101–110 of 302 posts
Dumb, just tax fructose in proportion to how much is added. Ths US should do the same thing.
If we just didn't subsidize its production, that would be a start.
I'm no agriculture nerd but isn't much of the US particularly well suited to growing corn, regardless of subsidies?
Sugar is an addictive poison. These products should be outright banned. Folks can make wonderful pastries at home. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/8187/obesity-and-metabolic... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
This kind of comment asking for it to be banned is always from an extremely uninformed person. Addictive poison, really? Wait til they see what's in fruit. Or just talk to a sports scientist about why it's in sports drinks. Of course in excess it's bad, but normal sugar consumption is not an issue.
According to Mintz, the production of sugar was at the heart of the transition from pre-modernity to industrial modernity. Pre-modern human diets all over the world varied widely but consisted of very little or no sugar. The production process required a ton of technological sophistication and intensive labor. Colonial era economic slavery regimes developed mostly in service of the production of sugar.
Sugar is now a huge part of diets in just about every modern culture. It really is addictive in a sense, both for individuals and in a collective economic sense (like oil, sugar consumption and production processes are dialetically self-reproducing, the argument goes).
Myself, I don't really know if we should try to constrain sugar consumption via law for moral reasons. Those efforts sometimes reek of a moralizing paternalism that I don't much care for. But the way we consume sugar, like everything else, has a history. We didn't always do it this way. We need not do it this way forever. And there's more to it than just disparate isolated individual consumption choices.
EDIT - To summarize, the way we consume sugar today is not arbitrary or "natural," but an outcome of the particular way that industrial modernity has developed.
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> These products should be outright banned. This attitude is more dangerous than sugar.
What is dangerous about banning products with added sugar? I mean, I'm against it. A lot of traditional foods, like fruit preserves, have added sugar. But what is danger, exactly? People would just not have food that tastes as good...
Healthy and unhealthy people alike like sweets. Just because some abuse it doesn't mean an outright ban is in order. And why stop at sugar?
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Those things aren't sugar though.
I'm not sure if you're missing the point intentionally or unintentionally but while those chemicals sometimes can cause health problems later in life but the sugar is what's causing the calories that are causing the obesity that is causing the health problems we want to mitigate. The sugar is the problem and both the pastries have the same sugar. The homemade one may be marginally better but it's a distinction withou…
In Australia obesity increased while sugar consumption decreased. The additives really matter and have a huge impact on human health--they are not a rounding error, but it was a great marketing tactic on behalf of various food industry groups to vilify sugar while deflecting from the other ingredients that are similarly problematic.
more info on Chile, mentioned in article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/health/chile-soda-warning... it's probably safe to say that this is a global public health imperative, given the suffering/costs/economic loss around the world that these beverages and food-like products cause. would also like to see some money from things like corn driven to healthy food subsidies e.g. spinach (or pick your favorite) to off…
Around 2015 IIRC they got into the diary game with Fairlife milk, they own core power. They do lots of business in tea (gold peak and others) as well as coffee.
You can recognize the bottles for a lot of the products because they use the same one with a different wrapper - core power, illy, fairlife and others share. (Note: illy is a partnership)
I’ll also point out their zero sugar line, out since 2017, is fantastic - much better than the older diet technology in terms of taste.
This law is way way way overdue. American Corporations are killing Mexico's youth with junk food. I know kids who exclusively drink soda. Healthy, beautiful kids who deserve to go out and play and live their best lives.
You can't blame this on Americans. Walk into any tiendita in rural Mexico and you will find isles of candy and sugary beverages, much of which Americans wouldn't recognize. Mexico loves sweets. I'm glad they're recognizing that dietary health is a serious issue and trying to make changes. But I wonder what effect this will have on paleterias? They're one of the many things I miss from Mexico.
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A homemade pastry has fewer preservatives and additives, you have greater control over the contents, requires a time and effort investment, and is not heavily marketed with prominent placement in grocery stores and appealing, colorful packaging. There are both nutritional and psychological differences between the two that make the homemade version effectively much less unhealthy for you.
>A homemade pastry has fewer preservatives and additives Sugar is sugar.
Not that too much can sugar is good for you either, but it's more expensive, so before the advent of corn syrup, less was used.
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We tax alcohol and cigarettes because they are bad for you, but are totally fine with binge eating as much junk food as you like. Obesity is a massive epidemic. Heart attack and stroke are the number one killers, with obesity the highest cause. I'm all for putting warning labels on food showing the potential problems of overconsumption.
I bet if you ask any random person in the US if McDonald's is bad for you, they will say yes. I don't think the obesity epidemic is from lack of information.
So yeah, information is certainly necessary but not enough.
Covid shows that governments who fail to encourage nutritious diets will end up with higher healthcare costs.
Think about universal healthcare and alcohol. How much money is spent on alcohol related issues? The best answer is to ban its sale. Same for tobacco. Enough people have shown then are unable or unwilling to do the right thing. As a result junk food, booze and smokes need to go the way of freedom of speech. We need to ban them.