I'm not sure why we keep looking downstream at the problem when there is in fact an underlying SINGLE cause upstream that can address a lot of the issues. Remove the subsidies, allow food to cost a bit more, financially incentivize people to eat 1) better food and 2) smaller quantities of food, and let the downstream problems like obesity, diabetes, etc. take care of themselves.

I believe that a person's diet is very often (not always) shaped by cultural influences. If your parents forced you to eat a healthy diet as a child you are infinitely more likely to maintain those habits when you get older. I know this is true for me, and the converse is true for a lot of people I know.

In any case, I can't agree more with this article. If you ever want to see a microcosm of American society up-close and personal, just take a trip to your local 7-Eleven. See what people are buying and moreover, what is being offered for sale. I don't believe 7-Eleven is evil. What you see on the shelves is simply a reflection of what their customer base wants. If their customers wanted salads and tofu, that's all you would see on the shelves instead of one salad in the back of a bin surrounded by donuts, candy bars, beer, rotating hot dogs, and lottery tickets.

The fact is that the Americans who get enough exercise and eat a sensible diet are a depressing rarity. I know people who alternate between McDonald's and Five Guys every day. I don't blame the businesses and I don't blame the companies pushing the products. People have more choice now than ever before which is a good thing but I wish there were a way to protect kids from parents with terrible judgment.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2012/07/30/how-the-dr...

But there are also medical opinions forming that indicate corn syrup is more damaging than natural sugars...there was a post here on HN a few weeks back that I can't find right now about this.

Michael Pollan may be on the right track with his advocacy, but let's not dumb the debate down to focusing on something there is little evidence for.

I can't say what the cause of the high-salt is, but we have a good idea what might be contributing (at least) to the high sugar/high fat parts of their diet.

Corn syrup has permeated just about anything that doesn't come off of a vine or out of the ground. HFCS is added to bread, fruit juices, hot dogs and even soy sauce. It is quite a chore to find bread without HFCS.

Once you get used to good food that doesn't contain gobs of salt and HFCS, the stuff that does is disgusting.

http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/when-a-crop-become...

A tub of chocolate spread is a healthy option because it has hazelnuts and dairy? A bottle of soda is diet because it substitutes one of the dozen chemicals?

Compare that with the produce aisle where there's no marketing and it becomes clear the worst the product the harder it needs to be marketed.

A few years ago I was enraged walking through a Whole Foods store (for the first time) and coming upon one Homeopathic remedy after another in an entire aisle of medicines that weren't. It took me some time to realize that Whole Foods is not in the business of keeping me healthy. They are in the business of selling products. And so is everyone else.

It is in the supermarket's best interest (short-term at least) to not manually stock everything but rather let vendors of different product lines setup their special displays. That's how you get the entire Doritos-line product display. It is in the best interest of the Doritos agent to maximize the sales at this particular store to get the highest commission. Doritos has learnt that giving a commission based on store-specific sales is the best way to maximize sales. The same goes for the Weight Loss and Diabetes mags, and even the pharmaceutical aisles.

Additionally, it is in the best interest (again, at least in the short term) of the residents of the neighborhood to have one store they can go to in order to buy everything. Think of everyone aligning their actions with the best of their abilities to benefit themselves the most, like a crowd of hundred gather around a street performance to give themselves the best vantage point, and you end up with the world as is today.

This does not mean it is the best the world can be. Certainly it is possible to optimize for net good at the cost of specific losses to certain entities but then we come back to the debate of who decides who should pay more taxes or lose their license to engage in trade. So as it stands, I am ok with seeing obviously unhealthy products aimed at the most vulnerable because unless the market wants otherwise, doing anything to change that is going to shake up more than a few foundations that build our economy and society.

For one thing, food distribution in the US acts essentially like an oligopoly. There are a surprisingly few number of food distributors with a huge influence on which products are emphasized in the store. Companies like Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola can use their size to push out smaller companies and local farmers that produce healthier foods before the consumer even has a chance to find those products on shelves. As a result, in economic terms, most consumers are operating without anything close to perfect information and, consequently, aren't really "maximizing their personal utility functions."

