New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake
wsj.com
wsj.com
In particular, I would be really curious to know what the basis is for the guideline that saturated fats should be replaced by "vegetable" oils, and that "saturated fat should be less than 10% of calories." I've looked at a lot of studies myself over the years, and find the evidence against seed oils to be much stronger than the evidence against saturated fat.
They're the results of the "Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee", which does contain references, methods, etc and can be found here:
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/2020-advisory-committee-re...
The initial demonization of saturated fats is a good example of something that was taken too far to the extremes. However, when the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease was later found to be weak, many people made the mistake of arguing that saturated fat had no links to heart disease, or even that saturated fat is actually actually good for you. Likewise, the initial exaggeration of the role of LDL cholesterol has led to a small but vocal minority of people who claim that LDL has no connection to heart disease, which doesn't agree with the science. Unfortunately, contrarian takes reign supreme when it comes to getting clicks and likes, so that's what we see the most of.
There are small communities that discuss dietary studies from a neutral, scientific point of view. However, it's relatively boring to do so and tends to leave more questions than answers, which doesn't make for great headlines or debate fodder. It's also difficult to introduce new people to dietary studies because there are so many inconclusive and conflicting studies performed over the past several decades. Someone arguing in bad faith can easily cherry-pick a handful of studies to support nearly any position, while choosing to ignore studies that don't reach the conclusions they want to see.
From real-world experience, nit-picking minor details like which types of fats are better than others is missing the big picture. In the real world, the difference between healthy and unhealthy diets is usually plainly obvious to anyone paying attention. Excessive portion sizes, excess sugar, constant snacking, alcohol, few or zero vegetables and other such obvious flaws tend to dominate the problems in people's diet. Making minor changes like swapping one type of fat for another is futile if someone is over-eating at every meal.
Because of the limitations of nutrition science and the incentives of academia, weak evidence is basically equivalent to no evidence.
If "X causes Y" is the dominant paradigm, and a review of the studies shows:
- 20 studies showing "no statistically significant results"
- 10 studies showing "low effect size, but statistically significant" correlations that "X causes Y"
- 0 studies show "X reduces Y"
Does that mean that "X" weakly causes "Y"? No. Because what probably happened is that any time a study got an "X reduces Y" result the academic said, "This looks wrong, let me play with the control variables a bit" until the result became "no significant association." Or possibly they just through the study in the rubbish.
The proper conclusion from the above studies is: "We have not established any link between X and Y. If any link does exist, it is below the threshold of our ability to measure it using our limited tool-set in nutrition science."
Or in other words: any study result that cannot be distinguished from p-hacking should not be admissible as evidence.
AFAICT, this is the case with saturated fat -- there is no set of studies with a sound, convincing methodology that shows a clear and undeniable causal link with heart disease. If you disagree, I'd like to see what studies you find convincing.
the initial exaggeration of the role of LDL cholesterol has led to a small but vocal minority of people who claim that LDL has no connection to heart disease, which doesn't agree with the science
What is the best evidence that dietary cholesterol causes heart disease? What is the best evidence that reducing LDL through either reducing saturated fat or cholesterol intake, or through pharmaceutical intervention reduces all cause mortality?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
(or, as I heard on a podcast the other day, "a nutritious kid's breakfast was a bowl of sugary cereal, a glass of orange juice, and a piece of toast")
[1] https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/hc-sc/documents/services/p...
[2] https://smartcdn.prod.postmedia.digital/calgaryherald/wp-con...
It would be an authoritative source, but just because it's authoritative doesn't mean it is credible or correct.
All the authoritative nutritional sources are backed by corporations. Corporations fight over the nutrition standards and then have the government/NGOs/etc peddle it.
That doesn't mean it's all wrong, just that the right parts are those that accidentally coincide with dominant industry interests.
I think the parts that are right are not those that coincide with industry interests but those that go against industry interests. Those parts are probably directionally correct but have softened language due to lobbying.
Hardly an outrage that recommended make alcohol consumption stayed the same instead of being the same as female one. I am quite feminist and still ... like ... admit that average malé body and female body are not perfectly equal when it comes to alcohol.
I'm not sure who out there is done a favor by being told that some alcohol and added sugar is fine when a better mindset is to be aware that it's pure indulgence that has nothing to do with nutrition.
