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Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

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Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#81

Post by bunderbunder »

Alex3917 wrote: post #29
umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.

If you're referring to the CDC figure, then I doubt you're making an apples-to-apples comparison. That figure's based on the deaths that are easily attributable to serious alcohol over-consumption, like cirrhosis or car wrecks. It doesn't include things like increased cancer or heart disease risk.

Whereas the oft-quoted figures for smoking and sugar are pretty much all about things like increased cancer or heart disease risk.

I'm not sure what the numbers would be like if you _did_ include those diseases in the alcohol death figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up somewhere between smoking and sugar.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#82

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

elorant wrote: post #37
umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.

A small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied.

Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#83

Post by lawl »

bunderbunder wrote: post #51
darkpuma wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it doesn't work in Russia is far from proof that it couldn't work elsewhere. Edit: Prohibition on advertising is not prohibition on alcohol. I reject the relevance of this suggested equivalency. There is no risk of organized crime getting supercharged by a prohibition on alcohol advertisements .

{ "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demons…

Isn't a third option for advertising simply to increase brand awareness? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but I remember ads for laundry detergent for example.

Is it reasonable to say that people wash their clothes more often because there's ads for laundry detergent on tv? I think these ads were designed to make you grab their product when you're in the super market because you've seen their brand before. I remember I recently bought a bottle of shampoo and realized the only reason i grabbed this particular one was that i immediately recognized it because i saw their ads on TV over a decade ago.

If we assume that most people drink socially, then I think it's not unreasonable to think that consumption doesn't really increase with advertising. You probably don't go out with friends for a beer more often because you saw an ad for a particular brand of beer.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#84

Post by pmarreck »

dyarosla wrote: post #70
Alex3917 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.

Source re:addictiveness?

Alcohol: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...

Sugar: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-...

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#85

Post by [deleted] »

FreeFull wrote: post #69
bunderbunder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

{ "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demons…

It could also be the case that advertising changes which particular product people choose (say, which brand of beer), but doesn't affect the demand for beer overall.

[deleted]

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#86

Post by runarberg »

umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

It’s banned in Iceland. The big breweries simply offer a low alcohol with the same branding and advertise those. Poor tourists end up being the only ones buying them, not knowing they are low alcohol, as they are allowed to sell the low alcohol beers in the grocery stores while regular beer can only be sold at the state run liqueur stores.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#87

Post by eternalny1 »

moroleth wrote: post #62
umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop…

> significantly harder to get addicted to

Are you sure about that? It has negatively affected millions of people in the US.

"A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this month finds that the rate of alcohol use disorder, or what's colloquially known as “alcoholism,” rose by a shocking 49 percent in the first decade of the 2000s."

One in eight American adults.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#89

Post by scythe »

I think a smaller but still effective first step would be to label sugary products as such. Many people may be unaware of the number of things they consume which are more than 50% refined sugar by dry weight. A great deal of "fruit" products fall in to this category.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#90

Post by dmoy »

retiredcoder wrote: post #50
jhrmnn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Scandinavian countries show that if you do not prohibit completely, but just make people jump through some hoops to get it and/or make it very expensive, it sort of works.

I find that there is much more smoking (including indoor) and drinking in Denmark than most of any other place I lived, or maybe I am just older now and can’t the hangovers are much longer??

Maybe they meant Sweden/Norway only? I'm not sure. I think the alcohol tax in Sweden is like a full 7x higher than Denmark. I could be wrong there. This is second hand from an old co worker, and years out of date.
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