Second, a big reason people are buying a lot of these calorie-dense, unhealthy, processed "foods" is that they are cheap compared to, say, fresh fruits and vegetables. However, there are massive health care cost externalities that aren't factored into the costs of those products. It's a classic market failure, and if those costs were properly factored in, consumers would probably consume a lot less of them.

This is more like an unplanned emergence of manufactured consent in the agricultural/food/health industry. No single company, lobby, or agency planned on turning our world upside down and replacing grocery stores and farmer's markets with supermarkets and drive-thrus.

What happened was that over the past hundred years, innovative companies in the food industry came out with delicious snacks, fast foods, and ready-to-eat meals that created a market that never existed before. When these companies grew and got stronger, their marketing message became embedded in the common sense - eat cereal for breakfast, drink 8 glasses of water etc. It was in the best interest of these companies to say "Tired at 2pm? Take some 5 hour energy!" And the consumers voluntarily started stocking up on 48 packs of Capri Sun and 128oz bags of Ruffles.

As the companies grew, they were acquired and optimized to sell only the most profitable products. Over time organizations and agency sprouted up to protect the interests of the industry's capital, labor, and assets. If that meant ensuring corn was subsidized, so be it. If sugarcane sugar tariffs needed to remain high, so be it.

It is easy to claim market failure looking at this solely from the supply side but from the demand aspect, the current market is paradise. Regardless of how good or bad the products are, people genuinely want them. Every now and then, I myself want a can of Pringles. Fulfilling the demands at prices low enough to satiate the consumers does not seem like a market failure to me.

The actual market is comprised of the decisions people make, given all the man-made rules and available information. It's not something we decide to adopt; it's simply the way humans allocate resources in the face of choice and scarcity. And for many reasons, it doesn't usually optimize for anything in particular, besides short-term utility. Going laissez faire is like riding a bike with no hands. You'll be stable for a while, but when you have to react to real-world changing conditions, if you don't take action, you're inevitably going to wreck.

Unless legality comes into play, my rules of morality should not affect your economic purchases and vice versa.

Completely agree. Of course in this particular case there's a lot more than just morals involved, since choosing to become obese has economic and other impacts on everyone in the society.

I had understood your original point to be that this was all (morally) okay because it's how the market decided, which was what I was responding to. I may well have misunderstood your point.

Anyone know why they're not in America?

I used to love them when I lived in Germany. I found it hilarious when I discovered the reason because its one case where "Won't someone please think of the children" results in a mental seg-fault if you stop to think about it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise#Overview

The blog post attempts to use emotional manipuation to win people its side.

For instance, it ignores the fundamental tradeoff involved (freedom vs. public health), it uses vulgarity in the title, and has a massive platitude at the end. Moreover, it is highly focused around pictures, which is a giveaway for an attempt at emotional manipulation.

In summary, this is highly juvenile and evasive writing and thinking.

Even if you agree with the author's ultimate point of view, you should feel insulted that he would try to appeal to you you in a way that is not based in reason and logic.

If I am responsible for helping you when you're sick then am responsible for helping you not get sick in the first place.

We shouldn't have to. The universe doesn't owe me anything, and nor do I owe it anything. And socialized healthcare is manifestly bad for me individually and manifestly bad for everyone in the long run.

I would be completely fine with all this stuff if insurance premiums were tied to weight/health - unfortunately for everyone who does exercise and stays in shape, they are not .... yet

> Obesity is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and is associated with high medical expenditures. It has been suggested that obesity prevention could result in cost savings. The objective of this study was to estimate the annual and lifetime medical costs attributable to obesity, to compare those to similar costs attributable to smoking, and to discuss the implications for prevention. …. Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scienc...

You start off with a dismissal of the author's point based on a completely subjective value judgment, then point out some trivial rhetorical techniques to try to discredit their argument, and then you make another completely unsubstantiated value judgment by saying that we should be insulted by any argument that's not laid out in bland logical terms.

