Food Industry Launches 'Ferocious' Campaign Against Regulations on Ultraprocessed Foods (arstechnica.com) 208
Studies show ultraprocessed food "encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished," writes Ars Technica.
But the food industry's response has been "a ferocious campaign against regulation." In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of "junk food" high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers. FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year's spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar.
In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like [Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos] Monteiro. "The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce, and delay," says Barry Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London and a consultant for companies on the multisensory experience of food and drink.
So far the strategy has proved successful. Just a handful of countries, including Belgium, Israel, and Brazil, currently refer to UPFs in their dietary guidelines. But as the weight of evidence about UPFs grows, public health experts say the only question now is how, if at all, it is translated into regulation. "There's scientific agreement on the science," says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "It's how to interpret that to make a policy that people aren't sure of."
[...] As researchers have learned more about the link between UPFs and poor health outcomes, companies have remained largely silent about these risks, leaving trade bodies that advocate on their behalf to argue loudly against the validity of the research.
But the food industry's response has been "a ferocious campaign against regulation." In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of "junk food" high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers. FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year's spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar.
In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like [Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos] Monteiro. "The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce, and delay," says Barry Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London and a consultant for companies on the multisensory experience of food and drink.
So far the strategy has proved successful. Just a handful of countries, including Belgium, Israel, and Brazil, currently refer to UPFs in their dietary guidelines. But as the weight of evidence about UPFs grows, public health experts say the only question now is how, if at all, it is translated into regulation. "There's scientific agreement on the science," says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "It's how to interpret that to make a policy that people aren't sure of."
[...] As researchers have learned more about the link between UPFs and poor health outcomes, companies have remained largely silent about these risks, leaving trade bodies that advocate on their behalf to argue loudly against the validity of the research.
Millenials && forward already know the tru (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing ultra-processed food through seems like war on the poor. The fact that soft drink consumption has fallen off a cliff isn't something that can be reversed. I'm a millenial and I think my toddler has seen me drink soda (unknowingly) perhaps five or six times in her life.
By contrast I grew up with a white and blue diet pepsi 12 pack in the fridge growing up. Pretty sure my dad grew up drinking shasta cola or some variant. Junk food is not long for this world, they already lost the cultural war, if there was any.
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:4, Insightful)
Junk food is not long for this world ...
What I've seen: McDonalds continues earning billions selling their third-rate fast-food. KFC is also doing well, probably because of their faster service and smaller menu. Burger King is stuck in the middle and surviving through home deliveries (UberEats, DoorDash, MenuLog).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:5, Insightful)
My mother's answer was simple, "this is your dinner. You don't have to eat it but it's this or nothing. We ate it."
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My mother's answer was simple, "this is your dinner. You don't have to eat it but it's this or nothing. We ate it."
Yeah, until they come and wake you up at 1am because they're hungry. Seriously though, I do think your mother's approach is the way to go, and pays dividends in the long term, but it does requires a huge amount of patience. It's way easier to just give in to your little one's whim and not have to deal with the pushback, and the more money rich/time poor parents are, the quicker they fall into this pattern.
Good parenting is hard work, but our society doesn't consider it a real job.
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Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:4, Informative)
I was taught respect for my elders from birth to now. If I was stupid enough to not eat what I was given and then tried to wake my mom at 1am then further respect training would be immediately provided. I was never hit but I sure as hell wouldn't try to wake her at 1am because I was hungry after turning down dinner.
Now that she's the only one left and needs assistance with all sorts of things our roles have changed. I now take care of her stuff (medical, finances, housing, transport, etc), respectfully and with love. She earned it.
Now eat your damned dinner or make your own if you don't like what I made. You're tall enough to reach everything in the kitchen and smart enough not to injure yourself or start a fire.
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Yeah that was my mums approach too. She was no strict disciplinarian, hippy mother with a copy of Dr Spocks guide to parenting under her arm. But she was adamant us kids eat properly, and banned sugar from the diet, and because my dad has had issues with high blood pressure, she didnt care for salt either. The end result is I dont put extra salt in my food (Though my understanding is these days salts not considered the demon it once was) and dont put sugar in my coffee or breakfast. Not out of any particual
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:5, Interesting)
Food preferences are more about acclimation and training than the food itself. I have one picky eater and one adventuresome eater. McDonald's is pretty close to their last choice for food because it's so greasy, the cheese is way overprocessed, and there are only two textures (squishy and French fried).
