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Comment by davidgh | Hacker News Reader

I agree that blanket warning messages tend to help very little.

However, I do find that actual data does influence my behavior. I’ve been particularly surprised at how much calorie information published on restaurant menus impacts my decisions.

So, rather than a general warning that will be so widely published that it’ll be ignored, give me more data. If you can make the data visual, even better.

For example, you’ll note on food labels that the sugar is represented in grams, but there’s no associated percentage like there is for the other items on the label. When you show me that this bottle of Coke contains double what I should consume for an entire day I think that will help me and will also incentivize manufactures to think more about the sugar content they add.

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Yeah if they just replaced grams with teaspoons as was proposed originally in the 70s, the data would be a lot more accessible.

This would be incredibly annoying when you actually want to record it. We should be using more metric measurements, not less.

I agree. Metric makes it much easier to compare things.

This is true, and I’m all for metric, but this isn’t a question of imperial vs metric. It’s about taking this intentionally obscured data and making it accessible and understandable for people. The food industry lobbied to have it presented in this technical way for a reason.

I guess best would be if every can of soda had a picture of the amount of sugar in it. That may illustrate things nicely and understandably. Most people don't really connect numbers and measurements to reality.

They don't even need to be using more metric measurements, just stop using volume measurement for things that are much better suited for weight measurements.

Screw the scientists. They're smart enough to do the unit conversions.

Values for the general public should be in the units the general public uses for those things.

agreed - if someone asked me to measure out 50 grams of sugar i have no idea how much that would be

About 4 tablespoons of sugar.

Aka a quarter cup. (Yay imperial units!)

That's roughly what's done in the UK (maybe EU wide - not sure), and red, amber, green colour coded.

Then it's rendered useless for at a glance. The only thing that seems to survive as intended is the colour coding.

A bar of chocolate might have a "portion size" of 8 squares, but give daily amounts and percentage thereof based on 4 or 2 squares. Presumably so they can avoid having to state that a portion is 235% of some recommended daily amount.

Some portion sizes are ridiculous - like half a can or bottle where most would drink all. The "traffic light" sizes are equally ridiculous, but very often different. Both are often different to the amount most regular folks would eat or drink.

The reason nutrition labels dont work is because nobody knows how to put things in relation. How much sugar should be in this item? How much fiber should I eat in a day? The government tried to fix this issue with food pyramids, plates, etc, but were corroded by propaganda, and/or poor understanding of nutrition. A gallon of water a day is ridiculous for most. Your diet is really dependent on how active you are, among several other factors. Nutrition is not a one size fits all type of thing.

We dont really understand proper nutrition yet. Recommendations are constantly changing, what used to be good is now bad, and vice versa. Companies just need to continue telling us what is in our food, and let us do our best.

Adding a percentage based statistic wont help because daily intake stats are wide guesses at best, and most people dont care anyway.

The most effective way to teach nutrition is by cooking. When people can see what is going into their food, they naturally use less. Also, try changing your diet a bit, and feel how it effects your mood. Other than that, if someone wants to make bad decisions, thats their choice. There is no need for these aggressive campaigns against sugar like the sugar line proposed above.

At this point I think I'm with Denis Leary on this one: Take the warning labels off everything and let nature run its course for a few generations.

I think we're already doing that now

Despite being presented with some data (kcal info) you don't know how to interpret it. It is, in fact, irrelevant. Calorie data is not helpful in determining proper eating habits. The actually useful measure is average meal insulin index times food quantity. This is a better metric of obesification since insulin drives weight gain.

Or just a macronutrient breakdown.

A diverse diet consisting of low average insulin index foods is the ticket to a long health span. No need to watch macros as long as the diet meets this criteria.

Can you tell me more? This is a bold claim, I'm curious what are you basing your apparent confidence on.

I saw something similar a couple of months back, can't remember where it was off the top off my head.

It may have been one of Jason Fung's youtube videos - he is an MD and big proponent of intermittent fasting. (As a side not intermittent fasting has been used to reverse type 2 diabetes. Lack of insulin sensitivity would seems to be a big problem).

You're being pedantic here. If you're counting calories and trying to stay within some sort of range you're probably going to be OK - especially if you're working out even a little bit.

If the calorie info makes you choose a salad over a plate of fried food covered in grease it is 100% doing its job.

Not an expert, but I do take an interest in nutrition and read a reasonable amount on it, and it does appear that glycemic load is more and insulin spiking is important to overall health than calories to me from what I read.

Admitadly I may have a bias as i am not overweight, and my interest is in being healthy rather than loosing weight.

Well, the calorie estimate is also just that, an estimate. So you don't even know what the real number is.

Still I have found that it gives you enough of a heuristic to be effective when you do pay close attention. (Source: I lost 100 lbs over 18 months)

Good job with the weight loss!

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