What part of what you have said is based in reason or logic? Should I be insulted by your comment as well?

I could pick apart every piece of what you said, but I doubt that would be productive, so I'll just focus on one particularly damning thing.

> make another completely unsubstantiated value judgment by saying that we should be insulted by any argument that's not laid out in bland logical terms

Yes, I have made a value judgement that people should appeal to each other using reason and logic.

If you do not agree with that, there is no point in discussing _anything_ with you, because you cannot be reached.

(As a sidenote, that value judgement is not subjective. It's also not unsubstantiated. However, even if you _were_ interested in reasoned and logical arguments, it would not be useful for me to give you a philosophical treatise on this topic in the HN comments. Particularly not for something that all reasonable people (by the very definition of "reasonable"!) agree on already.)

Anyway, your point isn't nearly as straightforward and uncontroversial as you've made it out to be. You're not just saying that people should discuss things using logic, you're saying that people should discuss things using logic exclusively. Or at least that's how I interpret your statement that we should be insulted when somebody uses rhetorical devices.

If you really have the philosophical or mathematical background it would take to make a proper argument grounded only in logic, that would be one thing (and I suppose I can't conclude that you don't, based solely on the lack of evidence so far). What you see entirely too often online, though, are people who claim to be making perfectly logical arguments, but are only able to do so because they're extremely cavalier with their axioms ("freedom trumps health", perhaps, or "it is only possible to have a rational discussion with somebody who explicitly rejects all other forms of reasoning".)

And, for the record, I am explicitly not claiming to be making a proper, logically sound argument here. I acknowledge and accept that I don't know how to do it properly, and I'd most likely just make a mess of things.

We have free healthcare already.

> We have free healthcare already.

Free as in beer, but unfree as in freedom. Also, even beer as to be paid for by somebody.

Don't get me wrong, I love our healthcare system. I am trying to explain the reasoning for the authors post.

"Slang term used in Australia to refer to gambling slot machines. Pokies can be found in many hotels and pubs in Australia."

Thought I need to agree food is not.

Anyways two or three cokes a week won't hurt.

Drinking Daily coffee won't hurt.

Eating at McDonalds or BurgerKing twice a week won't hurt.

If you do sports twice a week. (And eat some Vitamins, but that is usually no problem I believe.)

But obviously it depends on how active you are, plus I don't think it's up to the supermarket to ensure that people eat healthily.

As a european living in the US, I am appalled at the sheer quantity of vitamins/pseudo health products that my roommates consume. Do you really need this? I don't know a single person in France who takes vitamins on regular basis.

If you sit on your pc in your office or at home, and have bowl of fruits next to you, you'll eat one or 2 per day and then you got ALL vitamins you need.

I would argue that 6 x 30mins is the minimum and mcdonalds should be once a month, not twice a week.

And skip the vitamins.

The fact you think in any shape or form vitamins have a relevance to you shows you have a total miss understanding of food science and how it relates to you.

Unless you are starving because of drought in a poor country or are living on the streets with an addiction, then fair enough.

The problem I see is that there are two terms of "healthy" food that people tend to confuse.

1) Food that makes you Overweight 2) Food that does not have specific oils/ Vitamins.

Apologys for not writing clearly there, I tried to make the point that you usually don't need to care about Vitamins.

http://statspotting.com/obesity-stats-half-of-the-u-s-popula...

(The other broad rule that distracts me in these cases: If a female subject in an advertisement is a brunette, it's usually targeting women. If blonde, it's more likely to be targeting men.)

Reading materials for those with gluten-free diets aren't so tabboo, why is it so for food recommendations that help keep a healthy A1c level?

http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/overview/

The magazine is mounted on a shelf encrusted with boxes of discounted chocolates/candy. I think the point was the irony - perhaps after stocking up on Mars bars we can mentally pat ourselves on the back for flicking through a personal-health rag or feel less bad about gobbling sweets as we look at overweight/deformed celebrities.

