US nutrition panel’s ties to top food giants revealed in new report | Hacker News Reader

US nutrition panel’s ties to top food giants revealed in new report

theguardian.com

29 pointsc42010 comments

“This is an avoidable problem,” Ruskin said. “It would be far better for public health if they picked experts with no conflict of interest. They can do that but they don’t.”

This is naive. It's saying that politics would work better if you remove politics from it. Possibly true, but like saying bridges would be cheaper if the gravitational constant was smaller.

IMHO the better approach is to avoid centralized decision making particularly for such difficult subjects. And learn from the resulting massive parallelism we sometimes call liberty.

Does anyone else feel like there is a constant deluge of articles that would lead one to believe reasonably that society is really not set up for the masses at all? Like, it’s one thing for money to flow to the top, but it’s quite another thing for actual health and safety and general flourishing to be withheld.

as a US citizen, I suspect that an advisory panel that is half composed of very large agribusiness lobbying people, is not considered wrong by the architects and implementors of that advisory panel. I have no specific knowledge of this group or their history, but I claim that US governance does emphasize business, instead of say religion or tribal groups.

Now, personally I have seen the horror show of processed foods, food in public schools, aspartame and other artificial sweeteners like corn syrup, making whole food that spoils into processed food that can sit on the shelf of a store at a gas station for months. And the health results that go with it, largely called 'obesity epidemic' but lots more than that. Controversially I will add GMO foods, which many here actively support.

The only government that is better than the one we have is one with new blood and new activity. This is not easy or quick. I am grateful for this report, and urge anyone with standing and reputation to find a way to participate in this issue. I feel we have gone very, very far in dark directions and the "markets" are not fixing it.

How can anyone be surprised by this?

It's the same problem in Denmark as well.

Can someone point to the problem? It’s not like chips and soda are the primary recommendations. Unless PepsiCo is getting into veggies?

The problem is that in the past versions of these, the influence of food companies has resulted in guidance that was not entirely nutritionally sound. There is every reason to think the same influence will have the same result in the future.

Do you understand why Research studies have to disclose similar links? Bias is a real thing.

Yes I’m not fucking stupid.

I’m curious where the bias is in the current dietary “plate” recommendations. There’s nothing at all like the fat is bad sugar is good crime of the 60’s-90’s

So if bias is a real thing show it to me or do you just make vapid comments and run?

> There’s nothing at all like the fat is bad sugar is good crime of the 60’s-90’s

It wasn’t “sugar is good”, it was “carbs are good” and this is still a primary component of the recommendations. You’ve given an excellent example of why potential avenues of bias need to be disclosed. Even if it isn’t obvious today that something isn’t scientifically valid, it is harder to identify where errors might be if we don’t know the potential sources of bias. It is worth pausing and asking why these food giant ties were hidden rather if there was no bias arising from the relationships.

But to answer your specific question, I would guess there’s bias in today’s “plate” recommendation with respect to animal products, but this is only a guess as I’m no expert - simply a fan of unbiased experts designing these things.

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