Again, we're trying to fix the symptom instead of dealing with the root cause -- because we don't want to give up our Mountain Dew and Frito Lay.
To say nothing of, as the other poster said, how much time+money it can be to avoid, particularly when you've not got much spare income, so the difference might mean not having to skip a meal this week to afford your medication, even if it might be lead-filled or the equivalent that'll harm you over time (and not just directly, in money saved - making your own rounded meals costs a bunch of time, and sometimes upfront costs, and if you're that low on resources, you might not have that time to spare.)
I would agree the correct way to mitigate this is to do things like ban HFCS, among other things, and start aggressively researching the harms of anything remotely sweetener or addictive behavior-forming in foods, because if you remove the thing that triggers an excessive "MORE" response in some people, you better believe you're starting whack-a-mole with food companies finding other addictives that secretly cause your toes to fall off in 20 years but taste 5000x as sweet, or something.
Diet has psychological, social, evolutionary, physiological, hormonal, economic, aspects (and more). Not only does that make it difficult to eat on a rational basis, people don’t even seem to be able to think or talk about diet rationally.
I think if you examine your comment, you’ll probably be able to spot some rather unlikely explicit and implicit assumptions, which will lead you to reconsider. I say this under the presumption you want to be a help (because if you don’t, no one gives a fuck what you have to say).
You want to think about causes that could actually explain the problem so that you can think of solutions that could actually work.
IMO, “eat better” is a good place to start, but the “how” is completely missing (not to mention, avoiding chips and pop is barely getting started with good eating). I think you need to think a little deeper about this.
which part do you think should be reconsidered?
In the US -- much more so than the rest of the world (though it's catching up elsewhere too) -- we are besieged by addictive garbage food everywhere. It's like cigarettes 60-70 years ago. Just one example, you used to be able to get cigarettes in hospitals, and today's equivalent is that hospitals are stocked with soda and other junk food (even in places like the NIH hospital, which I visit periodically; I was just shocked the first time I saw that, of all places where I would expect them to only or mostly have healthy alternatives. Same thing at my wife's nursing school; she was distressed at how only about 10% of the readily available snack offerings could be considered healthy. And if doctors and nurses don't have a healthy lifestyle they're unlikely to effectively help patients to.)
So yes, it is extremely difficult to eat healthy in the US, and it requires both discipline and money, which is tragic because low income people are impacted the most and have the hardest time even gaining access -- much less being able to afford -- anything other than high-calorie, low-nutrient food that the local 7-Eleven-equivalent is stocked full of.
> You want to think about causes that could actually explain the problem so that you can think of solutions that could actually work.
The problem is that our food distribution and availability is controlled by a small number of very large corporations whose primary concern is profits, at the expense of people's health (and the taxpayer's money in paying for rising health care costs, including weight loss drugs). The solution is similar to our approach to smoking -- regulations that made it harder for people to get addicted to smoking in the first place. But mostly, class action lawsuits.
> avoiding chips and pop is barely getting started with good eating
True, but when you see how many people walk out of Costco/Walmart with a shopping cart full of chips and soda, you realize pretty quickly that there is a lot of low hanging fruit when it comes to addressing the problem.
> I think you need to think a little deeper about this.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this problem. What makes me so upset is that there seems to be very little thought given to this problem in the US -- other than looking for silver bullet, and coincidentally, highly profitable, drugs, instead of concerted efforts to combat what is a serious an ongoing nationwide health crisis, and one that affects the US much more than other countries (US obesity level is 2x UK and 4x France). I have yet to see any serious debate at the national level, by either party, to even begin to address the problem.
Agreed. In today's world it's easier to stop smoking because cigarettes are not everywhere like they used to be, whereas it's hard to escape junk/highly processed food. It's like being an alcoholic when every vending machine and store sells your favorite whisky.
And that's why a social change is needed to stop pushing this garbage on everyone, starting when they are kids.
Nonetheless, there's a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of cutting out the very worse offenders (soda, high sugar foods, chips, snacks, etc.) and substituting with healthier alternatives, without having to do some crazy diet or skipping meals.
My biggest worry is for the next generation--when you grow up on garbage, it's hard to break that craving. (In our house we have a zero soda policy, and very little high carb and high sugar processed foods, but we always make sure to have fresh fruit and dried fruit and nuts readily available so the kids can grab that for a snack. But it's more expensive to do that and we have to forego other expenses, and sadly it's not something that's accessible to many Americans--and __that__ is where we need to see change.)
it gets harder and hard to constantly make good choices as you go down the income ladder not just due to the food environment but also because people on the whole just cognitively cannot make these decisions optimally all the time when they are tired, stressed, and overworked.
But it’s a problem of our own making because of large foodstuff corporations that force addictive garbage on everyone (through limited availability and high cost of healthy alternatives and the fact that junk food is literally everywhere and many times the only option). It’s a disaster and yet it’s hardly talked about — instead we look to drugs (which can make $$$) to fix the symptom.
But it's like saying, "here's an (expensive) pill that can help you stop smoking, but we're going to continue pushing you to buy cigarettes with every vending machine you pass and with every ad you see". Instead of removing cigarettes from all the vending machines, making them harder to get, and taxing them so they're more expensive and a new generation is less likely to get hooked on them.
The food system is fundamentally broken, but there's no incentive to fix it because that would mean a loss of corporate profits.