Comments on: Redefining Food: A Radical Proposal to Reduce Obesity

By: Ian Coleman

Ian Coleman — Sun, 30 May 2010 20:36:06 +0000

Calories are nutrients. Therefore, soda pop and hotdogs and potato chips are food. Good food too, as I eat these things on a regular basis. The trick is, don’t eat so much that you get fat. And what is the big deal about vitamins and minerals. Have you ever in your life met anyone who suffered from scurvy or goitre or beri-beri? Neither has any physician in a developed country since about 1955.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:32:15 +0000

Rather than enact a junk food tax, it would be simple enough to just remove the junk food subsidies. Corn and beef both get massive subsidies in the US (money, ability to ignore environmental rules, free water, guaranteed sales for school lunches). I read somewhere once that if you got rid of all of the subsidies, “cheap” ground beef would be around $20/lb.

By: Adam Pieniazek

Adam Pieniazek — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:38:27 +0000

This is a brilliant, brilliant idea and would hit home for lots of people. Still, the bigger issue are corporations and their psychopathic pursuit of profit with a complete disregard for their negative impact on society, the environment and humans. In our current state, corporations will never let this logical system fly, but if we were to reduce the power of corporations and return power to actual human beings, perhaps this system could get implemented.

By: Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:01:36 +0000

@James, why do you think nutritional science is corrupt?

@Michael, good points. I hadn’t noticed that Canadian food was salty, on the West Coast at least.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:00:31 +0000

I guess it would not necessary to exactly determine how bad a paticular piece of food is. Instead, it should be sufficient to fight the really bad ones (Pop drinks- excessive sugar, fast food- excessive fat, sodium, etc.). There will always borderline cases, which should probably just be left alone.

Turning back the diet 250 years sounds good- however, keep in mind that you would also eliminate many good things such as tropical fruit. Also, winters used to be times of limited fruit, veggies etc. Note- people did not live very long back then, e.g. because of limited medical care, so the comparison is kind of hard…

The elimination or strong reduction of refined sugar is certainly not wrong, although I’ve seen studies that found the strongest correlation between waist size and diabetes, not sugar intake and diabetes. Also, excessive sodium in Canada (and trust me- many foods still taste salty for me, after living here for almost two years (I’m from Germany)) seems to be the single biggest nutritional problem, believe it or not.

By: james

james — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:35:51 +0000

I like the idea, but I think nutritional science is too full of holes (and corruption) to pin down which foods are really the worst. We all know processing food ruins it, white flour and sugar being particularly bad, refined salt, and so on. I don’t necessarily agree on the saturated fats part, it’s a little muddy considering how little un-screwed-up food people actually eat.

We all keep hearing about how heart disease and diabetes, cancer, … rates are going up. Well the obvious question is what has changed? Surely the simplest way to undo the damage is just to reverse the changes? Turn diet back 250 years and remove sugar and that’s probably quite good (unless unhealthy populations are used).

By: Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:06:00 +0000

@Michael and Mich

You both make good points. I think a more general principle here is that the cost of an item should reflect not only the cost of producing the item, but also the costs to society of consuming that item. From this perspective, junk food, cigarettes and gasoline are generally underpriced and Organic foods, bicycles and bus passes are generally overpriced.

By: Mich

Mich — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:51:48 +0000

@Michael
I like this, but then I wonder whether it wouldn’t make junk food more desirable because it’s ‘worth’ more. Then again, the number of people unable to afford lots of junk food would probably outweigh the number of people splurging on fancy dinners at the newly expensive McDonald’s, so maybe it’d be worth it anyway.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:26:54 +0000

My approach to address this problem would be an “unhealthy food tax”, which should be slapped onto anything with lots of saturated fats, trans fats, sugar, sodium, etc., proportionally to the “badness” of the food. If your average fast food burger with fries suddenly cost 10 instead of 5 bucks and coke were suddenly more expensive than real orange juice, then people might end up making better chocies. And some people (like me) would still occassionaly reach for the then $15 Chocolate Extreme Blizzard , aware of the costs that this in the long run causes for the health system if done repeatedly.

By: Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:25:13 +0000

@Ben

Helping people read more and stay educated is part of a long term solution. My suggestion is more of a quick fix, though I think it would still be helpful for a more educated society in that it promotes cognitive economy. The idea of government staying out of it in the hopes that Darwinian evolution will take care of the problem is unlikely to work when intelligence and education are inversely correlated with birth rates.

Good points. This is one of the reasons I don’t live in the US.

@Mich

Nope, I’m not that guy. I’ve only written one book, and it’s not going to be on the bestseller list anytime soon. Yes, the mislabeling of sugar water as juice is probably contributing to diabetes rates. Unfortunately, I don’t think congress understands this sort of semantic distinction.