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There is a valid argument about the loads of salt and sugar in modern processed foods but no, we attack something that does not have as strong scientific evidence.
I think both are easy to see examples of ingredients that seem out of place from what our bodies have evolved to eat for millenia.
When you read about how things like canola oil (i.e., rapeseed oil) are so high in erucic acid that they're toxic and must be extracted with hexane to make them edible, it's reasonable to question whether we should be eating them at all. Versus something like olive oil (literally just squeezed olives) or butter (milk from cow).
You might as well add everything farmed, raised or processed to that list.
Appeals to nature don't work in nutrition [1]. We've been starving and malnourished since the Neolithic [2]. And almost everything in our food supplies we consider "natural" is engineered.
Also increases CVD and mortality [1]. And causes your descendants to be fat [2].
Here [1] is another study from China That shows that simply having an obese parent is the single biggest factor in a developing childhood obesity, and nearly doubles the obesity risk.
I didnt bother digging up a study, but this link[2] says that in the USA, a child with 1 obese parent has a 50% chance of being obese (absolute, not increased hazard ratio!) If both parents are obese, a child has an 80% chance of being obese!
This makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I would expect the modeled behavior, status, household food, and parenting to have a huge impact on children. This naturally overshadows the interesting but tiny impact of epigenetic transmission.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8648067/
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12199-021-009...
https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/conditions/obesity#:~:t....
That said, if you are worried about the next generation, it'd be interesting to compare the magnitude of transgenerational effect from simply being raised in a household with obese parents in the usa. I imagine it's much larger but I'm not on a pc to look it up right now.
Last, if I were to lazily steel Man my appeal to nature, I doubt our Neolithic ancestors yo-yo'd back and forth between skinny and obese generations due to calorie restrictions.
Regardless that is a tail risk when thinking about the general population.
I'd argue similarly but take the opposite position, why support HFCS and seed oils? What are their positive attributes that contribute to a healthy body?
They're cheap, that's it. We deserve higher quality food. Let's subsidize something else.
Its about focusing your energy. You have populations eating loads of sugar and salt but focusing on a tail risk, HFCS and seed oils. Most of the seed oil science is fringe though I am sure there is some extreme tail risk. Same with HFCS. Its more worth the time focusing on what really matters, its calories, sugar and salt. Those are no easy task either.
Maybe it's the calories, sugar and salt, maybe it's the HFCS and seed oils binding it all together. Either way the processed food industry is churning out poison.
Seed oil science is all bunk junk science, similar to HFCS. I am sure there is some measurable tail risk but its nothing compared to the generalized risk of calories, sugar and salt (regardless of sugar types).
You see why one might want more evidence than "maybe" to ban a major food product? Particularly since having effected that ban, one would wait to measure the results, waiting time in which one might have deployed substantiated policies.
The main issue with HFCS seems to be how cheap and subsidized it is which leads to being a major ingredient in a large number of products that should just have less or no added sugar.
The OP specifically called out HFCS not sugar.
This is the last thing you should want for better health.
What you'd get is an explosion of "This is known by the state of California to cause obseity" on everything from a banana to a chocolate muffin, leading to people to ignore and diminish the health impact of eating a chocolate muffin because, "how bad can it be if they have to tag a banana".
"Clearly disclosing risks" just leads to overwhelming people and is the opposite of good health education. In fact junk food peddlers would love for this to be the "solution" because it wouldn't nudge people away from junk food.
Much better is just to tax unhealthy food more. That nudges people toward healthier options without them realising it.
However, people (or junk food companies masquerading as people) will oppose such "sin taxes" on the basis they are regressive.
I don't want to derail this thread. But anyone know R. F. K. Jr's views on this?
The problem is ultra-processed foods, not natural fats and vegetable which are even considered fairly healthy in moderation (there is a reason why the Mediterranian diet is considered healthy despite consuming a lot more of this type of fat). Reducing fast food intake is among the most healthy choices you can make, but the problem in fast food doesn't really come down to canola oil.
Regarding sugar and HFCS, I completely agree, not just because of the direct association to weight gain, but also because of the desensitization to sweetness that is often followed by higher usage patterns.
I don't think the appointment of a medical quack is going to be good for anyone, despite any silver lining you might grasp at straws for. We need science-based medical advocates that follow the evidence, not undisciplined slobs.
You can try to attack the work he's quoting from, and maybe you'll have a legitimate point. But if you act like he put on a lab coat and tried playing scientist, and is just spewing original crank research into the world, well you're just misinformed, and you're making others misinformed as well.
Of course, you're in good company doing this. That's pretty much every mass media reference to the man, and why the meme about him being a crank exists.
Show me one example where he's said something like that and he was citing a real source. And I mean an actual source that he should be respecting. If he just parrots this stuff from other cranks on Twitter, that's not exactly the defense you think it is.
This specific issue is based on a lawsuit, googling brings this up:
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/robert-kennedy-jrs-legal-...
I can't speak to whether the case is good or not, but the point stands: these aren't his original claims as so many people like to say. They come from e.g. expert witnesses. Maybe those people are cranks, I have no idea.
> But if you act like he put on a lab coat and tried playing scientist, and is just spewing original crank research into the world, well you're just misinformed, and you're making others misinformed as well.
He still claims that vaccines cause autism. He's ardently against the HPV vaccine, despite proof that it decreases cancer risk with no comparable downsides. He claims that 5g causes tumors. He's a huge advocate of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, despite there being zero legitimate evidence of them having any affect on COVID 19.
