. As you say, it's not so simple. Industry is just a part of a cycle of perversion of the goal of effective government. Industry isn't forcing politicians to create or execute bad legislation. Industry isn't forcing voters to ignore the voting records of politicians who demonstrate poor integrity. Ultimately, the driver of everything in a democratic re…

This is true, but I think it glosses over a bunch of important structure in society that isn't obviously connected to the voter. An analogy might be to say that ultimately, all of your behaviors come down to the neuron. While technically true, it ignores brain structures, hormones, emotional state, etc that are almost always more important in actual treatment than any attempt to deal with individual neurons. Society…

I think that saying "it's all the voter" tends to shut down thinking about the real alternatives for fixing problems

There are plenty of real alternatives for fixing problems that involve the voter: Education, access to information, encouraging cultural changes, etc.

In part, I was countering the previous poster who was blaming the 'Industry' boogey man, for why sugar has done the damage it has - but not mentioning the culpability of a government so easily influenced by money and then voters so easily influenced by politicians who don't have their constituents' interests at heart.

As you say, it's complex. But, we could talk about fixes on HN all day, but until voters elect smart politicians with integrity who will implement fixes, it's all just academic.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#49

Post by crusso » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #10

crusso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry shapes the culture, but worse, the law and the market. As you say, it's not so simple. Industry is just a part of a cycle of perversion of the goal of effective government. Industry isn't forcing politicians to create or execute bad legislation. Industry isn't forcing voters to ignore the voting records of politicians who demonstrate poor integrity. Ultimately, the driver of everything in a democratic re…

You seem to be reinventing "median voter theory", which got rebadged "public choice theory", which nearly nobody attests to in public. In the US at least, government was designed to be in effective and deadlock-prone. When there was a monoculture, individual legislators (say, Tip O'Neil) bucked the central tendency to ... do whatever it is we do now out of a sense of duty and pragmatism. And as the monoculture faded,…

No, you constructed a straw man.

I didn't claim that voters got what the median wants. I claimed that the main driver in the complex cycle of perversion of the function of government is the bad choices of voters.

Without an informed citizenry that can make solid election choices, even the best government framework is doomed to fail because it will be populated with politicians who are unable or unwilling to do the jobs they were elected to do.

Re: How the sugar industry shaped key government research about your teeth

#50

Post by ArkyBeagle » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 3:02 AM UTC

crusso wrote: post #49

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be reinventing "median voter theory", which got rebadged "public choice theory", which nearly nobody attests to in public. In the US at least, government was designed to be in effective and deadlock-prone. When there was a monoculture, individual legislators (say, Tip O'Neil) bucked the central tendency to ... do whatever it is we do now out of a sense of duty and pragmatism. And as the monoculture faded,…

No, you constructed a straw man. I didn't claim that voters got what the median wants. I claimed that the main driver in the complex cycle of perversion of the function of government is the bad choices of voters. Without an informed citizenry that can make solid election choices, even the best government framework is doomed to fail because it will be populated with politicians who are unable or unwilling to do the jo…

I've read perhaps too much Bryan Caplan :), who holds that Median Voter Theory/Public Choice theory is sufficient to explain the bad choices of voters. But of course you are as familiar with that as I am, right? No. You probably are not. My bad then. rends garment.

That's more like "assuming a linkage not in evidence", a much less crafted thing than a strawman. It's ordinary carelessness, not savage guile. I can see how they seem like the same, though.

Although in the sense of revealed preferences, I'm sort of loath to call it all "bad choices." We are inconsistent, hypocritical, vain and venal creatures. That's sort of who we are; I can ... function better if I accept that and celebrate the odd exception. That way the glass is half full. For every thing that doesn't work, there are thousands of cases where it does.

And let's not kid ourselves. It's all very difficult, what our public servants do.