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Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills

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

#331

Post by Broken_Hippo »

brianwawok wrote: post #40
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first thought when I saw the headline. Water is a human need. All that out, however, I do actually agree with some of what is being done. I'd seriously prefer to eat a gummy candy than swallow a pill - no matter how small a pill is, I can only swallow one at a time. Patients with dementia get crushed medicines mixed with jelly or another substance here - and a pre-mixed solution of some sort would be easi…

People in the US already take about 10x too much medicine. Not sure making it easier is a good social goal.

I'm not sure it is that high, but doctors do tend to prescribe more instead of saying "no, you can't have the antibiotic for your cold". Part of this is a regulatory issue as well - I walk into a pharmacy here in Norway and you have to ask for some of the medicines, even though they are available without prescription. In the states it was different - basically no regulation. On top of the fact that medicine in the states is most definitely a consumer good paid for by the individual... in universal coverage, it is a bonus not to over-prescribe medicines and to make sure that those that need medication take care of themselves as they should so that costs don't go up - and people don't need more medication.

Making medicines easier to take doesn't actually address any of this outside of making it slightly easier for those on medication to take it as they should so that their conditions don't get worse.

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

#332

Post by Broken_Hippo »

techiferous wrote: post #52
brianwawok wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US already take about 10x too much medicine. Not sure making it easier is a good social goal.

Agreed. Some health problems are reversed by making healthy diet and lifestyle changes. If your body is unhealthy because you eat too much sugar and refined carbs, and you take a pill for that, you now have two problems.

Like I said before - that is a different problem. People need to have enough money to eat well without sacrificing electricity. Plus they need transportation or nearby grocery stores with affordable prices... in addition to the time and ability to cook at home.

How, exactly, does making needed medications help with any of those issues?

I seriously don't think people that are sick need to suffer to take their medicines, especially since a good number of sicknesses are not because of an unhealthy lifestyle. In the case of children, they have no control over that in any case.

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

#333

Post by throwaway049 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #257
shawn-furyan wrote: post #245

The offerings of humongous multinational conglomerations are not coherent. You could generate stories of this type all day, because the offerings of the likes of Nestle, GE, J&J, P&G, Coca-Cola, et. al. are the results of the efforts of hundreds of thousands of employees (for each conglomerate) subdivided into thousands of business units [read sub-companies], each with its own goals, challenges, and many existing wit…

> This sort of story is pure narrative fallacy My favorite of these are the articles which criticize health insurers who invest in things like tobacco products. The point of insurance is to manage risk. Tobacco is indisputably linked to expensive health consequences down the line, so if there is an increase in tobacco consumption, that would generate more claims for health insurers down the line. Capturing some porti…

It may also be that someone who dies early from smoking related disease would otherwise have gone on to cost the insurer even more in treatment for some other longer term problem. I am speculating, but I would imagine insurers have analysed this.

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

#335

Post by shawn-furyan »

anigbrowl wrote: post #305
shawn-furyan wrote: post #245

The offerings of humongous multinational conglomerations are not coherent. You could generate stories of this type all day, because the offerings of the likes of Nestle, GE, J&J, P&G, Coca-Cola, et. al. are the results of the efforts of hundreds of thousands of employees (for each conglomerate) subdivided into thousands of business units [read sub-companies], each with its own goals, challenges, and many existing wit…

On one level I agree with you, but the whole point of a corporate structure is to give a collective effort the legal identity of an individual so that administrative efficiency and profit can be maximized. It's no coincidence that virtually every stock-based corporation has a strictly hierarchical governance structure culminating in the office of a chief executive, notwithstanding the existence of boards and presiden…

I agree that there is a tremendous amount of dissonance in the ideas that executives deserve massive compensation and that they don't have much control over such gargantuan organizations. The way I resolve this dissonance is by not buying into the idea that corporate executives as a class are worth their extreme compensation packages.

Humans seem to have a soft spot for narrativization, and it's easiest to pin a narrative on the chief of an organization. But it's my belief, and I think the evidence doesn't contradict it, that these narratives usually have little to do with the causes of changes in organizational fortunes, particularly in the case of conglomerates.

"But Steve Jobs!"... Well, few CEOs are Steve Jobs. None, actually...

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

#336

Post by pluma »

tdkl wrote: post #211
pluma wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this may come as a shock, but any one person's specific sexual preferences aren't always universal.

And yet he's right - sexual attractiveness of fat/obese people is more of a fetish, then an evolutionary preference. Another thing is also "that's all I can get".

An evolutionary argument could be made either way:

* overweight/obesity signals access to food or ability to sustain oneself (implying also being able to sustain offspring)

* underweight could act as a handicap (showing off ability to remain on par with more well-fed competitors)

The rational thing to prefer in a mate would obviously be a "healthy body" (i.e. neither underweight nor overweight, with moderate muscle build) but it's also obvious from any good luck at human societies that that isn't always the beauty ideal.

Talking of beauty ideals: on a less than evolutionary timescale we can see shifts in preference of tan or pale skin (e.g. historically fair skin was often considered more beautiful because it signalled wealth and not having to expose your skin to the elements).

