Any company that sells sugary snacks does its best to get people to consume as many of them as possible, right?
Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
261–270 of 347 posts
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term…
If Aunt Jamima's is unhealthy due to its sugar content, actual maple syrup is going to be unhealthy too. The authentic stuff might taste better, but it's still basically just sugar. I happen to have a glass bottle of pure Canadian maple syrup in my fridge. It contains 53g of sugar per 60mL. That's apparently 18% of your recommended daily intake of sugar. It contains 4% of your daily intake of Calcium and is 'not a si…
Yeah, I wasn't really trying to single out maple syrup as an ideal "healthy food". It's just a particularly egregious example of deceptive labeling, inasmuch as most people who think they're buying it are, in reality, buying a 100% synthetic imitation. There are people who will tell you they love maple syrup, unaware that they've never actually even had maple syrup.
A more widely known example is "juice" that is 0% juice.
The same thing occurs with varying degrees of severity for all the food offered at major grocers, including healthier options like loaves of bread (most off-the-shelf breads at Walmart contain large quantities of either sugar or brown sugar) and canned fruits (the "standard" version is usually canned in "heavy syrup", i.e., sugar water).
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of the cause of the diabetes endemic is Nestle though? Isn't lack of nutritional education more to blame? It's easy to come down hard on the smoking industry due to the chemically addictive nature and serious health hazards of the product, but there are many consumers who moderate their fat and sugar intake. And then there are diabetics who don't consume any Nestle products - so why can't they be given treat…
Agreed. As someone with Type 1 diabetes (look up the difference if you don't know), I'm always interested in this distinction. Sugary foods neither "give people" nor cause Type 2 diabetes. A person consistently consuming too many sugary foods over a long period of time causes themselves to be at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes. Cigarettes are a different beast, due to the chemically-addictive nature of them (although…
How are the dopamine hits from a nicotine-delivery product different from the dopamine hits from a glucose-delivery product?
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so You are conflating people's ability to select healthy foods with their desire to do so. There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy, at least here in the U.S. It's just that people frequently eat what they like and, then, too much of it.
No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term…
> people who buy Aunt Jemima's and the other brands of syrup usually believe they are buying maple syrup, a naturally-occurring food that our ancestors successfully consumed without growing into 400 pound hamplanets.
The fetishization of "natural" (and related terms like "naturally occurring") is, I would argue, one of the major areas of health misinformation when it comes to foods. (In any case, maple syrup isn't naturally occurring, its a processed foodstuff -- the process may not require particularly modern technology, but its still processed; there's a considerable difference between unprocessed maple sap and maple syrup.)
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing beats being healthy, which is why I'm not one of these idiots who doesn't read labels. I've put in the work to optimize my purchasing habits, so I know that the average grocery store contains about 38,718 items. It only takes me around 15 seconds to skim a label for nutritional content and add a mental note of it's contribution to my dietary needs, so I can finish shopping in a new store in just over 161 hour…
You only have to read every label in the store if you want to make the optimal decision. But a healty diet can still be achieved by only reading labels of products you are most interested in, but not purchasing the unhealthy ones.
You're right, of course, but I have to do something to break up all the time I spend reading EULAs and terms of service for all the websites I visit.
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> someone should be able to carefully select healthy foods, the evident reality is that people aren't able to do so You are conflating people's ability to select healthy foods with their desire to do so. There is no lack of information regarding eating healthy, at least here in the U.S. It's just that people frequently eat what they like and, then, too much of it.
No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term…
"a naturally-occurring food that our ancestors successfully consumed"
I think there's some problems there with the definition of ancestors as in just the last one or two for an extremely small subset of ethnic groups. And that microscopic subset is being compared to a diet consisting primarily of corn syrup for 2/5th of a billion people.
The idea of eating grains is recent in evolution. Unsurprisingly farmers use grains as a tool to fatten up livestock. Works pretty well on humans too. Pancakes and syrup are in no way natural or healthy.
