alt.hn

2/3/2026 at 8:42:51 AM

From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease

 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066

by jbotz

2/3/2026 at 9:48:39 AM

I grew up close to Winston Salem, North Carolina. The city with two cigarette brands named after it. Everyone died of emphysema or lung cancer there. As a 10 year old kid, I could buy cigarettes from stores. In the 6th grade, our class took a tour of the RJ Reynolds factory in Tobaccoville, NC (yes that is an actual place) and we watched as our school teachers were given free sample packs of cigarettes.

I tell that story because it is true.

And I wonder... is there a town named Twinkieville in the USA where everyone dies of obesity and/or diabetes and kids can buy pounds of candy at the store without an ID? Or, is every town in America Twinkieville?

by seethishat

2/3/2026 at 10:04:59 AM

Twinkies are just a simple yellow spongecake filled with cream. They are so unhealthy because in the quest to keep the price something that people can afford (or for greed in profits) companies are forced to turn it into processed zombie garbage but if you break it down, a Twinkie was only just originally a simple yellow spongecake with some cream. A treat served to guests during coffeetime.

Its financialization of everything including food, government tipping the scales against peoples well being and a declining purchasing power of the average american that has resulted in this awful reality where food isn't food.

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 11:04:03 PM

The un-ultra-processed version of Twinkies are also going to contribute to obesity and heart disease. Sponge cake and cream is high in empty calories, very high in saturated fat, and all around bad for you.

I think people sort of miss the forest for the trees with this stuff. Making your own milkshakes, or ice cream, or fried chicken, or Twinkies, will not save you from obesity.

It's not the processing per-se. All these foods are ultra-palatable, readily available, and high in calories/saturated fat.

by array_key_first

2/3/2026 at 11:43:31 AM

I read there was an actual original Hostess bakery. Imagine a fresh all-natural Twinkie. Mmmmm

by yowayb

2/3/2026 at 7:08:31 PM

So there isn't a free lunch in life but you can fight back against financialization. In the case of a Twinkie follow this guide to make a proper twinkie at home: https://youtu.be/lD2OOTx2G9k?t=592

You will be spending your time but you basically "reverse" the financialization of the product in a way. You could also pay someone to make it for you but then you'd be spending more money (again no free lunch so you have to pick what you want to sacrifice: your time or more money)

I've been trying to do more of this at home to cut out anything processed at home but I have to accept that given limited time I have to let some food items I used to enjoy just go by the wayside.

I've also been trying to do this elsewhere such as "home cooked software" thats tailored to me only and does not include ever increasing junk I dont want.

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 7:11:45 PM

A lot of the nationwide products that got started a century ago were first produced without any artifical ingredients. Until years later as each additive creeped in. I imagine a lot of them under persuasive sales presure from the vendor of the additive.

Doesn't mean they were not yet seriously processed or truly the healthiest to consume.

OTOH there's always vegan Twinkies now:

https://oopsydaisysweets.com/products/vinkies

So attractively priced at only $30.00 a half dozen, they just sold out :(

by fuzzfactor

2/3/2026 at 7:17:03 PM

Thats one of the points im trying to make. Incomes have stagnated, people at the lower end already were kind of splurging, now they cant justify it at all. So further cost reductions have to go into the product. COVID also masked the ability of companies to just extract more profit out of the product due to the price shocks that never went back down.

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 11:45:47 AM

> They are so unhealthy because in the quest to keep the price something that people can afford (or for greed in profits) companies are forced to turn it into processed zombie garbage

Well, sort of. That processing is generally there not so much specifically to keep the price down as to prolong the shelf life. But it's true that without the preservatives you'd be paying higher prices.

by thaumasiotes

2/3/2026 at 2:54:51 PM

Tastykakes[1] are about the same price as Twinkies but have half the shelf life (or less, depending on the product) due to fewer preservatives and better ingredients. They don't have the distribution that Twinkies have, but it's grown to include the entire East Coast at this point, I think. Still pretty bad for you but several rungs up the garbage ladder, for sure. I don't understand how Twinkies are able to compete in their market.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tastykake

by alamortsubite

2/3/2026 at 7:11:53 PM

I don't think thats true, I looked them up and this looks just as processed: https://www.heb.com/product-detail/tastykake-butterscotch-kr... (scroll down to see the ingredients)

Perhaps you are referring to a Tastykake from a bygone era?

