Hacker News Reader

Comment by j-c-hewitt | Hacker News Reader

Not totally true. Cigarettes are a very effective appetite suppressant. That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much.

Obesity has skyrocketed as cigarette and other tobacco use has declined. Obesity also increases the risk for most types of cancer, so it is just trading increased lung cancer risk for some people for increased risk of both heart disease and cancer.

In general nature does not like free lunches. There are costs and trade-offs in everything and smart phones are not an exception to that.

View on HN

Do you have any source for "That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much." ?

As far as I can tell most low wage / manual labor jobs are plagued with cigarette smoking because it allows more breaks / and it's a way to kill time.

Here in germany a lot of 30s people picked up smoking during their mandatory military service (cigarettes were free to avoid creation of black markets, people who smoked had more breaks + herd behavior)

You’re saying it’s not even one of the reasons?

I don't know, I have a hard time thinking someone would go: "I better start smoking these cancer inducing sticks, I've read studies proving they reduce appetite".

I doubt people go out of there way to start new addictions voluntarily, but maybe I'm too hopeful.

Kitchen work is also extremely “crunch-y” with high stakes blocks of time where any mistakes you make have compounding costs. A stress relief drug like nicotine can help you regulate your mood around that cycle.

There are better ways to regulate mood and stress but most of them can’t be packaged and sold for $5, which makes them unlikely to proliferate under capitalism.

If only there was a way to both not smoke and control your appetite, and maybe even eat less processed food while you're at it.

Alas, I guess we'll just have to leave that hard problem to the scientists and philosophers.

I'm really unsure what you're implying. What's the appetite control method you have in mind?

I can tell you that in my experience most barely-processed foods don't do any better at filling me than most processed foods. And some of the worst candidates for appetite control are nuts. So I hope "less processed food" was supposed to be an effect, not the cause.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com