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Comment by gorjusborg | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if we'll ever get to a place where we hold food companies accountable for addictive, unheathy food being advertised and sold the way we hold tobacco companies accountable?

I know there is a personal responsibility involved in both, but the situation seems similar.

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In Mexico (and many other places) they put big labels on packaged foods that have high sugar content. I spent a month there and I found it really helpful. Of course in the US, any attempts at labelling for the benefit of consumers is fought tooth and nail by the food industry.

I don't think those make a big difference. I've seen them in a lot of memes. They're easy to tune out, and are on a lot of healthy food.

Here's some more info on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_labeling_in_Mexico#Labels

US nutritional info panels are far easier to tune out, but many people still find them useful. Better to give people information should they want to put extra thought into their diet as opposed to keeping things obscured and making the task that much more difficult. The Wiki article says 10% of people take the labels into consideration. If 5-10 million Mexican families eat healthier diets at the cost of simple labels covering some marketing materials, that seems like a fantastic deal for consumers.

It's good to be able to easily access facts about food, yes. It's the warnings that I think are simply OK, they don't help much nor hurt much.

For instance, most people don't need to worry about their dietary sodium, and I think in the US a lot of people could discover tasty food like soups and stir fries and curries that are high in salt and moderate their animal product consumption. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/dietary-salt-and...

Edit: looking in that article it's good to avoid too much sodium, but a lot of people don't notice that how salty food tastes isn't always directly related to how much sodium is being consumed. Sodium deep inside of food isn't going to be as easy to taste as salt on the surface.

An equivalent system, the nutri-score, have been showed to be extremely effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score

On the french version of the page, it indicate:

> it also noted the following associations for the products purchased:

increase in overall food quality by 7.9%; 6% reduction in energy; 7.8% reduction in salt/sodium; 15.7% reduction in fat; 17.1% reduction in saturated fat;

Big Tobacco became big food: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/settlement/bi....

When tobacco became problematic they bought all the food companies.

It seems like, as a society, we're moving more toward "personal freedom" -- which includes "personal responsibility".

Like: we used to ban alcohol, betting and drugs. But we unbanned alcohol and betting and are moving towards decriminalization of drugs.

Not saying one way is right or wrong (I can see arguments on both sides, and I personally prefer having freedom). But it does seem the general trend in (US) society these days.

i think society should allow someone to partake in those activities because like you said personal freedom. but many if not all of those activities can develop into addiction which is a form of disease - so society should also heavily disentivize their usage. taxes, prohibited advertisement, can only get from certain places, etc

I can't wait for the unlicensed Twinkie dispensaries to start sprouting up.

Wouldnt that just hurt the people prone to addiction? If I'm not addicted to alcohol and a huge tax is implemented then I'll just stop drinking. If I am addicted my problem has just been exacerbated because my addiction is now more expensive. I guess it might stop people from experimenting to begin with.

It's not a binary thing, addiction is very dynamic, especially alcohol because of its ubiquity in the west. Nearly all alcoholics no matter how bad once had a fairly typical usage pattern, often for many years or decades before something changed and they lost control of it.

Changes to lifestyle, stress, recreation patterns, and access can all be factors in it spiraling out, and once you're there it's hard to gently wind it back. It's difficult to compare directly because a lot of the places with intentionally high taxes on alcohol also have strong public healthcare systems.

But even simple measures like municipal ordinances against selling sub-500ml containers of hard liquor show small but clear results in reducing addiction rates. In any case the consensus among addiction medicine professionals right now seems to be in favor of this sort of "soft restriction" public health policy.

Legalization hurts people prone to addiction - prohibition hurts people prone to moderation.

Do we prevent some from having a bad experience, at the expense of others having a good experience? Or do we allow some to have a good experience, at the experience of others having a bad experience?

I’m a bit of a hedonist so i very strongly favour the latter.

