Kellogg’s is going to war over Mexico’s nutrition label rules
statnews.com
statnews.com
I live in Australia, this reminds me of our tobacco plain packaging legislation [1]. A post implementation review was conducted a few years afterward [2]. Some interesting bits from the PIR conclusion:
> Applying the government’s RBM framework, the regulatory burden was estimated as $73.87 million across the entire industry (including manufacturers, importers, wholesalers and retailers).
> While it was not possible to complete a full Cost Benefit Analysis for this PIR (due to the limitations on the data available at this time and provided by industry), potential monetised benefits were also analysed including an illustrative example of health benefits. That example estimated that a 0.07 percentage point drop in smoking prevalence would be equivalent to $273 million in monetised health benefits
> Dr Chipty’s modelling also estimated a 0.55 percentage point drop in smoking prevalence in Australia, over 34 months following implementation, attributable to the 2012 packaging changes. This strong result, that is “likely understated”, is expected to grow into the future as the full effects of the 2012 packaging changes are realised over the longer term
So, within 3 years after the introduction of packaging changes, smoking prevalence throughout the population had dropped by at least half a percent (approx 100k people). It cost the tobacco industry less than $100m in one-off transitional costs, and it's estimated to have more than $2b in monetised health benefits over that three year period alone.
It also cost tobacco industry lost revenues & profits, but hey, that's their problem, maybe they can find a different business to invest in.
[1] https://www.health.gov.au/topics/smoking-and-tobacco/tobacco... [2] https://oia.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/posts/2016/02/Tob...
This reminds me of the analysis I’ve seen for marketing campaigns.
In my experience, it is easy to break one of the many assumptions inherent in methods like Diff-in-diff. Because of this I have little trust in these techniques in general.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences
Anything in the real world has many many factors affecting its consumption. What would it matter if it was trending down specifically? Or are you asking what models and statistical tools they use to make analyses like this when there are a complex set of factors at play?
Depends where you live. Visiting the US I don't remember ever seeing anyone smoking, but in Europe it's huge, especially in centra/southern/eastern Europe, including the Balkans where coffee and cigarettes are the staple of any nutritious breakfast.
I see plenty of teenagers smoking, plus on outdoor terraces and outside of offices, clubs, bars, even the balconies in my building, it's full of smokers.
Europe is a few decades behind the US on giving up smoking. Also, now the hipster thing is to switch to these e-cigarettes.
I think a lot of people, non smokers mostly, don't see all the bonding, networking, flirting, and general socializing that happens when smokers get together for a fag, which probably explains why this unhealthy habit is still very popular today in many countries. I know many people who met their SOs at smoking breaks or found out about new yet unpublished job opportunities from the chit-chat that happens at smoking breaks.
Could be because it's seen as a socially acceptable addiction to have during daytime, granting you more breaks at work. If someone goes out every 45 minutes to play games on his phone he'll be seen as a lazy slacker, but if he were to go out for a smoke, it would be more likely to be allright, especially if his boss was also a smoker.
There's something about the smoking break gatherings, from a social aspect, like asking for a cigarette, asking for a light, cupping the flame against the wind for someone, which act like natural ice breakers, conversation starters and could help create instant bonds or chit-chat opportunities, that can't be replicated at other kind of gathering during the day such as water-cooler or standings in line.
You don't need to be wealthy to smoke a lot, just bad with finances.
That’s probably because the places where people do smoke are less likely to be visited by tourists.
It's going down because of many measures that have been implemented:
- restriction of billboard advertising
- restriction of tobacco ads in film and tv
- warnings on packaging
- photos on packaging
- banning smoking in public buildings
- banning smoking in restaurants
- banning smoking in public transportation
- banning smoking near entrances
- age restrictions on buying cigarettes
- banning of automatic vending machines
etc.
Each of those have a small effect, but in total the effect is large. It's hard to measure the effectiveness of individual measures, but in aggregate it's clear that these measures significantly reduce smoking. Especially if you compare countries where these measures have not been implemented yet with countries where they were implemented sooner.
