Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills • Hacker News Board

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#291

Post by andrewjl » Mon, May 09, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

noxToken wrote: post #137

jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

I don't know if dumb is the right word. Ignorant is probably most apt. I want you to think about all of the food that's in your house. Eliminate anything that you would consider intentionally sugary like candy, confection, soda, etc. Now how much of a time consuming task would it be to scrutinize every label for needlessly added sugar? Consider how many people would be willing to do that to check for some extra sugar…

The solution is to have the FDA mandate big bold warning labels stating that long-term consumption of high quantities of sugar has been linked to diabetes and other health problems. Give consumers some information to help make an informative decision.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#292

Post by miles » Mon, May 09, 2016, 8:49 PM UTC

lloyddobbler wrote: post #254

bduerst wrote: post #217

Earlier 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…

"Sugary foods neither 'give people' nor cause Type 2 diabetes"

High Sugar Consumption Linked To Type 2 Diabetes http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php

"For a while the association between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes was thought to solely relate to weight gain, but new research conducted at UC San Francisco indicates that sugar intake may also be directly linked to diabetes.

...

"This suggests for the first time that not all calories contribute to diabetes risk in the same way.

...

"Diabetes rates increased the longer a population was exposed to excess sugar and it decreased when sugar availability went down.

...

"Mation Nestle, PhD, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said:

'As far as I know, this is the first paper that has had data on the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. This has been a source of controversy forever. It's been very, very difficult to separate sugar from the calories it provides. This work is carefully done, it's interesting and it deserves attention.'

...

"A previous study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a similar association, revealing that added sugar and high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of obesity and diabetes."

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#293

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 09, 2016, 8:51 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #290

md224 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply, but this still doesn't clarify anything... what is "behavioral and psychological toxicity"? I was under the impression that the "bad consequences" of these drugs was the risk of damage to the body, but the phrasing implies that they're not talking about physical/physiological toxicity. So what's left? Does using cocaine turn you into an asshole or something? What behavioral/psychological changes…

> What behavioral/psychological changes are there beyond those associated with the regular consumption of any addictive substance? Not many, and that's precisely the point: in terms of additivity, the neural receptors involved are essentially the same as those involved in other drugs; and in terms of toxicity, it's metabolized essentially the same as alcohol. Give a fruit juice or a whisky to a 4-year old, and it's a…

[deleted]

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#294

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, May 09, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #262

slavik81 wrote: post #241

Earlier 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…

To be fair, canning fluid has to have a certain osmotic pressure to inhibit mold and bacteria growth, and most people prefer their canned fruit to be packed in some variety of sugary water rather than salty or acetic water.

Even the fruit packed with fruit juice is often packed in a different kind of juice (excepting pineapple). You could have peaches packed in genuine grade-B maple syrup, but it won't be able to compete on price on a shelf next to peaches in heavy sucrose syrup.

(You can also make pruno from the syrup in fruit cans that doesn't taste entirely like moldy garbage. But I wouldn't pour any for my friends, or at least not the ones I wanted to keep.)

As for the bread, you shouldn't be surprised that many "whole wheat" breads are still primarily made with the same enriched white flour as white breads. They just have a fraction of the wheat kernel added back in so that the bread looks brown when it's baked. Deceptive labeling.

Even if a type of food is ostensibly healthy when prepared at home using a traditional recipe from pure, wholesome ingredients, as a pre-packaged, ready-to-eat product in the grocery store, it is most likely already reduced to complete crap. For me, it has almost gone past the point where it isn't just a matter of carefully reading the ingredients list and avoiding certain entries. Now I prefer buying only the foods that themselves qualify as a single ingredient. But even then, cans of "extra virgin olive oil" are almost certainly lying, upselling the "3 or 4 extractions too late for virgin" olive oil , mixed with hazelnut oil.

But what else is a consumer to do?

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#295

Post by md224 » Mon, May 09, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #290

md224 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply, but this still doesn't clarify anything... what is "behavioral and psychological toxicity"? I was under the impression that the "bad consequences" of these drugs was the risk of damage to the body, but the phrasing implies that they're not talking about physical/physiological toxicity. So what's left? Does using cocaine turn you into an asshole or something? What behavioral/psychological changes…

> What behavioral/psychological changes are there beyond those associated with the regular consumption of any addictive substance? Not many, and that's precisely the point: in terms of additivity, the neural receptors involved are essentially the same as those involved in other drugs; and in terms of toxicity, it's metabolized essentially the same as alcohol. Give a fruit juice or a whisky to a 4-year old, and it's a…

I agree, which is why I was trying to point out that the authors were using this BS idea of "behavioral/psychological toxicity" to try to explain why sugar wasn't really the same kind of thing as cocaine or other addictive drugs.

I'm annoyed that they shied away from this equivalence, but not because I want people to treat sugar like it's an addictive drug... I want people to recognize that being addicted to something (like sugar or cocaine or alcohol or coffee) is not the great evil it's made out to be, and to realize that our drug laws are completely incoherent. The authors use weasel words to avoid equating sugar and cocaine because then people would wonder why one is legal/normalized and the other is illegal/stigmatized. They have to find some way to maintain the distinction.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#296

Post by lotharbot » Mon, May 09, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

throw7 wrote: post #289

lotharbot wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the sugar they sell is bad, that's it, there's no questioning" I question it. There appears to be little-to-no scientific evidence that there are "bad" sugars and "good" sugars. From what I understand (I'm no doctor, just a person who reads a lot) the main problem is the volume of consumption, not "good" vs "bad" sugars. There's nothing wrong with a normal, healthy person having sugar in any of the forms Nestle se…

It's not only the dosage that does you in, but also the processing... which i think is what others are alluding to. Meaning a can of soda has a whacky amount of sugar to begin with, but also, if compared to say an orange, has no fiber/roughage (which helps the insulin spike supposedly, plus orange will have good micro-nutrients and antioxidants). I think people should be much more mindful of these manufactured proces…

> "It's not only the dosage that does you in, but also the processing"

but not the sugar itself -- it's the same chemical. (There are those who believe certain types of sugar are processed differently in your body, which is actually not true, at least based on the large body of scientific evidence available thus far.)