To me it's like lowering the daily fiber recommendation just to make people feel better about constantly undershooting it.
These guidelines always sound like hopes and dreams in the US. Companies just pump their foods with sugar to bump up calories or make it taste better. You can only get such minimal sugar in your diet if you exclusively go on keto-like diet.
Most truck drivers in the US take a physical and get a two year medical card. Diabetics that demonstrate blood glucose control get one year.
At my last physical my blood glucose was way out of control (my bad), and they gave me a three month card and "come back way better than this in three months."
I then ate mostly meat, cheese, plain greek yogurt, and protein bars (17g carbs) and protein shakes (5g). Pre-sliced apples and frozen vegetables. Minimal cheating, confessed in my diary. Most of my shopping is Walmart, because you can park a truck up in there.
In regular consultation with a nutritionist in my doctor's office (I send her my weekly carb and blood glucose diary), I generally eat anywhere from 40 to 80 grams of carbs, according to labels, or Wolfram Alpha when needed. Occasionally low hundreds.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=nutrition
Not quite keto, but low and mostly disciplined. Minimal exercise.
My glucose readings went from high 300s (like I said, out of control) to 90s and low hundreds. My nutritionist saw a few low 80s in my diary and warned me that 80 is moving into "low blood glucose."
Aaannd ... I've lost 30 pounds; 220 to 190, at 5'11". That was an absolute and unanticipated side effect.
The other main diabetic measure is A1C, which requires a blood draw. Last recent physical was 14, double what's reasonable. It's a 3 month average, so it won't be where I want it to be after 3 months, but I expect enough improvement to regain my one year medical card.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycated_hemoglobin
All this (and the "minimal exercise" comment) to say "low carbs good, added sugar and processed grain really bad."
As a trucker, almost everything I eat comes in a package, and is cooked in my microwave or eaten directly out of my little refrigerator. I read the labels, and put it back if there's added sugar, or enough carbs that that one meal would dominate my carb budget. I eat oatmeal (with water, not milk, my preference) almost every morning, steel cut and out of the round cardboard container, not flavored floor sweepings in envelopes.
Read the labels. And if you're diabetic, stick your fingers every day, even if you don't use insulin. If you don't read your blood glucose regularly, you could be lying to yourself.
Anecdote of one.
You're right on regular monitoring even without taking in carbs, depending on your metabolism, you can still get crazy high readings on almost no carbs in the diet... Took me 6 months of no carbs and had to still take insulin on occassion to keep it controlled.
Wolfram Alpha tells me a quarter pounder is 42g carbs, and it also tells me that the bun is 23g. So the quarter pounder that I just ate goes in my diary as 19g carbs, and the bun goes in the trash.
(Sorry, that escalated quickly)
Compare their "about us" pages:
FDA:
"The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation."
USDA:
"We have a vision to provide economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production that better nourishes Americans while also helping feed others throughout the world; and to preserve our Nation's natural resources through conservation, restored forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands."
It's another government agency that does not serve the greater good.
This podcast enlightens many of our current ag policies: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/
It’s pretty clear that the prevailing ideology of most people in leadership is that whatever is good for companies is the greater good.
I counted 120 grams of added sugar a day in the school lunch of my son. Non-fat chocolate milk and sugar laden starches. Juice counts as a serving of fruit (and our pediatrician didn’t see a problem with that)
But hey... they’ve got a bag of 4 carrots so that will balance it out right?
1. Your drink choice was milk or chocolate milk. Both had artificial sweeteners. Apparently, we had no lactose intolerant kids in the whole school.
2. We were fed lots of bread and potatoes. Even the main dish was often pizza or similar, which contains bread.
3. Green vegetables were exceedingly rare.
4. A kid in Kindergarten and a 6th grader got the same lunch.
In retrospect my lunch diet was atrocious due to this as a kid. You don't need to feed kids sweetened crap all the time. It's especially hard to justify given that all the public schools had complete kitchens that were used every day.
Basically, public school was just state sponsored day care where I grew up. Not only that, it was awful quality day care.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/15/142360146/pi...
This has been going on for just about 40 years now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable
This has been a running joke / outrage in our house.
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/school-lunch...