People don't give up smoking overnight, the 20 year lead the US has over these measures is not something we can expect to catch up... Smoking is going down, slowly, and I think it's because of all these measures.
I smoked for about 10 years between the mid 80s and 90s. When I started, most of the 'cool', 'sophisticated' etc people seemed to smoke. When I stopped, it was mostly a health choice, but partly because it seemed no longer 'cool', everyone I knew had given up or was trying to.
I can't even fathom why anyone would start smoking now, it seems like an affliction of the poor and/or the old rather than anything sophisticated.
All of this is mostly a change in fashion, people having a deeper awareness of the health risks, becoming aware of tobacco industry manipulation, etc. No doubt government messaging aided and supported that change, but it is not the only or even the main cause imho.
Where do you think this change is coming from? When I was a kid, there was a huge billboard right next to my school with a man wearing aviator glasses, an airplane in the background, smoking Memphis cigarettes. That was the coolest guy I've ever seen.
Compare that to 20 years later, there's a photo of a depressed guy on the package and a message "smoking causes infertility".
When I first started at uni, students still smoked in the auditorium. That was cool.
By the time I finished, people who smoked had to go outside and stand in smoking zones like animals. The opposite of cool.
There's a reason why the public perception changed. I don't think the public perception would have changed as drastically without government intervention.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/237908/smoking-rate-hits-new-lo...
Hell, when I was in high school, you could still smoke at 16.
I'd argue the health risks have become way more know, which drove most of the reduction.
I wonder whether they take into account the long-term cost of people - who quit or don't smoke because of this legislation - becoming more of a burden on the social systems because of extended life? Things like this always remind me of the 'Smoke Screen' episode from Yes, Prime Minister [1]
I can't see how that could potentially be a net positive for society.
The vast majority of smokers remain productive until they retire but they have lower lifespans. Also take into account that nicotine suppresses appetite and smokers are less likely to be overweight.
From the same report linked in this comment chain, page 53:
> As another example, the Analysis of Costs & Benefits also considers potential gains to productivity. There is sufficient evidence both in Australia and internationally to conclude that smokers take more sick leave than non-smokers. There are also academic reports that estimate the level of excess absenteeism attributable to smoking. Using these sources, and others, the Analysis of Costs & Benefits estimated productivity gains that would be realised where the tobacco plain packaging measure prevents initiation of smoking or increases the number of smokers who quit. The estimated value per working smoker avoided is $337.48 per year and the value of increased productivity per working quitter is estimated at $84.37 per year.
The report doesn't cite those studies, but here's one from Sweden:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598486/
> Smoking was found to increase the annual number of days of absence by 10.7 compared with never smoking. Controlling for risk factors at work, and thereby accounting for some of the selection of smokers into riskier jobs, reduced the effect to 9.7 days, corresponding to 38% of all annual absences due to sickness. Moreover, controlling for health status further reduced the effect of smoking to 7.7 days. The effect of smoking on sick leave was similar for men and women.
and another from Taiwan:
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/suppl_1/i33
> Using a conservative estimate of excess absenteeism from work, male smokers took off an average of 4.36 sick days and male non-smokers took off an average of 3.30 sick days. Female smokers took off an average of 4.96 sick days and non-smoking females took off an average of 3.75 sick days.
As a side note, the stark difference between those two countries in excess sick leave is the average annual days of sick leave: 25.2 in Sweden, 3.9 in Taiwan.
Sure. Smokers also probably take more breaks at work when they do show up. But that isn't the same as becoming a burden on society as the OP claimed.
look at this indian governmental press release mandating photos to be posted on tobacco packs
edit: CW. NSFL imagery on the page
So you get 500 ml bottle with nutritional info shown for every 100 ml and 250ml because that's the 'serving size'. No-one has ever drunk 250ml (8 ounces) and then left the rest for later.
"Servings" are just a convenient way to capture the fact that there are some cases where you're not expected to ingest the entire container: that's why a packet of mayonnaise and a jar of mayonnaise have near identical serving sizes, and same for packets of sugar vs boxes of sugar.
It's crazy that Coca-Cola is paying restaurants to only offer their poison (no still or sparkling water). These companies are literally making us sick.