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 7:29:09 PM

It is true. The shelf life of those Tastykakes is three weeks. A Twinkie's is six. The shelf life of a Tastykake pie is seven days. They haven't changed much or at all since I was a kid.

Have you tried a Tastykake (and a Twinkie)? The difference is obvious if you can spare the calories.

by alamortsubite

2/3/2026 at 8:31:45 PM

I have tried almost all of the Tastykakes that I could purchase here on the east coast. They seem quite average in terms of quality. While I have never eaten a Twinkie and Tastykake side by side I do concede that Twinkies these days are a bottom of the barrel level of quality and TastyKakes are at least a small level above. I'm just looking at that ingredient list and it seems quite processed.

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 9:51:30 PM

I think you misinterpreted my original comment, but I applaud your diligence in sampling the entire Tastykake product line. The pies are my favorite, though I rarely eat them as I value my health. I would not touch a Twinkie unless I were starving, or perhaps as part of a paid stunt if the money was right.

by alamortsubite

2/3/2026 at 10:59:21 PM

Understood. I do enjoy the coconut juniors Tastykake but I am focused on cutting out all processed and unnatural ingredients so I am forced to produce more at home. Its just the world I feel we are stuck in now.

Regarding Twinkie, did you see my other comment on producing them at home using natural ingredients? https://youtu.be/lD2OOTx2G9k?t=592

You may be able to hopefully recreate the original quality using this(if this is something you'd like to try).

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 4:35:25 PM

> I don't understand how Twinkies are able to compete in their market.

Branding is very powerful.

(Never rebrand, it'll just disturb pleasant memories)

by ChoGGi

2/3/2026 at 5:02:00 PM

True, I imagine the Twinkie Pavlovian response is a tough one to shake.

by alamortsubite

2/3/2026 at 7:14:08 PM

Its a combination of three things: A triple whammy. Yes preservatives are extremely important. But we are now seeing reduced sizes as well as ingredient substitutions to preserve some semblance of the taste while using cheaper ingredients.

by nebula8804

2/3/2026 at 9:35:26 AM

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

"That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy."

Unhappy Meals - Michael Pollan https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/

by jcynix

2/3/2026 at 10:05:53 AM

Advice like this is right, in theory.

Just like: Don't smoke, don't drink, work-out, take walks, spend time with your family and friends, don't work too much. Also, don't worry too much!

All the real problems come in practice.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to have a solid basis.

However, 80% of success comes from applying these things in your messy life.

by baxtr

2/3/2026 at 10:57:48 AM

The idea behind that phrase is not that is necessarily easy... but to decomplicate the other extreme where you are choosing this superfood and avoiding that other veg because it is "bad for you". It gives a simple heuristic for healthy living. It helps make it less daunting.

For example what do I have for breakfast? Oh let's boil and egg amd grab a carrot and corn on the cob. Or whatever.

What do I do in the supermarket? Meats, veg, bit of fruit maybe bit of dairy. Am I obessing over avacado vs. pear. Nope. Chicken vs. beef? No. Chocolate bar vs carrot? easy choice.

Now probably once you get thay square you can do harder stuff like food reaction / allergy testing and so on.

by hahahahhaah

2/3/2026 at 11:12:58 AM

Premature optimization is a thing in life AND in programming. Many folks make it far more complicated than it needs to be.

I regularly see folks agonizing about every decision and new study, but the thing is.... the tips on OP's very basic list are responsible for like 80% of the value one gets from "living healthy".