I’m sure they were still too much carbs, but they had protein and real vegetables, though usually canned.
And it seems like I have access to more medicines and medical data than my grandparents did.
More transparency would be nice, more data from more frequent experiments would be nice. But the point is, they are using scientific principles (over the long term, I can't say for specific administrations).
Guidelines:
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-1...
The entire thing is a 164 page PDF, there's also a much shorter executive summary:
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-1...
Eat these:
• Vegetables of all types—dark green; red and orange; beans, peas, and lentils; starchy; and other vegetables
• Fruits, especially whole fruit
• Grains, at least half of which are whole grain
• Dairy, including fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese, and/or lactose-free versions and fortified soy beverages and yogurt as alternatives
• Protein foods, including lean meats, poultry, and eggs; seafood; beans, peas, and lentils; and nuts, seeds, and soy products
• Oils, including vegetable oils and oils in food, such as seafood and nuts
Don’t eat these:
• Added sugars—Less than 10 percent of calories per day starting at age 2. Avoid foods and beverages with added sugars for those younger than age 2.
• Saturated fat—Less than 10 percent of calories per day starting at age 2.
• Sodium—Less than 2,300 milligrams per day—and even less for children younger than age 14.
• Alcoholic beverages—Adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink, or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women, when alcohol is consumed. Drinking less is better for health than drinking more. There are some adults who should not drink alcohol, such as women who are pregnant.
https://promarket.org/2016/09/19/sugar-industry-buys-academi...
"The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.
The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer."
"World Health Organization figures show the French are far from being the heaviest drinkers in Europe. They have an average annual consumption per person of 12.6 litres of pure alcohol among the over-15s, behind Lithuania’s 15 litres, Germany’s 13.4 litres, Ireland and Luxembourg’s 13 litres each and Latvia’s 12.9 litres. In the UK 11.5 litres are drunk per person annually. Wine represents 58% of all the alcohol consumed in France. "
The moral of the story IMO is take anything these institutions recommend with a grain of salt. This is the same FDA that pushed the carb-heavy food pyramid for years, ignoring all of the sugar and corn syrup added to everything[2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/27/the-french-mus...
[2]https://www.salon.com/2015/04/12/the_fdas_phony_nutrition_sc...
I don't see the contradiction in this. You can also make the conclusion that europeans are living longer than us despite their alcohol intake, but they can live even longer if they weren't drinking as much.
But all those factors mean that it’s likely in spite of the drinking that they’re healthier.
As for the life expectancy issue, that remains a mystery, but it would appear unlikely that higher alcohol intake is beneficial from a health perspective.
Most lung cancer is a result from smoking. That is true. However, it is also true that most smokers don't get lung cancer.
So while drinking alcohol will increase your risk of cancer by a substantial amount comparatively, we're still comparing really small numbers. An increase of 0.1% to 0.2% is a 100% increase in risk, but you're still not likely to get it.
And before anyone reads this as a pro-smoking message, there are many other ailments that come with smoking that happen with greater frequency. However, smoking will not guarantee you get lung cancer.
> Most lung cancer is a result from smoking. That is true. However, it is also true that most smokers don't get lung cancer.
> So while drinking alcohol will increase your risk of cancer by a substantial amount comparatively, we're still comparing really small numbers. An increase of 0.1% to 0.2% is a 100% increase in risk, but you're still not likely to get it.
The problem with this sort of thinking is that risk factors are, roughly speaking, multiplicative. So if you have other risk factors such as a family history of lung cancer, smoking may bump your personal risk from 12% to 24%. Still an increase of 100%.
And of course, that's just a combination of two specific risk factors, many of which are implicated in multiple conditions (for example smoking also increases the risk for other lung conditions such as emphysema, heart problems, etc., meanwhile alcohol consumption also increases risks for diabetes, cirrhosis, heart problems, stroke, etc.), and many risk factors aren't as obvious (or as well marketed).
The flip side of the multiplicativity of risk factors is that if you have several that are at least nominally under your control just eliminating one or two factors is probably going to be worth the effort (but if you are an overweight, snoring, sedentary, smoker and drinker, who consumes way too much sugary and salty snacks, etc. etc., choosing to take the stairs instead of the elevator is probably not the place to start).