Holy sh... that would be in the US, right? Is that even legal?
Yes, there's 20 servings in this package if by a serving you mean 1/5th of what you average adult eats in one sitting.
The one exception here is when a portion actually equates to a portion, eg. '80 calories per cookie'. Those are wonderful, and probably what the original motivation for that type of labeling was; tangible.
And %: say, peanuts 51g fats/100g -> ah, product is roughly 1/2 fat.
Personally I ignore "Serving size" as meaningless bs.
As for whole packaging: say 22g sugar / 100gr, and there's 350g in the package. 3.5x22 is too difficult to calculate in one's head? (roughly!)
While actually it's basically 100% sugar.
Maybe nobody drinks half of a modern 500ml bottle, but people certainly used to think of less than half of that as a single serving.
That's why there need to be strict rules on that. In the EU, serving sizes make sense (1 cookie or 2 slices of bread) (probably because they have to), and there always has to be the normalised by 100ml / 100g too, so you can compare even if serving sizes are lying.
Like 1 child hand full of muesli, totally typical serving size for a breakfast. Totally legit to label the sugar with A or B then.
I just get EU labels on Import products but so far I don't get it. They all have A or B and are full of sugars, sweeteners and aroma products.
Like: The box says score A but when you check the 100g list you realize that you are eating a complete meal calorie wise as snack using a realistic serving size. With little to zero nutrition value. Why A?
And it makes us even fatter
Similar when checking prices, I compare the price per 100g, not the price per randomly sized package...
The only good thing about EU labels is that they always have precise values per 100g or 100ml, which allows accurate calorie tracking vs. US labels with ridiculous serving sizes (eg. serving size is half a cookie. Who the fuck eats half a cookie)
Not always unfortunately. 2 examples I have in mind:
- biscuits are sometimes « individually » packaged by 4 or 6 (ie you buy a box containing 2 or 3 smaller packages inside) and the serving size is 2 biscuits. Real serving should be 1 package for it to make sense
- there’s a brand of fresh ravioli which I buy, the package makes 2 servings, but if you do that you have a ridiculously small serving. 1 package makes a normal plate
There’s no way to get a « serving » unit that makes sense. I always rely on the /100g instead
Actually I had a coworker who would in fact drink 250 ml of a 500 ml bottle and leave the rest for later, although usually he would never get around to finishing it because he drank carbonated beverages and by the time he was next thirsty they had gone flat.
The odd thing was he did this for all size bottles and cups. E.g., if I went to get lunch and he was too busy for a break then and I offered to bring something back for him no matter what sized drink I got for him he drank half.
"Per serving/portion" seems like an American quick, like "tablespoons" or "cups" as units in recipes. The EU the labeling standard is per 100g or 100ml.
> So you get 500 ml bottle with nutritional info shown for every 100 ml and 250ml because that's the 'serving size'. No-one has ever drunk 250ml (8 ounces) and then left the rest for later.
What do you mean? I do that all the time.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
The serving size can be relevant (whos going to drink an entire large bottle of V8 all at one time?) but there's no reason they can't do a side-by-side comparitive thing, similar to how cereal boxes compare the stats for the cereal by itself (dry) and with milk.
(Against warning labels on junk food in Mexico: How Switzerland danced to the Nestlé tune)
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-18/glp-1-dru...
This is actually one reason I love FBA - I can buy all sorts of small brand specialty health foods from Amazon, bypassing what the local stores choose to stock (or, more often, not stock).
Amazon's anticompetitive practices mean this will become harder in the future however, as they will use this sales and pricing and customer data directly against any mom and pop product that becomes sufficiently successful.
We really need better protections for small businesses that sell via giant online platforms. There is no shortage of healthy, tasty food, people who want to sell it, or people who want to buy it.
6 or 7 supermarket chains further, sometimes a dozen products in same category, end result: not one (0) without added sugars. Anywhere. And all in a similar range, iirc.
So basically the same product everywhere. Just minor tweaks (or with/without chocolate, eg.) + packaging, brands & pricing differences.
