rt, will you ban it?
Sure, why not. Gotta ban something.
Why? It’s just sugar packaged differently and a harmless substance.
No because things shouldn’t be banned unless they cause unavoidable harm.
That’s a bit glib. A pest control company can sell a chlorine gas spray just because it says it on the label?
Yes. People have a right to take risks.
And that’s exactly why we should be talking about banning HFCS content.
You know chlorine gas is bad, and that’s just a risk you think people should be allowed to take. But you clearly don’t fully understand just what chlorine gas is or what it does to your body. And that notion that a the ‘risk’ part of ‘health risk’ diminishes its severity is like believing the ‘thoery’ part of gravitational theory means we shouldn’t take that seriously.
Let me be more clear. People have a right to 100% totally fuck themselves up, to the point of grievous injury or death.
So the problem with hfcs is that it’s everywhere. And not just like juice, I’m talking like canned goods, deli meat, peanut butter, crackers, bread. So it’s really hard to avoid unless you just make everything from scratch. And not I’m advocating for a total abolishment but it’s easy to go over your daily sugar with it being in everything. I would try to limit it or maybe have a warning on packages. For the other person that linked a study, I looked into one of the guys that did it, and he does just like a lot of hfcs studies, like a weirdly amount and I found that kinda sus lol This site lists papers for and against the safety
https://journalistsresource.org/environment/high-fructose-corn-syrup-your-health/
https://www.healthcentral.com/article/how-to-reduce-your-intake-of-highfructose-corn-syrup
It’s not as bad as all that, I’ve cut it out of my diet for about fifteen years. It involves A LOT of reading ingredient labels but for just about everything it’s in, there is an alternative without. Sometimes it does come at a premium, though. In the past ten years or so a lot of food manufacturers realized there was a market for foods without it and often advertise it on the label (breads especially). With some things like soda, you can get real sugar, glass bottled sodas which are expensive, but another alternative is drinking water which you should be doing anyway.
I agree that you can avoid hitting the daily sugar thing (and avoid hfcs) by reading ingredients but I don’t think many consumers do that. I certainly did not expect it find it in canned tomatoes and I use that in a lot of the recipes I found online. It makes sense why it’s in there though if it’s acting as a preservative. In fact, I’m going agree with a lot of folks here and just would like to send an end to corn subsidies.
I mean, not ban, but certainly restrict.
I’m amazed to see some people agree with banning it here… Like… Under what grounds? Because some people overeat? Jesus… What the hell?
Well, it’s not about overeating for one thing. The stuff is everywhere in American food. Assuming you’re in the States, you’ve probably consumed a lot more corn syrup than you think within the past year, and the stuff isn’t good for you. Here’s an article from the Cleveland Clinic about why it’s probably not the best thing to eat:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/avoid-the-hidden-dangers-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup-video/
Now, as I initially said, I don’t know about banning it, but I kinda feel like warning labels are justified, and maybe some other restrictions.
Also… I live in Iowa, and frankly the corn subsidies that have helped cause the corn sweetener explosion are destroying the environment here. It’s a lot to get into, but corn production at this scale causes changes to weather patterns. It’s a lot.
So, I’d like to see corn subsidies ended, or at least reduced a lot. This would make corn sweetener more expensive and therefore a less attractive ingredient.
I think we just need a way to incentivize corporations to provide healthy alternatives as well (and not just HFCS, but high sugars in general, etc). Not sure of the best approach, but the bigger issue is that when every corporation is pushing cheap sellers that are addictive, its no wonder most people eat them. Like, McDonalds alone isn’t responsible, but corporations in general because their basically saying they can’t be held responsible for being successful. But they’re putting so much money into being successful and trying to be successful, that it’s difficult when you have such large entities pushing that way but then saying “it’s not our fault people are going in the direction we push”
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I mean, if we’re talking about impossible things, changing the world economic structure is one of them.
You can’t socialize food production without socializing the entire economy of the world. Many countries rely on food production as their number one source of income. So you can’t just socialize one industry. Let alone getting the world to play along.
An incentive could be “offer healthy alternatives otherwise something bad will happen.” It requires meddling with the system and ignoring the free market, but sounds like I don’t think you’d disagree with disruption in the free market.
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That’s not the way any of this works. You can’t just change a portion of the system. The US imports a ton of food. Banning something is actually a realistic ability. Ingredients have been banned before. Creati ng a system that is doomed to failure due to not thinking about it for 3 seconds is a different class of ability. We’re talking about changing the laws of a country, not breaking the laws of math and physics. I’m pro-socialism but this is an awfully thought out take. It would cause worldwide economic collapse and less to starvation around the world due to such an event.
