The Insanity of Our Food Policy
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil%E2%80%93United_States_co...
Here's a primer on what sugar (or more precisely, fructose) does by Dr Lustig (of UCSF, if memory serves):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
I wouldn't be surprised if US agribusinesses ultimately end up on the receiving end of lawsuits across the world -- much like tabacco companies did.
In any case, I wouldn't count on that. Recent meta-studies (if we are to at least believe those) show that a majority of scientific papers are non verifiable and non reproducible BS, contain fabrications and alterations, etc -- and that's talking about the "hard sciences". And having been involved with researchers, I don't doubt that at all.
E.g:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re...
and:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...
This is the "Experts were wrong before" dodge, which conveniently ignores how often individuals are wrong.
The problem with this is multi-fold:
Do you know what good information looks like, or are you going to be fed crap from a circle-jerk of sources which all repeat the same lies? This is a bootstrapping problem, ultimately: How do you know where to get the first info you use to tell crap from good information?
Experts largely agree with each other in most mature fields. This is part of what it means for a field to be mature. The problem is, a lot of the liars and scammers agree with each other as well, or at least the ones all selling the same scams do. How do you tell the difference?
Since I don't have time to become a Ph.D. in biology, medicine, or an allied field, I have to trust the experts. Nobody has time to be an expert in everything.
Also, 'make up your own mind' is predicated on the idea that you are making up your own mind, as opposed to baby-duck-like imprinting on someone who makes good-looking videos and can string words. The people who follow Alex Jones think they're thinking for themselves, too. Following a body of knowledge as opposed to a single charismatic guru is a hedge against this baby-duck effect.
And:
> without the need to appeal to expert consensus (which might as well be bogus and profit-driven?)
How do you know Lustig isn't bogus and ego-driven?
The way you do it for everything else you learn. Start small, explore the area, verify yourself what you can, talk to people and read from various sources.
>Experts largely agree with each other in most mature fields.
When it gets away from the core mechanics of some field, that agreement is based on some fundumental premises that not necesarrily you or everybody shares with them. A lot of that is also based on the prevalent paradigms and ideologies of a time -- phrenology was once accepted by "experts", as were electro-shocks for gay people. And don't get me started on economic "experts".
Basically anything that moves from an hard scientific explanation to a value judgement is suspect and should be scrutinized, whether experts agree to it or not.
I'd only accept a consensus of lots of independent experts with no state or corporate funding, but those are very hard to find (if at all possible).
>How do you know Lustig isn't bogus and ego-driven?
I don't. Hence I advocate for people to "make up your mind on your own based on information" -- not just trust Lustig or "the expert consensus".
Exactly. So, which other sources have you read from which confirm what Lustig said?
> phrenology was once accepted by "experts", as were electro-shocks for gay people. And don't get me started on economic "experts".
Oh, yes, the "Experts were wrong before" dodge, which is so beloved of quacks and alt-med nutballs in general. It so conveniently ignores the fact that lone people are wrong a lot more often.
> I'd only accept a consensus of lots of independent experts
So, where are all of the independent experts who agree with Lustig?
Dissent then came mostly between two extremes. Namely: "Interesting take, but the body can process a lot more sugar than Lustig suggests before becoming sick", and "NO NO NO! [That's not what I learned and believe is true!] Low-carb food is baaaad!"
Speaking personally, the first end of that spectrum stroke me as forming reasonable objections. The second end stroke me as quacks and curmudgeons on roughly the same level as economists -- i.e. they'll dismiss anything that won't fit their worldview, including evidence and reproducible facts.
And they don't subsidize things like vegetables.
Now, what do Americans not eat enough of? And it's partly because they're too expensive compared to cheap grains and cheap grain-fed meat?
Vegetables aren't a priority in that situation, because they can be easily grown in backyard gardens. On the other hand, row crops tend to be carbohydrate-heavy (perfect for a famine), cheap to produce, and they benefit significantly from economies of scale.
Most fruits and vegetables can't be stored or transported like grains - unless they are picked before being ripe & at peak nutrition.
Playing games on the supply side is a fool's errand. Incentives become unpredictable, if not counter-productive. Boost demand and incentives will work themselves out. Pay people to live healthy lives and they will drive the farmers to produce healthy foods. Put money on the behaviors you want to see more of - and you will see it. Pay to encourage price stability (farm subsidies) and you'll see price fixing. Pay people who get and stay fit and they will drive the markets to healthier plateaus.
