A good example of how the state makes crybabies out of many industries.
They don’t call it the Nanny State for nothing.
Of course the social welfare state makes dependents of individual citizens.
As much as I hate corn subsidies and sugar tarrifs, HFCS isn’t actually any worse for you than a comparable ammount of sugar. Fructose is fructose and sucrose is sucrose, it doesn’t matter what plant it came from.
Are you sure? These are rats, but 1 serving of sugar versus 1/2 serving of HFCS, everything else being equal, resulted in the HFCS rats becoming more obese than the sugar rats:
That is what should be expected. Being overweight indicates lack of drive and it doesn’t help you make money either.
I would need to post a scheme about the metabolitic pathways linking dietary carbohydrates and fat metabolism but I am far too lazy to scan it and post it…
Suffice to say that in vertebrates (cows, pigs, monitor lizards, us etc) the fructose pathway of utilization through the liver bypasses phosphofructokinase regulation and may account for the ease with which dietary sucrose (which when hydrolized yields fructose) is converted to fat.
No need to post your charts, though that would be nice. Lustig has it all in the video I posted. He shows in great detail how fructose is metabolized. There’s lot of nice little flow charts with molecules, etc…for all you biochemist buffs.
And he discusses (and shows) why HFCS is no better or worse than regular sucrose.
What does this prove exactly?
We are obviously beyond the threshold where cost is an issue in access to calorie rich food.
So is it due to access to cheaper junk food as many social engineers would like you to believe? Not very likely.
There is likely to be found a more genetic causal relation to why there are more obese among the poor, but this is another one of those taboos that makes anyone who suggests such a thing a Nazi or or something.
Wow. That first photo is painfully non-candid.
You are almost embarking on a major “socialist” fallacy here. Food production is still mostly directed by consumers. That production is not in accordance with the B.S. recommendation of the government only proves that. Yes, there is some distortion here and there due to subsidies. But overall, consumers are still directing production. That pyramid is such because that’s how people want it to be.
Food production is still mostly directed by consumers. That production is not in accordance with the B.S. recommendation of the government only proves that. Yes, there is some distortion here and there due to subsidies. But overall, consumers are still directing production. That pyramid is such because that’s how people want it to be.
Yes that may be, but if meat were twice as expensive as it currently is if there were no subsidies, then less of it would be purchased.
In fact when I was a student, and my wife was unemployed just after she moved to Toronto, we subsited on mainly rice, beans and chicken once a week.
Once I became employed, we bought steak on a regular basis.
So what about the exceedingly high price of sugar and exceedingly low cost of HFCS both created by government intervention?
Is the consumer directing the production of HFCS? I think not - Companies use a sweetener, and they use the cheapest one available - it happens to be HFCS because of intervention in the free market of sweeteners.
Look, the point is warranted. There are distortions. But I would refrain from bare assertion statements about how much meat would be in a free market and what the alternatives would be.
The point is this: The food industry is incredibly huge and versatile. It is absurd to blame such intervention on things like obesity.
As far as sugar vs corn sweeteners, I agree that those who cry corn is bad, sugar is better, should be informed that government is making one cheap and the other more expensive. However, there is no basis for the claims that one causes more obesity then the other. I don’t care if Ron Paul or Lew Rockwell claims it. It’s absolutely baseless.
You nailed the most important point here, Kakugo. Without an understanding of the metabolic pathways and processes, you’re just shooting in the dark to find out what is good/bad for you.
I stick to a very low carb diet and try to get around 50% of my energy from saturated fats. 
Anyone who can be as critical of the mainstream as an austrian and at the same time have a curiosity of nutrition would in short time have found things like “the optimal diet” and the “paleo diet” and are on their way to great health if they aren’t already there.
Other than the fact that fructose is more damaging to the liver than glucose, and liver damage/impairment is one of the factors (if not the largest factor) in how much insulin you get into your bloodstream.
“In fact when I was a student, and my wife was unemployed just after she moved to Toronto, we subsited on mainly rice, beans and chicken once a week.”
Good luck doing any decent physical training with that.
