The Start of the Sugar Wars
SFGate: Get ready for the sugar wars
SFGate: Get ready for the sugar wars
"Metabolic syndrome is healthier than fascism"
Every state in the USA has strict rules against driving while intoxicated, serving alcohol to minors, stating how much alcohol can be served to patrons, and limiting the hours bars can be open.
I notice America has lived with these common-sense rules for generations now without descending into the Mussolini zone.
Please explain to me why removing soft-drink vending machines from schools or limiting portion sizes back to 20 oz. will suddenly be the tipping point for totalitarianism. Please link to any good public health studies showing a negative benefit ratio for preventing this.
For some reason I just can't fathom, my liberty doesn't feel the least bit constrained by an inability to sell Scotch to school children. But it seems you clearly have an understanding that limiting my freedom to sell whiskey to Girl Scouts - and the government's refusal to let them buy it - is deeply harmful.
Are there benefits to high-proof hooch for little girls we don't know about? Please offer me a quality study on this one, too.
Thanks!
While I would never equate regulating sugar with fascism, I will fight within our democracy to prevent allowing agencies the capacity to further regulate when they've illustrated just how corrupt and incompetent they are as they are currently structured. I will support anyone and anything that uses private funds to educate the individual about nutrition.
You might consider having a bit more trust in the average American rather than assuming they're children not capable of making rational and informed decisions. Once given the information, many will willingly give up their soda and chips making those regulations utterly useless.
Why is the first response on the left always authoritarian?
Our first goal should be eliminating the subsidies on sugar production, not attempting to control the behavior of our fellow citizens using government as our enforcer.
The only "regulation" necessary is to insist that sugar and heroin both be pure, and properly labeled.
Goodness. Now descent into total lunacy. The blog comments have evidently been taken over by extremist political eccentrics. Now society can't even protect its members (inclusing minors) against dangerous drugs.
And, no, members of society are not atomized units that don't interact and that may be considered as if they were separate, having no effect on each other, and in terms of a greatly simplistic notion, descending from 18th century enlightenment liberalism, of "harm" (understood in an impossibly limited and unrealistic sense).
And if its the drug addicts' "personal choice" to take dangerous drugs -- regardless of what it does to his driving ability, propensity to commit crime, or anything else -- then it would also logically follow that he should be denied medical care when the inevitable consequences of his actions follow, since how is the trouble and expense he puts everyone else to everyone else's responsibility?
It's interesting that this peculiar and extreme ideology of personal choice without responsibility thrives exceptionally in America and is rare elsewhere.
"It's interesting that this peculiar and extreme ideology of personal choice without responsibility thrives exceptionally in America and is rare elsewhere."
It's interesting that some folks think this is a negative. As if it's a bug, not a feature.
The good news is whatever limiting laws or regulations some try to impose will need to be democratically passed. Good luck with that.
Paleo will never become a mainstream movement while you guys run around arguing we have to give pure heroin to kids. All the while arguing how "rational" you are!
But this is Andreas' problem - he's hopped on the Paleo bandwagon and these right-wing extremists are the core believers there.
Wow, talk about conflating arguments. You might want to re-read. You seem to be confusing different commenters and different arguments.
I'm not a Paleo; I'm LCHF and also Libertarian. I didn't suggest NOT regulating heroin, but I did suggest we have a rational basis to be suspicious of regulation.
Also, it's pretty presumptuous of you to attempt to police who can and cannot comment or visit this sight. Again, why so authoritarian and also angry?
Now I fully accept that it in many countries that seems NOT to be the case... in the USA and UK for example I see major policies being drafted and driven by rich and powerful, self-interested, lobby groups BUT does that mean we accept this as fait accompli and work on the assumption that government will never represent our needs over big companies and a select group of powerful, rich families?
That seem like a a defeatist attitude to me.
Removing the hyperbole, it will be the tipping point for regulation without adequate science as in the low-fat fiasco which is still going on. The government (via their academic and medical advisors make it hard to even buy full-fat foods, never mind not know which science is accurate).
I know more science than Hizzona' Mayor Bloomberg but he can with barefaced power, sweep me from his sight.
To make my point, I offer the logic problem that I have posted elsewhere. I will reveal answer in a couple of days but I am tabulating results. It is a classic logic problem (it is not a problem in diagnosis).
Linda is overweight and has consistently had difficulty losing any amount of weight, despite having "tried everything." Which is most probable?
