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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

You should visit a food processing plant sometime. What they are doing with food is not what your grandma does when she cooks it from ingredients you can buy at the grocery store. And I bet your grandma doesn’t have a food chemistry lab to fine tune her recipes.

Similarly, fig trees don’t make Fig Newtons. They make figs.

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I've watched plenty of how its made. The ingredients look the same it just comes in huge quantities.

Oh, I'm familiar with it. And you know what? They mostly are doing what grandma does. Just in vastly larger ovens etc. Even if you want to talk about corn syrup, what do you think grandma made her pecan pie with?

And the things that are different -- emulsifiers, stabilizers, natural/artifical flavors, etc. -- aren't actually making the product unhealthy, at least not in any way that causes weight gain. Those aren't sugars, fats, or salt. They're just making it last longer on the shelf, and have more flavor. But it's not changing the nutrition, and it's not making us eat more of it.

You really think Chips Ahoy is making you fat in a way that grandma's chocolate chip cookies don't?

I don’t know if it’s the nature of the products themselves, or if it’s because they’re vastly cheaper and more accessible. There’s a natural limit to the number of cookies to be had from Grandma before she says “that’s enough,” vs being able to get 64 at the local market anytime you want for a pittance.

See, now we're talking.

That's my point. It's got nothing to with supposed "manipulation" of ingredients.

It's about other stuff -- whether it's price or accessibility or someone telling you "that's enough".

Yeah, I agree. People really seem desperate to believe it all comes down to boogeyman adulterants, but it's a huge red herring and completely unnecessary for ending up with a culture of junk food, obesity, and calorie surplus.

Drop dough into frying oil and then roll it in powdered sugar.

Drop potato slices into frying oil and then salt them.

You don't need boogeyman R&D chemicals to make food that you can't stop eating. What changed is the accessibility of these things. You can go to 7-11 and buy thousands of calories of packaged donuts for dollars. Combined with there only being junk food in US quickmarts compared to, say, cheap bento boxes in Japanese 7-11.

It is far more likely that the obesity crisis is a combination of a lack of healthy food culture combine with industrial revolution of mass produced food capacity. Since you don't want to drop your industrial capability, the only other option is to change societal food culture and their relationship to food. Or just take drugs. That works too

> I don’t know if it’s the nature of the products themselves

Isn't this what you were just arguing it was not 10 minutes earlier?

I’m wondering if it’s a little of both. I’m not a nutritionist, but one operating theory I’ve read is that many processed foods are manufactured in such a way that they make you feel less full than a homemade equivalent would.

Really just feels to me like youre blaming the wrong entity here. Why is it too much to expect adults to act like adults and make decisions for themselves? If the companies were selling directly to kids sure but why is it their fault that people cant control themselves?

> Why is it too much to expect adults to act like adults and make decisions for themselves?

Because people don't act rationally. The model of a human as a rational actor who deeply considers all of the potential impacts of their decisions is a fiction that has been proven flawed by countless studies. Those actions can have externalities and consequences for which the public bears the cost, not just the actor.

> why is it their fault that people cant control themselves

Nobody's ascribing fault here; rather, we're trying to understand the bigger picture.

> Those actions can have externalities

I dont believe that people who eat unhealthy food have any doubts about the effect of the food. They just dont care that its unhealthy, that isnt an externality.

> Nobody's ascribing fault here; rather, we're trying to understand the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is that more products that people enjoy is a good thing, and if some people cant handle that its not societys fault.

The externality is increased public health care cost. Obesity leads to increased risks of heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, etc. And there’s a strong between poverty and obesity, making it more likely the public will pay the cost of treatment.

There are other externalities as well; for example, we still haven’t really solved the problems created by all the plastic packaging used with processed foods.

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