Anyway, sidestepping those risk factors you can both identify and do something about is probably worth it, because no individual is really representative of the population as a whole (ie. there are no people who are average in every way), and you don't really know how large your personal base level of risk is that the one isolated factor is multiplying.
Maybe it's because they have better and cheaper healthcare.
Took a long time to realize just how bad the food pyramid was.
Keep in mind that lactose intolerance isn't evenly distributed across the globe. People of Northern European extraction have the lowest rates, so the Standard American Diet overlooking or ignoring other extant USAian groups' dietary needs and constraints from consideration (however numerous they may be among the US' population) shouldn't be too startling.
I wonder if anyone actually thinks everyone would stop if these guidelines told us to, especially given our ongoing lack of compliance.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25572471 [1] https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-1...
sugary drinks are the worst culprit and sugar is too expensive for it. high fructose corn syrup, otoh.
but here is a dirty secret: corn is subsidised by the govt. and HCFS is the by product of our mid western corn. and instead of dumping it, it gets back into local consumption.
in a way, we are funding our own HCFS based diseases. i think i have come to a point..in the past 8 years i have been farming..where i can pretty much connect every societal and financial and environmental ill to farm subsidies.
cancel farm subsidies forever and the pandora's box will disappear. poof!
What does an apple contain?
HFCS comes in mostly two forms HFCS 42 and HFCS 55. The number denotes the dry fructose content. The rest is glucose. This means that 100g of dry HFCS contains 55g of fructose and 45g of sucrose.[0]
100g of raw apples contains 10.39 g of sugars. 2.07g of sucrose, 2.43g of glucose, 5.9g of fructose.[1] Sucrose is fructose and glucose connected by a single oxygen atom. Sucrase in your small intestine splits sucrose into equal parts glucose and fructose. Effectively you're getting 6.935g of fructose and 3.465g of glucose or 66.7% and 33.3% respectively. Even if you want to keep sucrose separate
If you press these raw apples into juice then you'll get a sugar profile that's not too dissimilar from the soft drink that's sweetened with HFCS. It really shouldn't matter which you drink. Blaming all of these issues on HFCS specifically just means that these companies will switch to something like "All Natural Apple Syrup" that has even more fructose than HFCS did.
I do want to mention that eating an apple is different from drinking juice made from that apple. The fruit itself contains fiber, which will slow the absorption of sugar and will mitigate some effects of it. When you press a fruit into juice you tend to lose the fiber.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/high-fruct...
[1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171688/n...
The interesting question is another one:
Why does apple juice have a glycemic index of 45, while a whole apple has a glycemic index of 38 and coke a glycemic index of 65, soft drinks going up to 75, and jelly beans up to 150, more than pure glucose?
And how do apple juice, hfcs soft drinks and fruit juices increase the risk for heart disease?
https://bmcnutr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40795-01...
The question of apples vs hfcs is sweet but misleading.
Edit: oh you've added your own research. Thanks for that. My remark still holds, the real insight is that sweet drinks are no good for health, and hfcs even more so than succrose sweetened drinks. So no matter if apple.juice is similar in contents and effect as a coke, both should be a rare treat, and water and unsweetened tea and fresh apples are really a Good Thing (tm).
Hmm. Potentially an argument for smoothies over juice?
I am not sure we want our food infrastructure to be subject solely to the whims of the free market. The free market doesn't care about geopolitics, land use, stability, weather, equitability, etc. "Efficiently allocating resources and maximizing profit" is a different goal than "everybody gets food every day".
In fact, most of it isn’t even for human consumption.
It would make sense to see how other countries have dealt with subsidies and see how it works and doesn’t work. NZ for example has eliminated them. Canada has shifted its dairy subsidies from supply side the demand side. Etc.
We still have to consider population size and GDP etc. Canadian population is close to California’s population. NZ population(5 million) is half the size of LA county(10 million at least).
2011 opinion piece : https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-ag...
2020: https://reason.com/2020/02/29/trumps-proposed-cuts-to-farm-s...
The situation is very nuanced.
If we let the market decide the price, it would only lower the cost of sugar.
I don't think there is any evidence that HFCS is appreciably worse than sucrose. The problem is added sugar of any type.
Interesting. Could you detail a bit on how farm subsidies create ill? Or link to some articles which do?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/18/486051480/we...