All the rest of the organic whole grain horseshit and panicking about microplastics MIGHT net you another 10%, but at double the cost to your happiness.

The last 10% is basically impossible to achieve without completely sacrificing your quality of life.

by mapontosevenths

2/3/2026 at 11:34:46 AM

Realistically who is avoiding a vegetable because “it is bad for you”? Never heard of that.

Everyone knows that vegetables are good for you basically always.

Superfoods are just the latest marketing fad

by pousada

2/3/2026 at 9:39:37 PM

Anecdiatelly I have heard one about some veggies are worse than others for being hard to get pesticide off if not organic. Also too many bananas. Too many eggs etc.

And those were before Facebook lol

by hahahahhaah

2/3/2026 at 12:01:05 PM

Google “plants are trying to kill you”

The latest social media brain rot is that vegetables are bad for you.

Grifters in this space include Paul Saladino and Anthony Chaffee.

by hombre_fatal

2/3/2026 at 10:57:58 AM

But then why work? Lets assume everyone will follow your advice, then we all could work less, may be just 4 a day. If so, then why do not we change the work day to 4 h? It is not like all bad food, tobacco, etc will be gone, but we will not produce all that in such huge quantities.

by throwaw111

2/3/2026 at 11:22:01 AM

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?" - Douglas Adams

Folks on HN are very much in the "Where" stage of life. No one here works 4 out of 8 hours just to pay for their food. Nobody should.

That said, you very much seem to be missing the point. Ultra processed food is far, far cheaper than whole foods. That is one reason they are more popular.

For example, it would cost me more just to buy the ingredients to make tacos at home than it does to go through a Taco Bell drive through and buy enough for the family already prepared.

We're not going to be moving to four hour workdays by feeding people food that costs twice as much and takes longer to prepare.

by mapontosevenths

2/3/2026 at 11:37:04 AM

My brother and his wife began cooking pretty much every meal at home a couple years ago. Prior to that they ate out very regularly, especially once they had kids.

They started cooking because feeding the family of 5 at McDonalds cost close to $80.

There may have been a time where fast food was cheaper, but it seems we're past that.

As far as Taco Bell goes, a single crunchy taco is $2.19 and their fancier ones are closer to $5. When I used to eat there I'd usually get 3 tacos and a drink, so I'd be into that today for something like $10-$11. I cook tacos at home regularly for cheaper, and with homemade tortillas and grass fed beef no less.

by _heimdall

2/3/2026 at 12:01:09 PM

> They started cooking because feeding the family of 5 at McDonalds cost close to $80.

How much would they eat from McDonald’s? And what size appetite are the kids?

Fast food has definitely gone up in price, but if you’re spending $80 at McDonalds you’re either a glutton or you don’t know what to order.

A “Big Mac Bundle Box” is $15-20 depending on region. It has two Big Macs, two Cheeseburgers, two fries, and a 10-piece nuggets.

If three of the five are kids (vs say 16+ boys lifting weights), I’d be curious how two of those wouldn’t feed the entire family for $30-40.

I’m not suggesting cooking at home is a bad thing nor that eating McD is a good one. But the details matter when you’re spending 2x more than it could be.

by koolba

2/3/2026 at 2:06:46 PM

Oh I'm sure some of the cost is because both my brother and their teenage son can eat some food. They're both in good shape, they just exercise quite a bit and have always had an appetite.

I also thought $80 for 5 was high, but that was his anecdotal number. I would have expected $50-60 pretty reasonably, and still st that point a family of 5 could eat for a good bit cheaper at home.

by _heimdall

2/3/2026 at 1:09:09 PM

You are right, I stand corrected. It's been about 10 years since I last did the math and it's changed dramatically since then.

I'm sure it varies by region, but my grubhub app and the 12 pack of tacos (hard or soft) is $24.99 here so about the same as the $2.19 you found.

