[DistressedDrone]

I suspect it can be solved in many different ways, but when you sell food by the pound, it's much more advantageous to distribute your limited quantity of nutrients in as much produce as possible.

This seems really, really hard to regulate.

[ullevaal]

When reading comments like this, which are good-natured, and a natural response, do you ever think “wouldn’t be great if we as humans had more trust built into our systems, and people actually making a best-effort attempt at honouring that trust”? Instead of everything being a scam until proven otherwise, and even then the scam is probably just one level deeper in what triggered the interest in that product in the first place.

[adrianN]

Related to your question, I found the ideas in this long and winding essay to be quite interesting: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...

[Nasrudith]

Terrible as it sounds trust is in computer terms a gaping security vulnerability. If anothet clever actor can take advantage of it they can gain all sorts of things at cost to you.

Distrust is like an immune system - it has costs and can occasionally hurt you but it developed and is ubiquitous for a reason.

[gotoeleven]

Sadly human nature is what it is. It seems like it would take a long time for evolution to make humans not naturally lazy, greedy, jealous and xenophobic. It's also not clear that, even in a world where resources are abundant, there would be any evolutionary pressure to not be this way.

[ullevaal]

This comment was triggered by the essay “The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams” by Jia Tolentino in the book Trick Mirror, the essay also being available in audio form online. So the scam here was to get you to google that book, I wonder if my scam will convert anyone?

[xyzzyz]

Frankly, it seems to me like it's rather relatively simple thing to regulate. We already mandate things like adding vitamins to milk or flour. Extending this to vegetables really doesn't seem like big problem: farmers would just have to buy magnesium-enriched fertilizer.

[alisonkisk]

Why pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?

[bumby]

Diet is quite more complicated that just taking a multivitamin, unfortunately. Some nutrients compete for absorption (Zn and Ca, for example) and shouldn’t be taken together. There’s also debate about the need for phytonutrients that also come along with plants. The data is mixed enough that the US Preventative Services Task Force isn’t yet willing to endorse supplements as a means of reducing cardiovascular or cancer risk.

My personal opinion is that the human body may be too complex to say we fully understand a seemingly straightforward solution like just taking a multivitamin. We evolved over an awfully long time before industrialized agriculture and supplements. I’m not trying to demonize them because they have solved the number 1 concern humans had for the last 10,000 years of not getting enough calories, but I think it’s wise to temper the hubris of thinking we understand the human body well enough to expect a simple fix from a pill.

[spfzero]

For all of the things we know are present in food and necessary for nutrition, I suspect there are still a lot we don't know of.

Biodynamic farmed food seems like the best bet if you have access to it. At least you're avoiding the worst of the mega-farming shortcuts.

[justinator]

Vitamin absorption via pills doesn't seem to work very well.

[toomim]

This. It's actually very hard to get enough Mg from pills. Your body needs a lot.

[xyzzyz]

Then the issue is to remember to take the pill. Much easier to forget than to forget to eat.

[cutemonster]

Also, can be hard to reach out to everyone and let them know that they need these pills. Many might not know what "magnesium" is?

It's simpler to add iodine to salt -- and maybe magnesium to the soil

[thaumasiotes]

Another issue is that the effect of a nutrient can sometimes differ based on what it is consumed alongside. Pills are not necessarily as effective as supplemented food.

[slipframe]

Because anybody with sense prefers eating food to popping pills.

[Smaug123]

This is an instance of the orthogonality thesis, by the way. Your assertion is that "increased ability to think" should cause "increased desire to eat Traditional Food (tm)", which is no more true than the assertion "increased ability to think causes increased desire to consume Renaissance art". Desires are, by and large, orthogonal to the generalised ability to achieve desires (the ability which you label "sense"). Some desires are not orthogonal - the desire to survive and be healthy, for example, which is instrumental in achieving many other desires - but to argue your assertion on those grounds, you must prove that Traditional Food is sufficiently dramatically better for achieving some instrumental goal.

[krastanov]

Come on, this is a bit too aggressive of a statement. On the other hand, there is some anecdotal evidence that nutrients in pills are not absorbed by our gut as well as more "naturally" delivered nutrients.

[dghughes]

I wouldnt say anecdotal nutrient bioavailavilty is quite well-known and studied.

[slipframe]

"Why do we need to drink water anyway? Why can't we all get our fluids from an IV?"

[zepto]

Why stop there? If you are getting fluids via IV, may as well add in nutrients.

[dr_dshiv]

Why regulate when you can market? If I knew that a brand of zucchini had high mineral content and flavor, I'd buy it at a premium

[QuarterReptile]

Sounds like a good way to have every milk container say "rBST free, from cows raised without hormones!" Which could also be stated "farmed in accordance with California law."

[dr_dshiv]

Yeah, in this case, I'd rather have the former... Since I'd assume the latter? Maybe that's me.

And, to be clear— I don't want to be dismissive of the importance of govt regulation! It's just that working out the marketing opportunities can happen much faster than effective regulation.