Battle to the death.
Posted on 02/02/2012 7:02:33 AM PST by CharlesThe Hammer
I am a medical sociologist, which means I study the health of whole societies. I've spent more than 20 years studying the best possible ways to address alcohol problems in societies -- what works and what doesn't to protect people from harm.
I work as a professor in the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and at the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. This allows me to connect with other scientists who come from very different backgrounds but who want to work together on big problems -- think of a Manhattan Project, only one focused on protecting health through the collaboration of scientists who study everything from tiny cells to entire societies.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
When I went on the prism diet in 1997 I learned to read labels. I was not allowed to eat any packaged food that had sugar as one of the first four ingredients. Since then I like to show people ingredient lists as a source of humor.
People would be flabbergasted to find out what foods list sugar (or corn syrup, etc) in the first four ingredients, and often it is foods you would guess have no sweetener in them.
A little off subject, but sometimes I want a snack at work that is not sweet. We have Armour Vienna Sausages in a little 5 oz can for 50 cents. These are very small cans. The ingredients label says it has, per serving, 120 calories, 80 from fat, and contains 520 mg of salt (22% of a daily adult recommended intake).
Now, that’s not all that good but it’s really not bad either, until you read what most people ignore: The multiplier. That is, the number of servings per can. It’s a trick producers have used for a while that I first discovered on an Ice cream bar that seemed to be very low on sugar and calories, considering how good it was.
Anyway, back to the little can of sausages. It contains 2.5 servings. That’s right. Six little 1.75” long mini-dogs are 2.5 servings. This means a can, which anybody can eat without breaking a sweat, contains 300 calories, 200 from fat, and 1,280 mg of salt, which is over half the recommended adult intake of salt.
Labels are actually a great source of entertainment for me, and the more entertaining the label, the less likely I am to eat what is in the package displaying the label.
So tell me about your success in this area. Really, did you accomplish anything other than expending grant money?
Sure sugar is bad for you in large quantities but it's already subsidized and taxed so highly in the US that we pay more per pound than just about anyone. I know when I've eaten too much. So do most people. Butt out.
I once heard a local newscaster trying to pronounce “meteorologist” and she came up with “Media Urologist”. Sort of a compelling image, I thought.
Kinda wondering how she "studied" alcohol.
While munching unsweetened pot brownies.
I read the "DUmmie FUnnies" on FR. Does that make me a "Socio-Political Progessive Analyst"?
Frankly, what Mrs WBill makes is far better than anything I could get in the store.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with eating a couple of "Oreo" cookies (or whatever). The problems stem from eating a couple of packages of Oreos. Then, sitting on your butt 12-16 hours a day and not exercising them off.
But, since the backlash is starting up against HFCS, and since politicians have no self-discipline and assume everyone else is just like them ....I'd look for HFCS to be regulated in the near future.
That’s a good point. American agribusiness is amazingly surreal in how it does things. Its design today is in effect based on the public-corporate partnership models of economic fascism of the 1930s.
This amounts to centralized government dictation of the means, type and quantity of production, but under those diktats, production is carried out by corporate management instead of government bureaucrats, as long as compliance is achieved.
So, for example, if Michelle Obama dictates that corporations must use less salt in their products, as she has done, they must comply with her unelected diktat, but it is up to them to do so.
As long as they do so “voluntarily”, they will not be forced to do so by the bureaucracy.
But salt is one thing, and sugar is another. Proportionally, 10 million short tons of sugar are consumed in the US each year, mostly by people and bacteria in fermentation. About 40 million tons of salt are *used*, but only a fraction of that is consumed, the rest being used for food processing purposes in which only a small fraction is consumed (like brining).
So while limiting salt added to food to enhance flavor can be done, limiting sugar would likely increase the price of food considerably.
Simply take away a lot of the farm subsidies, which make wheat and corn, including corn syrups, less expensive than they would be on their own and healthy alternatives would be relatively cheaper.
Food Nazis can eat used food for all I care.
Battle to the death.
Used food? Isn’t that what vegetarians would call meat?
Sounds like you have a good handle on it. Nice job! It just irks me that companies toss this stuff in, or distort what should be clearly understandable, to mess up food products. I think generally, most ppl do not read labels like they should. Thus, the companies get away with it. I may need to look into that prism diet myself.
It's just good marketing and product design.
Exactly.
I was recently buying a can of tomato paste and one can had an ingredient list of precisely one ingredient while another had six ingredients, including HFCS as the second listed.
I have become a very careful label reader, and I try to stay away from prepared foods anyway, even the ones without HFCS. But, last night, I was foolish — and I paid the price.
I didn't need a governing body to intervene. I didn't need a tax on sugar to prompt me to quit. I made a choice based on my own experiences.
Yes, he’s such an important person, we should join him in his cause /sarc.
Nanny State PING!
She could probably still score, just not with me.
“Put those sugar beets down and step away slowly, you’re under arrest you sugar hoarding scum”
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