More seriously though, Australia is only marginally better than the US with this whole problem. We need to push the whole health thing a whole lot more.

I like my weekly chocolate and sarsaparilla ration, but I know it's not something I should do every day. Stopping junk food from becoming a daily thing for people is a great first step.

I also play sport at least twice a week, but again, we've become a lot more loose in that department over the past 10 years. All year round sport is meant to be compulsory for virtually all schools, but too many people sit out nowadays. If we get people playing sport at school, hopefully we can get more than 75% playing it well past the end of Uni.

But otherwise, I don't think this sort of advertising is bad or should be banned, rather we need to tighten up our education about nutrition and regular sport.

That said, I strongly disagree, to the point of revulsion, with the implicit desire of the author, which I see echoed in various forms and about various subjects, that the government take action to ban any of this. ("Imagine if 65% of the population had a gambling problem and we let the banks put pokies inside ATMs." - emphasis mine).

It appalls me that HN is so adamantly desirous of the freedom of the press, the freedom of anonymity, the freedom of assembly, etc., but sees no problem with calling for the mass restrictions of freedoms in work, housing, healthcare, and the like. Even, apparently, the freedom to choose what you eat. It's revolting to us that someone might decide what you should be able to say, but we are happy to make moral pronouncements from our padded office chairs on others' behalf, as long as it's something that won't affect us.

Let me be clear - I am not absolving these companies of all wrong. They commit fraud when they lie about ingredients, they are implicit in assault or even murder when they sell actively toxic (as opposed to simply unhealthy) food and advertise that it is safe, and they regularly abuse our screwed-up political system to gain unfair and immoral advantages over competitors. These things are all wrong.

Selling unhealthy food, with an honest description of what's in it, isn't.

He even mentions it in the post - consumers are voting with their feet. We can disdain the stereotypical "people of Walmart" all we want, but we have no business forcing them to live the way we think is best. We're no better than the NSA if we start going down that road. No one is coercing them to buy there. There are plenty of cheap and healthy alternatives. We just have to come to terms with the fact that they are making a poor choice, and we have no right to force them to stop.

We absolutely should encourage them not to. It's perfectly fine if you choose to boycott these places. It's fine if you don't let your children eat that food, and it's fine if you make it your life's work to making that food obsolete. But you have to draw the line there. Once you start forcing people, at the threat (ultimately) of death, to eat certain things, you are no better than the NSA forcing people at the threat of death to say or not say certain things. That's not our place.

</lengthy rant>

All that said, he's right. The world is, as he bluntly puts it, "fucking insane", and this is one of the ways that shows.

EDIT:

Holy cow, this article got flagged to death. Probably rightly so. It's on the third page right now, despite having 65 points in 2 hours.

Can you please clarify the difference between the two?

Also, I don't see anywhere in your post that you address the fact that drastically unhealthy choices by other citizens are born by everyone else through increased costs of health care and insurance.

And one last thing, since one of the more common strategies is taxation, calling it threat of death is a bit hyperbolic. At most it's threat of imprisonment, and it's still a bit disingenuous to call it that.

The reason I and so many others dislike government intervention so strongly is for this very reason - it is the one organization which we allow to police all others with our collective power of death, and its role should thus be as small as possible in order to avoid abusing that awful responsibility.

As for toxic vs. unhealthy food, I'm not a nutritionist or biologist, so I won't attempt a scientific distinction, but essentially someone selling drain cleaner and saying it's drinkable is wrong, while someone selling soda and saying it's drinkable isn't. A healthy person can have a soda without negative health effects - those only show up if you drink it excessively. Drain cleaner is enormously damaging to your body period, no matter your health or whether you drink it regularly or not.

That's simply untrue. The standard recommendation from nutritionists as to the healthy number of sodas to drink is zero. That's why I asked the question: the reality is that the difference between 'unhealthy' and 'toxic' is simply one of scale. Yes, clearly, drain cleaner is on one end of that scale, and soda is on another, and alcohol is somewhere near the middle. Trying to act as though there is a clear dichotomy, though, is misleading.