Re: Millenials && forward already know the (Score:3)
I visited the US a couple of years ago. I was intrigued about Chick-fil-A because I've read so many things about them and how their food is on a "higher tier" of fast food.
it was a fucking frozen Chicken tender and a sauce made of flavoring, coloring, and xanthan gum.
I've also seen american fast food restaurants in Japan and most of the time half of the clients are foreigners.
I have no idea what's wrong with Americans and their obsession with just terrible and expensive fast food. all of the food I tried in
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe in what you're saying when we start seeing meaningful reductions in obesity. As it is right now every bit of data I've seen shows obesity increasing, not decreasing, here in the US
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:4, Informative)
Younger generations are listening to what millennials are saying, and actually taking action on it. Soda sales are in the dumper and have been for years and years. If you don't believe me go look at soda sales numbers YoY for any two years after 2000.
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Just because soda sales are down doesnt mean both adult and childhood obesity numbers arent still increasing and they very much are.
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At least we now know sugar can be crossed off problem list.
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Childhood obesity is going up as well as instances of children developing associated issues like type 2 diabetes. Basically, American children are developing long term health issues that they will likely have to deal with their whole lives at MUCH earlier ages than when they used to.
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:5, Informative)
Childhood obesity is a very large and growing problem in this country so that's not it at all https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/... [cdc.gov] / . Our nation's children are very literally MUCH fatter than they used to be and are developing weight related issues like type 2 diabetes at significantly increasing rates.
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I get the feeling this it's due to many factors colliding,
* Poor diet ("processed foods" but also incorrectly-portioned meals)
* Meds that promote weight gain
* Less outdoor time for kids - more screens - sedentary lifestyle
* Social normalization of over-eating and obesity
* High levels of stress, psychological issues
Any one of these can make you gain weight. Get hit by 2 or 3 of them and suddenly it feels like you "can't lose weight" and your "body is just that way".
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> Social normalization of over-eating and obesity
It's not just normalization, it's celebration. To hear the "body positivity" and "healthy at any weight" people talk, you'd think that not only is obesity not a problem, but that it's a healthy way to live that should actually be encouraged. And if you disagree with their narrative, you're a discriminatory bigot as bad as any klansman. They'll criticize people for losing weight and getting in-shape. And they'll even interrupt private conversations and a
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Why do you believe there is no way people are more fat now than years ago?
Have you been outside? Been in a Walmart? Sat in any restaurant with an all you can eat buffet? Aware of the "body positivity" movement and the term "fat phobia"?
It's terrifying and disgusting how fat so many people are today. When I was a kid you didn't herds of 350+ lbs people waddling around.
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I'm fairly certain increasing obesity is only due to an aging population.
The irony of your comment is that the aging population are the healthy ones. The obese don't make it that far.
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I'm a millenial
What, did you purchase your low Slashdot id then, lol?
Anyway, um, no: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/... [cdc.gov]
(They certainly know how to engage in self-praise though ... )
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I totally purchased mine. Couldn't possibly have been on the internet as a child. That'd be illegal.
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Forcing ultra-processed food through seems like war on the poor.
It's more indifference than malice. And the effect of regulating UPFs on the poor is going to be complex, with no outcomes that are both happy and easy to achieve.
What we're talking about is the product of technology that allows businesses to take cheap (and indeed federally subsidized) ingredients and transform them into ultra-palatable, shelf stable edible products on an *industrial scale*. This makes them really, really inexpensive and available to people who live in areas with low availability of fresh [wikipedia.org]
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:4, Insightful)
Ooooh, we wouldn't want our foods to be ultra-palatable and shelf stable now, would we?
Shelf stable, sure. Ultra-palatable, no. The way manufacturers make ultrapalatable is by putting copious amounts of fat, sugar and salt into them, all of which are fine in *moderation* but bad for health in excess. Ultrapalatable doesn't even mean nice to eat. Think "Cheet-Ohs"; you might enjoy a few, but way past the point you're enjoying them you continue to eat them compulsively, without any real pleasure. Real food doesn't work that way. Even if it's incredible, when you've consumed a modest quantity of it you don't want to eat any more. That's a *good* thing.
Let the FDA determine whether manufacturers are introducing anything harmful into our diets by doing this.