The condiment industry is interesting. Maple syrup in particular is advertised as the breakfast itself, with the pancake merely as sponge to soak as much as possible. Consumed as a meal, 60 mL isn't much. As an occasional condiment 60 mL is a multiple of a reasonable amount. Consider an analogy with hot pepper flakes. A tiny subculture that uses a fraction of a teaspoon to flavor chili once in awhile while its in season will have different medical issues than a culture where basically everyone eats two cups per day, every day.
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a "health" product or not is of no value to the discussion here I think, we can debate all day long about what way of eating is correct or not, then let me put it in broader terms: Targeting different groups with different products that actually might have nothing in common or even be antagonists in a way, is nothing immoral or unusual. I used the term "health product" as an antagonist to their sugary product…
Out of interest - if a cigarette company started selling lung cancer treatment, would you still hold this stance? I would hazard to say that the analogy I've chosen aligns more closely with the stance of the article and the posters taking a condemnatory tone than your Yamaha analogy does.
Don't really understand the downvotes here can people explain why they are downvoting?
The parent opinion is that Nestle is a large corporation and they are diversifying their revenue streams as every profit-seeking company is entitled to.
The other opinion elsewhere on this thread is that sugar is the enemy and therefore Nestle should be held accountable for first causing a problem then charging people for offering the solution.
It's probably going to be hard to reconcile either opinion given the subject of sugar in diets is already quite divisive, but is an attempt to illustrate the anti-sugar camp's perspective through an extreme but easily understood example not constructive?
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Aunt Jamima's is unhealthy due to its sugar content, actual maple syrup is going to be unhealthy too. The authentic stuff might taste better, but it's still basically just sugar. I happen to have a glass bottle of pure Canadian maple syrup in my fridge. It contains 53g of sugar per 60mL. That's apparently 18% of your recommended daily intake of sugar. It contains 4% of your daily intake of Calcium and is 'not a si…
Yeah, I wasn't really trying to single out maple syrup as an ideal "healthy food". It's just a particularly egregious example of deceptive labeling, inasmuch as most people who think they're buying it are, in reality, buying a 100% synthetic imitation. There are people who will tell you they love maple syrup, unaware that they've never actually even had maple syrup. A more widely known example is "juice" that is 0% j…
Now I'm curious how many people are really confused about it.
I've helped collect and boil sap, so I'm pretty sure I've had the real thing, but still, I don't think I was ever confused about there being syrup products manufactured from other sugars.
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I disagree. Foods are regularly marketed as healthy when they are in fact unhealthy. Labeling is frequently deceptive. Foods that are well-known to be healthy, like fruits and vegetables, are modified to accommodate preferred taste profiles. Go to Walmart and look at the maple syrup section. You'll see about 8 SKUs that claim to be "Syrup", meaning they're just a viscuous fluid, but cleverly omit the actual term…
> people who buy Aunt Jemima's and the other brands of syrup usually believe they are buying maple syrup, a naturally-occurring food that our ancestors successfully consumed without growing into 400 pound hamplanets. The fetishization of "natural" (and related terms like "naturally occurring") is, I would argue, one of the major areas of health misinformation when it comes to foods. (In any case, maple syrup isn't na…
Yeah, like I said in another comment, I didn't use the example of maple syrup because it was a particularly healthy food, but because it's a particularly egregious instance of deceptive labeling. The consumer is being tricked into buying a completely different product than he or she intended to buy -- no part of Aunt Jemima's or other major syrup brands has any relation or origination point inside a maple tree -- and most never realize it.
Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First of all, diabetes pills are not really 'health products.' They are more like 'you fucked up your health, now try not to die' products You can make the same argument about low cost sugary foods that originated from the same conglomerates - trade lower prices & time to avoid starving... if you can't afford to eat healthy you eat what's fast, affordable and tastes good. You can have your cake and eat it too, you…
In Spain we say "Pan para hoy, hambre para mañana". Which literally translated would mean "Bread for today, hunger tomorrow". Eat cheap and in the future your health will be paying for that, and it will be more expensive than eating healthy during your life.
One argument I read is that when you take profits from the food industry and subtract health care costs due to industrial diets we're (just the US) 1.4 trillion a year in the red.