Just goes to show how powerful food conglomerates destroy consumer choice.
What other sorts of solutions are possible other than forcing people to put things on their packaging that they don't want there?
Do you feel the same way about the ingredient list?
A ton of court decisions say it is in the US. Here is an article that cites a plethora of them [1]. Note: I have no idea who gfi.org is or whose agenda they are pushing or what side they are on. They just happened to have an article with a nice list of relevant cases.
[1] https://gfi.org/resource/the-first-amendment-right-to-use-cl...
So if you want to argue that being required to label the ingredients and other required prose on the outside of your packaging is 'speech' then you are effectively siding with the corporations against humanity. You can probably find some justification for that in your own mind but it isn't going to convince me that you have it right, no matter how many silly arguments you can find to back it up. There is such a thing as common sense and courts risk their own legacy as well as ridicule if they lose that very important element. And in the United States the supposedly independent supreme courts vote o n just about any subject that is even mildly politically tinted can be guessed with an accuracy that borders on certainty, something that should never ever happen if the court were independent.
This sort of reasoning is what got you 'the United States vs $50,000' and other elegant bits of bullshit. And don't get me started on the political nature of the US supreme court, which seems to be visible to all but a handful.
As one of those evil American conservatives, I'm perfectly okay with targeted compelled speech in business activities, such as requiring marketing to be truthful.
Very few conservatives would be upset with the FDA being focused on "truth in packaging" as opposed to "FDA-approved" translating to "force employers/schools to force this on everyone" (aka experimental COVID shots).
Very few conservatives want to remove all regulation - many I know like the safety of the banking system as opposed the scam-heavy crypto market. However, we don't like over-zealous political enforcement of regulations (aka IRS doing targeted audits on conservative leaning institutions) or every transaction being reported to the government.
You are correct there isn't a meaningful economic difference between Democrats and Republicans right now. Both parties are letting inflation run rampant, have done little to fight taxes, deficits, or debts, and have no sense of financial responsibility to their taxpayers or voters, even though they both scream it when they are the minority party.
However, most Conservatives care about the federal debt/deficit, even if all the Republicans in the House don't. That's why Congress's approval rating is crap.
My son is allergic to Soya, Nuts, Eggs, Dairy and since he started eating solids we've have to label check everything and in doing so as a family we've basically stopped eating packaged foods alltogether. Do you know just how hard it is to avoid Soy now, it and it's derivatives are in pretty much everything, and even if it's not a raw ingredient it's in the bulk of the 'supply chain'.
I think when we look back in 20 years the packaged foods business is going to look at lot like the tobacco one does today...
The point being, the added sugars will probably come to 20-25 percent of the daily allowance if you drink a single bottle of beverage. At the same time, it will not be seen as "high in sugar" because, hey, the serving size is only 250/330 of a bottle, so the sugar level is below 20 percent. [Sophisticated level of duplicity]
Most people are not that careful anyway - they might glance at the nutritional label, and see that the sugars are only 7.5% and think: that's pretty good, I'll have one, not seeing the 100 ml gotcha. [Basic level duplicity]
The only thing that will alert you is the cloying sweetness of the drink which will cause you to pull out a calculator and see what that small bottle is going to really cause.
Processed foods (snacks and beverages) in India seem to be very high in sugars, sodium and fat, more so than the same brands available elsewhere.
Why is it strange? The metric system? It's exactly the same in Europe. Nutritional information is per 100ml/g, so that you can easily understand compare nutritional values.
>Most people are not that careful anyway - they might glance at the nutritional label, and see that the sugars are only 7.5% and think: that's pretty good, I'll have one, not seeing the 100 ml gotcha.
No mate, people in India and in EU are used to looking at the nutritional information per 100g/l as that lets you easily compare nutritional value between foodstuffs packaged in different weights, and figure out what's healthy/unhealthy, for example I saw Coca-Cola and most soft drinks are about 10g/100ml sugar, meaning that 10% of the product is sugar, so that's my yardstick of unhealthiness, or that most chips/crisps have around 30g/100g fats, aka 30% fats, so I seek out variants that have much less.