This is what I suggested is the extreme limit of what is politically possible, but it's not going to be easy. It's not close to how it works today. Additives are declared GRAS (generally recognized as safe), not by the FDA, but buy the manufacturers, and the FDA vetoes that if it has a problem with the data submitted by the maker. In any case anything in use before 1958 is grandfathered as presumptively safe. This includes many additives such as carageenan which are now looking like a problem.
Even if there were independent scientific review in the approval process, which there is not, the problems with UPFs are cutting edge science and wouldn't be grounds for rejecting an additive yet. There needs to be funding for new science to zero in on the problem additives, and that's not going to be popular with industry because many profitable products are going to get banned.
So the bottom line on UPFs is that if you can afford to do so, you should avoid them. But we have to recognize that not everyone can do this.
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How much would your cost to cook your own food change if you didn't have a car, didn't live near a grocery store, didn't have a kitchen, and didn't have time to cook? Additionally, at what point in time did your time become worthless? If you add in the cost of your time to shop and prepare and clean at an hourly rate of, say $25/hr. Now your meals are closer to $20-30 each, and the fast food (with the same time/opportunity costs baked in) is coming in around half that. Having the time and agency to prepare
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:5, Informative)
Forcing ultra-processed food through seems like war on the poor. The fact that soft drink consumption has fallen off a cliff isn't something that can be reversed. I'm a millenial and I think my toddler has seen me drink soda (unknowingly) perhaps five or six times in her life. By contrast I grew up with a white and blue diet pepsi 12 pack in the fridge growing up. Pretty sure my dad grew up drinking shasta cola or some variant. Junk food is not long for this world, they already lost the cultural war, if there was any.
Conflating ultra-processed food and "junk food" is exactly the kind of mistake which the food industry wants us all to make. For a better explanation than I can give for why this is so, I recommend a recent book called "Ultra-Processed People" by Chris Van Tulleken. In it, he makes a compelling case that many, many food products widely considered healthy or benign are in fact damaging in various ways, and he proposes causal mechanisms and cites research.
In short, various food processing activities remove nutrients, while adding flavour and texture enhancers which are implicated in damaging the intestinal microbiome and allowing things into the bloodstream that ought not to be there. Even some purely mechanical processes - pureeing fruit, for example - cause stronger and more rapid blood insulin rise, leading both to further cravings and insulin resistance. And this is just one small example.
The overwhelming predominance of ultra-processed foods - foods which arguably are actively addictive while being both nutritionally deficient and actually damaging to health - goes far, far beyond what is naively referred to as "junk food".
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Ultra-Processed People
I've seen that movie, but I think they call it Soylent Green here.
Re:Millenials && forward already know the (Score:4, Informative)
Does Van Tulleken have an actual definition of ultra-processed foods? I've read about a dozen books on food politics, food manufacturing, industrial food supplies, etc. by various nutritionists, food anthropologists, and investigative journalists, and I don't know what ultra-processed foods is supposed to mean. Food processing occurs on an infinite spectrum, and there is either some cut-off point after which food goes from 'processed' to 'ultra-processed', or it is a label with little hard-and-fast meaning. Or, maybe, there is just some concise definition, but I have yet to encounter it (it seems relatively recent in the food politics/industry popular literature).
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His rule-of-thumb is that ultra-processed foods are those whose ingredients are unlikely to be found in an average domestic kitchen. There are points both for and against that approach; but I felt that on the whole he struck a good balance between putting people off with excessive scientific detail, and dumbing the content down to the point of New Age meaninglessness.
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Yes they do, and we just keep finding new ways those sugar substitutes are absolutely terrible for the human body.
It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:5, Interesting)
As Dr R. Lustig said in one video , changing food consumption habits takes a generation . it's like smoking and other bad habits.
as always , sugar is everywhere and it is the main culprit of the metabolic diseases ( High blood pressure , diabete , ....) but in front of the evidence some guys will always says that fat is the culprit. but fat was part of our food since the begining of the humanity , not sugar.
Re: It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:3)
In the spirit of your post, focusing on "calories" (ad in: banning high-calories junk food) is also a bad strategy. Fat is high-caloric, yet byball accounts preferable to hydrocarbons even compared to lower(-caloric) amounts.
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Hydrocarbons? Don't you mean carbohydrates? Not that same thing.
Re: It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:2)
I mean the sugar thing.
Not a native speaker. (Also not a chemist...)
