shipperx | (no subject)

Entry tags:

100 things

(no subject)

So, I'm reading an article on the NYC soda size ban (that was court suspended) and I read another article this weekend about Mississippi passing a law that NO REGULATION can be passed regarding nutrition.

Yeah. Um. Hmm.

I'm not sure it's all one thing or the other.

(And before I talk about that can I bitch about the new online LJ interface for posting? It sucks! Look, I"m not as picky as some about all the bells and whistles, but I damn well want to have some ability to actually make the damn thing work with a functioning cursor! Damn it, LJ!)

The thing is, I'm all for 'our freedomzzz!' We should be able to choose to eat what we want and if we want to eat too much, well, our choice.

But that's looking at things on an individual level.

The complication comes in with the fact that many of these problems are systemic. It's not like the government isn't involved. The government is already involved. Look at our farm subsidies program, the foodstuffs we subsidize to keep priced artificially stable (read: low), or stuff we supply to the poverty stricken in the form of SNAP and WIC, or things we make readily available in public schools. We primarily subsidize corn and soybeans, which sounds more healthful than it is because the corn is in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup and the soybeans are distributed as soy oil and isolated soy protein, things that haven't existed in nature before. These are bio-engineered foodstuffs distributed in historically unprecedented quantities (and in themselves are historically unprecedented. They didn't EXIST a century ago but are now in virtually EVERYTHING from cornbread mix to tomato sauce to blue cheese salad dressing. Experiment for a week trying to avoid them. It's damn near impossible.) To reduce them will take government action, because it's through government intervention that they are more cheaply produced than other options in the first place.

Still, does that mean Bloomberg sizing your soda for you?

Or does it make sense for Mississippi, listed as the state with THE most weight related problems as well as the most dependent on poverty aid to stamp their foot and say "No regulation on nurtrition! EVAH!" It's thinking like that that causes the USDA and FDA budgets to be slashed, with us winding up with uninspected peanut butter factories that cause salmonella outbreaks.

Not all regulation is bad. If the only thing we're concerned with is profit margins, we're on the road to Soylent Green, people.

Still, does that require regulating what size soda is sold?

Don't get me wrong. The above linked article has some good points.

Unlike other foods, sodas are a unique target for intervention. They contain sugars – and sugar calories – but nothing else of nutritional value. They are candy in liquid form.

Arguing that we should:

crack down on what gets sold in our schools, tackle abusive marketing practices, demand a redesign of labels [to inform consumers of content]

That part seems practical.

You will still be able to drink all the soda, and down all the sugar, that you want. The cap on soda size makes it just a tiny bit harder for you to do so.

That “tiny bit harder” is its point. If you have to order two sodas instead of one, maybe you won’t. If you have to add sugar to your coffee drink yourself, maybe you will only add one or two teaspoons instead of the 10 or more someone else put in there for you.

Okaaayyyy. That's a bit more, but I see it's worth discussion. Rational discussion (good luck with that in politics these days).

I mean we have warning labels and 'luxury' taxes on cigarettes for not dissimilar reasons. (BTW Nabisco is currently owned and run by William Morris, the maker of Malborough cigarettes... AKA Big Tobacco.) You can do what you want, but no one said it has to be as cheaply as humanly possible to do it.

I guess.

But... I don't know.

Still:

You may find this hard to believe, but the original Coca-Cola was 6.5 ounces, smaller than any size available today. In the 1950s, Coke advertised its 16-ounce bottle as large enough to serve three.

Times have changed. The sizes of foods and drinks have expanded, and so have waistlines. This is no coincidence. On the basis of calories alone, larger portions are all you need to explain why Americans are putting on pounds.

Well... sorta but not exactly. From all the books I've read recently, it seems that yes, caloric consumption has increased across the board. However, protein consumption has remained roughly the same. Fat consumption has even (marginally) gone down. The increase in calories has come from an increase in carbohydrates -- primarily cerals (wheat, corn, and rice products) and sugar be it sucrose OR high fructose corn syrup... or any other of a half dozen names they currently break sugar into so that labels can list it multiple times without it having to show up first on the ingredient list.