Having only the nutritional value listed per random serving size or the entire product like in the US is confusing because I can't easily compare sugar/fat percentage content of different products of different weights.
I mean, it's annoying that they do things like '3.5 servings per container', but at least you only have to multiply by 3.5 (I would just prefer a total on each container). If it were 'there are 5g of carbs/sugar per 100g of material,' it would end up being an extra step to determine total grams, divide it by a potentially wonky number or round and divide, then multiply the 5g times the resulting number. Sure it's not that much harder, but it would really add up throughout the day if you were tracking your diet. And IME that's a much more common use case than comparing nutritional value of different products by comparing the macronutrient makeup in grams from the labels, which I've actually never done once
> The only thing that will alert you is the cloying sweetness of the drink which will cause you to pull out a calculator and see what that small bottle is going to really cause.
Not sure I understand this point. Something that is 7.5% sugar will taste the same whether you drink 100ml of it or 2l. There are definitely problems with the concept that a serving from a 330ml bottle is 250ml - that is clearly meant to deceive. But if you have some concept of how much sugar is too much for your taste, the 7.5% sugar figure is enough.
On the one hand, I think it's great to warn "ignorant" people about the content of their foods. And by Ignorant I don't mean poor uneducated people. You'd be surprised how many college-educated, well-off people in Argentina think that a cereal bar is a "healthy food". Or that corn flakes is a healthy food. So, suddenly, these black scary labels started appearing everywhere and people were like "Oh wow, does this have a lot of sugar in it? I thought it was healthy".
So that's a good thing.
But on the other hand, they'r extremely simplistic. A label that says "excess fat" can actually be a good thing. If it's some raw, healthy fat (say, Oil, butter, etc), that's a great type of food. But it'll share the same "excess fat" label with a crappy hydrogenated-fat based food.
Take for example whole milk, which it is now known that is the ONLY healthy type of milk. It'll have a "excess fat" label. While Skim milk will contain non such labels.
Anyway, I think the balance is favorable for those labels. At least "protect" the uneducated people. If anybody wants to learn more about food, they'll put the time and learn to ignore those labels and just focus on the raw macronutrients.
EDIT: I know the "whole milk is better than Skim milk" might STILL be a hot take (not for long I hope...). Here's my answer to another comment:
> The gist is: fat is not bad; at all. Most of Vitamins contained in Milk are fat-soluble. That means that all the good properties of milk are transported by fat. Also, whole milk is less processed.
> Here's a very "intuitive" reasoning, as an exercise: if Vitamin D is fat soluble... how is it possible that Skim milk has MORE Vitamin D (or A) than whole milk? (answer: because it's artificially added).
Sources:
In this case I'd take "extremely simplistic" any time over well-balanced-through-slightly-more-complex-set-of-rules. Thing is, the rules will be gamed in the long run, period.
Simpler rules would eventually allow consumers to easily determine how are they being cheated.
That seems like a strong claim, according to whom?
The gist is: fat is not bad; at all. Most of Vitamins contained in Milk are fat-soluble. That means that all the good properties of milk are transported by fat. Also, whole milk is less processed.
Here's a very "intuitive" reasoning, as an exercise: if Vitamin D is fat soluble... how is it possible that Skim milk has MORE Vitamin D (or A) than whole milk? (answer: because it's artificially added).
Sources:
but more importantly, Vitamin D/A added WITHOUT fat, is just wasted. The body absorbs those vitamins only in the presence of fat. So, most of the artificially added Vitamins will end up being disposed adding extra stress to your kidneys.
But in the end, I don't think these labels work by instantly educating individuals. It works by continuously reminding people that these foods are not healthy. Most will not stop eating them because of the labels, but many will probably give it at least a second though.
For me, the bottom line is, why would I drink skim milk if it's just a more "watery" version of the perfectly healthy whole milk?
Btw, and this is just me, I'm not lactose intolerant (I eat A LOT of yogurt, milk, cream, cheese, etc), but skim milk makes me "sick" (lactose-intolerant symptoms). Maybe it's just my brain.
i suppose an argument can be made that it makes up for more fat elsewhere, but i agree. personally i avoid any milk product that has less fat than is natural for that product. and i am a big fan of raw milk. when we had the opportunity we used to buy milk directly from a farmer because it just tastes so much better.