We can have both. We can have broad access to all manor of food and drugs AND we can have strict labelling and advertising standards. We all know the entire concept of market capitalism is based on accurate and available information for marketplace participants, yet we keep letting the dominant participants manipulate the dissemination of information for their own benefit and to the detriment of consumers.

Wouldn't there be major issues with post facto laws in the case of food like many other weasel worded usages of "holding accountable"? I swear, the tobbaco lawsuits have turned lawyers into junkies for grand lawsuits which has them looking to find the next big tobbaco whether the target deserves it or not.

Unlike tobbaco there is nuance about consumption as good or bad on a per person level, and there was never any obligation nor capability to police the diet of their customers. It isn't like cigarettes where ideal consumption is zero.

USDA shares the blame for placing Carbohydrates as the primary food source on the food pyramid.

> USDA shares the blame for placing Carbohydrates as the primary food source on the food pyramid.

I agree, but I have no real evidence, just a feeling.

Is there any evidence?

None of this is intended to be medical advice. Consult your own practitioner.

This is publicly available, but to understand Dr. Fung's entire thesis on obesity and Type 2 Diabetes (along with his entire destruction of the prevailing mainstream treatment protocols for T2D) in particular, it is necessary to read his book, "The Diabetes Code".

https://casereports.bmj.com/content/2018/bcr-2017-221854

I've been following the protocol from The Diabetes Code for about 2 months. Objectively: 10lbs lost, key metrics are improved, medications deleted and a Type 2/inflammation related vision ailment objectively healing. I guess I need to say, I have no association with this doctor, receive no monetary benefits. Prior to that, working with an endocrinologist, my stats were deteriorating and my symptoms worsening.

Fung's book The Obesity Code received a 31% score for scientific accuracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fung

I'm kind of curious if there is any diet or nutrition related book that would score high on scientific accuracy. The field in general seems hard to study well.

If any commenting pass-byers know of any, let me know, id be interested.

Dr. Michael Greger's books (and website: https://nutritionfacts.org) boast an astonishing amount of citations of medical studies. He readily acknowledges the vast volume of literature around nutrition, with more and more studies being published every year. He and his volunteers have taken on the mission of wading through it and making sense of it.

His books, in order of publication:

- How Not to Die (2k citations) - How Not to Diet (5k citations) - How Not to Age (13k citations)

thanks for the recommendation!

Right. I can't believe you're citing a source that can be edited by literally anyone.

Also, I cited "The Diabetes Code", not "The Obesity Code", goalpost mover.

Wikipedia did very well here. There is a link in a footnote to an external site where you can confirm that Red Pen Reviews did in fact give this review.

Carbs craving is an evidence, I feel them myself and have much more difficult controlling the amounts of calories I eat when I'm eating more carbs and sugar. One person experience, especially if oneself, is a hard evidence.

Need to hold "healthy at any weight" propagandist responsible too.

Things like soft drink taxes already begin to do that.

Have those stuck anywhere? I know it was trialed in a few places (Berkely for one) but I don't think it lasted.

Great idea though; just like taxing tobacco helped reduce smoking (among other things)

We have taxes on sugary drinks in France. The tax depends on how much sugar is added, in kg / hl. Funnily, synthetic sweeteners are also taxed, but at a flat rate equal to the "up to 1 kg / hl" of sugar. See [0] for the official text.

I'm not convinced this has had a great effect, since I hear there are more and more people who are considered obese [1].

[0] https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F32101?lang...

[1] https://presse.inserm.fr/en/obesite-et-surpoids-pres-dun-fra...

How are they responsible for what you choose to eat?

On the flip side, do we want to let people line their coffers by creating addictive substances that some people literally cannot stop eating?

Umm... that describes literally any food and its production. We cannot stop eating or we die. That is how it works.

That's like saying how are cigarette companies responsible for whether you choose to smoke?

Yes, I agree. Tobacco companies are not responsible for how you use their product.

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