[unixpickle]

> I asked Nicole Avena, a professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai who studies sugar addiction, if she believed it could be possible for food companies to engineer, intentionally or not, compounds that would make GLP-1 drugs less effective. Avena told me it was plausible.

Never really thought about this before. The food industry is a virus and current weight loss drugs are the best vaccine we have, but it'll forever be an arms race.

[keybored]

You give the game away with that analogy.

We wouldn’t throw our hands up if private corporations were able to sell more and more dangerous guns to civilians (arms race). "Ah but what can we do, it's an arms race." We would make it illegal.

[tstrimple]

Actually we are explicitly throwing our hands up over more and more dangerous guns in civilian hands. We haven't made it illegal and all attempts at even moderate regulation are met with outrage over losing "freedom".

[keybored]

We as in Humans.

EDIT: But not even Americans just Throw Their Hands up over guns. Many, but not all! In fact many are very concerned about the lack of gun regulation.

Contrast with the food industry. There the status quo is to throw your hands up as long as people are making a profit. No matter how underhanded the tactics. Oh well if there is a demand then that is just their god-given right (to make a profit).

[Teever]

It would probably be ridiculously illegal to put substances in products that are designed to counter the function of prescription medication.

It's the kind of thing that I hope would result in not only massive fines for the corporations but jail time for the people involved in the decision making and the R&D.

[gizmo686]

They don't need to be designed to do that. Companies don't really understand why things sell. They have a lot of ideas about what makes a successful product that are generally accurate. But at the end of the day, they just try stuff, see what sells, then do more of that.

If a sizeable portion of the market is on Ozempic, then this will naturally lead to there being a portion of the market that sells well to those people. At that will likely happen a decade before any human understands the mechanics by which that food sells well to people on Ozempic.

[tonyedgecombe]

They already put substances in food to make us crave them more. It's not a huge leap from there.

[Teever]

It is a huge leap from the status quo to intentionally disrupting the effects of prescription drugs.

One is unscrupulous and the other is blatantly illegal.

[bodiekane]

What law would it be breaking?

There are tons of common foods and food additives that are known to interact with medications. Grapefruit juice for instance has a large and diverse set of drug interactions, some potentially very dangerous: https://www.drugs.com/article/grapefruit-drug-interactions.h... but that doesn't mean it's illegal to sell or consume.

[Teever]

The key word is intentional.

If you're intentionally researching and developing an additive that weakens the effect of a prescription medication and you're not telling people the. You're effectively poisoning them.

That's super illegal.

[mathgeek]

If they do find something that fits the bill, it will be referred to and marketed as “appealing to the cravings of folks on these drugs, and they personally need to be responsible about their choices”.

It’s helpful to remember that this is the same corporate landscape where (in the US) insurance companies can decline prescriptions in order to reduce their own costs.

[ohthatsnotright]

Not for long, given who will be running the next administrations FDA, and the general cult of "de-regulation" taking hold.

[sabbaticaldev]

someone that voted for them would argue that those regulations are what brought us to the current predicament. It’s currently very legal to make addictive unhealthy food

[dns_snek]

I think we can consider ourselves lucky if government(s) act quickly to prohibit things before they cause too much damage. I'd love to live in a world where these sorts of people are held accountable but unfortunately we weren't born in the right timeline to experience that.

[whaleofatw2022]

Idk. One challenge is that plenty of natural things can interfere with prescription medication... grapefruit juice comes to mind.

[Vampiero]

Coca Cola has phosphoric acid in it so you don't puke from the fact that it contains unnatural amounts of sugar.

Sugar itself, in its processed form, is quite unnatural and causes cravings and addiction.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't get much sugar aside from fructose.

Conclusion: sugar is mostly used by the industry because it's addictive.

[pvaldes]

Processed sugar is glucose. Glucose is all except "quite unnatural" in our metabolism. Physiology in animals is based on energy provided by any stuff that can be converted into sugar. Our brains will die in a few minutes without glucose. This reminds me the lemon juice panic when used as additive.

We can talk about if this sugar has pesticides or other substances mixed with it in the post process that are toxic, but this trend of people saying that glucose is addictive is ludicrous. Unlike real drugs, we really need it to live. Would you trust somebody saying that oxygen is a drug and people should stop consuming it?

[inglor_cz]

Processed sugar is sucrose, also half-glucose, half-fructose.

Even though both are found separately in nature, it doesn't necessarily follow that their combination is just fine, especially in the volumes consumed in a typical Western diet.

If sugar isn't addictive at all, why do so many people have cravings for sweets? Cravings are a major hallmark of addiction.