I'm joking (sightly), but it's easy accounting. Give yourself X sugar point, Y fat points, and Z salt point, per day/per week, and you can still eat unhealthy food while making some effort. Small steps etc.
This song from Fito Olivares is quite old and is still a hit in most parties. You'll also encounter it in many tiktoks and instagram reels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-RV8ZbMcdQ
So I would say if what you want is for people to eat less of a certain food, it works. It's not ridiculous.
Only problem with these sort of policies is a phenomenon called "complexification" [1] where in order to get rid of the seals you introduce complexity into the product itself to escape it (for example by replacing certain chemicals with derivatives that are not quite but very similar).
It's difficult to escape the race, but for a while, these policies do work.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
If they didn't at all, the food companies probably wouldn't be fighting so hard against them.
Great definition. Added to my quotes list.
True. How many people think drinking a coke is great for hydrating yourself or think pre-packaged/fast-food-chain products are "good food"
This is the main issue
How many daily calories are from snacks and other 'needless crap'?
How ridiculous is it if big corporations take them seriously? In fact, if we look at how tobacco laws worked, this kind of messaging works extremely well in shifting perception of people about it in the long run. Sure, people may still drink it, but maybe they won't give some to their kids, or introduce them to it later, or they won't make jokes about people not joining them in that habit at social gatherings, etc.
Here's a twitter thread explaining it better (in spanish): https://nitter.net/22xTJuan/status/1635239549902389248#m
This is so infuriating.
Either put less sugar in, or let people eat less of it. Replacing sugar with some random chemical just ruins your thing.
Heinz Beans did this in England. They have a "Reduced Sugar" version right next to the normal ones on the shelf. "No Artificial Sweetener" written in the same big font on the label. Cool. Those beans sure are crazy sweet, so it'd be nice to see what a less sweet version will be like. But then you taste it and get that terrible Nutrisweet chemical aftertaste that lingers for an hour, and have to throw out your entire dinner and scramble to make something else.
Sure enough, deep down in the ingredients you'll find their "totally natural sweetener that's not sugar, but that we made by combining a bunch of chemicals in a lab."
This is one place I'll be happy to see legislation put in place to fix. I don't want your synthetic poison in my kids food.
Allulose is not a poison by any measure, but if you're so paranoid about what your children eat why feeding them with instant foods like FruitLoops in a first place? Breakfast cereals are highly processed food, even without any added sugar - parent as concerned about the food quality as you certainly can come up with a healthier breakfasts for their kids?
The point is that I want to be able to buy “food” without this garbage in it. It’s a pretty crap precedent to allow it in anything other than explicitly labelled “diet” food.
The idea being, you could eg. tell your kid that they can have any cereal as long as the border is yellow, and have to mix it with one whose label is green.
The black "BAD" labels are not as effective, they desensitize to BAD, and if all sweets are BAD you just ignore the label (though they do help some, according to data from Israel which implemented such labels a few years ago).
The color codes (not as direct, but even more universally recognized) and the chance for a middle level is a better system. And they could put Allulose in that level, for a compromise that has a better chance of passing.
That plan was lobbied to death; no surprise.
lol. This isn't the kind of innovation we want market capitalism to deliver, but it's exactly the kind it is best at sometimes.
Of course, most supermarkets are more interested in profit margins, and whatever helps to increase them.
Sorbitol was safe … you see the problem?
I’m guessing a lot of the keto fad sugars will end up there.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/erythri...
Also, I was thinking of sucralose, not sorbitol:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37246822/
Technically, you can argue that sucralose-6-acetate is a manufacturing byproduct that is supposed to be totally removed however the testing says it is no, at least for some brands - Likely direct carcinogen.
[1] https://www.amazon.in/Cadbury-Bournvita-Chocolate-Health-Dri...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cadbury-Bourn-Vita-Chocolate-Powder...