[..]Americans are told to fill 50 percent of our plates with fruits and vegetables. But here's the contradiction, as the researchers see it: U.S. agriculture policies "focus on financing the production of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, dairy and livestock," the researchers write. About $170 billion was spent between 1995 and 2010 on these seven commodities and programs, according to the researchers.[..]
[..]"Higher consumption of calories from subsidized food commodities was associated with a greater probability of some cardiometabolic risks," the authors conclude. For instance, they found a higher probability of both obesity and unhealthy blood glucose levels (which raises the risk of Type 2 diabetes) among people who consumed the most calories from subsidized foods.[..]
having pasted the above, the article also takes the other side(because. NPR)..and i have points of disagreement with this bit:
[..]Consider this: Sugar hooked us on yogurt. Americans eschewed yogurt until Dannon began adding sugary jam to the bottom. Same story with cereal. Adding sugar to tasteless flakes drove up sales.
And then there's the idea that crop subsidies don't necessarily make food cheaper. Here are two reasons why. First, only a tiny slice — an estimated 15 percent — of the price we pay for processed foods, say, a box of cornflakes or cookies made with wheat and corn syrup, actually goes to the farmer.[..]
why? because all the excess production has to go somewhere. because school lunches and food bank supplies have certain guidelines. why is smuckers jam approved for school cafeterias? and the other grape jelly guy. i forget the name. because smuckers agrees to buy the excess HFCS.
HFCS also in peanut butter. the healthy vegetables and fruit isnt subsidised. only commodity crops. and only a small portion of it is for human food consumption. and it's only for commodities that is listed on the stock exchange. its the same with ketchup. ever wondered why we have HFCS in our tomato ketchup? and school cafeterias menu includes french fries and ketchup..both of which were considered to be part of the 'daily 5' vegetables/fruits for a balanced diet.
it is also the reason for our high meat consumption and why its cheap. subsidies doesnt pay farmers. it pays them to continue farming for feed, ethanol and HFCS. the good and healthy food we eat comes from canada or south america. because it's cheaper to pay subsidies than hand over something as important as feeding 330 million people.
we cant forget fibre(cotton) and dairy. both of these are dying or loss making sectors in the united states. its in absolute shambles. the guy making the money is the one who sells alfafa or hay. you can make more profits growing hay for feed than growing food for humans. and the guy who makes food for humans barely breaks even. and they are almost always collecting farm subsidies.
fertiliser and input companies(looking at you, bayer nee monsanto!) have their hooks on all commodity crops. because you have to see this from the vantage point of wall street. after we have introduced derivatives, futures and options etc..its a feverish speculative game. with algos running everything now, its certainly not about food anymore. it's a ponzi scheme. farms exist to make profits for inputs, tractor/machinery and seed companies. they are all publicly listed companies. connect the dots. and farms are propped up by tax payer dollars. pension companies and insurance companies buy farmland and play in the stock market. it goes back to paying pensions and medicare and benefits etc.
this house of cards may or may not come toppling down. but its still a house of cards. most of the feed and fodder grown..esp soy..was going to china. and as exports. we produce so much and we dont need as much. it helps balance our budget. or at least work with it. meanwhile..our waterways and aquifers are poisoned. farmers get caught in debt traps and imprisoned by unending credit. land rich but cash poor. so much poison in our waters and soil. the number of cancers have sky rocketed amongst farmers. i am not a luddite. but we cant ignore ground reality.
330 million is a lot. its not as much as the 1400 million of china or india..but it's still one of the more populous nations in the world. food security for this country is no joke. but we are holding on to depression era policy when it comes to farm subsidies.
a generic wiki entry on ag subsidies here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
The link from monsanto via corn and hfcs to sweetened peanut butter and hfcs jam was especially interesting, and funds buying and then leasing out farm land is especially, umm, sweet.
How come we've never labeled leases or patent licenses 'tax'? How come we only consider irs as unjustified money deduction? When in reality irs/taxation is the only lever to feed the skimmed cash back into the pockets who actually did the work?
The older I get, the better I understand the new deal.