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Fats are not the enemy. Good fats are fantastic. Organic nuts, avocado, olive oil, etc., are almost perfect foods with very predictable impacts on humans - unlike the ubiquitous crap filled with corn syrup, coloring and preservatives we see everywhere that is not really even food. Don't be afraid of good fats...just eat the right amount of them. And doing so will reduce cravings for that over-processed garbage they push on us and our children. Seriously - try it.
Re: It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:2)
In the spirit of your post, focusing on "calories" (ad in: banning high-calories junk food) is also a bad strategy. Fat is high-caloric, yet byball accounts preferable to hydrocarbons even compared to lower(-caloric) amounts.
Seriously, it's the calories. The calories, the calories, the calories.
Replacing 1000 unneeded calories of sugar with 1000 unneeded calories of fat is not preferable, or 1000 calories of carbohydrates, or 1000 calories of protein.
We have an obesity epidemic, not an epidemic of people that actually need that extra 1000 calories, are not overweight, and are getting it from sugar instead of a mix of fat and protein, and have problems because of it.
It's like saying knife murders are preferable to gun murders. Y
Re: It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:2)
Replacing 1000 unneeded calories of sugar with 1000 unneeded calories of fat is not preferable, or 1000 calories of carbohydrates, or 1000 calories of protein.
So... how many calories does a sugar molecule have? When you have the answer, hold on to it for a moment.
Now - you surely know that the body deals in ATP, right? So, how many ATP molecules is a sugar molecule decomposed into?
When you put those two together, how does thr story even make sense?
We have an obesity epidemic [...]
Why do you think this is related to calories, and strictly to calories?
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As Dr R. Lustig said in one video , changing food consumption habits takes a generation . it's like smoking and other bad habits.... as always , sugar is everywhere and it is the main culprit of the metabolic diseases ( High blood pressure , diabete , ....) but in front of the evidence some guys will always says that fat is the culprit. but fat was part of our food since the begining of the humanity , not sugar.
That was a really interesting lecture/presentation: Sugar: THE BITTER TRUTH [youtube.com]
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.
Re:It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:5, Funny)
He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.
And here I am eatig a whole grain cereal which has added sugar. Let them fight to the death!
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+1 truth.
If you look at the ingredients list of many so called health foods, high fructose corn syrup is in most of them turning them from potential health foods into toxic trash.
I stopped eating as many things as possible that are loaded with HFCS. I wasn't fat but wasn't slim anymore either. Since then the extra weight has slowly been falling off without any major lifestyle or other diet changes. It's all empty calories and bad for you in other ways as well.
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Try 50% Fiber One, especially the kind that looks like rabbit food, and 50% Total. If you eat 40 g of each, you'll get 80% of the (relatively low) US RDA for fiber, 100% for lots of vitamins and minerals, and "only" 6 g total sugars.
You can eat Fiber One by itself, but it's hard to choke down because it's basically fiber powder with guar gum as a fiber-based binder/glue. Ironically, in spite of having so much fiber and so little taste, it's well within the definition of "ultraprocessed food".
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This particular one is Banana Cheerios. Not the greatest, not the worst. I also have various Whole Grain Cheerios, Frosted Mini-Wheats (again, fiber + sugar) and a box or two of granola. I gave up the raw sugar cereal a long while back. I've always been on the thin side so I'm not overly concerned with weight gain (though I have added a few pounds since high school decades ago). I'm just working to keep my blood sugar below 100 for my yearly check up (batting 1.000 so far).
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Get a zojirushi and some bulk steel cut oats and just prep your own oatmeal ahead of time.
Re:It takes a generation to switch habits (Score:4, Interesting)
The cultprit is neither sugar nor fat, it's the removal of fiber in processed food.
Eat an orange, but don't drink orange juice. Eat olives, not olive oil.
A good reference on healthy diet is this: https://www.who.int/news-room/... [who.int]
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This is just trading one over-simplification for another. Nothing wrong with orange juice if you drink the juice of one orange in a serving, even sans fiber. Sugars and fats have pros and cons, depending on all sorts of factors. To say it's not those but somehow it's the removal of fiber isn't accurate.
When it comes to diet and nutrition, the second you say, "The culprit is/isn't..." you're on dodgy territory. The kind of territory usually inhabited by naturopaths, homeopaths, and assorted quacks.
The right
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It's not just the sugar.
Anecdotally, my parents generation (inlaws) grew up dirt poor in a condemned slum in the 1940s and 50s. By all accounts their diet was not very good as you might expect. Of all the things lacking, refined sugar wasn't one of them, being no perishable, calorie dense, robust, easily transportable it was getting cheap even back then. It was one of the things they did have ready access to.