Well there goes half the incentive to remove the excess sugar.
And having one major problem is better than two.
I've been on a campaign of cutting sugar down as much as I can: even in nominally "sweet" things it's incredible how much sugar standard recipes will call for then you can 1/3rd to 1/4 as much and get a superior result.
my main concern is that many artificial sweeteners are suspected to cause cancer
I do think there is an underlying truth to this.
I get stomach problems from nearly all common sweeteners, especially at the dosages they throw them in. Assumingly because I never really ate them before this all started.
There are now whole categories of items in the supermarket where no product is digestible for me.
Furthermore, they push the misleading idea that you can still drive to the supermarket, buy processed foods, load them in your car, drive home, eat them in front of the TV and be fine, as long as you don't buy the high-in-sugar stuff.
If you want to beat obesity start by buying just the ingredients and then cooking meals at home. It's not that hard. Then start walking to places instead of taking the car. Taking public transportation is also good because it frequently forces you to walk a non-negligible amount. Also stop eating while watching TV. You can go one step further and throw out the TV altogether.
You don't need to work out (although you should for other health reasons); you also don't need to diet; the vast majority of dieters gain all of the weight they lost during the diet and then some.
What effect do people report from them? Reduction in appetite. Which tells us the obvious truth: you need to eat less or parity calories in then you do going out. A nutrition professor ate nothing but Twinkies and lost weight[1] while doing so. Probably wasn't fun, but it worked. Someone did the same with nothing but McDonald's[2].
Your entire list is just a list of your perception of "virtuous" activities, and has nothing at all to do with whether or not you'll gain or lose weight. It's lies, judgement and irrelevancy to push an agenda about how people should live, rather then sticking to the observable facts of the matter.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profe...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/woman-says-mcdona...
From my country, where "everyone" cycles to work, two random papers:
https://www.uu.nl/en/news/dutch-bikers-live-six-months-longe...
https://www.kimnet.nl/binaries/kimnet/documenten/rapporten/2...
Now this is normally the point someone says "well obviously you have to cook things which don't..." - yeah. Exactly. Whether or not it's "home cooked" doesn't matter. What matters is you have a calorie budget per day and you need to not exceed it on average.
Virtuous activities don't accomplish much of anything directly. Walking just plain doesn't burn that many extra calories.[1] The benefit of that whole list is basically "it's hard to eat while you're walking or not at home or at the shops". The benefit of the improved cardio-fitness is going to make you feel better, but you won't burn a lot of extra calories.
That's what I mean about lies and judgement: "throw away the TV" - why? It's got nothing to do with anything. Sitting around reading a book is just as sedentary. Telling people they have to do a bunch of things which aren't associated with the core outcome is just setting them up to fail - or have unrealistic expectations because everyone has a different built-in sense of "correct" about food.
To actually help people you start from the core facts, and give them the tools to figure out what habits are going to work for them. Try counting calories for a week and get a sense for what healthy portion sizes and meal composition actually looks like (this is where nutrition labels help a lot). The conclusion of "do home cooked meals" is one which follows - maybe - from that exercise, but it's absolute fiction to think that it's impossible to gain weight if you only cook at home.
[1] https://greatist.com/fitness/calories-burned-walking#calorie...
I guess it's part herd behaviour and part natural resistance to change, but what has made "us", the human species so entrenched, that we think we need cars, TVs, premade meals? Humans "never¹" had them, yet now, within one or two generations somehow believe we cannot do without it? All while the rational evidence is clear that it's hurting both individuals², all of humanity and in some cases all of nature?
¹ statistically seen, if we take the entire history of the human kind ² to clarify the difference with something like "health care" that the human kind also statistically "never" had.
Whenever I stop at a fueling station I see the same picture: a young, somewhat overweight man wearing tracksuit pants picking up junk food. He chose comfort. Can you honestly blame him for that?
Of course as a species we thrive in discomfort, but the benefits come with a delay - there's usually no incentive to start.
Why, yes, off course. I don't judge him for that, but certainly he's the (only?) one to blame for his "somewhat overweight" and all the health issues that might come from that.
