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It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

josvisser.substack.com

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Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#11

Post by kiba »

angarg12 wrote: post #3

> the color coding program was completely misguided because it assumed that we didn’t know what healthy food was. I challenged the nutritionist to an experiment: Make two plates of food, go into the restaurant at lunch time, and ask people to point out the healthier plate. My bet was that if you did not purposefully make it very tricky, people would unfailingly point to the right plate. I wholeheartedly disagree. I u…

It depends, really.

Some people genuinely don't know what's healthy and what's not. Some people know what's healthy but having trouble resisting these temptation. Usually it's a mixture of both.

Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#12

Post by tabony »

angarg12 wrote: post #3

> the color coding program was completely misguided because it assumed that we didn’t know what healthy food was. I challenged the nutritionist to an experiment: Make two plates of food, go into the restaurant at lunch time, and ask people to point out the healthier plate. My bet was that if you did not purposefully make it very tricky, people would unfailingly point to the right plate. I wholeheartedly disagree. I u…

“Healthy” is meaningless. You should provide calorie counts and strive for nutritional balance.

If I have a “healthy” 300 calorie salad before a 3 hour run, I will crash very hard. Instead I will eat a high sugar and high fat candy bar.

If I have two “healthy” 800 calorie quinoa and chickpea salads when I am trying to lose weight, I will gain weight. Instead I could even eat a 500 calorie burger and lose weight.

Frankly if you are interested in your health, you have to understand how it all works. Sometimes you need carbs, sometimes you need fat, and sometimes you need protein. The amount that you need today depends on what you are planning to do this week. You need to know your own schedule and feed yourself accordingly.

Most of the “changing opinions over time by health experts” is because they are trying to answer “what one advice works for everyone” which is a non-starter question to begin with.

Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#13

Post by chefandy »

xg15 wrote: post #4

OP indeed misunderstood the color coding program by treating it as a knowledge problem. Looks to me like it was much more about "nudging": It's one thing to decide for yourself, in your head, whether to have the tofu bowl or the fries for lunch. It's another to have both next to each other in the cafeteria, one authoritatively labeled with a green, the other with a red dot. Sure you can still choose the fries, but it…

The nutritionist probably isn’t an idiot, and didn’t assume the developers lacked the knowledge or intellectual capacity to determine the nutritive and caloric density of food. People choose convenience foods for two reasons: a) they’re usually delicious in the least healthy ways, and b) because they’re convenient. The nutritionist likely understood that people choosing unhealthy convenience foods because they were delicious and didn’t care if they were healthy— such as the author— were going to do that anyway. They were probably trying to even out the cognitive load required to make healthy choices for the people that did want to make better choices but were just grabbing whatever was convenient while running to a meeting or as a quick break without losing their flow and didn’t really have time to think about it.

There might be a knowledge problem here, though: perhaps the author, a bit arrogantly, incorrectly assumed they understood the nutritionist’s ostensibly simple-minded intent and strategy on-sight, and dismissed it out-of-hand instead of considering its utility for differing goals, challenges, and motivations.

Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#15

Post by LeroyRaz »

I'm all for informing people. A lot of people (myself included) are generally pretty ignorant.

As to traffic light systems: I think they should be transparent, and linked to easy-to-verify information.

An example of a good food one is the UK: They have a traffic light system for various macros. For each of the chosen macros (fat, sugar, etc...) the symbol displays the macro amount along with an associated colour.

This system is great because it is a systematic and consist visualization of an objective fact (e.g., more than 20 grams of sugar is always red). While the consumer might be influenced by the colour, it is extremely clear what the colour means and they can make up their own mind (e.g., how much fat do I want to consume?)

An example of a bad one: Germany has a traffic light system for food too. But here it is just a colour (with no clarity as to how the colour/rating is calculated). The rating seems arbitrary and strange (for example smoked salmon gets a red rating, while a slice of pizza might get a yellow rating, etc...). The consumer has no insight into what the rating truly means and hast to either trust it, or ignore it.

Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#17

Post by numpad0 »

angarg12 wrote: post #3

> the color coding program was completely misguided because it assumed that we didn’t know what healthy food was. I challenged the nutritionist to an experiment: Make two plates of food, go into the restaurant at lunch time, and ask people to point out the healthier plate. My bet was that if you did not purposefully make it very tricky, people would unfailingly point to the right plate. I wholeheartedly disagree. I u…

But losing weight is a somewhat unhealthy condition, so you have to eat slightly unhealthy with as little side effect as possible to achieve that, no?

As in, preferably taking as much vitamins and micronutrients as practical, with less calories than your body burns within reasonable range.

Re: It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

#18

Post by tnel77 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #10
angarg12 wrote: post #3

> the color coding program was completely misguided because it assumed that we didn’t know what healthy food was. I challenged the nutritionist to an experiment: Make two plates of food, go into the restaurant at lunch time, and ask people to point out the healthier plate. My bet was that if you did not purposefully make it very tricky, people would unfailingly point to the right plate. I wholeheartedly disagree. I u…

I think part of the problem here is that “healthy” in a nutritional quality sense is orthogonal to “healthy” in a caloric density sense.

This is the problem. We use “healthy” interchangeably and it really depends upon your goals.

For example, I would label peanut butter as a healthy snack, but you really need to keep an eye on your portions because it is wildly calorie dense and excess calories is usually unhealthy.

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