So yes, calorie consumption has gone up in the U.S. . . . because sugar and cereal consumption (we also subsidize wheat) has exploded. When discussing these things we tend to mention the first and politely avoid mentioning the second.

Anyway, interesting article, but I remain conflicted. And I don't know that I totally agree with the writer.

Still, in practical terms I tend to think that what should be done is move many of the farm subsidies away from non-edible (sugar producing) corn (The corn used for that is too sweet to be consumed in any way but sugar or alcohol or used to produce ethanol. It's not your corn cobs and niblets) and towards a broader scope of vegetables. That should (but won't) be done, because keeping the price low for sugar is good for mega-corporations like Coke, Nabisco, General Foods, etc. and we live in an era where profit is king (queen, king's hand, and court jester. Oh hell, it's practically the whole damn court). As long as what the government does is to the benefit of big business, well that 'government intervention' is good. But, if it's intervening in other way (for the 99%) 'teh socialist evol!!!!'

So, yeah, the most logical step (stop subsidizing agri-businesses' hyperproduction of sugars) will never be taken (they have big-time lobbyists, y'know). Which leaves things like soda bans, which feels an awful like avoiding tackling thorny issues with suppliers and instead taking the problem to the consumers.) And I don't know how I feel about that.

I don't know where I come down on the concept regulating soda bottle sizes. Seems like a bicycle being used as a fishing pole. Though I think even that may be better than Mississippi behaving like a three year old having a tantrum because someone is trying to limit its time with its binky.

*sigh* No good answers. I don't know. Just navel gazing, I guess. Carry on.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

This post was so informative! It's all Wall-E and liquid cupcakes, as far as I can tell. I love me a liquid cupcake (was finishing my daily can of coke as I was reading this), but yeah, wish it were easier to cut down on sugar without basically eliminating the foods that are most available to me.

I have always found Mississippi profoundly tiresome - poor education & all the ills that follow. WHAT A MESS THAT STATE IS!

I thought the soda ban was the stupidest thing ever. It was way too big brother. But on another level, still pointless. What's next, not letting someone order a whole pizza unless they can prove they have people to share it with? There's a TON of things that people eat that they shouldn't.

So, yeah, the most logical step (stop subsidizing agri-businesses' hyperproduction of sugar) will never be taken.

This was my exact thought. The actual problem of what's IN our food that makes it bad (depending on what you're talking about, things that other countries don't even use) is what government should be looking at. But it won't be.

As Michael Pollan has written (almost ad nauseam), the fundamental problems about food and food quality are legion. One of the most distressing things is that despite the thousands of food TV programs on the air now, almost no one in America cooks at home anymore. It's a spectator sport. Everyone is too pressed for time and would rather reach for the ready made, the packaged, and the completely manufactured for their meals.

Secondly, in the old days (the 1950s-early 60s), poor people used to cook for themselves because it was the only way to eat cheaply. Now they stuff themselves and their children with low-cost, easily-obtainable, non-nutritive fast food, compounding their poverty with obesity and its attendant health problems. I watched a program on HBO the other day on "The New Poor" in Portland, OR, and damned if almost every person profiled wasn't at least 50 pounds overweight (including some of the kids).

I'm not in favor of legislating how and what people eat, but I also don't want my tax dollars to pay for the treatment of diseases which could have been avoided easily by decent diets. It's a conundrum. Even if we attempt to educate children and change their diets with healthy federally funded school lunches, every teacher will STILL end up with a huge pile of fresh fruit in the trash cans at the end of lunch.

The way we're going we ARE going to end up like those cheery fat blobs at the end of Wall-E. Depressing.

