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Comment by refracture | Hacker News Reader

Soda isn't food. It's empty calories with no nutritional value. Obviously Coke/Pepsi don't care about this, they just like money, but from my perspective if I gave somebody money so they could stock their pantry and feed their family I would not be pleased to see soda on the receipt.

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Bet you wouldn't be saying that if you were starving. Wonder what the highest calories/$ food is out there, though probably not soda.

edit: hah, someone's done the legwork: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/

No drinks though. Looks like soda from a $2 2L bottle comes in at about 500cal/$, much lower than the leader in that list. Not sure how cheap one can get soda elsewhere though (from fountains etc).

If you are starving you need both calories and nutrients. Missing either one of them means you will still be starving.

You will survive significantly longer with plentiful calories and no nutrition than you can with very few calories but a "correct" nutrition profile.

Most of human history was lived by people with some amount of malnutrition. It's almost a default state of being alive. It's only since the broad cultivation of the Potato and after that, green revolution that allows us to grow enough food to technically feed everyone (and then throw half of it away because god forbid we help people survive rather than build a system that incentivizes dragon hording)

Hah I wondered the same and found that same list.

Obviously it's easy to speak from my perspective where I'm fortunate that I don't have to worry about accessing food.. but even when confronted with that my position remains unchanged. Maybe if you were arguing about healthy/neutral drinks I would feel different, but I've had enough people in my life develop obesity and diabetes from addiction to soda to regard it as marginally better for you than alcohol and tobacco.

I hope I live long enough to see society in this country start revolting against HFCS/sugar and excess sodium in our diets, it's death by diabetes and heart attacks/strokes.

Flour is at the top of the list with over 4000 calories per dollar, though obviously you need to bake it with something, and not coincidentally, white bread is next on the list with about 3000 calories per dollar. Bags of granulated sugar are also up there, and then the first things you can just boil and eat start to appear with rice, plain oats, ramen, and pasta providing about 1500-2000 calories per dollar.

In comparison, fast food like a 2-liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi provides about 450 calories per dollar, while a fast-food hamburger provides about 100. While the corn syrup lobby and fast food industrial systems are strong, they're not even close to being a cost-effective way to feed yourself.

Would you be starving if you're in food stamps?

The point of food stamps is to allow you to buy real food when you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. Somebody with food stamps doesn't need to survive off sugar water like an overgrown hummingbird because they can buy real food. Even in "food deserts" there are hundreds of better options than soda.

Right, no sugar. So sugar free diet soda and flavored waters should be fine then.

What about peanut butter?

Right, no peanut butter.

Actually I'm starting to like this idea of banning sugar and maybe some other ingredients, would get rid of a lot of garbage in our diets.

What about potatoes and processed wheat? Starch quickly converts to sugar during digestion.

Also, peanut butter is highly nutritious, even with some amount of added sugar.

We already require labelling for added sugars. No SNAP for added sugar products seems reasonable. (More reasonable: no school lunch subsidies for that crap.)

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