PepsiCo's CEO Indra Nooyi Was Right. Now What?
fortune.com
fortune.com
True and important to note when you're grocery shopping. Organic, natural, non-GMO do not mean that thing you're holding in your hand is actually good for you.
What I took away from this is that as a consumer you have to be very engaged in evaluating your food choices. Unfortunately most people aren't, it seems. I continue to be surprised by how many otherwise intelligent people fall for claims of "low fat", "sugar free", "high calcium", "organic", "natural", "gluten free", "kale", other fads etc.
The other thing I learned is if you want to be a low-information consumer, there are far better countries in the world for you to live than the US, places where the government takes a stronger hand in enforcing population health and consumer protection. If you live in this country, you had better be smart and look out for yourself, because the companies and the government not only don't care, they are actively trying to screw you.
(Another example - my local coffeehouse has a half-sweet latte drink which is itself almost too sweet. I'm guessing the full-sweetness version makes room for more cane syrup by taking out actual coffee.)
Relevant read: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...
Other words like "natural" and "organic" have suffered a similar bastardization fate where these words mean nothing anymore (look at this Gatorade bottle for example: "Naturally flavored with other natural flavors". http://cdn-jpg.thedailymeal.net/sites/default/files/u58340/o... What??)
It's no surprise even the CEO of whole foods says most of the stuff they sell is crap. I used to shop at their original two stores in Austin before they decided to expand and they sold a very different class of product.
Triscuits solved my snack problem and they are high in fiber and whole grain with only three ingredients; get the low salt variety as they taste just fine. You can top them will all sorts of delicious fruits and vegetables to where each day is something different.
Sugar is so hard to move away from, I know many who got into juicing only to gain weight because they juiced what their tastes buds told them tasted best, fruits!
Sugar free naturally, stick to the vegetable isle. Drink lots of water and if you like it, experiment with different varieties of tea either hot or iced
I can't put my finger on it but the first 1/4th of the article through me off.
I see it all the time and hate it, but don't know how to describe it.
The journalism suits the interest of the journalists and their managers and not the reader.
If there is ambiguity in a verbal definition, it can be clarified by writing down a mathematical model, not by endless debates about the meaning of words or classification of the economies of different nations.
"Pure capitalism" would be a synonym for "free market" although it's rarely used academically, I guess because the term capitalism is a lot less descriptive that "free market".
Terms like "mixed economy" just refer to somewhere in between these two extremes.
As I said, economists are not particularly interested in giving things accurate names, or classifying them. They mighty do this occasionally, as is necessary especially when communicating with people outside the field, but the field itself relies mainly on mathematical models, not sociological categories. That is why I feel the need to correct someone who, speaking with an authoritative tone, claims to know that "free market" and "capitalism" have precise and different meanings.
Please never phrase your opinion like this ever again. Whatever interest I had in knowing what Benjamin Tucker said about this issue, I've lost due to your smugly phrased sentence.
Even though I claim to speak with authority because of my PhD, I don't consider that condescending or smug, and a person is free to judge that my education is worthless if they like. But throwing out names of very obscure people in place of an actual argument is objectively smug and rude.
It takes a special perspective to sell $66B worth of product while blaming consumers for their inability to discern healthy food.
On the plus side tho', their production requirements oftentimes bring state-of-the-art processing facilities to areas lacking in, or in desperate need of, clean water and filtration. Parts of India come to mind.
I wish the press would do the responsible thing and use the proper words for those things: "corporate raiders".
Giving into establishment's newspeak is not doing anyone a favor. And let questionable people do the toxic thing they do (destroying companies for his own interest) while feeling good about themselves.
For now, I chose to keep away from any media that uses those lying words (such the ones one would use to cover up for torture, bombings, etc).
Noted: Fortune is in the no read list.
…so nice to hear that her cult is still working out
I shouldn't have been shocked. He is a food engineer. Sounded like a joke title, but the supermarket shelves have more engineering in them as the shelves of Best Buy.
