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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what articles in 2050's are going to say about such things in the 2010's.

"Social networks knew all along that the dopamine-based intermittent reward system of their products was causing decreased attention spans, addictive behaviors, and mental illness, but continued expanding until the whole globe was in a stupor."

From Sleeper (1973), set in a future USA:

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes

“Food and drink companies knew all along that sugar was making you obese and diabetic.”

The difference is that most/all sugars are not inherently harmful, and we believe that they can be consumed safely at reasonable doses. A bit of glucose or fructose won't kill you, and is a (small) natural component of your diet. So banning sugar would be rather hard, compared to complex toxic chemicals which can't be processed by our bodies, decay slowly, and where we really have fairly limited reason to put in products.

The problem is at least twofold:

- some foodstuff is optimized for addictiveness, with far too much sugar, starting at the craddle.

- nutrition science has been purposefully sent in the wrong direction for decades.

Fat (edit: typically) causes type 2 diabetes, not sugar.

I would like to read more about this if you wouldn't mind sourcing your facts.

I believe you mean obesity, not dietary fat.

Is this what your meant to write?

I've worked on diabetes medical devices for about 8 years, did some research on diabetes to augment my ability to work on said diabetes medical devices, and personally know several people with type 1 diabetes and as well type 2 diabetes.

Did you mean instead to write: Sugar causes type 2 diabetes, not fat?

https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/11/17/fat-is-the-cause-of-ty...

I suppose high sugar consumption could cause it, but it doesn't look like that is the typical mechanism.

Michael Greger, the author of that post, owns the website nutritionfacts.org. He appears to be taking the celebrity doctor career route, since his bio boasts about the lectures he gives and appearing on the Dr. Oz show.

Shows us something peer reviewed.

Edit: I haven't found anything to definitively say Greger is a quack, but given that searching his name brings up mainly alternative medicine type sites, I remain suspicious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_causes_of_diabetes_m...

Let's just hope articles are still being written in the 2050's

The science was mostly settled and obvious on climate change, to the extent that the corporate actors with the most incentive to pretend it was nothing acknowledged it. They invested heavily in contingency plans under the assumption that it was only a matter of time until regulation made it untenable to burn fossil fuels for energy on anything like the previous scale. Nothing was done.

Lets start with the fairly obvious: DHS and TSA knew the airport scanners cause cancer.

I can't believe people used to _douse their food crops_ with glyphosate!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

Doubtful. Glyphosate is one of the safest and most effective herbicides developed. If we develop alternatives to herbicides, such as GMOs or different growing methods, I can see that reaction to herbicides in general but not specifically glyphosate.

From one friend which is working in agriculture, glyphosate was used before planting the crops, to remove invasive species. But it does not change the fact that it's toxic to humans.

Glyphosate is also used to get cereals to dry up faster once they've grown enough.

One big one is air pollution. It is huge in terms of health affects on the population but we ignore it because of the feeling that it cannot be helped. When we finally clean our air it is going to seem ridiculous that we accepted our faith to live our whole lives in toxic fumes for two whole centuries.

We've already made huge strides in this. Here's [0] a gallery of shots of LA smog in the middle part of the last century. It's full of pictures of people crying because the air pollution is stinging their eyes. It's nearly unthinkable today, aside from the random winter day in Salt Lake where an inversion traps everything. But it was a daily occurrence back then!

[0] http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-air-pollution-0428-pictur...

Apple knew all along their phones give you cancer.

(I don't actually believe this is true. Don't hurt me.)

"There was a powerful sugar and corn lobby which artificially lowered the price of their goods so healthier, cheaper options could not compete."

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