I had perplexity pro figure out the cost of purchasing the ingredients for comparable homemade tacos. With great value (Walmart store brand) ingredients it came to $20.04. $6.49 of that would be "left over" ingredients you don't use (mostly half a pound of beef you could use for something else later).

So you save $0.96 cents per taco by doing all the work yourself and using generic ingredients. Plus you get an extra half pound of beef for later.

So if your time is worth less than $12/hr it's a net gain.

I'm assuming it takes you only half an hour to travel, shop, and bring home the ingredients then half an hour to cook. If you live further away, factor in gas etc, the time it takes to do dishes, or are a slower cook then the break-even might come out closer to $6-$7/hr.

by mapontosevenths

2/3/2026 at 2:01:37 PM

When we make tacos it takes around 30-45 minutes, including making fresh flour tortillas.

Tortillas themselves use very little, a cup of flour and a couple tablespoons of butter so maybe $1-$2? The beef we use is around $12/lb and we use 1/2lb to feed two of us. I don't have a cost on the seasoning, we mix it fresh as well so its negligible.

I'd assume we end up around $10 to feed two adults and spend around 45 minutes on the high end. We'd spend about that long to get to taco bell, though we live in a more rural area so that may be an over estimate for most.

by _heimdall

2/3/2026 at 11:41:03 AM

> Ultra processed food is far, far cheaper than whole foods.

I think this is mostly true in the US and a cultural thing.

In EU and SA for example I can buy “whole” food - just called food here - for a fraction of the price it would cost me to buy a bunch of cheeseburgers or some other junk food every day.

by pousada

2/3/2026 at 4:13:58 PM

>> Ultra processed food is far, far cheaper than whole foods

Is it? What is the cost of bag of rice? Potatoes? lentils?

by ponector

2/3/2026 at 11:12:49 AM

And enjoy protein deficiency?

Vegetarian India literally suffers from one of the highest rates of protein deficiency and stunted growth worldwide.

by fakedang

2/3/2026 at 1:25:01 PM

Eating mostly plants does not mean one has to have protein deficiency.

Seitan, tofu, tempeh, TVP, etc etc. All plant based, all high protein.

by KempyKolibri

2/3/2026 at 11:28:51 AM

Are you ignoring the "mostly" in mostly plants?

by sceptic123

2/3/2026 at 11:58:26 AM

That isn’t because of being vegetarian but because of poverty.

by ViktorRay

2/3/2026 at 11:55:06 AM

Us Westerners could cut down on the starch, add more salad and greens and pretty easily meet this requirement I think.

I don’t know if we need as much animal foodstuff as we consume but just doing that should be enough.

by keybored

2/3/2026 at 11:22:25 AM

Source?

by mapontosevenths

2/3/2026 at 12:06:51 PM

Then eat protein-dense plant foods like tempeh and tofu.

by hombre_fatal

2/3/2026 at 9:38:07 AM

But but but the influencers are telling me to put nothing but cheeseburgers and testosterone in my body and that just coincidentally reinforces with what I want to do anyway!

by virgildotcodes

2/3/2026 at 9:47:13 AM

I love how this gets presented as obvious advice, yet explains nothing and introduces an even less well defined thing it will do: "be maximally healthy".

by XorNot

2/3/2026 at 10:06:00 AM

It's just a dietary heuristic, why would it have to explain everything? If you want that, just go and look at the literature on overweight and obesity or, say, substitution of animal protein for plant protein. It's all there.

by KempyKolibri

2/3/2026 at 11:07:50 AM

It isn't a dietary heuristic, because there's little advice provided. The extreme is that it is advising people to seek treatment if they suffer from pica or bulimia.

by dwaite

2/3/2026 at 11:45:58 AM

By heuristic, I just mean “a rule used in decision making”.

Under that usage, the fact that the rule doesn’t provide fine-grained advice doesn’t disqualify it from being a heuristic. Eating mostly plants is a rule used in decision making when considering what to eat.

> The extreme is that it is advising people to seek treatment if they suffer from pica or bulimia.