Played hell with their teeth, of course, but not obesity.
They had sugar and fat (animal fats mostly)
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I think we may see bans on the wide use of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and canola oil in foods. Note the major spike in diabetes and hypertension ever since HFCS became widely used as a sugar substitute starting around 1980; and recent research shows that certain seed oils, particularly canola oil, can cause heart inflammation issues.
In short, we may end up with food safety certification similar to that used by the EU, phased in over three years.
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but fat was part of our food since the begining of the humanity , not sugar.
You're so good at discounting "this one thing" as a cause, but then ruined it by suggesting it was another "this one thing".
The reality is it's not fat, it's not sugar, it's a highly complex multi-variate issue involving many things including not just specific calorie dense ingredients, but also components that change our desire to continue eating along with food availability.
Sugar has literally been part of our diet since the beginning of humanity as well. What has changed is the quantity we consume of it,
No surprises here (Score:4, Interesting)
A bunch of tobacco companies moved into the "food" business when their efforts to block the evidence of the harm from smoking failed eventually.
So, now we have "food" companies and smaller "electronic cigarettes" companies with the same tried and tested playbook.
Unsurprisingly, the character of the campaigns against the facts is the same.
But of course! (Score:5, Informative)
Their money's more important to them than your heath is to you.
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On the other hand (Score:3)
If he's correct, though, the casualties could be in the brazillions [youtube.com]. (sigh) Nobody gets me.
[ Thanks Rick. So few opportunities for that one. :-) ]
Main problem (Score:3)
I think that the main problem is how to prove the actual problem.
Ultra processed food in itself is probably not dangerous. Or not that much. And I'm pretty sure that the UPC food industry can prove this with studies and animal testing and all that.
The main danger, however, is not eating UPC. Having a Big Mac or Twinkie every now and then won't kill you. But NOT EATING any low, or unprocessed food will keep you lacking the good stuff. And that will kill you. And you will lose the ability to prepare your own food. And the ability to taste unprocessed food.
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Heavily processed food lacks certain things that our body requires to function properly. Yes, the occasional hamburger and twinkie will not kill you. Not even if you have either of them twice a week.
Eating NOTHING BUT that is what kills you.
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Yes. Which I noticed to become a problem in the US. I don't know if it's just the people I met, but no one knows how to cook anymore. I've impressed people by making pancakes without a mix....
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The Twinkie may not kill you, but when you do die, it will keep your corpse looking great for thousands of years.
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The main danger, however, is not eating UPC.
I know! We need a pill to fix that!
I am confused (Score:2)
What's the difference between "lobbying" and "bribing"?
Re:I am confused (Score:5, Informative)
What's the difference between "lobbying" and "bribing"?
They're spelled slightly different.
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Lobbying does not involve giving money. Lobbying means keeping close relation with lawmaking procedures, such as:
* show up at the committee meetings of elected officials where industry actors are invited for discussion;
* send regular reports or "white paper" to elected officials informing them of your arguments related to any law in drafting;
* invite elected officials for the company events where you present your new policy and expected results -> careful, invitation just means "welcoming", cannot cover
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From TFS:
food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023
Now you tell me with a straight face that all that money was solely for your points above.
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food and soft drinks-related companies
Considering the food sector of the economy is $1.5T and the summary is giving a very, very broad description I am actually surprised it's that low.
Not saying industry lobbying isn't a problem but that money as described is covering likely hundreds of companies and industry groups including all of the farming and ranching sector, restaurant suppliers, importers, equipment suppliers...
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I was only answering your question regarding the definition of the concepts, I don't know if these companies are honest or not. I'm ready to to believe they're not honest and also practice bribing, but it's not what TFA claims to have been measuring. TFA used publicly available data from NGO "Open Secrets", only being able to sum the numbers referring to legal activities, for the reason that the illegal ones are not known.
If we now want to speculate and make a quick estimate, let's say: each big company kee
Re:I am confused (Score:4, Informative)
lol, wut?
Lobbying means giving money. The rest of that is secondary. The other part of lobbying you "forgot" is special interests literally writing legislation the bribed officials then put up for a vote, unread.
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Lobbying means giving money.
