| > Manually picking up every food item and reviewing the list of ingredients by hand in the middle of grocery store does not comport with [accomodating the median IQ] I don't know how the situation looks in the US, but in Europe, there's compulsory, standardized labels listing ingredients on every non-whole item. Whole foods are marked with the country/ies where it was produced, treated and packaged. If it's considered too much effort to read a clearly laid-out sticker, the problem is definitely with people reaching an extreme kind of intellectual lazyness, which is why I don't understand the need to teach nutrition mentioned in other comments. Just read what's in the thing, dammit! If somebody doesn't understand that sugar has absolutely nothing to do in canned beans, well... I'm lost for words. This means the actual problem is the complete disfunctionality of our educational systems. As you rightly point out, > Corporate profiteering absolutely plays a massive role in the obesity epidemic. and is easily countered by buying a tad more consciously than "I probably don't need this, but I'll buy it anyway just in case" or "I like the look of that" or "I've seen this in an ad, must be awesome", and then proceeding to throwing a quarter of your purchases away. As you might have guessed, I was not raised like that, and it utterly boggles my mind how some people can function that way. Apart from the food, it's a massive waste of money! So yeah, the problem is, as always, education, because I don't see how foods could be marked any clearer than black-on-white stickers that take ten seconds to scan thouroughly for any unwanted ingredients. |