A. She is on a high carbohydrate diet.
B. She is on a high carbohydrate diet with high amounts of refined sugar and starch.
1. Please send answer directly to me: feinman@mac.com so others are not influenced.
2. Please do not share with other bloggers or social media.
Why is it assumed that taxation is the only recourse here? Currently the price of sugar (notably HFCS) is artificially maintained lower than its true market cost by massive subsidies. The only beneficiaries that I see out of this arrangement are the food and beverage manufacturers who (by packing our food with cheap, refined calories) gain massive profits at the sake of both the tax-payers and the nation's health... oh and let's not forget the government representatives who reap the financial rewards of supporting this policy.
Remove those subsidies, set things back to a level playing field and as Dr Feinman suggests above, let's have honest, open, evidence-based and unbiased debate on the subject. Then we can truly have a freedom of personal choice.
I guess for me the government intervention required to put things back to a level playing field -- i.e. fair market price... same for everyone -- is quite a different approach than coercion using regulations and taxation.
Another vital step, as I see it, which also involves government intervention is the divorcing of that government from lobby groups. Surely we all disagree with the current arrangement which (so far as I can see) gives money more of a say in public-policy than it does the voting public? Again not a taxation. not a regulation but a fair and level playing field... sounds, to me, an awful lot like the same sentiments expressed by "[insisting] that sugar and heroin both be pure, and properly labeled".
If they don't represent you then let them know and if they fail to act then vote them out of office... that would be a start.
We are not powerless onlookers in this disaster but so long as you continue talking as if you are, then you may as well just let this faceless "them" do whatever they feel like
Meet with your elected officials. They or at least their aides will meet with you; it's their job. Be brief and polite and ask for representation on the commission of people who understand low carb in diabetes. One suggested to me that i send him a short check list to use if the issue came up (he meant if more people contact him and his colleagues). Possibly helpful is the 15 theses as in my blog post http://wp.me/p16vK0-c3.
You will likely find that, as I have, that your representatives are serious, intelligent and interested in what you have to say. It is only that there are many other influences that accounts for the crap that they actually turn out. But we can make a change. It has to be a serious grassroots movement. As FrankG says, moaning and complaining on-line, is an alternative but less likely to change things.
I acknowledge heroin has uses as a drug for acute conditions. So does chemotherapy. Neither are nutrients, whereas sugar is a nutrient--the glucose is metabolized directly for energy. Perhaps alcohol would be a better analogy to sugar than heroin. We do not permit our kids to drink either alcohol or soda pop. They can decide for themselves once they are adults. We don't ever drink soda pop as adults but we do have a small glass of wine with dinner. We tell our kids the difference is that their brains are still growing so it is prudent for them to avoid alcohol for now. The soda is imprudent at any age in our view.
And although it may have been Mayor Bloomberg who was the mover and shaker in the New York soda ban, it is normally NOT freely elected officials who make these regulations. It is an army of un-elected, lifetime beaurocrats living off our money who usually make them, and the result is rarely a "ban" but instead a tax, which usually means money in the pockets of the ones making these decisions. There are exceptions, but we cannot sort through every official to find them, and the general rule is that no one who is making money off whether a decision goes one way or another can be trusted to make it. Not only that, but there is then a temptation to tax things that have much less evidence against them, just for the extra cash.
And here we also run into a problem that socialized medicine causes: the fact that the public is picking up the tab for everyone's health care means that even honest beaurocrates feel forced to make at least some of these decisions. And with all the controversy and all the disagreement among doctors, nutritionists and scientists, they aren't in any position to make them. The only way to solve this problem is personal responsibility–which is the other side of the coin of freedom and is usually conveniently forgotten by liberals and conservatives alike. Personal responsiblity means that I am the one responsible for my own health care, and my own health choices. No one is allowed to make decisions about what I eat–but no one is picking up the tab for my poor choices, either.
Why is it assumed that taxation is the only recourse here? Currently the price of sugar (notably HFCS) is artificially maintained lower than its true market cost by massive subsidies. The only beneficiaries that I see out of this arrangement are the food and beverage manufacturers who (by packing our food with cheap, refined calories) gain massive profits at the sake of both the tax-payers and the nation's health... oh and let's not forget the government representatives who reap the financial rewards of supporting this policy.
Remove those subsidies, set things back to a level playing field and as Dr Feinman suggests above, let's have honest, open, evidence-based and unbiased debate on the subject. Then we can truly have a freedom of personal choice.
I guess for me the government intervention required to put things back to a level playing field -- i.e. fair market price... same for everyone -- is quite a different approach than coercion using regulations and taxation.