I threw in the towel and pretty much buy raw food, bread from bakeries that can't afford all the soy supplements etc. The manufactured stuff I guy (bread, butter etc) costs a lot more because the labor content of the food is higher. Luckily I can afford it.
I am morally unclear on the value of the engineered food. On one hand it's true, we have calories and vitamins, fibre etc in the hands of people who in an earlier age couldn't afford it. On the other hand the nutritional value available to poorer people is still lower than the wealthy.
But I think they are buying less because it's so crazy expensive. I know that's why I stopped.
To get 'normal' oranges I had to seek for expensive packages.
Honestly I really want to see a push to lower acidity in drinks. They seriously should start putting that on the bottle and talking about it. Acid drinks are a major health crisis that nobody talks about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison
Water fluoridation is at safe levels. Other fluoridation is not. Completely agree.
Oh, and eat a diet that has no carbohydrates in it.
I have no idea what you meant with the carbohydrate comment if you wouldn't mind explaining.
Oh and thanks for the down vote, but this isn't reddit.
You do ingest toothpaste, albeit only small amounts. Much like you ingest mouthwash, you just try to keep it to a minimum.
> HN's propensity for "don't like it? Just buy this gadget/start your own company/move to Somalia"-style rhetoric also makes an appearance.
What else can I suggest? In a democratic society that is your choice. You can fight to change the law, or you can work around it.
> I have no idea what you meant with the carbohydrate comment if you wouldn't mind explaining.
Since humans developed agriculture and started consuming large amounts of carbohydrates, they have experienced tooth decay. Fluoride is necessary to prevent it.
> Oh and thanks for the down vote, but this isn't reddit.
This discussion is completely off-topic and your comments are unhelpful. A downvote is justifiable.
Ridiculous. First, neither of us live in a democracy. There was no vote where the general populace elected to receive low doses of toxic minerals in our drinking water. Rather cabals of lobbyists persuaded municipal officials to add it under the guise of it being a good thing. Which has yet to be statistically demonstrated.
You don't know where I live! Though I'd agree that capitalist countries are not very democratic, at least not mine and the United States.
> There was no vote where the general populace elected to receive low doses of toxic minerals in our drinking water.
It varies by country.
"Toxic minerals" is an amusing statement given that virtually all substances are toxic in the correct dose. As someone else pointed out, sola dosis facit venenum: the dose makes the poison.
Your statement about toxicity is quite valid, nevertheless you can remove the word toxic and my point still stands.
I would love to know of the country that democratically elected to receive fluoride in their water.
Yeah, I'd just assumed from the way you worded that, that you didn't know where I lived. My bad.
In short, he's known as the father of Public Relations. Fluoride can only legally be disposed of in expensive toxic waste dumps, and Mr. Bernays came up with a plan to dispose of it for free by passing it through the human body. His public relations skills were so amazing that he even succeeded in making people (like you) want to ingest it.
This has no impact on its health benefits, however. For $1 a year, we get less cavities. This isn't marketing bullshit, it's science.
TLDR: most of Europe
That tells me all I need to know.
Says exactly what I claimed. I'm not going to waste my time finding primary sources, because your asinine response tells me all I need to know.
Therefore, "anti-fluoride" seems fitting.
If you must dispute water fluoridation on Hacker News, do so by making careful, factual, respectful comments.
The site guidelines specifically ask you not to call names. That includes both calling each other names as well as calling each others' arguments names (e.g. "woo").
Someone participating in this discussion would either know this from general knowledge, or could look it up.
People aren't that ignorant.
You have only to look up the rates of tooth decay among non-fluoridated countries to find that there is no difference whatsoever.
It doesn't matter what theirs is, the link I gave you isn't useful as a source, but as a list of sources.
I'm not sure how any of this relates to vaccines, since we are talking about fluoride. But anytime you want to know if something is true or not, the only way I know of is to dig deeper for more information.
One thing to keep in mind while digging in, we know there is a financial incentive behind pro-fluoridation studies (it is expensive for business to dispose of it). As far as I know, there isn't much financial incentive in being against fluoridation, save for some boutique toothpaste brands that would probably lack the resources to conduct peer reviewed studies.