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The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

nytimes.com

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Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#11

Post by dylanjermiah »

harshreality wrote: post #6

What's frightening is the conservative/libertarian view: "Government has no business telling me what to eat." Which is just nonsense, and not only because the decision on what to eat is driven by genetics that did not evolve in the presence of modern processed foods. Government isn't telling you what to eat if it keeps companies from selling the worst junk food. If you want to make junk food yourself, you're welcome…

The government is not capable of 'shifting incentives' through the use of force. Attempts made for a small group to dictate what others want and what's best for them will, and have, ended in failure.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#12

Post by mrob »

dylanjermiah wrote: post #11
harshreality wrote: post #6

What's frightening is the conservative/libertarian view: "Government has no business telling me what to eat." Which is just nonsense, and not only because the decision on what to eat is driven by genetics that did not evolve in the presence of modern processed foods. Government isn't telling you what to eat if it keeps companies from selling the worst junk food. If you want to make junk food yourself, you're welcome…

The government is not capable of 'shifting incentives' through the use of force. Attempts made for a small group to dictate what others want and what's best for them will, and have, ended in failure.

Governments have very effectively reduced tobacco use through advertising, restrictions on where smoking is legal (backed by force), and taxation (backed by force). Making something expensive and inconvient can make it unpopular while avoiding potentially counterproductive bans. The same principles could be applied to unnaturally delicious processed foods.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#13

Post by astrange »

adwhit wrote: post #10
sz4kerto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that simple thought. The simple $1 McDonalds burger has one of the best value/price ratio in the history of the human nutrition. "The double cheeseburger provides 390 calories, 23 grams of protein – half a daily serving – seven per cent of daily fibre, 19 grams of fat and 20 per cent of daily calcium, all for between $1 and $2, or 65p and £1.30, The Times reported." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/1…

Healthy food is cheaper. If you accept that raw/unprocessed food is healthier than processed, and that vegetables are healthier than meat, then this must be true, because processing food requires energy and raising livestock requires feeding the livestock. If this is not true in practice, it will be due to perverse taxes and subsidies.

> Raw/unprocessed food is healthier than processed

> Vegetables are healthier than meat

But neither of those claims are true. Raw meat isn't healthier than cooked meat because you'll poison yourself, and if you go and try to live on a vegetarian diet without careful attention to modern scientific knowledge about nutrition, you'll end up with all kinds of things like vitamin B-12 deficiency.

You need a mix of raw and cooked foods because some nutrients are not bioavailable with or without it, but not because raw foods are more "natural".

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#14

Post by ZeroGravitas »

_xcode wrote: post #3

tl;dr anyone?

Free market capitalism works really efficiently, except when externalities are present, at which point it efficiently exploits them to everyone's detriment. Your health is an externality to the corporations that make your food.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#15

Post by jensen123 »

harshreality wrote: post #6

What's frightening is the conservative/libertarian view: "Government has no business telling me what to eat." Which is just nonsense, and not only because the decision on what to eat is driven by genetics that did not evolve in the presence of modern processed foods. Government isn't telling you what to eat if it keeps companies from selling the worst junk food. If you want to make junk food yourself, you're welcome…

I don't consider myself a conservative or libertarian, but I find it annoying when besserwissers in the government are telling me how to live my life, even when they are offering good advice. For example, if some government besserwisser is yammering about not eating sugar, it almost becomes more tempting for me to eat sugar, even if I agree that eating lots of refined sugar is unhealthy.

However, if I figure out on my own that eating lots of refined sugar is unhealthy, then cutting down on my intake is easy enough.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#16

Post by uptownJimmy »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #14
_xcode wrote: post #3

tl;dr anyone?

Free market capitalism works really efficiently, except when externalities are present, at which point it efficiently exploits them to everyone's detriment. Your health is an externality to the corporations that make your food.

Brilliant. But completely incomprehensible to almost everyone.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#17

Post by toothbrush »

Happydayz wrote: post #8
sz4kerto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that simple thought. The simple $1 McDonalds burger has one of the best value/price ratio in the history of the human nutrition. "The double cheeseburger provides 390 calories, 23 grams of protein – half a daily serving – seven per cent of daily fibre, 19 grams of fat and 20 per cent of daily calcium, all for between $1 and $2, or 65p and £1.30, The Times reported." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/1…

I usually bring up a similar point when people criticize modern agriculture and food production. Right now someone can buy a pound of ground beef for around $3-4. After tax that represents around 30 minutes of labor for a minimum waged employee. It is absolutely remarkable that our lowest skilled, lowest productivity workers, can afford a pound of beef for 1/2 an hour of work. Obviously there are clear environmental…

That's only because we're exploiting other living species, which are much less able to defend themselves than we are.

A society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members, and if you ask me, that's the battery hens and mass-farmed pigs in their crowded "flats". The atrociously low price of meat is actually not at all a mark of civilisation, but rather of barbarism towards animals. Animals which, might i add, consistently turn out to be more intelligent that we originally thought.

Everybody should read Eating Animals by J.S. Foer, it's surprisingly level-headed and non-ranty, but even so, it's hard to ignore what goes on in the food industry.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#18

Post by jmulho »

astrange wrote: post #13
adwhit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy food is cheaper. If you accept that raw/unprocessed food is healthier than processed, and that vegetables are healthier than meat, then this must be true, because processing food requires energy and raising livestock requires feeding the livestock. If this is not true in practice, it will be due to perverse taxes and subsidies.

> Raw/unprocessed food is healthier than processed > Vegetables are healthier than meat But neither of those claims are true. Raw meat isn't healthier than cooked meat because you'll poison yourself, and if you go and try to live on a vegetarian diet without careful attention to modern scientific knowledge about nutrition, you'll end up with all kinds of things like vitamin B-12 deficiency. You need a mix of raw and…

> "if you go and try to live on a vegetarian diet without careful attention to modern scientific knowledge about nutrition, you'll end up with all kinds of things like vitamin B-12 deficiency."

That is true. However, if you go and try to live on a meat-eating diet without careful attention to modern scientific knowledge about nutrition, you'll end up with all kinds of things like obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#19

Post by norea-armozel »

mrob wrote: post #12
dylanjermiah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is not capable of 'shifting incentives' through the use of force. Attempts made for a small group to dictate what others want and what's best for them will, and have, ended in failure.

Governments have very effectively reduced tobacco use through advertising, restrictions on where smoking is legal (backed by force), and taxation (backed by force). Making something expensive and inconvient can make it unpopular while avoiding potentially counterproductive bans. The same principles could be applied to unnaturally delicious processed foods.

I would hazard a guess that the decline in celebrity endorsement of tobacco products had a larger influence on the total decline of smoking at least in the adult population. Mind you, this wasn't uniform as the rate of smoking has not declined at the same rate for poorer populations despite the absence of both advertisements or celebrity endorsements.

Re: The Science of Addictive Junk Food (2013)

#20

Post by norea-armozel »

harshreality wrote: post #6

What's frightening is the conservative/libertarian view: "Government has no business telling me what to eat." Which is just nonsense, and not only because the decision on what to eat is driven by genetics that did not evolve in the presence of modern processed foods. Government isn't telling you what to eat if it keeps companies from selling the worst junk food. If you want to make junk food yourself, you're welcome…

For me, the problem isn't about libertarian/conservative views on the matter, but the fact that both forget that institutional norms can offset any economic disincentive for any good or service. One example for me would be the overuse of cars in cities which is the product of both private and public institutional norms which require nearly everyone to own a car to get around a city in a timely fashion.
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