[YetAnotherNick]

What do you think processed sugar is? It's literally just natural sugar purified. Almost everything in nature which contain sugar contains both fructose and glucose combined.

[inglor_cz]

The list of problematic substances that are "just" purified natural matter is quite long. We aren't built to consume purified products endlessly.

[otisv]

I think the parent is pointing out that supernatural amounts of refined sugar in food products is unnatural and that it is added in such high amounts because it is addictive (even going as far as to add other substances to reduce the symptoms of such supernatural sugar doses, p.s. I'm unsure if this is true or not just regurgitating his argument) and thus companies are adding as much refined sugar as possible to increase the sales of said products.

While you seem to be arguing against a strawman that the existence of glucose in our metabolic systems is unnatural, thus sugar is addictive? I think your counter points are a tad tangential compared to the actual points made by the parent comment.

[sabbaticaldev]

our brain won’t die a few minutes without sugar, not even days. You should learn about ketones (which i’m sure you already know, why some ppl are addicted to spread misinformation?)

[everforward]

You would be incorrect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroglycopenia if your blood glucose levels dropped to 0, you would die pretty rapidly. It’s analogous to unmanaged Type 1 diabetes in a vague sense.

There is no physiological requirement for dietary carbohydrates. There is a requirement for glucose, but your body can create it from non-carbohydrate sources including the acetone produced by ketones. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

[addicted]

Our hunter gatherer ancestors didn’t wear clothes, live in housing, use technology, or anything like we do today.

This is literally the worst justification for anything.

Even the “unprocessed” food we eat today, including plants or dead animal flesh is nothing like what the hunter gatherer ancestors ate.

[SoftTalker]

The point is our internal metabolic processes are largely unchanged and were developed over many millennia of evolutionary adaptation, despite vast external changes in how we live in the past few centuries.

[scotty79]

I don't think there's anything sinister about using acid to make sugar taste better.

You can put ungodly amount of sugar in your tea if you squeeze half a lemon into it and it's delicious.

[bamboozled]

tired of it already , feel like all this food bashing is the new “wokeness”. I enjoyed coca-cola in moderation for decades, so what ?

[sabbaticaldev]

i have a friend literally dying because he can’t stop being addicted to coke. Even with his kidneys and liver stopping working, he’ll still drink it. So what, you ask?

[alphan0n]

So what, we asked.

If coke stopped existing this very second, your friend would find something else to destroy their body with, because the cause of their problem isn’t coke and the prohibition of it isn’t a solution.

[mensetmanusman]

People with survivor bias don’t understand the occasional self sacrifice required for the good of the larger set of humanity.

[FooBarBizBazz]

Nah, wokeness was zero-sum, interested in domination/submission and Power, and it sought to control others, particularly their speech. This is positive-sum -- your health comes at no-one else's expense, and indeed your example can quietly help others (and vice versa) -- and the only person you're really worried about controlling is yourself.

[Mumps]

The phosphoric acid - vomit thing is a factoid. Trivially, consider that you can just eat pure sugar and not vomit.

Also, a glass of orange juice is about 1tbsp of sugar away from coke.

[tayo42]

The US is about enter an era of no government regulation...

[bamboozled]

I love the excuse given for destroying the FDA, “they are corrupt and allow food coloring in front loops”, you ain’t seen nothing yet boy …

[khaki54]

I don't think the FDA should be destroyed.

Sometimes you have to question if they are in the wrong too frequently, for instance recalling 80,000 lbs. of butter (when it's already more than $7 lb. in most grocery stores) because the butter packaging didn't say "Contains milk". It's a recent example of something they did that only caused harm. Notify the company to fix their packaging, sure, but under no circumstances should they be recalling the butter.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-butter-recall/

[frankharv]

Some of has to do with Dairy products and milk destroyed by man due to regulation.

Farms should not be raided for selling people real milk.

The system has gone too far. Let people eat what they want.

You want gov milk than buy it. Dont force it on everybody.

Nanny state needs to scale it back.

[lancesells]

First they came for my gas stoves and now my raw milk. Let's destroy the FDA and food safety that keeps people alive because pasteurization is the devil.

Counterpoint: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/the-dangers-of-raw-milk-w...

[frankharv]

https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/dairy/raid-on-...

[tayo42]

You're raid link is a raid done by the PA police.

I can buy raw milk in California supermarkets. Complain to your state about it.

[fazeirony]

ya! just like we did with the sackler family right? they're doing hard time for creating the opioid epidemic. oh wait, they're billionaires so i forgot they get a different set of rules.

don't hold your breath on any jail time for food companies doing this is my point.