[sisu2019]

I am super anti sugar. I don't eat it except in fruit and I don't give it to my child.

I still don't want the government messing with nutrition. It's track record with that is just awful and there is no reason to think it's going to get better.

Politicians please do it as Hippocrates said: "First do no harm"

Before you ban, label or tax sugar you have to get your house in order: Stop distorting the food market with subsidies and stop giving people wrong information (Food pyramid etc).

[nanny]

They haven't used the food pyramid in nearly ten years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate

Harvard has an even better one: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-...

Also, the food pyramids and plates are from the USDA, the federal government. Not a state government like sugar warnings are coming from. So you're talking to two different organizations when you say "before you label sugar, fix the food pyramid".

[primroot]

I should cite from that Harvard link:

"Generations of Americans are accustomed to the food pyramid design, and it’s not going away. In fact, the Healthy Eating Pyramid and the Healthy Eating Plate complement each other."

[primroot]

I can't agree more with this. I'm in Chile right now, and they have put warning labels on all sorts of food here, saying things like high sugar, high fat, high sodium, and so on. Well, now it seems all food is unhealthy, so you might as well eat whatever you want. Yes, there is such thing as reductionism, losing sight of the forest for focusing on the trees. Sugar from fruits is not the same as refined sugar, despite them being the same molecule. The world is built out of interrelations not of platonic essences.

[imtringued]

The problem is that most foods available in supermarkets are unhealthy.

[silversconfused]

It's funny how tech and food have so much in common. Wanna make a lot of money? Sell people absolute junk and tell them it is good for them. Once enough people have listened and you've got critical mass, wholesome healthy alternatives that are sustainable over the long term can be eliminated by implying they are "uncool" with clever brand placement.

[primroot]

I agree with that. But are cheese, butter, lard, and panela (dried sugarcane juice) unhealthy? Should you buy cheese that is unsalted but contains other less studied food preservatives or just eat less cheese?

[wpietri]

> Politicians please do it as Hippocrates said: "First do no harm"

This is not tenable for politicians. Bodies are by default healthy, and have enormous powers of self-repair. A do-nothing bias works in favor of that.

Politicians, though, mostly resolve questions of competing interest. A do-nothing bias in politics means yielding to short-term thinking, special interests, and the desires of the powerful. Sugar's a great example, in that it's generally harmful but specifically very profitable, so left unchecked we'll get a suboptimal societal outcome while enriching people who unnecessarily put sugar in food.

[conanbatt]

The thing is that people that come to this sub is over-represented by wealthier individuals, or californians, that already don't drink a lot of sugar.

And it is tempting to put restrictions on others that don't affect you.

To the people that downvote sisu: how about a warning label, always visible, on every social-website, this included, that extended computer time is bad for your health?