One might argue that marketeers, big-food, TV, influencers, politicians, and whatnot also may hold blame here, e.g. by "making this man believe he wants this", but that's a whole different debate.
Do you believe he values this over being comfortable?
> "making this man believe he wants this",
I don't think it takes much convincing - after all being comfortable is great.
It's deciding to be uncomfortable - so walking/cycling instead of driving, eating less overall etc. that goes against our basic instincts - I'm surprised that you're surprised that not that many people do it when out of the two lifestyles it's the one that requires more effort.
Diabetes isn't comfortable. I know all about it, I'm type I.
Hardly any health issues related to "moving too little" or "eating unhealty" are comfortable.
Most of my friends with health issues associated with lifestyle got their first wakeup call right before their 30s. Plenty of time to develop habits which take over a decade to drop - or more if they started during childhood.
And here's the kicker: not all of them made the necessary changes. Also some others did, but are unhappy with this new lifestyle and would like to go back but external factors like the threat of divorce keep them from doing so.
What I'm getting at is that it's the people who consciously choose effort who are the weirdos. Healthy, longer living weirdos, but weirdos nonetheless.
People drive cars, eat trash and lay on the couch because they like to. You'll only get other outcomes in an environment where it's too hard to do any of those things.
This all seems pretty strange and won't make you lose weight. What will is just eating fewer calories. That's it. You don't have to change anything at all if you don't want to. You can drive to the store, you can eat in front the TV, you can eat your hamburgers and drink coke. Just eat less of it, and you'll lose weight.
The idea that people have to be "educated" to know this is ludicrous, such a typical "government" / "expert" notion. Eat too much = get fat has been known and understood for centuries. People knew this when they were illiterate peasants. School children tease each other about this. The obesity problem is not caused by lack of education, it's caused by lack of self-control (exacerbated by the refinement of food composition, improved cost and convenience, and marketing).
If I wasn't lucky enough to have a good pre-college education, I wouldn't have learned CS, and without money and contacts outside my family (I was ashamed of what I became), pretty sure I would have stayed obese. It was 90% luck, 10% effort.
[edit] for the 'obese should just walk crowd' : did you ever walk so much, blood soaked up your boxers and pants? My ankle was hurting so much man, but the worst was the dampness caused by the blood. Twice a week, for a month. Lost 200g. My inner thighs are reddish-brown because if the scar tissues. Only solution is eating less, but when you've learned all your life to eat till you aren't hungry, what can you do?
So in this case the intention is to make people eat healthy and Kellogg is violating that intention by replacing sugar with an ingredient that they know isn't covered, because they specifically lobbied for it not to be. Similarly Coca-Cola by designing their labels to only have the warning on one side and asking the supermarket to place the items so that the warning isn't visible.
There's no real way that these companies come out of this looking good. Either they label correctly and people can see that their product is a lot more unhealthy than they might have realized or they go to court to protect their "right" to knowingly damage the healthy of their customers for profit. I fail to understand how you can have so little moral integrity. Why not just embrace the new labels and design better products.
Not to disagree, but this is probably the same kind of thinking that means websites have popovers saying "we respect your privacy click here so we can share your behaviour with an unfeeling AI designed to manipulate you into obsessively returning to this site at best, and at worst also with advertisers who will use their own unfeeling AI to manipulate you into buying stuff you don't need and can't afford for the highest price they can squeeze out of your overburdened wallet"…
instead of just not having analytics and advertising tracking.
When I’m considering buying a food item for the first time I read the entire label to make sure it meets my criteria. It would be nice when buying it again to be able to at a glance tell that it is still the same as when I last bought it.
- Products do not change formulas at random, if they did they'd have to re-submit samples for the label evaluation.
- These labels don't have your best interests in mind anyway: If you are a bodybuilder, you will have tor read nutrition info labels yourself and ignore the warning labels, because only you know what quantities for each nutritients you will take to meet your goals.
they have medical patients on their boxes down there, the trade is a big as ever
The tobacco companies lost, thankfully. :)
In terms of % of population smoking, the trade has been shrinking significantly: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/31/2/129