The reason that you and so many others who refer to taxation as threat of death are a pain to have discussions with is that you argue in such a way as to completely ignore reality. Yes, in your hypothetical theoretical worlds, there exists a narrative in which someone resisting taxation would proceed to foment a rebellion which would end in that person's death. That being the case has absolutely no place in a rational discussion of government, and simply serves to distract us from real practical issues that are worth discussing.

You seem to think (please, correct me if I'm wrong) we can divorce our philosophy from our system of government and talk only about "real practical issues", and I would politely reply that it's impossible. Whatever your idea of the meaning and purpose of government is will have fundamental implications as to what you advocate it does practically. It's not irrational to speak of the fundamentals, it's irrational to ignore them. Our philosophy is how we understand reality, and I argue that a philosophy of government that does not take into account the basic fact that they are the one organization that we view morally able to take a life is a deeply flawed and heavily unrealistic one.

As for the soda thing - sure, it's a matter of scale. Just like ph is a matter of scale. ph 6.5 is pleasantly acidic, while ph 1 will burn the flesh off your body. There are definite points where you can say "this is toxic" or "this is just unhealthy". That's where you start getting into judgment calls, made by humans. The law would of course be more nuanced than this, but ultimately it comes down to that. But it's important to note that none of it is forbidden, and if a person looks at the ingredient list (again, fraud is still illegal) and decides they want to drink it anyway, it's nobody else's business to force them not to. (A concerned talk by a close friend or relative would, of course, still be in order).

This idea of it all coming back to human judgment is, incidentally, why I believe a utopia is impossible in the current state of affairs. I have an essentially pessimistic view of human nature as it is at present (I have religious views which are positive on human nature in the long run, as it is eventually redeemed. I don't want to argue those right now, as it won't get us anywhere). But I do believe that we shouldn't give up on finding a better system just because we can't find a perfect one.

Saying drain cleaner is edible is downright murderous. I don't believe the same of soda, regardless of what your unsourced "standard nutritionists" think. It definitely isn't true of water. We have to draw some lines somewhere. Will this be abused? Of course. But it has far less impact, and thus far less opportunity for corruption, than our current system.

Obviously you can't divorce your philosophy from your views on issues insomuch as those views derive from your philosophy. That doesn't mean that you have to regress every single discussion to philosophizing by using hyperbole such that the discussion of the issues is obstructed by the discussion of your personal philosophy. The vast majority of people do not equate taxation with threat of death, so every time that is brought into the conversation, it completely derails the conversation and makes it unproductive. And no, it is not a more practical argument than I give it credit for. It is a slippery slope argument at best, and that is being exceedingly charitable.

Back to the issue at hand, the unhealthy/toxic distinction was just to try to get you to rethink your assumptions (doesn't seem to have worked). The real objection I have is the one you chose not to respond to: drastically unhealthy choices by other citizens are born by everyone else through increased costs of health care and insurance. Inevitably your response is that forcing anyone to pay for the health care of anyone else is an act of violence and therefore not permissible according to your libertarian ethics, but that means that we have to let people simply fall over dead if they can't pay for treatment, which in the opinion of most is a far greater moral wrong. If I've mischaracterized your views, I apologize in advance and am very curious to hear how you reconcile this problem.

I upvoted this article, but not because I see no problem with calling for mass restrictions. It's causing good debate and perhaps provoking thought. I do see your point, that we're not upvoting fox-news-worthy neocon propaganda for the sake of discussion. But perhaps there is a difference in the outcome of following the respective propagandas. Which one would be more "forward-thinking"? Stopping all immigration or banning pepsi from schools?

EDIT:

>Stopping all immigration or banning pepsi from schools.

I look back on this statement as a false dichotomy, as a result of the replies. My perception was challenged as a result of this article being posted in the first place and the banter that followed. I still stand by my original upvote of this article, as it lead to my own personal growth, selfish or no.