How is that entailed?

by KempyKolibri

2/3/2026 at 10:33:16 AM

> "be maximally healthy".

It's the bare minimum if you care about aging well, maximally healthy is a whole other thing

by lm28469

2/3/2026 at 11:41:21 AM

The whole article, if actually read, explains a lot. Not the least how we came from talking about "food" to talk about single ingredients instead. Which then are hailed as the "solution" for all of today's problems with nutrition. Until the next big thing comes along.

by jcynix

2/3/2026 at 9:54:53 AM

I am not sure we can take a slogan from 2007 as a state of the art understanding.

But I am biased. I‘ve seen this slogan everywhere to promote UPFs that claim to be healthy because they are „vegan“.

Now that the market for meat alternatives has collapsed I don’t see this reasoning anymore. What a strange coincidence.

by DarkNova6

2/3/2026 at 9:55:50 AM

> the market for meat alternatives has collapsed

What country are you reporting from? It seems to be absolutely booming in the UK. A brief internet search suggests it's growing and predicted to boom in the US as well.

by n4r9

2/3/2026 at 10:16:52 AM

Yeah, though my Beyond Meat shares beg to differ on that. Down 95%!

by vanviegen

2/3/2026 at 10:22:56 AM

That could be due to increasing competition? They had high brand awareness during the 2010s but (in the UK at least) we're seeing competitors like This and Alt, as well as cheap own-brand versions, coming onto the shelves in a big way.

by n4r9

2/3/2026 at 1:26:26 PM

UPF meat substitutes do tend to be healthier than their meat-based equivalent (see the SWAP-MEAT trial, for example).

by KempyKolibri

2/3/2026 at 11:07:11 PM

I think people really underestimate how bad meat is for you.

It's extremely high in saturated fat and lots of meat is carcinogenic. We classify bacon in the same category of carcinogen as alcohol and tobacco. Meaning, we know, for sure, it causes cancer.

by array_key_first

2/3/2026 at 7:22:07 PM

>I am not sure we can take a slogan from 2007 as a state of the art

Me neither, I prefer common knowledge that has stood the test of time for a lot longer, like about 100 years more.

Not my downvote btw, corrective upvote actually.

by fuzzfactor

2/3/2026 at 9:43:28 AM

My caveman brain was psyched out by the idea of stopping my coke drinking habit. I thought I had a soda addiction. Turns out I didnt, I just didnt drink enough water. After I pulled water bottles instead of coke cans from the fridge, the cravings went away.

Sometimes we don't need cold baths or extreme regimens to fix all the messed up things we're doing to our bodies. Simple changes go far to heal the damage.

by prodigycorp

2/3/2026 at 9:58:58 AM

I think what you experienced was behavioral addiction, tends to be a lot easier to overcome than chemical/physical addiction, often enough by just replacing the habit/behavior with something else.

Most people fighting addiction and having a hard time is fighting a chemical dependency, which is a lot harder and when people start looking beyond "Just do X instead".

by embedding-shape

2/3/2026 at 10:15:12 AM

You're probably right. It seems like there's not a hard line between behavior and chemical addiction, because of how the chemicals create reward signals to reinforce certain behavior.

From the article:

> Basic science models show that liquid sugar concentrations around 10% by weight—comparable with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew—can reliably trigger addictive behaviors in animals, including bingelike consumption, withdrawal, and dopamine system alterations.

But yeah, it's obviously nothing close to a nicotine.

by prodigycorp

2/3/2026 at 9:23:38 AM

There is no escaping the fact that feeding addictions is a great business model.

by blackbear_

2/3/2026 at 9:26:09 AM

It's a real challenge for a society based around personal freedom. Same goes for addictive apps. I feel the conflict within me.

by teekert

2/3/2026 at 9:32:02 AM

Regulating predatory business models is not in conflict with personal freedom

by kuerbel

2/3/2026 at 9:44:33 AM

There is no definition of “predatory business model” that isn’t simply a reflection of the majority’s values, so there absolutely is a conflict between the two.