Edited 2013-03-20 17:57 (UTC)

things that other countries don't even use

As a European I am amazed at the American foods that have corn syrup in. A friend just mentioned it was in almost all the Horseradish sauce at her local supermarket!

It seems to be a pointless ingredient added to everything just to increase the carb and calorie content... I remember another American friend saying they really did add it for no other reason than to use it up, as they were so heavily subsidised to produce it.

Pointless is somewhat relative in this question, though.

It IS pointless at a nutrient level. It's also superflous... for the consumer.

On the other hand, it makes a great deal of sense for the producer. People are biologically wired to love sugar. It lights up the pleasure centers. We crave it. It also has the 'bonus' of spiking your blood sugar that once hormones take over actually end up making you hungrier so in the long run -- you eat more of the product.

Also, because of High Fructose Corn Syrup, it's cheaper than ever before it can be used to augment foods to make them more palatable when otherwise you're using cheaper or less satifying ingredients. When they came out with trying to lower fat content, the prodercers did just that. But by lowering the fat content (which they've taught as 'good'), it didn't taste as good -- UNTIL voila! Sugar was added. Take something like Snackwells cookies for example. They're the 'healthy' alternative, because they 'reduced the fat'. However, calorically... they have the same calories. They just removed the fat and replaced it with sugar. And sugar is cheaper than fat. So win/win for the producer.

What's more, producers need their products to not spoil (or delay spoiling) so that they can stay on the shelves for extended period of time. Sugar (and sodium) are presevatives! They cause these things to last longer. And last much longer if they're replacing fats which can go rancid. So the product stays 'good' longer, increasing the producer's ability to sell their product. Win/Win/Win. (Seriously, they discovered this with dog food. They literally put sugar in dog food to last longer and one thing your dog does not need is sugar).

Add in that sugar makes you hungrier and it's win/win/win/win.

From the producers point of view, sugar isn't pointless at all. It makes perfectly logical sense... even tough for the consumer's nutrition it makes little sense.

When reading one of the books I've read late (I've forgotten which one), the point where I actually became shocked was when they began discussing how Coke began adding salt to its recipe because 1) Salts make you thirstier. 2) Salt decreased the sweet... so that they could add yet. more. sugar. without it alienating people (Because flavor-wise there comes a point of too-sweet. Hormone-wise, it just continues to stoke you to want more.)

At some point in the 80s Coke and Pepsi hit on the marketing point that they'd basically saturated the market in the U.S. The people who aren't drinking sodas are doing so by choice and thus were a tough sell. Convincing people who already loved their soda to drink MORE, however, made perfect sense. So Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper, etc. are engineered to taste good but not to hit your satiation buttons so that you like it and yet are always left wanting more.

Some of this is in Michael Moss's book:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-17/cereal-with-70-sugar-hooks-kids-on-junk-food-bliss-point.html

I'm sort of feeling the same way -- no easy solution, and while I don't agree with the "soda ban," I also feel like at least someone's TRYING to do something, even if it's clumsy and heavy-handed.

Barb and I have pretty well scrubbed HFCS out of our diets (we read labels), and for the most part watch sodium because of Barb's high blood pressure (I still sneak some high sodium stuffs because I don't have HBP), but it IS hard -- although one of the easiest ways is to shop primarily at Trader Joe's -- and it does require "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Of course, I still love sugar. I drink more water (still addicted to Diet Coke, fake sugar notwithstanding) than I used to, and I don't sweeten my tea anymore, but candy candy candy is my absolute downfall, and I hate like poison someone telling me I shouldn't eat it because it's bad for me.

I tend to think it's one thing to have sugar in products that should have sugar, and another when it's snuck into what was perfectly fine without it. I mean, I have a can of corn that has added sugar. Why does corn need added sugar? It IS sugar. Or the fact that this last Thanksgiving we ended up having to make cornbread for stuffing from scratch because every cornbread MIX we tried was so sweet that it basically amounted to corn muffins. Fine if I was making muffins, but way too sweet for a savory stuffing. And last week, I was looking for a salad dressing and found that even organic Ranch or Blue Cheese had sugar and/or soybean oil in it.