You indeed have to pay the people who act as lobbyist for you, but you do not give money to the elected officials, this is what makes the difference with bribery. See also Wikipedia: "Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interest groups hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] It's about hiring consultants and having them argui
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Sure because politicians will write special legislation and do things for your company just out of the kindness of their hearts and a sturdy sense of civic duty.
Right.
Back here in reality, lobbying means money.
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You are going to misunderstand articles from the Financial Times, where they use the word "lobbying" for "hired consultancy".
Re:I am confused (Score:4, Informative)
Bribing is what you call it when the other side does it, lobbying is what you call it when your own side does it.
Hard science... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, the dude who made the biggest impact on UPF consumption, at least for a short while, was Morgan Spurlock (remember Supersize Me?) who's sadly just passed away. His hilarious demonstrations of how companies like McDonald's are harming most of us hit the spot. We need more popular culture & comedians to go after UPF companies, like Kraft Foods.
We need to hit the UPF companies with their own tactics & where it hurts. Make people see them for the lying, selfish scumbags they are, hate them, & insist on outlawing their harmful practices. We're doing it with tobacco & we can do it with UPFs.
Maybe the first steps would be banning advertising & putting unequivocal health warnings on food & beverage packaging? Also, include effective, actionable food health education on national curricula so the next generations grow up being better informed about the risks & choices.
BTW, did you know that when Philip Morris saw the writing on the wall & realised they had to diversify from tobacco, they bought Kraft Foods. UPFs are the new tobacco. The film "Thank you for Smoking" is a hilarious & entertaining introduction to how food, tobacco, alcohol, & firearms companies & their lobbyists operate. I highly recommend it if only for its sharp, witty entertainment value.
Re:Hard science... (Score:5, Informative)
The guy was a charlatan who completely discredited himself by not revealing how many of heath problems were caused by his uncontrolled alcoholism, to the determent of any good he might have been able to do with his documentary.
This is tobacco all over again (Score:2)
I don't know why my choices must be 'cook from scratch from raw ingredients' or 'extremely unhealthy'. I can afford to pay more, yet finding anything with a simple ingredient list is all but impossible.
Meal kit deliveries? (to be less "impossible") (Score:2)
Maybe some options of interest: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vega... [duckduckgo.com]
One example: https://wholeharvest.com/pages... [wholeharvest.com]
Others: https://vegnews.com/taste-test... [vegnews.com]
I tried Whole Harvest for one big experimental order last year and overall liked it. However it tended to have too much pepper for my taste. Also there was so much from the order I had to organize what I ate and also freeze many things to avoid spoilage before the best-by dates. And also there is a lot of packaging to dispose of (to be expected of course). A
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No shame, maybe, but a serious litigation risk. In the modern music industry if you make any money then someone will come after you for plagiarism.
Joking aside, look at frozen vegetables rather than tinned. They tend to be better quality than fresh and don't need to be preserved in brine, and if you're planning on cooking them then the textural changes aren't a big problem.
money always wins over morality (Score:2)
Classism and corruption in action (Score:4, Insightful)
The upper classes are using our corrupt economy to cheat and steal from the rest of us. They will not stop until they've destroyed all our rights and all our democracies. Welcome to their plutocracy. Evil people are wrecking everything for everybody.
Cooking makes you richer (Score:3)
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Indeed. Many vitamins arent absorbed when combined with UPFs.
Hell, they arent absorbed when carb intake is too high, for example Vitamin C requirements drop to almost nothing if you don't eat carbs.
One of the factors often not taken into consideration in foods is anti-nutrients, that prevent absorbition or drasticaly reduce it, of nutrients our body needs.
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That's not quite true. You most definitely can eat both unhealthy home cooked meals as well as get morbidly obese doing so. The tricks often used by the food industry to make their foods highly addictive find their way into countless recipes.
It's fair to say that UPF are unhealthy, but the opposite is most definitely not universally true.
Now excuse me while I go downstairs and peel a set of fresh potatoes, cut them into small sticks and then deep fry them in saturated fat before pouring all the salt on them
Cue the latest stupid food fad (Score:2)
There has been a recent torrent of online commentary about the evils of "processed" food, whatever that term means. The "processed" argument is being used to kill off the last remnants of consumer interest in the plant-based meat substitutes now on the market and in the forthcoming technology of growing real meat from cells. If you think the fast-food industry is being the bad guy here for lobbying to keep the "processed" menu it has been feeding us, the real evil is the set of lobbyists using the same arg
what's the difference? (Score:2)
between "ultra-processed" natural foods and say, "impossible" burgers? I assume those "fake meat" burgers are heavily processed too?