>How come we've never labeled leases or patent licenses 'tax'? How come we only consider irs as unjustified money deduction? When in reality irs/taxation is the only lever to feed the skimmed cash back into the pockets who actually did the work?
i just want to touch upon this from the pov of ag and ag subsidies that is tax payer funded.
the primary motivation for ag subsidies and the 'new deal' was a good one. but it was from a different era and i am afraid that it has outgrown it's usefulness.
subsidies were given to american farmers to grow food, to reduce surpluses and to protect prices.
An Act to relieve the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power, to raise revenue for extraordinary expenses incurred by reason of such emergency, to provide emergency relief with respect to agricultural indebtedness, to provide for the orderly liquidation of joint-stock land banks, and for other purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act :
[..]The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies.[2][3][4] The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as an important precursor to this act.[5][6] The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.[7][..]
further reading: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/11/21/do-farm-sub... and https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/1996/farm-bills-and-f...
i believe that we need an overhaul of ag in the usa. it gets mired in social justice and equality and how to redistribute land and creating villains and victims.
all that has it's place..but there are also another important and relevant aspects to this. 1. automation of ag. 2. food sufficiency for our population and excess/surplus for trade 3. protection of habitat and environment. keeping farm land safe and protected from development and speculation.
this isnt an easy topic and finding answers needs a lot of teasing and tugging to undo the knots. but ultimately, subsidies cannot be completely eliminated either because we dont want people to starve because they cant afford food. perhaps we need income supports rather than price supports.
i dont harbour dogma on the subject of subsidies and am still learning. but in my experience of reading and learning and observing, subsidies are always messy. they have been net net harmful than good. there has to be a better way. we need creative solutions.
i am sure we will get there. someday.
there is one key detail in what you say: How do we ensure people don't starve because they can't afford food?
That's a lovely slippery road, because in the same vein you can ask: How do we ensure people don't die just because they can't afford healthcare? or elderly care?
And once we admit ourselfes to that humanist thinking, we may end up wondering how we balance the strive for profit, the force which we have agreed so miraculously "drives innovation", how we balance that with the wealth imbalance it creates. Because of course you maximize profit not just by increasing market value and being better than competition, but also by driving down cost, cost of supplies (there we are with food), cost of labor, tax, any expenses.
The strive for profit was formerly known under the ugly and negatively connotated name of greed. How do we tame and counterbalance greed?
And how to we create and adjust these countermeasures, the checks and balances of wealth distribution, such that every human being, by the grace of being human, has a right to die of age, and not of lack of food, or lacking shelter, or lacking healthcare, or lacking elderly care?
Have we even started thinking about it this way? Have started thinkubg about wealth accumulation and wealth responsibility as a generational and societal contract?
"We, the people, give everybody the freedom and the right to accumulate wealth. Should you become insanely successful with it, then it becomes your job to contribute back to those much less fortunate. and no: just redistributing from the center field to the bottom is not what we do here. We definitively make you, the wealthy, take responsibility for the poor, the sick and the old."
I think such a cleanly spelled out foundation would be helpful, so "the wealthy" and "the middle class" have a shared understanding of responsibility towards "the poor, the old, the sick".
And then we can have much more meaningful conversations about making wealth trickle down, to "the poor, the old, the sick."
We can then decide if we should just provide cash to those "in need", and have it trickle back up? Or do we install better educated agencies, who create and establish frameworks, and subsidize inidrectly, invisibly. like subsidizing agriculture, so food is cheaper in shops? direct funding of health care? elderly care? housing? or a mix? a "slider" which complements what you have as earnings with subsidies for rent, health care, ...?
How do we balance taxation and philantropy?
How do we, the people, raise the funding for this, "fairly and justly"?
The foundation for this really is this is a "contract" of clear responsibility of wealth for the people, who have allowed for and enabled that wealth.
And what I'm missing is a clear and transparent conversation of how wealth "trickles up" and then is redistributed back down. and how much trickling up do we enable? with "intellectual property" law? for plants and plant treatment?
The subsidies you pointed at so elaborately with your links are invisible to "the people" and intransparent even to those directly working with them. The funding for subsidies is currently collected mostly from the middle class, as taxes, and then it rushes through the hands of farmers or other subsidized entities right into the pockets of "intellectual property" owners for agri tech, pharmaceutics, arts, music. Where it disappears from the system, if wealth is not taxed, or otherwise redistributed back into the circle of life, so to speak.