Other than the fact that fructose is more damaging to the liver than glucose, and liver damage/impairment is one of the factors (if not the largest factor) in how much insulin you get into your bloodstream.
But fructose is contained in sucrose (table sugar), which is 50-50 fructose and glucose. HFCS contains (usually) about 55% fructose. Fructose is very damaging, but its a misconception to presume that regular table sugar does not contain fructose.
True. I was speaking in terms of gram of fructose vs. gram of sucrose. If I had to choose one for ingestion, I know which one I’d pick.
The point is this: The food industry is incredibly huge and versatile. It is absurd to blame such intervention on things like obesity.
I agree on you first point but not the second. The tariffs and subsidies are only part of the story. The point is that the federal goverment spent a bazillion tax dollars on a study and campaign which scared people into thinking that saturated fat was practically lethal. Consumers then demanded low fat alternatives (which were loaded with sugar) to which food companies responded. So, yes, your point is correct about food production responding to consumers. What I’m saying is that the federal government has provided faulty information to the public which has caused them to eat more sugar than before. So while tariffs or subsidies can’t make someone like a food they find revolting, the process of sugar serving as an alternative to fat was almost certainly instigated by government disinformation.
But I would refrain from bare assertion statements about how much meat would be in a free market and what the alternatives would be.
Agreed - we can’t know - if without gov’t intervention, say beef was still highly demanded and to compete economies of scale were created - such as factory farms are now(not justifying factory farms) and the price of beef became lower - and more was comsumed versus tofu, that would be driven by consumer demand.
And since humans are omnivores, I would imagine we still continue to eat meat.
However, there is no basis for the claims that one causes more obesity then the other.
Agreed - Everything in moderation, including moderation. Get your fruits and vegetables!
Good luck doing any decent physical training with that.
I was focused on my education, paying my rent and eating.
I didn’t have time for a gym membership.
The point is that the federal goverment spent a bazillion tax dollars on a study and campaign which scared people into thinking that saturated fat was practically lethal. Consumers then demanded low fat alternatives (which were loaded with sugar) to which food companies responded. So, yes, your point is correct about food production responding to consumers. What I’m saying is that the federal government has provided faulty information to the public which has caused them to eat more sugar than before. So while tariffs or subsidies can’t make someone like a food they find revolting, the process of sugar serving as an alternative to fat was almost certainly instigated by government disinformation.
This is a huge factor over the last 20-30 years.
Now we have the war on sugar, and the nanny statists are starting up the war on salt.
soon all we will eat is cardboard.
From Middle of the Road leads to Socialism - Von Mises - he lays it all out in 1950.
The interventionists emphasize that they plan to retain private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship and market exchange. But, they go on to say, it is peremptory to prevent these capitalist institutions from spreading havoc and unfairly exploiting the majority of people. It is the duty of government to restrain, by orders and prohibitions, the greed of the propertied classes lest their acquisitiveness harm the poorer classes. Unhampered or laissez-faire capitalism is an evil. But in order to eliminate its evils, there is no need to abolish capitalism entirely. It is possible to improve the capitalist system by government interference with the actions of the capitalists and entrepreneurs. Such government regulation and regimentation of business is the only method to keep off totalitarian socialism and to salvage those features of capitalism which are worth preserving.
Continuing
No branch of industry can be omitted from this all-round fixing of prices and wages and from this obligation to produce those quantities which the government wants to see produced. If some branches were to be left free out of regard for the fact that they produce only goods qualified as non-vital or even as luxuries, capital and labor would tend to flow into them and the result would be a drop in the supply of those goods, the prices of which government has fixed precisely because it considers them as indispensable for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. But when this state of all-round control of business is attained, there can no longer be any question of a market economy. No longer do the citizens by their buying and abstention from buying determine what should be produced and how.
Anyone who can be as critical of the mainstream as an austrian and at the same time have a curiosity of nutrition would in short time have found things like “the optimal diet” and the “paleo diet” and are on their way to great health if they aren’t already there.
Paleo Diet?
What was the average lifespan in the paleolithic era? I am guessing about half of what it is today.
Where you limit your food options to roughly what was available to people in the paleolithic era.
No idea.
Where did you come up with that?