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No, you can change parts of it, but you can’t just arbitrarily say any part can simply be replaced willy nilly. That’s just childish. Changes have impact and consequences. You’re literally ignoring cause and effect. I can see nothing is worth discussing with you though if you’re going to respond with something a child would say. So we’re done here.
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I wouldn’t ban HFCS, I would just remove added sugar and HFCS from grocery items that don’t need sweeteners or cconventionally never had sweeteners in them (it adds a lot of unnecessary calories, makes it harder for diabetics to shop, and usually tastes worse than unsweetened versions).
For example, I found pita bread with sweeteners in it (why? And yuck). Or most jarred tomato based pasta sauces (they typically make the sauce taste too sweet).
This seems to be a mainly American problem, though.
I wouldn’t ban it but I would ban subsidized corn. The thing is, humans want a sweetener and sugar is just as bad if not worse. Actually the history of sugar is worse then the history of any drug or evil empire. More humans have suffered because of sugar that anything else ever created by man.
I feel like landmines and rape and staphylococcus (and drug resistant variants after that) could give sugar a run for its money if we are talking about the worst things of all time xD
If you want to see for yourself the absolute horror that is sugar, i suggest this CBC documentary
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/K3ksKkCOgTw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thanks, I’ll have to check it out!
Nope
Yea, but I’m fructose intolerant and in it’s in nearly everything so I’m biased
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From like 1904-1906 Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to show how the happily non-regulated meat market was running behind the scenes. The result was America saw a huge decline in red meat consumption. There’s a moral standing at f not letting other humans be treated that way, but more to the point, people got a peek on how their meat was processed and packaged in terms of sanitation and food safety. The contents of the novel were confirmed by a third party investigation. It led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug act in 1906, which laid the groundwork for the FDA a couple decades later.
So yes. The government absolutely should be involved in food. We’ve had them involved for the past, oh, century or so and it’s why you can buy ground beef with the basic assumption that it won’t make you sick.
What an idiotic take. A good government is elected by the people and directed by them to make decisions in their favour. Of course it is the government’s role to protect its population from dangerous food additives.
As long as you also remove the corn subsidies as your role of independent absolute dictator goes I’m happy
Interesting read on obesity, and why sugar might not be the culprit we think it is.
Tldr?
TLDR sugar and fat aren’t to blame. Something in the environment is screwing up our bodies ability to maintain a normal weight, and it’s probably microplastics / forever chemicals.
@wahming @AllenSmithee Press X for Doubt.
If you had said sugar is not *solely* to blame I might consider that thesis but pretending as though sugar is not a core part of the problem is… an interesting take, which I do not believe.
What are slimemold’s credentials? Do they cite research? Just curious. This non-HTTPs website seems like a dubious source to me. But I might be wrong. That is a cursory judgement.
Will check out if there’s any research cited that promotes that thesis
They link to a lot of studies, and explain the reasoning at every step of the way. Like I said, it’s an interesting read. I’d be happy to hear an opposing view about any mistakes in their logic.
@wahming I’ve only read a little but it’s very well written. I apologize if I came off rude. I was just surprised.
I definitely am swayed by the discussion, FTR
Right? Prior to this I would have agreed with you about sugar. I’m open to the possibility that they’re making mistakes I’m not smart enough to notice, which is why I’m happy to hear other viewpoints on it
No I don’t believe in nanny states. If someone wants to produce it and someone else wants to consume it, they should be able to.
The thing is that if you are subsidizing the other end you are still interfering with the market.
I’ll bet you would dislike the government pulling back more and leaving even more to the morally bankrupt to abuse even less.
The government should be a strong regulator as a counterbalance as corporatations do not suffer repercussions for the worst externalities they produce.
I think government should be a strong regulator in terms of breaking up monopolies. I also agree that the subsidies impact the free market. It’s a bit of a complicated subject because price of food being volatile has often led to revolutions in the past.
So governments have a lot of incentive to subsidize food staples like corn or dairy. Without the subsidies we may see a sharp increase in inflation, at least temporarily. And whichever administration carries this out is virtually guaranteed to lose the next election.
Perhaps a better solution is instead of subsidies, we have a sort of basic command economy for staples while still allowing a private market for luxury food items. Not sure. Haven’t thought about this much.
I don’t like subsidies because groups that get fat off government’s teat end up buying up our politicians and we start looking more like China where private & state power become intertwined. But maybe it’s a necessary evil when it comes to food, I’m not sure.
OP’s comment isn’t directly exclusive with stopping subsidies, though. I could agree with not subsidising corn but not having to regulate a fairly harmless product.