In short: no matter if yo do it via indirect, hidden subsidies into farming, healthcare, elderly care, housing, eductaion (we didn't look at that yet :-D ) or direct subsidies into the pockets of those who don't have a living salary, the key thing is an agreement on where the cash comes from, that you redistribute back to where it's needed, the societal contract, the give to get for trickle up and support back down. and I'd love to understand where that conversation is happening.
Once tobacco advertising was suppressed/banned, the media didn’t defend them anymore...
Why even bother having a scientific advisory committee then?
There's way too much fucking money being made to cut these industries off by even a percent.
On a related note, the alcohol industry is actually really shady. They like to put on a clean image of providing responsible adults entertainment, but in reality the industry is deeply dependent on alcoholics. It’s estimated (2007 numbers) that just over 10% of alcohol drinkers consume half of the alcohol in the United States. Without that small cohort of alcoholics, a large percentage of the industry would go broke. Ever since learning this fact, I’ve taken an extra skeptical eye towards anything that even vaguely looks like alcohol industry influence.
What business wouldn't adapt to the fact that their customers' purchases follow a Pareto distribution? Many (most?) do. I'm not saying that they're not shady, but this isn't evidence of that.
Trying to maintain your market, while giving all sorts of people liver cancer, cirrhosis, fetal alcohol syndrom, et al, is probably considered shady by most people.
https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/alcohol-sales-...
As you say, it is completely predictable that beverage companies would adapt to a Pareto-like distribution of consumption. However, unlike for things like books or outdoor equipment, adapting to a Pareto distribution here means that a company is intentionally profiting from addiction. This is an absolutely huge negative externality in terms of the social , health, and economic harm that alcohol addiction causes.
Another strange food is dairy. In fact, I think that most Europeans were lactose-intolerant, until they started getting people from Asia mixing in genes.
There was a study, to that effect, recently; where they looked at old DNA samples.
I remember the Masai tribe, in Africa. These are some of the most robust, healthy people you have ever seen, and their traditional food is cow's milk, mixed with cow's blood. YUM.
But I loves my sugar and milk in my tea (don't drink booze, though).
There is a major difference between someone averaging a drink every other day or so, and someone having 10 drinks a day. The latter group is unquestionably addicted, with extremely negative personal and social consequences for that addiction.
I think it's the other way around, but i claim no expertise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
> As Cook notes in his book, the top 10 percent of drinkers account for well over half of the alcohol consumed in any given year.
Also notable from this article:
> "If the top decile somehow could be induced to curb their consumption level to that of the next lower group (the ninth decile), then total ethanol sales would fall by 60 percent."
> The top 10 percent of drinkers account for well over half of the alcohol consumed in any given year.
Yes, 75% is well over half.
Even as teenagers we drink a pretty large amount before actually going out and really getting going.
Just base the cost of a off licence on square footage.
Can I assume you mean simple sugars that are added for taste? If you literally meant what you said, well you will die without carbohydrates (sugar).
2. You can live even without carbohydrates as such, only some fats and proteins are essential. Traditional Inuit diet consists of fat and protein; they are fairly healthy as long as they do not adopt modern Western diet.
https://theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower-heart...
“Traditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30–35% from protein and 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed.
This high fat content provides valuable energy and prevents protein poisoning, which historically was sometimes a problem in late winter when game animals grew lean through winter starvation.
It has been suggested that because the fats of the Inuit's wild-caught game are largely monounsaturated and rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the diet does not pose the same health risks as a typical Western high-fat diet.
However, actual evidence has shown that Inuit have a similar prevalence of coronary artery disease as non-Inuit populations and they have excessive mortality due to cerebrovascular strokes, with twice the risk to that of the North American population.
Indeed, the cardiovascular risk of this diet is so severe that the addition of a more standard American diet has reduced the incidence of mortality in the Inuit population.
The ‘everything is sugar’ meme really frustrates the conversation about nutrition and does lead to people making bad nutrition choices, as I’ve personally observed IRL.
One can argue that you might be healthier in the long run with carbohydrates, I’m inclined to disagree, but to argue that you can’t get energy without them is just objectively incorrect.
