I’ll play the paternalistic card, and suggest a quite sizeable portion of our population does not construct there diets based on the types of concerns we are discussing. I would fully support any individual’s right to choose what to cram into their maw, if they didn’t so readily stick out their hands once they developed diet and lifestyle related health conditions.
Yes, just about all foods we buy are processed in one way or another. But I’m not sure how huge a leap there is between - say - sugared cereals and sport drinks marketed at kids, and drug dealers and cigarette companies.
I think the OP’s point is that society is the biggest victim. It’s fine to leave it up the individual, but if their choices result in real, uncompensated costs to society, then shouldn’t society do something besides wring it’s hands?
As someone who started a thread fishing for left wing libertarian candidates to vote for, NO society should not do anything. Nobody forced anyone to put the crap in their mouth at gunpoint. Go to the grocery, even in the poorest sections of most cities there are shock places selling actual food and components of food, purchase and use if you desire.
I think anything you did to limit the food purchasable by the poor and ignorant would end up causing more damage in the end. And hell I’d want heroin sold at every pharmacy OTC too just to prove I will argue personal choice over all.
I have spent a bit of time learning about this topic, if you want to watch some interesting history on the modern food epidemic here are a few links.
the men who made us fat
Pt1-3
there is more to be found out there, but if you have even a passing interest in the health vs profit concept in this thread it is well worth the watch.
I wish society would ban this phrase and the bizarre thinking behind it.
I would encourage you to read the literature on focused on the psychological impact of childhood nutrition. If you are a child who is raised to think that pizza, tater tots, and chocolate milk is a complete, wholesome meal, guess what kind of meal you are likely to defend as complete and wholesome as an adult, despite all evidence (including your own health profile) to the contrary?
Kids can’t make choices, but their environment primes them for when they are able to make own choices. If your palate has been programmed to seek out craziness like flaming hot cheetos from the age of three years old, then all the talk about “choice” kind of misses the point.
I’m not saying society has to ban anything. But come on. There has to be something more than hand-wringing that it can do.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that in that process of “How can we get people to pay us lots and lots of money”, one of the more important steps is finding something that a lot of people will like and want. No matter how good your marketing setup is, you will not make lots and lots of money if the product is not something that provides value to people. You can add more ‘value’ by affecting how people perceive the value the product gives them, but you cannot make it up out of thin air.
Back when I was a kid, I watched shows such as Inspector Gadget and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oftentimes a character got “brainwashed” by having water splashed on their head, after which they had to do whatever the bad guys said until they were cured, usually by a hard blow to the head. At some point during the process of growing up, I figured out that this was fiction and that there isn’t really any such phenomenon as “brainwashing”.
In truth, “brainwashing” is a meaningless term. When Person A says that Institution B has brainwashed Group C, what it really means is that Person A disapproves of the choices that Group C is making. Ninety percent of the time, Person A will then go on to demand that Group C’s freedom to choose be taken away. Necessarily included in this argument is elitism. Person A must think that he has a better decision-making ability than Group C in order to justify imposing his own will on them.
Most schools in this country are run by governments. If those schools until recently were providing kids with very unhealthy food, that would seem to be a cautionary tale. It would suggest a moral lesson: blindly trusting the government to lead us to healthy food is not a good idea.
Or to put it another way: as an esample of villainous food marketing, you linked me to a webpage for Dominos Pizza’s school lunch program. But Dominos can brag that their school lunches meet or exceed all government nutritional guidelines. So it seems that government guidelines don’t protect us against junk food and corporate marketing. Indeed, it seems almost as if government guidelines are a reliable partner in corporate junk food marketing. And if that’s the case, we might want to think twice before expanding the role of government even more.
Two or three generations ago, the government was virtually uninvolved in trying to get us to eat healthy food. Nowadays every time I pick up a paper or magazine, I learn about the latest government efforts to meddle with our diet. Yet plainly as government involvement has increased, we’ve not gotten any thinner.
When discussing hypotheticals, I’m not sure why a particular products’ “legality” at this point in time ought to automatically trump all discussion.
-Different substances/behaviors have changed from being legal or not at different times. Prohibition is a handy example.
-Legal substances can be heavily regulated. Age limits, restrictions on driving under the influence…
-An individual’s ability to receive benefits for the abuse of legal substances can change over time. Alcoholics previously were eligible for Social Security disability benefits.