Sugar in my chocolate? You betcha. I want it there! Sugar in my chicken salad, however, feels kind of superfluous.

I LOVE sugar. I have a huge sweet tooth. It's my downfall as well, so I keep trying to balance what I know works and what I can really live with, because I tend to think in the end you have to come up with what you can live with.

I know that low carb diets work. I went full blown Atkin's once and lost loads of weight, and hunger wise I lost loads of weight somewhat easily in that I never counted calories and wasn't hungry. I could not, however, LIVE on it because sooner or later the craving for the denied substances became overwhelming. A year later, I fell off the wagon and haven't been on it since (and it's been about ten years). I just can't. I cannot live without carbohydrates.

That's why this time around I'm trying to only do what I think I can live with. I ban no single foodstuff (though I try to limit highly refined ones to occasional treats). I've also tried to satisfy a lot of my sweet tooth needs with regular fruit consumption (Which doesn't mean I don't have chocolate from time to time, because we all need chocolate from time to time!) I am trying to reduce my sugar intake, but not eliminate it.

That said, my memory of Atkins was that after going two weeks really hard core, sugar cravings decreased. So I did do a "NO SUGAR!" for two weeks (and only two weeks), not because I was permanently removing it but to sort of whittle down my sugar cravings. Plus, I was happy that my blood sugar had dropped significantly when mom checked it.

Still, it's not that I'm eliminating sugar (because I haven't.)I just want sugar for sweet things. I find it highly irritating that they've slipped into things where it has no business being in the first place. I think what irritated me the most was reading a can of corn niblets a few weeks ago and finding that there was added sugar in it. Corn didn't need added sugar. It's CORN!

I want sugar in my chocolate. It belongs there. I just wish they'd keep it out of things where it doesn't need to be. It's not needed in cottage cheese.

As for artificial sweetners, according to what I've read recently -- your own best guess is about as good as the experts. Apparently, there are surprisingly few independent studies on the subject. Sugar companies attack artificial sweetners with everything they've got, and in cases such as sacchrine have obfuscated issues such that to this day people believe it causes cancer, even though it's been repeatedly shown to be safe in that regard. (Personally, I don't like it because to me it tastes awful. But it hasn't actually been shown to cause cancer). That said, there really are no studies over what exactly they're doing, just that they're safe for sale and consumption. What it means to us overall or in the telescoped long term...? There just isn't much REAL literature on the subject. I was surprised to discover that. As it stands, there isn't evidence that they're any worse for you than a lot of other stuff.

I totally agree!

And I want to elaborate, but I'm so tired at the moment that I can't see straight. Hopefully, tomorrow.

I thought the soda ban was the stupidest thing ever

That was my first reaction as well. Reading some of the books I've been reading, I can see some of the thought process behind it. And some of the problem it's attemption to (clumsily) address. Still, it just feels like a far less than optimal approach. Plus it's a bit of a class issue. After all no one on 5th Ave will be impacted. It seems to disproportionately (and retrogressively) effect those who shop in convenience stores.

Exactly! I lost on the super-low-carb thing (not quite full-on Atkins), but gained much of it back the moment I stopped and started eating sugar again (and my own fault, I went overboard as well); but I do TRY to limit myself on a regular basis, but I'm not as good as I could be.

I do best, really, when I just plain watch what I eat and eat moderately, really not denying myself anything. I've spent this week just trying to be careful, and despite going out last night and having a fried chicken sandwich (another vice: fried foods), I have lost another pound. I have to stop thinking in the "lose it RIGHT NOW!" and start thinking about the long term again.