Are churches a predatory business? If the answer is no, then why are sugar manufacturers? If the answer is tradition etc., then that basically proves my point.

by p-e-w

2/3/2026 at 10:49:43 AM

> Are churches a predatory business?

the institution that invented Tithes? The institution that if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people? Which will take old women aside and talk about getting into heaven and helping missions in poor countries full of poor little children?

That institution might have a predatory business model?

The threat of hell is certainly very uncoercive yeah

by Arkhaine_kupo

2/3/2026 at 11:03:34 AM

While I don't disagree with the assertion that churches are somewhat "predatory" with the threat of hell etc., this statement isn't really supporting that thesis:

> if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people

So basically you're paying for a service? Your argument would be much better if they didn't actually help people with important stuff.

by cobblestone32

2/3/2026 at 11:12:06 AM

Creating a hierarchy in lets say a small town, were people who pay in can have a funeral early/better date/better priest while people who dont pay get a wednesday mid work and no one can attend so the family has to say goodbye to their loved one without people creates the kind of environment where participating is not optional.

That is the kind of situation the funeral thing was highlighting, not the provision of a service, but the creation of a coercive incentive for social hierarchy and emotional support around a very difficult moment.

Its the same reason predatory loans are predatory, not because loans are bad but because you find people at their lowest and provide a service where they are incentivised to make reckless financial choices

by Arkhaine_kupo

2/3/2026 at 11:18:23 AM

I mean, there's a limited number of dates and priests. Are you suggesting there should be a fixed fee for funerals, which dates and priests being allocated randomly? That's certainly analogous to state-funded healthcare as compared to private healthcare, but unless you want the government to interfere in the church, I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. And I mean, all cultural things are "manipulation" in some sense, take the case of going to see the latest superhero movie on the release day. Of course the tickets would be more pricey, is that also coercive?

by cobblestone32

2/3/2026 at 11:24:23 AM

> I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that.

Similar to shark loans, creating alternatives will always come with compromises. either we have public lenders that will lend money that will never be returned, or we leave a strata of society without access to capital.

But diagnosing the predatory nature of shark loans does not mean the proposal of an alternative.

I think the church model is coercive, specially when threats are existencial. Hell is beyond any threat you could make to someone who believes in it. Does not mean that I can come up witha. universal, generalisable model for providing adequate funeral rites, emotional support and remove social status from society.

by Arkhaine_kupo

2/3/2026 at 9:52:55 AM

Personal freedom includes not being manipulated by commercial interests.

by tristramb

2/3/2026 at 9:58:58 AM

Sure, but all successful capitalist economies revolve around supporting commercial interests which prop up the tax revenue which then hold up the welfare state and public infrastructure, QoL and freedoms we enjoy.

THe big challenge is separating the good from the bad commercial interests. It's not a challenge because differentiating the good from the harmful is difficult, but because bad actor industries also make A LOT of money that buys a lot of political power and also employ a lot of people, so removing them from economy would have negative economic and political consequences.

Basically it's like a dead man's switch in a mutually assured destruction weapon.

by joe_mamba

2/3/2026 at 10:55:05 AM

Just because they employ a lot of people does not mean that removing them from economy would have negative economic consequences.

Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss.

by deaux

2/3/2026 at 10:58:52 AM

>Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss.

Yeah but both tobacco industry employees and smokers vote. If they make up a large enough voter base, then this is political suicide in any democracy.

Hence how it took until 2019 to ban indoor smoking in my EU country, even though it was known for a long time it's a public health issue.

by joe_mamba

2/3/2026 at 11:41:48 AM

Personal freedom only works when someone is educated enough to make their own choices imho.

by randomNumber7

2/3/2026 at 12:52:55 PM

Most people know being fat, smoking and so on are bad. Its mostly not an education issue. But an outlook on live issue.

by panick21_

2/3/2026 at 9:31:22 AM

We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic. For us, close ones or even the generations to come.