Well, there goes ... (Score:2)
Just look to Europe (Score:2)
I want to care but I can't (Score:2)
The underlying problem with UPF = bad is lack of useful specificity. It would be one thing if they said ingredient x is bad avoid it, too much y is bad or process z yields k which is really bad. One could learn from and change their behavior, supermarkets could make adjustments and politicians can create a policy around such statements.
What they've actually done is created massive nebulous category that is as much about modalities of production as underlying ingredients. When most of what's for sale in t
Re:Next Stop: Criminalization of Critical Speech (Score:4, Funny)
The Texas cattle industry is also losing the climate war....something about the heat being too much for cattle. The governor should just cancel global warming like the alleged governor of Florida did. And if asshole becomes president again, he can use his magical Sharpie to redirect hurricanes away from Texas and Florida.
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You get a cow! And YOU get a cow! EVERYBODY gets a cow!!
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Interestingly, the World Health Organisation's guidelines on treating dehydration warn against drinking so called, "sport drinks." Just about anything else is better. Salty home-made lemonade (carefully measured quantities) seems to be the best alternative to oral rehydration solutions if none are available so if you live in hot climate, regularly do outdoor activities, & need a cheap, co
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It appears the World Health Organization does not have guidelines on treating dehydration outside that induced by diarrhoea. Their guidelines [who.int] on this do not mention sports drinks. Nor lemonade.
Sports drinks in general have too much sugar for a rehydration solution (which reduces speed of absorption), because that's not what they're meant for. The sugar is there to replace some of the energy used during exercise. The salts are there to replace salts lost due to sweating. The idea is to prevent dehydrati
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That's not quite correct. Excessive meat consumption is linked with increased risk of illnesses. As in everything, the best approach is deliberate balance:
* Yip, C., Lam, W. & Fielding, R. "A summary of meat intakes and health burdens." Eur J Clin Nutr 72, 18–29 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2017.117 [doi.org]
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Well... no. Despite me being an (almost) obligate carnivore (believe it or not... welcome to my wonderful metabolism...), I have to tell you that this isn't even the case for me, let alone to a person with a normal human metabolism.
Meat, or protein to be more correct, is probably the "healthier" thing to eat compared to carbohydrates in any form, but you will end up lacking certain vitamins, certain minerals and your kidneys may not exactly like the idea too much either.
Especially if you eat it in quantitie
Re: No need to regulate if you eat healthy (Score:2)
the healthiest food humans can eat
And just think of all the methane-belching cows you'll be removing from the ecosystem.
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Re: Understandable (Score:2)
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exactly.
My dentist, who bless her heart is obsessed with talking about general health more than dentistry, says that the key to which foods are good is whether you can pronounce all the ingredients.
I'm like really? Even if the ingredients are the easily pronounceable "lard", "sugar", and "cream"? :D
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"Good for you" and "good food" are different circles in the Venn diagram.
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Is there a definition of "ultraprocessed"?
There's always the idiot who asks this question. I don't have mod points so instead, think of bologna. That is in no way a "natural" food. It's processed seven ways to Wednesday. All those chicken nuggest you buy? Same thing. Hot Pockets, boxed meals you throw in the microwave, any fast food meal, anything which has a thousand and one items added to it or has been processed far beyond the normal means to create it.
But then, you could have done a simple search a
Re: Um (Score:2)
think of bologna.
An Italian city? Better yet, baloney (bologna sausage [wikipedia.org]). Go ahead. Read the ingrediants. I don't think many people would find them less than wholesome. Just because they have been run through a blender doesn't make them "bad".
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That's certainly a facile notion but, coffee and olives are also highly processed. Pistachio nuts and cashew nuts are heavily processed. Sauerkraut and kimchee, beer and wine, soy sauce and many other soy products, bread, tortillas, cheese, yogurt... and all of your fruits and vegetables have undergone considerable modification to make them more robust for packing, blander and sweeter.
Now go on and make excuses about how this is all too confusing and you still don't understand.
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Fiber is just undigestible cellulose.
Unecessary if you don't load up on carbs that clog up your digestif track.
High protein high fiber bars, often still contain sugar as the main ingredient, often HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), seed oils (Plam, Canola, peanut,etc...), lots of Soy and soy derivatives.
These are the main culprits for inflamation, weight gain and destroying your gut biome.