There are certainly fetishes for all aspects and variations of the human physique but blanket labelling a preference for overweight/obese body shapes a fetish seems a bit subjective -- especially if you consider that as a technical term a fetish doesn't simply refer to something you like but something you are attracted to instead of a sexual partner (as a whole).

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

#337

Post by ArkyBeagle »

anigbrowl wrote: post #305
shawn-furyan wrote: post #245

The offerings of humongous multinational conglomerations are not coherent. You could generate stories of this type all day, because the offerings of the likes of Nestle, GE, J&J, P&G, Coca-Cola, et. al. are the results of the efforts of hundreds of thousands of employees (for each conglomerate) subdivided into thousands of business units [read sub-companies], each with its own goals, challenges, and many existing wit…

On one level I agree with you, but the whole point of a corporate structure is to give a collective effort the legal identity of an individual so that administrative efficiency and profit can be maximized. It's no coincidence that virtually every stock-based corporation has a strictly hierarchical governance structure culminating in the office of a chief executive, notwithstanding the existence of boards and presiden…

But these things exist because people put money into 401k accounts, IRAs, and buy other "funds". That makes one sort of instrumentation of that corporation work in a certain, sort of negative-externality-prone way. That cross ( as in cross product ) the information-attenuating nature of hierarchy explains a lot.

As a corollary of Brian Kernigan's "debugging is twice as hard as writing programs", it should be clear that regulation is even harder - possibly many orders of magnitude harder - than steering a massive conglomerate.

I don't know how you design a ... non-atomistic corporation - a corporation that depends on governance principles other than those which align with Liberal atomism. If I read the literature right, atomism is sort of an inevitable consequence of Liberalism - as Hendrix said, "I'm the one that has to die when it's my time to die." How do we handle the problem of agency?

And I'm really skeptical of "holism" in general these days. It does not notch easily onto rigorous and empirical methods, and looks somewhat like a backdoor for collectivism. I dunno - maybe collectivism has matured but I'm quite skeptical of it.

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

#338

Post by ArkyBeagle »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #210
cisstrd wrote: post #155

Nestle is a very big company making all kinds of products, and since ever more people are following the health and fitness craze, there are so many people obsessed with health, they want to profit from it. They want to adjust their company in order to guarantee future profits, that's actually (a) the most normal thing in the world and (b) a form of following consumer's choice and wishes. I don't see how selling sugar…

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. Even Nestle's low-fat and low-sugar "foods" are a far cry from "health products." You are being disingenuous by conflating the two, or even for suggesting that Nestle is in the business of selling "health products." Beyond that, however, I see a pretty big flaw in your reasoning…

I think you sort of have to look at how SNAP evolved. It was the result of what was deemed to be an iterative series of improvements. Way too low-res, the sequence was "commodities" to food stamps to SNAP, with generics and store brands also evolving out of the same ferment.

SFAIK, the principal ... principle driving this was administrative cost reduction on the government side - reuse existing buildings and people.

And then it ties into the crop subsidy system, which is generally awesome in that it prices risk from shortage almost to zero at a cost in mild to "OMG!" overproduction.

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

#339

Post by ArkyBeagle »

hinkley wrote: post #231
dahart wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does this happen? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) > There can be only one explanation Why/how have you arrived at this conclusion? > it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem So, you have evidence of food that shouldn't have sugar in it but does in fact have sugar anyway. And you conclude that it's the consumer's fault, because they're stupid, and not the company t…

I'm really having a hard time with the cognitive dissonance in our society that says that optimizing to the Bliss Point is okay, but putting additives in cigarettes to make them more addictive is bad. They are motivated by the exact same desire and goal. If we're gonna rake Phillip Morris for it we should be doing the same to Kraft, Nabisco and Nestle.

So which corporations aren't subject to the RJR v. United States treatment then? Is that really what we want?

"Damn you, you gave us what we wanted. Now pay up, sucker."

I suspect the only additive put in cigarettes to make them more addictive was nicotine itself. And that was probably an engineering decision so they could use a broader spectrum of tobacco leaf.

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

#340

Post by ArkyBeagle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #276
wnevets wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That fact is now being used against you, and all of us, in a big conspiracy called "marketing". addiction would be a better term IMO.

Marketing is spot on. It's funny how people seem to know this, and yet don't realize it in practice - most of marketing is actively malicious. It's not like a law of physics which you can understand and then learn to work around; marketing is done by humans who have decades of psychological research, hundreds of years of honed best practices and many billions of dollars of budget annually within the industry; you can…

Reousrces for this include anything you can get on Bernays ( the Adam Curtis "Century of the Self' is a decent survey ) and "The Hidden Persuaders." Also maybe Marshall MacLuhan.

Really, media/advertising literacy is pretty important. If you don't know who the sucker at the table is...

This being said, it may or may not be actively malicious per se but it certainly tries to hack your unconscious thinking to affect your behavior. I'm just not quite ready to broadly label that "malicious" just yet - although some of the anti smoking propaganda now makes me wonder that I should.

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