Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 302 posts

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#261

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

aisengard wrote: post #245
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger is not in banning products with added sugar, but in the government having the power to regulate what one may do with one's body. If I wish to drink beer, smoke cigarettes and drink/do coke, that is my decision. The primary argument against that is that it puts strain on society to provide for people when they experience health issues from that. I have paid my entire life for social health programs and heal…

The government does have the power to regulate what you do with your body when your body interacts with the public. Cigarettes are rightly banned in enclosed spaces and shared public spaces. Alcohol is rightly banned if you combine it with operating heavy machinery. I agree that drug use should be decriminalized (complex topic), and that the outright banning of sugary products is a dumb idea.

> The government does have the power to regulate what you do with your body when your body interacts with the public.

I agree, and think this is probably for the best. My opinion is that these laws are rightful when the interaction is direct and obvious. If I smoke in enclosed spaces, I am directly increasing other peoples' chance of cancer, giving them no choice over their bodies. This is analogous to how one's freedom to move their body doesn't extend to hitting other people in the face.

I do not agree with the government imposing restriction based on indirect, ambigous harm, like the "harm to society" that drinking sugary drinks which might lead to obesity causes. Harm to society has been used to justify a myriad of harmful policies. Unless there is a very clear, direct link between an action and harm to a person, the government has no business stepping in.

(Of course, this is all just my opinion, I'm presenting this as a justification for my viewpoint.)

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#262

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

smt88 wrote: post #256
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger is not in banning products with added sugar, but in the government having the power to regulate what one may do with one's body. If I wish to drink beer, smoke cigarettes and drink/do coke, that is my decision. The primary argument against that is that it puts strain on society to provide for people when they experience health issues from that. I have paid my entire life for social health programs and heal…

> The danger is not in banning products with added sugar, but in the government having the power to regulate what one may do with one's body. But... that's not what Mexico's proposal is. It's also not the goal of any of these public health bans. The goal of the bans is to prevent people from selling and profiting from unhealthy products. It doesn't stop individuals from producing and consuming whatever they want.

How are you going to produce a KitKat?

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#264

Post by JoshuaDavid »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #214
partyboat1586 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it for what it is: http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml

> When unsaturated oils are exposed to free radicals they can create chain reactions of free radicals This seems like the most important claim and also has no citations.

I mean from an organic chemistry perspective it's obviously true. If you throw an electron at a C=C double bond, you get a ·C-C¯: which will then go ahead and bond with an H⁺ that's floating around, leaving you with a radical still bound to your initial molecule, so the theory is

    CH₃-CH=CH-CH₃ + · + ROH ⇒ CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + :O¯R
    CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + HOR' ⇒ CH₃-CH₂-CH₂-CH₃ + ·OR'
and then the · on your ·OR' restarts the cycle, and the cycle doesn't stop until you get

    RO· + ·OR' ⇒ ROOR'
which is gonna be some random peroxide that wouldn't normally form, or

   CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ ⇒  CH₃-CH-CH₂-CH₃
                                          |
                                      CH₃-CH-CH₂-CH₃
which is gonna be some really random molecule with who knows what effects.

Now how important this is in a biological context I have no idea. There is a plausible mechanism for it to affect cellular chemistry, but the problem is that "a plausible mechanism" and "an actual effect" are very far from the same thing, and biochemistry is complicated.

The citation I'd want to see is that the chain reactions of free radicals do something biologically interesting, or, even better, that diets high and low in polyunsaturated fats lead to significant health differences in animal models.

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#265

Post by ausbah »

calibas wrote: post #137
navailable wrote: post #39

Covid shows that governments who fail to encourage nutritious diets will end up with higher healthcare costs.

So it's not controversial to suggest a poor diet leads to things like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, nor is it controversial to suggest that the novel coronavirus is much more deadly for people with preexisting conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. For some reason though, if I put those two things together and suggest people eat healthier during this pandemic, it's this incredibly controversial thing…

the line between trying to encourage someone to be healthier via weight loss, diet, exercise, etc. and making someone feel bad about their appearance isn't always clear, especially from two different people. being healthy isn't as simple for someone as it is on paper, just saying "calories in stemming from this, I think the most important thing is that people "get fit" for the right reasons. that they want to have better health, be able to do more activites, etc. vs some of the more usually toxic reasons like trying to meet conventional beauty standards, hating their own appearance. far too often I have seen people who "rush" trying to get fit, or do it for the wrong reasons, and just set themselves up for failure in the long run - or potentially much worse, like depression and the like.

so I think things like having a good measure of "self love" and self worth no matter what you look like, patience, consistency, etc. are all keys to succeeding over just "eating less" or whatever

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#267

Post by jeffreyrogers »

rsanek wrote: post #259
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #86

This is a good idea, and the people in the comments are rightly pointing out sugar's problems. But just as problematic as sugar are vegetable oils which are in almost every packaged product you can buy at the grocery store. They cause all sorts of health problems because the vegetable oils are extremely reactive (due to being unsaturated fats and so having double bonds that can react with other molecules inside your…

> studies of fat consumption that break out fats into saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated fat categories generally show worse health outcomes for people consuming high intakes of poly-unsaturated fats. I will try to find a good study. This is counter to any study that I am familiar with and flies in the face of all nutritional recommendations. Studies that support MUFAs and PUFAs over saturated fats can…

I believe this study does not control for whether the fat is hydrogenated or not. So they are really measuring the effects of trans-fats, which are already known to be bad.

That is my general concern with almost all of the nutrition research on fats. They are not grouping the fats appropriately. If you group butter and hyrogenated vegetable oils together because they are both "saturated" fats and then do your analysis lumping them together then you can't distinguish whether the problems caused by saturated fats are due to the hydrogenization or due to the butter being saturated or both.

Saturated fat consumption is decreasing, while unsaturated fat consumption is increasing, but people continue getting less healthy. So it seems the premise that saturated fats are that bad needs to be questioned. Or at least we need to ask if it's really saturated fats like coconut oil and butter that are bad or something that happens to the fats like canola oil when it is hydrogenated.

Edit: also as anecdotal evidence, what is the one common feature of almost all food generally considered harmful? Lots of processed vegetable oils in it, often in conjunction with sugar. I have not seen a reasonable explanation of how this can be the case if poly-unsaturated fats are as healthy as they are claimed to be.

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#268

Post by Fricken »

anoraca wrote: post #70
Cyclone_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A 20oz bottle of Coke, which is a very common consumption choice given it's prevalence, has 65g of sugar. That is not normal sugar consumption. Fruit sugars are offset by the fiber content. Sugary beverages have no redeeming nutritional qualities. WHO recommends no more than 50g per day for adults, and preferably less than 25g. https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-gui...

Just avoid eating sugar when sedentary, the specific amount isn't so important. When you eat, and what other activities you're doing also matter. Chugging Gatorade and playing basketball is no big deal. Sipping Gatorade while surfing the internet is not so great.

Re: Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

#269

Post by dang »

iwebdevfromhome wrote: post #6

The title is a little misleading, this is happening in the state of Oaxaca only. I guess that if it works the government is going to try and implement it across the whole country.

OK, we've replaced the title with the more narrowly scoped language from the first paragraph.

Another issue here is the phrase "moving to". That's not the same thing as actually doing it, and frequently the processes that articles like this are describing end up outputting to /dev/null.

Post reply on HN