And I agree with the added sugars. That's another reason we started shopping for so much of our regular groceries at Trader Joe's (although some of their changes went to "0 fat + more sugar = good!" and it was "okay" because it's Raw Cane Sugar instead of HFCS... no) -- but not everyone reads labels, so are completely unaware of that extra sugar in Everything bit. I expect BBQ Sauce to have sugar in it, although I'd prefer molasses or brown sugar to HFCS; but not so much ketchup. I wonder if it's sugar that's changed the taste of cottage cheese -- I've been looking for a cottage cheese that tastes like cottage cheese and not "weird," but until I bought Trader Joe's full-fat (4%) small curd, I hadn't found any I liked... I just checked the label, and there's no added sugar. Mmmm.

One of the problems with Americans is that when we're told something is Good, we tend to overboard on it (i.e., low fat -- the Snackwells example is a good one). We have this "more is better!" attitude on things, when it's not necessarily true (a recent Scientific American had an article about the preponderance of antioxidants and how too much may not be a good thing).

I would like to read a real scientific article on what aspartame REALLY does to one's system -- I've read both the propaganda from the soda companies AND the hysterical ranting of the "Artificial Sweeteners are Teh Evol!" articles, but nothing from actual scientists doing a long-term study, like they finally did for saccharin to disprove the "it causes cancer" study. Because try as I will, the one thing I haven't been able to give up completely is a few Diet Cokes a day...

I can't remember in which book/youtube university lecture I read/saw a scientist admit that the truth is there just isn't much available literature on artificial sweetners. What the companies making them are required to do is to show that they are safe for consumption... so that's what they test. If someone wants to know more than, well, they were't required to run those tests. Does someone ELSE run those tests? No. The government says that's the company's responsibility. They don't fund that. And the company isn't going to fund something that brings no hope for profit and, in a worst case scenario, could even potentially hurt their product. They have no reason to want fund further research.

So, yeah, anyone telling you too much beyond that they've been proven safe for consumption is either giving their opinion or pure speculation. There's remarkably little scientific literature on the matter. Period.

One of the most distressing things is that despite the thousands of food TV programs on the air now, almost no one in America cooks at home anymore.

True. A lot of people don't even know how. Still, even knowing how it still time consuming which becomes a challenge when you don't have much time... which unfortunately tends to happen in high stress situations... which makes 'comfort food' seem all the more appealing. It's vicious.

Secondly, in the old days (the 1950s-early 60s), poor people used to cook for themselves because it was the only way to eat cheaply. Now they stuff themselves and their children with low-cost, easily-obtainable, non-nutritive fast food, compounding their poverty with obesity and its attendant health problems. I watched a program on HBO the other day on "The New Poor" in Portland, OR, and damned if almost every person profiled wasn't at least 50 pounds overweight (including some of the kids).

Yes. The frustrating part of this is that like a friend of my Mother's who angers me because she says things about poor people living on food stamps being fat, is that it comes with the belief that somehow such people are necessarily gluttons, when in fact there's a lot of science in support of it being more than perfectly possible to be overweight and UNDERnourished. When you're offered things with a lot of calories but very little nutrients, it's going to have a bad result. The more refined, the more processed the more it may have calories, but the less likely that it's nutrient dense. Plus, 'good' food isn't as readily available in urban deserts where there isn't a nice supermarket anywhere close, and even if it were fast food and processed food is still often cheaper. Plus, if you're someone working two jobs, you're tired. You don't have time to drive to the suburbs to reach a supermarket, or to cook from-scratch meals because you're working 16 hour days.

And then there's the way that the high sugar/transfat diets screw up the hormones. It's all a vicious cycle.

Recently I read a Salon article where some woman decided to try to make do for one month on allowance equal to an equivalent food stamp stipend, and she raved about how she bought fresh milk for her yogurt machine. Seriously, this is not the same thing as trying to live off the meager allowance the underprivileged on foodstamps must because I SERIOUSLY doubt that they have a William-Sanoma yogurt maker in the pantry!

*sigh* Don't know what an answer would be, but villifying people for being poor and living off of poor quality food isn't one of them.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only