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Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

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Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#71

Post by herbst »

sofixa wrote: post #48
badcppdev wrote: post #21

Nutritional labelling is such a cesspit of lies. My pet hate is the 'portion' or 'serving' sizes which are blatantly wrong just so the companies can lie about how much sugar they are selling to you. So you get 500 ml bottle with nutritional info shown for every 100 ml and 250ml because that's the 'serving size'. No-one has ever drunk 250ml (8 ounces) and then left the rest for later.

> Nutritional labelling is such a cesspit of lies That's why there need to be strict rules on that. In the EU, serving sizes make sense (1 cookie or 2 slices of bread) (probably because they have to), and there always has to be the normalised by 100ml / 100g too, so you can compare even if serving sizes are lying.

> In the EU, serving sizes make sense

Like 1 child hand full of muesli, totally typical serving size for a breakfast. Totally legit to label the sugar with A or B then.

I just get EU labels on Import products but so far I don't get it. They all have A or B and are full of sugars, sweeteners and aroma products.

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#72

Post by santiagobasulto »

I am a bit torn about these new labels. I'm from Argentina and they were implemented over there some time ago.

On the one hand, I think it's great to warn "ignorant" people about the content of their foods. And by Ignorant I don't mean poor uneducated people. You'd be surprised how many college-educated, well-off people in Argentina think that a cereal bar is a "healthy food". Or that corn flakes is a healthy food. So, suddenly, these black scary labels started appearing everywhere and people were like "Oh wow, does this have a lot of sugar in it? I thought it was healthy".

So that's a good thing.

But on the other hand, they'r extremely simplistic. A label that says "excess fat" can actually be a good thing. If it's some raw, healthy fat (say, Oil, butter, etc), that's a great type of food. But it'll share the same "excess fat" label with a crappy hydrogenated-fat based food.

Take for example whole milk, which it is now known that is the ONLY healthy type of milk. It'll have a "excess fat" label. While Skim milk will contain non such labels.

Anyway, I think the balance is favorable for those labels. At least "protect" the uneducated people. If anybody wants to learn more about food, they'll put the time and learn to ignore those labels and just focus on the raw macronutrients.

EDIT: I know the "whole milk is better than Skim milk" might STILL be a hot take (not for long I hope...). Here's my answer to another comment:

> The gist is: fat is not bad; at all. Most of Vitamins contained in Milk are fat-soluble. That means that all the good properties of milk are transported by fat. Also, whole milk is less processed.

> Here's a very "intuitive" reasoning, as an exercise: if Vitamin D is fat soluble... how is it possible that Skim milk has MORE Vitamin D (or A) than whole milk? (answer: because it's artificially added).

Sources:

- https://qz.com/405498/the-case-for-drinking-whole-milk

- https://archive.is/0yBjZ

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#74

Post by Symbiote »

em500 wrote: post #61
badcppdev wrote: post #21

Nutritional labelling is such a cesspit of lies. My pet hate is the 'portion' or 'serving' sizes which are blatantly wrong just so the companies can lie about how much sugar they are selling to you. So you get 500 ml bottle with nutritional info shown for every 100 ml and 250ml because that's the 'serving size'. No-one has ever drunk 250ml (8 ounces) and then left the rest for later.

> Nutritional labelling is such a cesspit of lies. My pet hate is the 'portion' or 'serving' sizes which are blatantly wrong just so the companies can lie about how much sugar they are selling to you. "Per serving/portion" seems like an American quick, like "tablespoons" or "cups" as units in recipes. The EU the labeling standard is per 100g or 100ml. > So you get 500 ml bottle with nutritional info shown for every 1…

"Per serving" is often shown on EU labels, although in addition to the per-100g figures. There are rules about when and how:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#75

Post by helsinkiandrew »

shmde wrote: post #47

This is a drink[1] which millions of Indian kids drink while growing up. Just see the amount of added sugar. And parents wonder why is the kid addicted to sugar growing up. Out of 100grams, added sugar = 32.2 grams. 32% of the drink is just pure sugar. People wonder why kids have rotten teeth growing up. [1] https://www.amazon.in/Cadbury-Bournvita-Chocolate-Health-Dri...

