[styren]

Not sure what point you're trying to make here? Policymaking to limit access to unhealthy food isn't particularly controversial and if there weren't more pressing issues were I live I'd love for politicians to push it further.

[HDThoreaun]

It very much is. My city, Chicago, instituted a sugar tax. It was so unpopular that it didn't even last a couple months. I'd say it's not just controversial but outright deeply unpopular.

[seadan83]

Limiting access to any kind of food AFAIK is extremely controversial!

For starters there are the massive astro-turf campaigns that make a lot of noise. Beyond this, food regulation is catnip for the culture wars.

> Taxes on sugar‐sweetened beverages reduce consumption, but a strong public backlash holds that they compromise consumers’ liberty, freedom, and autonomy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6916313/#:~:tex....

Recall when there was a hint that Biden would limit hamburgers? (This idea was a bad extrapolation, nobody was proposing it as law - but nonetheless the mere mentioned brewed a holy-shit storm of foaming at the mouth outrage): - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/conservatives-beef-with-bi... - https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/202... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/26/republicans...

[photonerd]

> Limiting access to any kind of food AFAIK is extremely controversial!

Where? Not in the US it’s not & it’s much more common to do so in the rest of the world too.

Try buying proper raw milk cheese in the US for example.

[seadan83]

> Where? Not in the US it’s not & it’s much more common to do so in the rest of the world too.

I can't find personally any examples in the US where regulations that limited access to certain foods was not met with an unholy backlash. Here are examples: - https://crosscut.com/equity/2022/08/study-finds-seattles-con... (the point there is that the ordinance was very controversial) - https://thefern.org/2022/12/how-food-became-a-weapon-in-amer... (this resource describes how/where food is controversial and has become part of the culture war; which means everything related to it is unnecessarily controversial)

Trying to find such examples, even lead in food is not regulated! [1] The FDA only has guidelines around lead and does sporadic testing. Fail those tests and the FDA only shames you, no jail, no required testing, no required compliance.

The example of the raw-milk-cheese is actually (according to this resourced) a poster-child of limiting access to certain foods as being contentious:

> There are many laws and regulations affecting the cheese and dairy industry in the United States. However, none is more contentious than the FDA-mandated pasteurization of all milk products for human consumption that was instituted in 1987. [2]

To be clear, food safety guidelines are very different from limiting access to food. This is a case though where access to certain foods was restricted and the cited resources states that as an example of the most contentious regulation.

I wondered as well what regulations have actually come from the FDA in the last 20 years and how were those received? It seems like the answer to that is the FDA has long been unpopular and structurely castrated to not be able to do anything regarding food [3]. Why that is the case, how it came to be - I could only speculate. My bets would be that it is easy to use the FDA as a punching bag, gutting it from the inside is certainly part and parcel to the 'small government' push that has been advocated of late [6]. It could also be part that the agency has fallen pray to corruption and is in the pocket of those it is there to regulate [4][7].

Looking at the list of 'milestones' from the FDA, published by the FDA itself, the list seems very underwhelming to me regarding anything food related going back 20 years, even 40 years (nutrition labels are one of the biggest items on that list; very underwhelming to me) [5]

Do you have examples where access to a given food was limited that was _not_ super contentious? I'm honestly not aware of any examples.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/lea....

[2] https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/why-americans-dont-get...

[3] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/fda-fails-regulat...

[4] https://time.com/4130043/lobbying-politics-dietary-guideline...

[5] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history/milestones-us-food...

[6] https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/2012/04/05/bud...

[7] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/05/fda-food-safe...

[photonerd]

Oh your idea of “super contentious” is “got a vapid clickbait op-ed article written about it”? Gotcha.

Then no, but I like words to mean something. You? Apparently less so.

[seadan83]

I'll repeat this ask - Do you have any examples where access to a given food was limited that was _not_ super contentious? I'm honestly not aware of any examples.

> Oh your idea of “super contentious” is “got a vapid clickbait op-ed article written about it”? Gotcha.

I'm not sure why you need to attack me here.

But no, that is not quite my idea; my ideas are not really germaine. I spent long enough looking for resources and references to not rely on just my own presumptions. You have failed to present any evidence, meanwhile there are over 6 references I presented that were easily found demonstrating the vast 'contentious' aspects of limiting food.

Your own comment regarding raw-milk cheese demonstrates that exact contention. If you were totally cool with that limitation on raw-milk cheese, then presumably you would not even bring it up.

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Side-note, please keep in mind where you are here and the guidelines for HN discourse.

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FWIW, here is a more non-click-bait non-vapid article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_raw_milk_debate

Wikipedia indicates this is a 'debate', ergo there is contention (https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/contention)

[GeoAtreides]

But nobody would propose making sugar illegal and putting people that eat sugar in jail.

[zeroCalories]

It wouldn't be 1-to-1, but I wouldn't mind a war on sugar. Letting your kids be fat should be treated as child abuse, and you should lose access to medicare/medicaid if you've been fat for too long. People have gotten too soft(pun intended) about the right to do whatever you want.

[P_I_Staker]

I think you should be responsible for other peoples poor life decisions.

These decisions are part of the equation for health. eg people exercise poor judgement with their health as a result of another condition and genetics. Those decisions also lead to further health problems.

They’ve found multiple genes tied to obesity. It’s striking how poorly these conditions respond to attempts to get better. At a certain point you either blame the patient, or accept that this is an incurable disease. (by incurable I mean we’re not very effective at curing it).

Why just lash out at someone with a disease, when for the majority of people this isn’t really tough? They just don’t struggle with these issues.

[zeroCalories]

Of course we should offer help. This is an epidemic orders of magnitude more serious than covid. If I had it my way fatties would have a state mandated gastric bypass, but because we can't do that, we need take out all stops in society to disincentives these behaviors.

[Panzer04]

The problem is attacking sugar doesn't really fix the problem. Being fat is a problem with overeating as a whole, not necessarily with sugar.

That's part of the issue with policy - often it's not getting at the real heart of the problem.

[cloverich]

but sugar is often the main or even only issue, because it bypasses your normal "im full" pathways. It's also deceptively easy to take a balanced amount of calories and tip it. Add one soda a day to a balanced diet and you end up with 10lbs excess weight per year.

Id wager for many people struggling with weight that sugar is the main and perhaps even only problem.

[RoyalHenOil]

>you should lose access to medicare/medicaid if you've been fat for too long.

Right, so you want to compound the problem, not actually solve it.

[zeroCalories]

If we don't have to pay for their healthcare their not a problem anymore.

[Apes]

Of course such an extreme proposal is going to seem silly - but what about outlawing any advertisement for sugary goods towards children, coupled with a heavy tax on sugary goods? Now that not only seems possible, but seems like only a matter of time.

[brightlancer]

> But nobody would propose making sugar illegal and putting people that eat sugar in jail.

Michael Bloomberg has entered the chat.

As an almost absolute rule, "nobody is saying" is false. Lots of crazies are saying it. Sometimes they're well respected politicians.

"But Bloomberg never did that!" Right, he did the first _step_ by targeting the sale of "large" sodas. But if you look at his actions on tobacco for ADULTS and the larger War On Drugs, it starts with selling, then buying, then possessing.

There are authoritarians who want to ban anything and everything you can imagine (plus many more). They start with what's popular and then move on to what is, crying "What about the children?!?!" and "Do you just want people to die?!?!" the whole time.