NO ONE is saying these are "original claims" of his. He's dangerous precisely because he amplifies disproven nonsense to a gigantic audience that eats it right up. If someone spends their entire lives repeating nonsense, then yes that is pretty much the exact definition of a "crank."
His crusade against seed oils fits perfectly with all of his other repeated claims: no evidence that they're bad beyond Facebook memes and substantiation purely from other cranks like Robert Malone and Bret Weinstein.
Watch this video of the man himself and listen to the claims he makes. https://youtu.be/Z-YQ1Y7c_Pk
So your honest take on his claims is that these are just "quotes of quotes" and that he might not actually believe the verifiable bullshit nonsense contained within his words?
> He still claims that vaccines cause autism.
He claims that an uptick in autism incidence is correlated with a lot of environmental things, one of them being that the number of childhood vaccines has increased, and as a result, work should be done to validate each of those environmental changes, vaccine schedule changes included.
> He's ardently against the HPV vaccine [in children, because their risk for HPV is negligible], despite proof that it decreases cancer risk with no comparable downsides.
> He claims that 5g causes tumors.
This based on some court case that he won against the government, as he mentions in your YouTube clip. No idea how real the risk is.
> He's a huge advocate of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, despite there being zero legitimate evidence of them having any affect on COVID 19.
There is plenty of academic literature around these things, I'm not qualified to comment on the quality of it, but it exists, and I'm not talking about YouTube channels.
I'd imagine the same thing is true about seed oils, although I'm not up on his views there.
My overall point is that every talking head that mentions RFK makes it look like he's just some weirdo that thought up all of these kooky ideas. If you go to the actual horses mouth, you see that these ideas came from one expert or another. Some of those people are probably wrong, but I (and respectfully, probably most of the commentariat) aren't actually qualified to tell you either way.
That is a factual lie. That is not what he said.
In 2005, he wrote an article (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2005-pt10/html/CRE...) that was published in Salon - since retracted by the publication, but never disavowed by him - in which he said, among other things:
> It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts... that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.
The idea that thimerosal in vaccinations causes autism, or any other neurological problem, has been thoroughly debunked by every serious researcher who's ever looked at it. I'll just link to Wikipedia's page on the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines) since that's easier than collecting the same list of sources again, but you can ask the CDC, the WHO, the NIH, etc., etc.
> There is plenty of academic literature around [ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine]
Yes, and all of it points to them having no effect on COVID. Sources: Mayo Clinic (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...), NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/12053/), WHO (https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cor...).
> I'd imagine the same thing is true about seed oils
So you know nothing, much like RFK. You're right, the situation is the same: there is no actual evidence, and this is a nonsense meme that's been spread on social media by non-experts. There are fewer academic studies, because the panic about seed oils is newer (and therefore there hasn't been time for academia to exhaustively disprove it), but that's not how this works: if you're making the extreme, uncommon claim, the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence, not on the rest of the community to disprove it. Sources: American Heart Association, citing a professor of medicine at Stanford (https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/08/20/theres-no-reason-to...).
> every talking head that mentions RFK makes it look like he's just some weirdo that thought up all of these kooky ideas
This is also a lie. This is the fourth or fifth time you've said this in this thread, and it's not true. Nobody, neither on this thread nor in the wider media landscape, thinks he invented them himself. Everyone knows he's parroting random memes or conspiracy theories he found online. That is not an excuse.
> I (and respectfully, probably most of the commentariat) aren't actually qualified to tell you either way.
You're right! That's why I trust the actual medical experts, who categorically disagree with RFK and his ilk, and tend to describe them as "quacks", "cranks", and "misinformed". If you are as unqualified to judge the evidence as you say you are, then the only even remotely logical response is to rely on experts to interpret it for you. Why are you trusting some random person with a a famous last name over every single medical researcher? Do you apply this logic to any other topic - "I'm not an expert, therefore, instead of listening to the experts, I'll listen to the first person I see talk about it on TV"?
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There is a reason why people abbreviate this whole conversation to "brain worm" and move on. Nothing RFK says about health is founded in reality. It is all crank nonsense, and it takes a special kind of gullibility or motivated reasoning to believe it when the actual sources are right there, just a Google search away. He's the equivalent of the schizophrenic who stands on the corner screaming about UFOs and bodysnatchers, just with slightly more decorum. In order to even believe that he's acting in good faith, let alone that he's right, you have to be willfully blind to evidence that is right in front of you. You have to choose to believe one weirdo over the entirety of modern science. That is simply not how intelligent people behave.
I can't be arsed to find a timestamp, but I've seen him say that. Maybe he's also said other things, I'm not his stenographer.
> Why are you trusting some random person with a a famous last name over every single medical researcher?
You're losing the plot here. Like I said, I'm not trying to tell you he's backing the right horse on any of this. I'm just mentioning what I see as misrepresentations of what his claims are. This is based on watching a good number of hours of him actually speaking during this past year or so, and then watching the news report utter nonsense about what I just watched him say.
Whoah there cowboy.
Perhaps as with certain other aspects of policy, the US would do well to get its own house in order first.
When it comes to food, there are many disgusting things allowed in US food that are not allowed in other sensible jurisdictions (e.g. EU).
Just a few of many examples:
- Titanium Dioxide
- Bromates
- Butylated hydroxytoluene
- Butylated hydroxyanisole
- Recombinant somatotropin
- Artificial food dyes