Same product is available in the UK, but can't be called a 'health' drink!:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cadbury-Bourn-Vita-Chocolate-Powder...

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#76

Post by refurb »

shoo wrote: post #51

Go Mexico! Unregulated markets often don't produce great outcomes for society. Regulate them for the public good. I live in Australia, this reminds me of our tobacco plain packaging legislation [1]. A post implementation review was conducted a few years afterward [2]. Some interesting bits from the PIR conclusion: > Applying the government’s RBM framework, the regulatory burden was estimated as $73.87 million across…

Isn’t tobacco use trending down anyways? How could you possibly tease out the drop in tobacco use from one change to packaging?

This reminds me of the analysis I’ve seen for marketing campaigns.

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#77

Post by pyrale »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #10

Mexico’s big black hexagons warning across excess fat/sugar/calories are kind of ridiculous. I don’t think they are serving to dissuade consumers, and even foreigners stop noticing the labels after just a couple of weeks in the country. The problem seems to be a wider one: Mexico is importing the convenience-store junk-food culture of its northern neighbor. People are often eating crap because there isn’t much else a…

> Mexico’s big black hexagons warning across excess fat/sugar/calories are kind of ridiculous. I don’t think they are serving to dissuade consumers, and even foreigners stop noticing the labels after just a couple of weeks in the country.

How ridiculous is it if big corporations take them seriously? In fact, if we look at how tobacco laws worked, this kind of messaging works extremely well in shifting perception of people about it in the long run. Sure, people may still drink it, but maybe they won't give some to their kids, or introduce them to it later, or they won't make jokes about people not joining them in that habit at social gatherings, etc.

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#78

Post by tzs »

If we are going to reform food labels, how about requiring that they include a last update timestamp?

When I’m considering buying a food item for the first time I read the entire label to make sure it meets my criteria. It would be nice when buying it again to be able to at a glance tell that it is still the same as when I last bought it.

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#79

Post by louthy »

shoo wrote: post #51

Go Mexico! Unregulated markets often don't produce great outcomes for society. Regulate them for the public good. I live in Australia, this reminds me of our tobacco plain packaging legislation [1]. A post implementation review was conducted a few years afterward [2]. Some interesting bits from the PIR conclusion: > Applying the government’s RBM framework, the regulatory burden was estimated as $73.87 million across…

> While it was not possible to complete a full Cost Benefit Analysis for this PIR (due to the limitations on the data available at this time and provided by industry), potential monetised benefits were also analysed including an illustrative example of health benefits. That example estimated that a 0.07 percentage point drop in smoking prevalence would be equivalent to $273 million in monetised health benefits

I wonder whether they take into account the long-term cost of people - who quit or don't smoke because of this legislation - becoming more of a burden on the social systems because of extended life? Things like this always remind me of the 'Smoke Screen' episode from Yes, Prime Minister [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsqTz4zg8Xk

Re: Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules

#80

Post by erfgh »

XorNot wrote: post #64
erfgh wrote: post #53

I don't believe such measures have a significant impact on obesity because they don't target the main causes of obesity which are the easy availability of food and the reliance on private cars for transportation. Furthermore, they push the misleading idea that you can still drive to the supermarket, buy processed foods, load them in your car, drive home, eat them in front of the TV and be fine, as long as you don't b…

We have effective weightloss drugs now like ozempic and semaglutide. What effect do people report from them? Reduction in appetite. Which tells us the obvious truth: you need to eat less or parity calories in then you do going out. A nutrition professor ate nothing but Twinkies and lost weight[1] while doing so. Probably wasn't fun, but it worked. Someone did the same with nothing but McDonald's[2]. Your entire list…

Saying "you need to eat less calories than you expend in order to lose weight" is like saying "to win in chess just mate your opponent's king". It's just saying the same thing in different words. The fact of the matter is that people that don't do those virtuous activities have a very difficult time maintaining a healthy weight and people that do do those virtuous activities have a much easier time.
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