Algorithm, food, intoxicants, anything that has manipulative potential.

by shrubby

2/3/2026 at 9:36:04 AM

> We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic

Except banning heroin clearly didn't work so well! There's still a lot of people using it. And the profits from selling it go to criminal gangs. And the people using it often die due to inconsistent dosing.

How do you define "manipulative potential"? If you ban sugar in drinks, do you ban fruit juice too? Where do we draw the line for "acceptable harm"? Personally I don't want to live in a society which bans huge numbers of things.

by leoedin

2/3/2026 at 12:26:21 PM

I agree. Maybe one would need to ban the misinformative marketing (although I know that opens another can of worms).

by randomNumber7

2/3/2026 at 9:54:46 AM

You can tax drinks based on the amount of sugar they contain. Yes, including juices.

by fsflover

2/3/2026 at 10:08:59 AM

Yeah, in my country oat milk is now taxed as a juice, of course milk isn't. So the plant based alternative is now 2x the price of cow milk. Thanx Milk industry.

by teekert

2/3/2026 at 10:52:24 AM

Milk is an order of magnitude healthier than the highly processed sludge called oak “milk”.

by cpursley

2/3/2026 at 10:57:37 AM

Source?

by fsflover

2/3/2026 at 11:31:04 AM

It’s considered an Ultraproceed food item. Just look up how it’s made and what’s added to it (oils, emulsifiers, fortified with minerals). It’s basically liquid cereal, but maybe worse.

by cpursley

2/3/2026 at 11:39:23 AM

> It’s considered an Ultraproceed food item

By whom? Oils are not necessarily bad for you.

by fsflover

2/3/2026 at 12:54:54 PM

Animal fat/milk with the hormones of a different mammal seem to be causing a lot of problems. Planetary and health related.

And the low fat milk in the carton is pretty far from natural, where oat milk in example seems to be pretty simple process based on quick googling:

https://www.loveandlemons.com/oat-milk/

Of course any industry can make anything ultra processed, like oat milk, but the generalization was wee bit hefty here.

by shrubby

2/3/2026 at 3:00:38 PM

With dairy, is especially important to go for the organic options. In generally (excluding parts of Asia), humans have been cultivating livestock and consuming dairy for tens of thousands of years. Our bodies are evolved for it, but not the ultra processed goop and all the added sugar everywhere. If you want to avoid animal products, it’s probably best to just drink water than these engineered “milks”.

by cpursley

2/3/2026 at 10:21:16 PM

> especially important to go for the organic options

According to Wikipedia, organic food does not offer any advantage over ordinary food.

by fsflover

2/3/2026 at 10:42:58 AM

What's the difference between a big company and a criminal gang if not for the law? If it wasn't for the big companies, more dangerous things would be illegal, just like Heroin and other hard drugs.

by hellweaver666

2/3/2026 at 11:11:50 AM

I mean, it's not often you hear about tobacco dealers shooting each other in a crowded mall, or alcohol bosses getting their house blown up (or sometimes their neighbors house). So there might be a few small differences between companies and criminal gangs.

by cobblestone32

2/3/2026 at 3:56:16 PM

> or alcohol bosses getting their house blown up (or sometimes their neighbors house).

There was a time when alcohol dealing led to an awful lot of that sort of violence. We put a stop to it when we legalized Alcohol and regulated it.

by mapontosevenths

2/3/2026 at 11:25:07 AM

It didn't seem to go too well last time it was attempted with one other drug. Namely ethanol. It might be time to try again as there doesn't seem to be any safe consumption level.

by Ekaros

2/3/2026 at 9:35:38 AM

Well, yeah, but who are you to decide what I do with my body? I'm not hurting anyone. (Nice to meet you, I'm the advocate of the Devil.)

by teekert

2/3/2026 at 12:28:44 PM

If I would look onto you as my obedient slavish worker I would like you to not kill yourself.

by randomNumber7

2/3/2026 at 10:04:31 AM

Shall we ban sex too?