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#297

Post by bunkydoo » Mon, May 09, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

This is the same company whose CEO said water is not a human right... Would we honestly expect anything less from these guys?

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#298

Post by scalio » Mon, May 09, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #150

jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

Wherever the baseline intelligence quotient of John Q. Public sits on an absolute scale, when we're discussing something as critical and universal as food distribution, it should be pretty easy to accept that, at a minimum, the median IQ should be accommodated. It should be easy for the consumer to understand what's in the food he's going to eat. Manually picking up every food item and reviewing the list of ingredien…

> Manually picking up every food item and reviewing the list of ingredients by hand in the middle of grocery store does not comport with [accomodating the median IQ]

I don't know how the situation looks in the US, but in Europe, there's compulsory, standardized labels listing ingredients on every non-whole item. Whole foods are marked with the country/ies where it was produced, treated and packaged.

If it's considered too much effort to read a clearly laid-out sticker, the problem is definitely with people reaching an extreme kind of intellectual lazyness, which is why I don't understand the need to teach nutrition mentioned in other comments. Just read what's in the thing, dammit! If somebody doesn't understand that sugar has absolutely nothing to do in canned beans, well... I'm lost for words.

This means the actual problem is the complete disfunctionality of our educational systems. As you rightly point out,

> Corporate profiteering absolutely plays a massive role in the obesity epidemic.

and is easily countered by buying a tad more consciously than "I probably don't need this, but I'll buy it anyway just in case" or "I like the look of that" or "I've seen this in an ad, must be awesome", and then proceeding to throwing a quarter of your purchases away. As you might have guessed, I was not raised like that, and it utterly boggles my mind how some people can function that way. Apart from the food, it's a massive waste of money!

So yeah, the problem is, as always, education, because I don't see how foods could be marked any clearer than black-on-white stickers that take ten seconds to scan thouroughly for any unwanted ingredients.

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#299

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, May 09, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #220

jensen123 wrote: post #72

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar. Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most pe…

There can only be one explanation: most consumers are dumb. You know how that makes you sound? Like a 9/11-was-an-inside-job, "we never went to the moon" conspiracy theorist. "There can be only explanation: the majority people aren't as enlightened as I; wake up sheeple!" But let's go with that: people are dumb. Assuming that to be true, are you arguing for or against regulating what goes into a can of refried beans?…

The Reinheitsgebot Bavarian beer purity law [0] restricted the allowable ingredients for "beer" to water, barley, hops, and yeast.

US Federal Standards of Identity for bourbon restricts ingredients to at least 51% corn (Zea mays) in the mash, new charred oak barrels, and mandates alcohol content in the final product.

The specific type of bourbon traded as Tennessee Whiskey has additional requirements for charcoal filtering and geographical origin.

There is ample precedent for regulating the ingredients, processes, and geographic origins of food or beverage products using a particular product name.

It doesn't even need to have the force of regulatory law behind it. You could invent a trademark for frijoles refritos, and license it as a marketing aid to any manufacturer willing to meet your requirements.

Specify that the ingredients must be specific types of beans without their skins, chicken stock, onion, garlic, pork fat, salt, and a consistent spice mix which may include any herb from a pre-approved list. You could require different qualifiers for pinto beans (no qualifier, or "norteño"), black beans ("negro"), kidney beans ("rojo"), or subbing vegetable oil and vegetable stock for chicken broth and pork fat ("vegetariano").

And there you are. Just look for the trademarked logo on cans, and you can be assured that you are eating "real" refrito beans. In theory, this is no different from putting the UL logo on a tested appliance, or a Kosher-certifying logo on compliant foods. An independent food certification company can operate entirely on quality control inspectors, marketers, public relations flacks, and trademark lawyers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot

Re: Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

#300

Post by jfoutz » Mon, May 09, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #296

throw7 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only the dosage that does you in, but also the processing... which i think is what others are alluding to. Meaning a can of soda has a whacky amount of sugar to begin with, but also, if compared to say an orange, has no fiber/roughage (which helps the insulin spike supposedly, plus orange will have good micro-nutrients and antioxidants). I think people should be much more mindful of these manufactured proces…

> "It's not only the dosage that does you in, but also the processing" but not the sugar itself -- it's the same chemical. (There are those who believe certain types of sugar are processed differently in your body, which is actually not true, at least based on the large body of scientific evidence available thus far.)

I don't believe different sugars are processed differently. I do thing that release mechanisms are different in, for example, corn vs corn syrup. The "extra stuff" you get with corn mediates how fast a body can absorb the sugar, the container needs to be broken down. So, in some sense, yes, all sugars are the same. The delivery system can change the rate of absorption though. *

* I have no proof of this. I'm making an uneducated guess that the insulin spikes aren't as steep or high with sweet fruits and vegetables compared with a spoon full of sugar.