0 - There is a tiny percentage (10 cases) of the population with the inability to build up body fat thanks to the Mardanoid-progeroid-lipodystrophy syndrome. Those with the syndrome can’t store excess calories in the form of body fat, and must eat continuous small meals to meet their metabolic needs. Curiously it seems like the lack of body fat makes their metabolism incredibly inefficient, as they are reported to average 5,000 to 8,000 calories a day. I presume this is because every calorie they eat is “use it or lose it”, resulting in a lot of waste.
1 - Humans can store some glucose in their liver and muscles for immediate use. But strenuous activity can easily exhaust this supply, so it’s not a reasonable source of energy for even moderate fasts.
Popular treatment is to eliminate sugar as a starting point. Then move onto other inflammatory foods.
Very few people believe "all drugs should be legal", that's a complete misrepresentation.
What drug treatment is available for sugar addiction to people who are self-harming and don't know how to stop?
If classifying it as a drug solved that problem by feeding all human beings healthier foods, so that they can get their caloric intake without industry-cheap sugars, I would absolutely be on board with that :)
maybe i'm just an optimist
I mean, i am fine with heroin being illegal. But I don't think the way it is done should be done more and more.
The story centered on an undercover ATFC agent who grew up in Hershey, PA (which gave him some sort of underworld cred) and had infiltrated the Swiss Cartels. As I recall there were some flashbacks about a chocoholic family member or lover that had died which was what set him on a path of self-righteous vengeance, and a raid featuring a showdown with a literally sticky-fingered bad guy. There may have also been a Bond-style femmes-fatale who managed to escape that was a scion of some chocolatier family (Mars, perhaps?). It's possible I'm confabulating some of these details.
I've tried to track down this story a few times without success, but it pops back into mind every time I see some mention of the idea of criminalizing sugar vs. decriminalizing other substances, so I thought I'd mention it on the off chance someone here recognizes it.
also, in line with your observation I think sugar should be a schedule I drug
Sonny Perdue... A charming, forward thinker and believer in science. /s
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/monsters-of-202...
His bias would lean towards less regulations, which is a position, fine, but when you're responsible on a federal level, that should benefit all Americans, not just Companies. But thats my 2 cents.
Exactly who you want in charge of health.
A naturopath will typically find the hormonal imbalances that is causing all this shit and provide supplements that actually work. Sure they may also recommend a statin, but you will get there far faster than a 9-5 kaiser MD.
Red yeast rice did wonders for my cholesterol. It is where statins came from in the first place.
The wikipedia article for "Naturopathy" doesn't inspire confidence.
>Naturopathy or naturopathic medicine is a form of alternative medicine that employs an array of pseudoscientific practices branded as "natural", "non-invasive", or promoting "self-healing". The ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine, rather than evidence-based medicine (EBM).[2] Naturopathic practitioners generally recommend against following modern medical practices, including but not limited to medical testing, drugs, vaccinations, and surgery.[3][4][5][6] Instead, naturopathic practice relies on unscientific notions, often leading naturopaths to diagnoses and treatments that have no factual merit.[7][8]
>Naturopathy is considered by the medical profession to be ineffective and harmful, raising ethical issues about its practice.[7][9][10] In addition to condemnations and criticism from the medical community, such as the American Cancer Society,[11] naturopaths have repeatedly been denounced as and accused of being charlatans and practicing quackery.[7][12][13][14][15][16]
elaborate?
>Naturopaths have been recommending a low sugar diet for like 30 years. So is that quackery?
I think the saying "even a broken clock is right twice a day" applies here.
Feels like suggesting lowering the speed limit to 55mph because it causes fewer deaths than 65mph. Just makes people skeptical of government overreach.
Actually, the 55mph speed limit was enacted as an energy conservation measure, not as a public safety measure.
People somewhat regularly having 3 beers might be convinced to only have 2 or 2 down to only 1.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6099584/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265635#can-wine-im...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191021-is-wine-good-for...
So I guess it also depends on what type of alcohol you consume.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265635#can-wine-im...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191021-is-wine-good-for...
It looks like there is no strong consensus on this issue among the researchers.
The ones like me, who don't drink every day, but then get wasted one weekend, are the most negatively affected by alcohol.
There's some evidence that the beneficial impact of alcohol comes from the comparison between people who have one drink a day (relatively healthy) and recovering alcoholics (typically extremely unhealthy).