Our bodies interact with extremely large amounts of elements in the environment and behavior that act beyond our conscious comprehension.

Sometimes in our favour and some others against us.

Banning everything that at some point worked against us is just establishing human life full of total deprivation. Worse than living in jail. Good luck maintaining a society in those conditions.

The individual and the society should instead focus on educating and teaching how to navigate an environment full of those elements.

by tirant

2/3/2026 at 11:13:05 AM

I'm having a hard time seeing a valid comparison between the act of keeping the species alive and the act of consuming poisonous chemicals.

by cobblestone32

2/3/2026 at 10:19:39 AM

That would be fine, if countries like the USA weren't actively turning their backs on logic and facts, and returning to a period that history refers to as the "dark ages"

by awesome_dude

2/3/2026 at 9:56:13 AM

[dead]

by frostyel

2/3/2026 at 12:25:47 PM

Notice something curious. The correlation with discussions around regulating businesses, freedom, and social media attention.

There is a strong correlation between someone making money and someone arguing that people being able to make money is about freedom.

And here we are a few centuries into capitalism and people say that they are conflicted because personal freedom = making money off people. Effectively.

Yet there are many freedoms that are not profitable. We just have to sit down in a chair and think it through for ten minutes. Preferably without the corrupting influence of a scren.

by keybored

2/3/2026 at 9:32:40 AM

And the addictive algorithm is not far away from violence.

The power asymmetry behind and in the front of the six inch screen is immense.

by shrubby

2/3/2026 at 7:54:06 PM

I've mentioned this before but over 40 years ago the periodical R & D was originally known as Industrial Research, and the R & D 100 was the IR100, showcasing the most promising companies they picked out every year in their opinion.

It wasn't too much like an academic publication, there were plenty of those, but lots of times a breakthrough would be reported anyway, and everything was more commercially oriented by far.

You know how trade publications can be kind of uninteresting for non-insiders, IR could be so boring that college professors wouldn't even read it.

But you could tell when an author had recently left academia and joined industry though because their papers appeared more academic than very seasoned ones.

It's still a challenging transition to make, but I'll never forget how it was addressed one time in the back pages. Where you get the occasional cartoon comic like you would in consumer media.

There's two scientists in lab coats working at their benches, the boss comes on the intercom and they look at each other as he blasts from the overhead speaker:

"Hey you guys in Research, get off your butts and invent something that's habit forming".

by fuzzfactor

2/3/2026 at 9:28:45 AM

What's your point? We regulated cigarettes and now they have a tiny fraction of their former customer base, saving millions of lives. These are solvable problems.

by smt88

2/3/2026 at 10:20:47 AM

Perhaps the point is that we need to return to social-democratic(ally inspired) policies of yore. In the current political climate, greed is good.

by tgv

2/3/2026 at 9:49:35 AM

Regulated but did not ban and the trick is to keep the availability far enough above the profitability of the criminal enterprise versus demand and your law enforcement potential.

Which technically isn't hard because criminal enterprise is pretty damn inefficient!

by XorNot

2/3/2026 at 12:55:04 PM

Cigarretes are an interesting example. Its way more about general society attitude, without doing a full baning. And that's likely what we need for other stuff.

We litearlly can't ban everything that is bad in the large. That would simply be to many things.

by panick21_

2/3/2026 at 8:14:42 PM

>We regulated cigarettes

Cigarettes were already regulated.

More like banning was applied to advertising and indoor smoking in lots of places.

>without doing a full baning.

This is why it worked, as good as it did.

That was enough regulation of the prominent, growing hazard & risk, for the vast majority to experience how much better it was than before, and usage snowballed downward as much as it could.

Without fully prohibiting anybody.

Advertising has huge persuasive ability.

by fuzzfactor