Why is it “absurd” to discuss the manner in which a product physically and psychologically appeals to a consumer, the intentions of the producer/marketer, the costs imposed from the production/sale/use of that product, and who bears those costs? Hell, for the sake of debate I’d happily stake out the position that society would be better off if marijuana were legal and soft drinks were not. No reason to bring Nazis into it.
So you tell me. What ought to be done about current obesity and food related health problems? Do you wish people who make poor lifestyle choices to be in your health insurance pool? Do you wish them to be covered by the government? Do you wish them to obtain treatment at emergency rooms? Do you wish them to be denied health care?
What do you mean by “taking responsibility” for poor life choices? How does a poor, uneducated, unhealthy person take responsibility? Die?
Ding ding - we have a winner! What groups do you think have the greatest influence in the Department of Agriculture’s nutritional guidelines? But I’m not sure your next statement necessarily follows.
Bad government actions/decisions, need not be addressed by “expanding” the governmental role. Instead of expanding the governmental role, bad policies could be replaced by better policies.
Okay. You’re right. Six and a half billion people all make every choice of their own free will, always have, always will, drop all the “victimizing” shit. Got it.
Man, if you’re this torqued about companies marketing food that you know, tastes good, I shudder to think about how outraged you’ll be when you figure out that companies use (gasp!) sex to sell things!
“What do you mean I’m not going to get laid by hot women if I wear Axe body spray?”
Not true. It’s a bit sweeping to say that “all the good stuff has already been invented” but there’s truth in that we’ve had the satisfying essentials of life for quite some time. Manufacturers have a choice of trying to compete with almost indistinguishable products (beer, cars, clothes, shoes, appliances, etc.), in which the competition is fierce, the market fickle and the margins slim; trying to innovate within an existing product area, which is increasingly expensive and risky; or creating a product niche and line where nothing like it existed before, and depending on massive marketing to drive the interest and the need into a large enough buying population. NOTHING about that last option requires that the product have any irreplaceable usefulness, real value or inherent consumer need/want.
When vastly larger amounts are spent on marketing a new product than on manufacturing the first year’s supply, there is something seriously wrong with the whole process. This inverted cost structure represents some very large number of products introduced in any given year, and has for quite some time.
Yes; exactly. Society as a whole should fight back, every time they’re asked to pull out their wallet. Not the way Consumer Reports and David Horowitz tell you to fight back, but by using their brains and telling sellers to stuff their worthless shit up their corporate rectum.
It’s not a matter of governmental intrusion; there’s very little that can be done with regulation (more, or changed). Government is the apex predator in the pyramid, dependent on the overheated cycle of consumption.
But it’s as if we’ve been invaded at street level by a hostile nation of carnies, intent on extracting every dollar they can from every one of us, using every tactic including long-term, generational indoctrination that earning/spending/buying is the very purpose of our lives.
What makes you think you’re outside the reach of the food industrial complex in the organic aisle? The big companies make organic products, too, and organic products can be just as full of sugar, salt, and fat as any other food.
So how do I determine what I’ve been brainwashed into thinking I really like when I actually don’t? Anything with any three syllable name in the ingredient list? What if I told you I actually DID like that thing? Am I just a slave? Or would you tell me that I’m just better off not eating it anyway?
If anyone believes that the government should provide health care for all, he or she surely accepts that that means paying for other people’s unhealthy choices. When you get right down to it, almost any health problem may have some link to an unhealthy choice, and almost any choice could cause a medical problem. Sex can lead to pregnancy or STDs; should the government work to reduce sex? Playing sports can lead to sprained ankles or getting hit in the face with a baseball; should the government work to limit sports?
When it comes to costs, unhealthy eating probably saves the government money in the long term. Consider two guys, Bob and Joe. Bob eats bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Throughout his life, he pays payroll taxes for Medicare. Then at age 60 he has a heart attack and dies before he can collect a single penny. His net contribution to Medicare is very positive. Joe, meanwhile, eats tofu and brown rice. He lives to age 95, racking up medical bills along the way. His net contribution to Medicare is very negative. The basic truth is that everybody, except the few who die prematurely from car crashes and such, goes through medical problems at some point. If the government pays for health care, then the government has to pay the bills for everyone at some point. Diet and other lifestyle choices can affect when it happens, but they change the fact that it happens.