Why not both? It's an arms race. Why not supply both sides?
I can see that going down well in other industries. The automobile industry can engineer metal fatigue into their axle joints and sell you replacements. Microsoft can build bugs into Windows and sell you critical updates to fix the flaw. Chair makers can sell you chairs with legs attached by screws that are slightly too short so they can sell you more screws of the correct size to allow you to remain safely seated...
I guess it would stimulate the economy.
In terms of Windows having bugs - unless you are a dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist who hates everything Microsoft stands for then it's fairly self evident that Microsoft doesn't intentionally introduce bugs into their products.
But a Tobacco company exists solely to hook their customers on their products. There sure is planned obsolescence, but the ones who they plan on becoming obsolete and thus discarded are their customers!
Isn't that just a loonie interpretation? Making Butterfingers available for sale don't "intentionally harm" anyone. Surely you're not working on an "attractive nuisance" sort of legal theory here.
P.S. If you are smoking Butterfingers you are doing it wrong.
Let's not forget our history here, since it wasn't exactly all that long ago. For decades, the consensus has been that the root cause of dietary issues is excessive fat in the diet, not sugar. Sugar was on the top of the food pyramid not because it was "bad" for you, but merely because it displaced other better things. I've been flame-roasted on HN in the last few years for being on the anti-sugar side, because consensus science and official government positions were strongly against the idea. It still isn't even the consensus today that sugar is the problem.
(My read on the current situation is that the evidence strongly indicates that sugar is a major problem, though probably not the only one, and that the government is moving as quickly as it can to adjust its recommendations while never having to admit they were in any way wrong, which is a process that takes many, many years of little slight tweaks so that at every point they have cover to claim this is what they were saying all along. Such moral cowardice where they'd rather let millions of people continue hurting and dying rather than take even a hint of responsibility is why I don't take my scientific cues from the government and recommend against anyone else doing it either.)
Trying to show that Nestle is "deliberately harming" people would require basically claiming that they should have known all nutrition science and government position was wrong and to some extent is wrong, since treating "Sugar is bad" as consensus is still premature!
(The mercy is that nobody has ever said it's good for you, unlike transfats, so nobody really looks at you too weirdly if you drop it out of your diet.)
Anything excessive in the diet will lead to gaining weight and eventually to obesity.
I can not say which will lead to diabetes faster, consuming extra 1000 calories daily in fat or in sugar, but in terms of fat gain results will be similar.
The government recommendations are most unfortunate, as they concentrate on macronutrients. So when *fat is bad" people will start eating sugary snacks, and when eventually it changes to "sugar is bad", fat will be added to everything instead of sugar.
It would be more positive to suggest eating more whole, unprocessed foods, but I'm sure political issues will never allow that.
Having made sure to stay focused on my core point, I'm going to point out that you're basically begging the question. The model of diabetes as unrelated to the form of incoming calories is the standard model, and that is specifically what is being questioned. Basically just reiterating the standard model isn't really an argument. And it's not that hard to imagine that sugar really is related when we are discussing the mechanism the body uses to regulate sugar. Specifically sugar, the pancreas is not responsible for regulating some sort of ontological "generic obesity particles".
Probably. I think the following is still controversial:
My read on the current situation is that the evidence strongly indicates that sugar is a major problem
There are multiple possible causes, or a combination of any number of such causes
- Excessive sugar
- Excessive fat
- Combination of fat and sugar
- Excessive calories
What is the root cause? I currently tend to think that the problem started to really accelerate when a lot of processed foods manufactured to be extremely palatable by hitting just the right combination of fat and sugar, entered the market.
For references, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) and the book "Salt, Sugar, Fat" by Michael Moss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"In the potlatch, the host in effect challenged a guest chieftain to exceed him in his 'power' to give away or to destroy goods. If the guest did not return 100 percent on the gifts received and destroy even more wealth in a bigger and better bonfire, he and his people lost face and so his 'power' was diminished."