False Dichotomy. Which one would be more forward-thinking: destroying the farm subsidies that let unhealthy foods become cheaper than healthy foods and skew the market, or having governments, like the one that brought you the 'food pyramid' and pushed it on schools, decide what you can and cannot consume?

I don't care about being "forward-thinking". I care deeply about freedom. I have relatively idiosyncratic views, but I align myself largely with the libertarians except on a few social issues.

I just don't think people should be forced to do things except in very specific and limited circumstances.

I find the examples you bring up rather interesting. First, I think the right/left political system in America implied by your choice of topics is a false dichotomy. I don't think the two sides are really all that different at the core.

Pepsi in schools is a non-issue to me. My problem there is the schools themselves - this is a different argument, and I'll have it in a different comment if you want to have it. So no, I don't think it should be banned.

The immigration question is very difficult, and brings up many issues such as the real role of nations and the importance of citizenship. I haven't completely made up my mind on the issue, but I think both the major positions are wrong.

Really, I think immigration wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the cancerous explosion of government in the first place. One of the biggest problems the Right has with immigrants (other than racism, which exists and which I eschew), is that they gain access to socialized benefits they didn't have to support. I don't think the government should be forcing people to pay for these social benefits in the first place, with a few very limited exceptions.

That said, there are many other facets to the issue, so I'm not going to take any definite stand on the issue as a whole at this point.

this tactic was unintended. can you please elaborate more on how this is that?

>Pepsi in schools is a non-issue to me. My problem there is the schools themselves - this is a different argument, and I'll have it in a different comment if you want to have it. So no, I don't think it should be banned.

i agree that the problem is the schools themselves (however I am interested in your thoughts/opinions there) but i do think extremely unhealthy drinks that impede normal child growth should be banned from publicly funded institutions.

>First, I think the right/left political system in America implied by your choice of topics is a false dichotomy

agreed. i recognize this now. please see the edit to my post.

thank you.

The guilt by association essentially means it seemed were implying that because I espoused certain views also espoused by a certain political party (i.e., my comment about disliking government interference in healthcare), I was thus espousing "fox-news-worthy neocon propaganda". I don't side with the GOP or Fox News on any sort of comprehensive basis, and I think there's plenty of reasonable discussion to be had on these issues, and there are reasonable thinkers on the other side of some of these issues, if you're willing to look past the unreasonable ones. There's crazy people on your side of the aisle, too.

Back to Pepsi/schools:

When I said the problem was with the schools themselves, I meant the idea of public education in the first place. I don't think I should be forced to send my child to a government institution to learn (this battle's been mostly won). I don't think I should have to pay for education for the rest (not even close). I think the idea of government having even the tiniest bit of control over education is abhorrent. Education needs to be independent of government the same way journalism needs to be independent of government - because it shapes the thoughts of the nation, and it is astoundingly foolish to give any control of thought to the organization whose only limit is the reasoned thoughts of its populace.

It was seen vividly recently, as the hyper-liberal NEA began to bring political pressure on the children of the nation to support a specific political party, all while in a near-mandatory system that is paid for by our tax dollars.

The alternative I would pose is literally any form of private education - both homeschooling and church schools have far longer and better track records than public education, which only stems back, in its modern, Prussian form, to the early 19th century.

So in other words, the Pepsi isn't really the issue there.

>The guilt by association essentially......

I'm sorry that I implied that, i did not mean to. I was trying to give an example of the type of articles that I would not want to see one HN.

Re: public schools. I completely agree with you. thanks for elaborating. I wouldn't ever dream of raising a child if i thought i would have to put them in public school. Mind you even then I would only dream ;).

well you've helped me realize how I can better express my thoughts and have also changed my mind on a few things. cheers.

Sidenote : regulation doesn't mean banning, just tax the junk food heavily so the most vulnerable don't buy it and have clear markers it kills your brain cells just like on cigarettes & alcohol.

This is a good video on HFCS from Robert Lustig and why you should avoid it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM