Diabetes is not always a byproduct of over consuming sugar and a company producing sugary snacks and diabetes pills does not force or even encourage over consumption of sugar.
I don't see what the actual problem is.
I don't see what the actual problem is.
Actually they do encourage you to eat a lot of sugar. Specially children. Their marketing campaigns are specially tailored to that objective. Just look at the cereal advertisements, most of their cereal brands have a lot of sugar in them.
If that is not encouraging over consumption of sugar I don't know what is...
I met a breakfast food operative in the supermarket once. I told him I thought his company should offer a low sugar version. He said everyone tells them to do so, but once it's on the shelves it does not sell.
People want less sugar in the abstract. But they love sugar in their shopping carts, in the mornings, and in their mouths.
1. It's quite possible (though it's a huge rabbit hole we shouldn't plumb here) that they were taxing the wrong macronutrient entirely, that is to say, that fat on the body is more a factor of sugar going in than fat going in. So in addition to imposing costs it may have failed to give benefits (whereas had it worked to improve health outcomes maybe it would have been worth the costs of enforcement etc.)
2. The Danes taxing butter?!? That seems extremely odd given the dairy industry and culture. But I suppose major kudos for being able to overcome such prior biases to even run the experiment.
This is about as sensible as saying that Krispy Kreme isn't pushing sugary foods, people just happen to prefer donuts with lots of sugar in them.
> He said everyone tells them to do so, but once it's on the shelves it does not sell. People want less sugar in the abstract. But they love sugar in their shopping carts, in the mornings, and in their mouths.
This sounds a little too just-so.
I don't know many kids that do the shopping :)
It's parents that choose the sugary breakfast cereals for their children. I think many have the capacity to make a healthy, informed decision, but for some reason they do not. Marketing is likely at least part of the reason.
Companies know they influence purchasing decisions through the manipulation of children.
Diabetes is a pretty good reason.
People who eat a lot of processed meat also tend to eat a lot of refined carbs...
> These results remained significant after further adjustment for intakes of dietary fiber, magnesium, glycemic load, and total fat. Intakes of total cholesterol, animal protein, and heme iron were also significantly associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
> Furthermore, total red meat intake was positively associated with total energy intake, intakes of all fatty acids, cholesterol, and protein but inversely associated with dietary carbohydrate, fiber, magnesium intakes, and glycemic load. Similar associations were observed for total meat and processed meat.
and also
> In the age- and energy-adjusted models, total red meat and processed meat were significantly associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes
This study does not go into refined carbs, but it does adjust for total energy. Don't focus on just this one paper. They this is just one of many such papers. The link between meat and diabetes is well established at this point.
Here's a meta analysis for example: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/121/21/2271.full
> Red meat intake was not associated with CHD (n=4 studies; relative risk per 100-g serving per day=1.00; 95% confidence interval, 0.81 to 1.23; P for heterogeneity=0.36) or diabetes mellitus (n=5; relative risk=1.16; 95% confidence interval, 0.92 to 1.46; P=0.25). Conversely, processed meat intake was associated with 42% higher risk of CHD (n=5; relative risk per 50-g serving per day=1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.07 to 1.89; P=0.04) and 19% higher risk of diabetes mellitus (n=7; relative risk=1.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.11 to 1.27; P<0.001). Associations were intermediate for total meat intake.
Note that "processed meat" means any method of extending shelf-life like smoking, curing, adding salt or preservatives, etc. but excludes freezing. None of the the meat-eaters I have known (including myself) really differentiate between processed and unprocessed meat when it comes to their diet.
Edit: All these studies blame just processed meat at the moment. But keep in mind that all we were discussing so far was diabetes. There are more than enough good reasons to avoid all animal-based food, including dairy. I will not go into that now. My intention was to show that sugar has been made the scapegoat for diabetes. There are plenty of other diseases that sugar does not contribute to, but meat does.
A product sold as breakfast, that consists of 25% sugar, absolutely qualifies as harmful.
I have kids, it's a constant battle even though we have no TV and I'm fortunate enough to have enough time to educate them. I'm constantly fighting with a whole room of people who are disgusting scumbags with access to millions of advertising spend.
He's also going against the professionals who already succeeded in imposing the norm and simply have to maintain it today.
I don't think education is the silver bullet, but habit forming is. For example, what is the habit you resort to when deprived of sleep, late for work and kids are throwing a tantrum? Sometimes that habit lies in preparation, something most of are are not very good at.
A product designed to impair judgement absolutely qualifies as harmful.
How about McDonalds? Or Coca-Cola? Should we just ban all marketing because we're no longer adept at making responsible decisions for ourselves and our children?
Over here (EU), the purpose of a corporation does not have to be maximising profit (although that is the default) and CEO does not have to use every legal method to maximize profit, at all costs.
The CEO of Nestle could say something as simple as "acting in this manner will be perceived negatively and will harm our future sales" and they would be safe from legal action.
But let's also point out that fact that diabetes is -not- caused by sugar consumption itself. There is a genetic strain, and there is a strain caused by obesity. Does sugar lead to obesity? Yes, it can, but it does not directly cause diabetes. This is an important distinction.
It's called vertical integration and it's not accidental.
And when consumed in moderation, has no adverse affect. Poor diet is you, not a company.
Nestle is simply going where the money is. If you need diabetes pills because of your poor decisions though, that is your fault.
They also advertise it like crazy.
How are these two things meaningfully different?
First of all, it is going a bit far to say they don't encourage over consumption of sugar. Nestle dropped a couple of billion on advertising last year [1], and that is primarily sugary food, or at least food that's broadly unhealthy.
Secondly, what about the tobacco companies? They did not force anyone to consume their products either; but with strict limiting of their marketing, especially to young children, the rate of smoking has gone down a lot in the States.
Studies show that willpower is a limited resource [2]. If you are being assaulted on all sides by a barrage of advertising, cheap snacks on display, and have been marketed to from your childhood, you are going to have a much harder time abstaining from these products.
I understand, or at least guess that you are putting forth a point of personal responsibility here – "Hey, don't eat those Hot Pockets, and you will be all good". But there are a ton of obstacles to that. These large food companies have pretty much ensured that most "convenience" stores carry only their products, and have little to no fresh produce or what you would consider "healthy" food. If you live in a poor neighborhood, a lot of times the only place that sells produce is located really far away, like 5 or 10 miles.
Thus, for some people it is clearly easier to eat healthy, and maybe some of that is on account of their socioeconomic class, current health, etc. But extrapolating that to all people should be a bit more nuanced, and maybe these companies' marketing should be a bit more regulated.
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[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/286531/nestle-advertising...
[2] https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-limited-resource.pd...
You said it yourself. It's not _always_ a (direct) byproduct of over consuming sugar. However, it often is.
There is no direct cause and effect, producing sugary snacks does not cause diabetes. People choose to over consume to the point they develop diabetes.
People's lack of self control created a market, Nestle wants to be one of the companies in that market.
And if anyone wanted to begin new a behavior harmful to others, they would only have to ensure others also do it.
Decisions have to made on values, not whether someone else is already doing it. If someone's getting away with a crime, it doesn't mean you get to do it, too. It still means neither of you should be doing it.
Surely if you're taking the dry, deterministic outlook on this discussion you'd take this into consideration.
From birth, everything we process with our senses adds to our understanding of the world and our ability to navigate it. If Nestle has enough money to flood the market with information supporting themselves, how can you expect people to make the right choices? And remember, not everyone has the fortune of growing up in a balanced environment that allows them to evolve a rational way of thinking, so they aren't just gonna jump on HN and start doing some research.
You can't just take the first order approximation. You gotta do the full expansion, man.
Refined carbs in general are the big issue, but sugar in particular is a very large part of the problem. It's difficult to buy any processed food that doesn't contain sugar these days.
> or even encourage over consumption of sugar
They market sugar-laden foods to children, such as sickly-sweet breakfast cereals - IMO they do encourage over consumption of sugar.
> I don't see what the actual problem is
I think the problem with Nestle doing both of these things is that it creates a pretty clear conflict of interest - to maximise revenue, they need to sell as many sugar laden products as they can, so they can sell more much diabetes medication.