Year-round fresh fruits & vegetables for 300M people can not be grown in the US. You can't subsidize farmers enough for them to make the sun shine longer and breed apples with a 6 month shelf life. You also ought to consider the global effects of shipping fresh food a few thousand miles or more, not to mention the human costs of raising and harvesting all those tasty luxuries.
Grains (and other starches) are stable, travel well (though they can grow closer to everywhere), and can provide an adequate base of energy and fiber within a diet tailored to a healthy individual.
If you want economic incentives done better, tax the fat and transfer it to the fit.
This kind of rent seeking should not surprise anyone. The market moves a lot more quickly than government. Today's reasonable policy is tomorrow's corporate welfare.
The lesson I take from this: other things being equal, err on the side of fewer programs and regulations instead of more. If you want to help the needy, it's better to use broad-based direct assistance (like food stamps or the EITC) than a more complicated program that singles out some sub-group like farmers.
Saying that things are "illogic" is insulting.Things make perfect sense, journalists just dont want to admit that US politicians are rotten to the core.
It's interesting to see how these things pan out though, In India, discontinuing a program to provide assistance to the poor gets you voted out of office. I guess the number of poor people in the US are not large enough for that to happen? There is a large middle-class though, and it would help if they showed more interest in the lives of the downtrodden....especially when there are more than enough resources to go around
More like: they've a long and entrenched track record of voting against their own interests, on the basis of keeping a hypothetical fable called the American Dream alive.
They didn't mind the size of New York or Philadelphia. Cities were very small in 18th-century America. In 1790, New York City's population was only twice that of Charleston.
The reason for DC's location on the Potomac was that the Southern states wanted the capital to be in the South.
The temporary capital of Philadelphia posed an additional problem, in that it was located in a free state. George Washington had to rotate his slaves through Philadelphia while he was President, so that they would not stay long enough to be emancipated.
The basis of the U.S. "yeoman farmer" idea was, in part, that there was land available for continual expansion. Simply go west, kick out the natives, and all your citizens could be given a plot of their own - organizing around this goal gave the government stability and purpose, even though it had several obvious flaws.
This was also the genesis of the internal conflicts during the 19th century; the eventual victory of the federalists in the Civil War was, in effect, the creation of a new nation organized around industrial capitalism.
Which is why the war was started by plantation slave-holders: They knew that the only way to keep their slaves was to dissociate their economy and politics from that of the industrialized North. Even after they destroyed the concept of states' rights by passing the fugitive slave laws, they still weren't confident that slavery could endure when the North was going great guns without it. When the North proved that they could elect a President without pandering to Southern Slave Power interests by electing Lincoln in 1860 without a single Southern vote going to him, that was the last straw.
(The election of 1860 was, in effect, two elections going on in parallel: Bell v Breckinridge in the South, Lincoln v Douglas in the North. Except, of course, only one man could be President, and Lincoln won the Electoral College by a convincing majority.)
The excessively subsidized farms discussed in the article were collecting an average of $30,000 a year. That's nice money, but I can't see a significant portion of the body wasting their influence chasing that around.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-pai...
http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-fa...
Just some interesting links I found while attempting to sate my own curiosity as to whether such a statistic has been compiled.
There's a certain part of HN that is totally all about rent-seeking. It's what startups do when they create platforms that are only a slight twist on things in order to get everyone to use them, and then if they get enough market share, they can take in rents disproportionate to any value they add.
Sure, there's a lot of productive and ethical startup stuff too. But there's just the undercurrent that if someone is making good money in the marketplace, it's because they are a success and should be emulated. Many people fail to question whether the business is really founded in ethical practices.
I guess, so far anyway, when something is that corrupt and unethical as the U.S. food policy, then even those who knee-jerk to defend anyone rich are not gonna be defending this nonsense. Everyone has a limit to their ability to be in denial about the corruption in our economy…
I find that modern day capitalism is ALL ABOUT rent-seeking.
That's what has halted major advances and innovations in favor of Tumblr's and Instagrams and reduced the number of Promethean Elon Musk like figures to people like Zuckengerg et al.
>I guess, so far anyway, when something is that corrupt and unethical as the U.S. food policy, then even those who knee-jerk to defend anyone rich are not gonna be defending this nonsense. Everyone has a limit to their ability to be in denial about the corruption in our economy…
Well, there's a counter explanation, that they don't think they are defending rich people in this case (e.g they don't consider subsidised farmers that).
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/p...
All that's old is new again.