Mintball wrote:The recent discussion by the Fabians/Labour over placing a cap on the amount of sugar that could be included in breakfast cereals: I mean, I know that the majority of cereals, no matter how much they are portrayed as healthy, contain sugar (and salt). But it was still a shock to discover that some cereals – particularly those marketed specifically at children – contain more than 30% sugar. Loathe though I am to invoke any idea of 'morality', there is not a single, solitary shred of moral justification for that. And for all that we talk about personal responsibility, why not corporate responsibility too? If responsibility is good, then it should be good per se, large companies shouldn't be exempted from it. I saw a TV program some months ago about marketing cereals to people and in particular into the UK. There simply wasn't such a market for sweet cereals untiil just after WWII. What the program pointed out was that the companies started adding sugar and removing fibre. That is the cereals were processed as opposed top pre-war cereals which were mostly not. The addition of sugar was a deliberate attempt to appeal to children and Sugar Smacks introduced in the 1950's were actually 56% sugar. It also mentioned that for a company, selling processed cereals is a real money spinning exercise because they basically turn what is virtually a useless commodity (the type of grain used) into a highly profitable end product. There is a very good an d in depth article here that describes the history very well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence As it points out it is just amazing we eat the stuff given the manufacturing process takes all the goodness out (in order to make the product stable with good shelf life) and then they put "goodness" back in chemically. Made me laugh when the man from Kellogs said if they took too much salt and sugar out of cornflakes the packet would taste better. Quote:And it is worth repeating that the sort of companies we're talking about employ people with Phds etc to do their marketing; to work out how to sell to people without Phds. This is also true and is along the same lines as marketing such as "Have a break, have a Kit, Kat" or "Milky Way, the bar you can eat between meals". As a country we never used to eat between meals and so marketing was set the task of creating such a market. Cereals have gone down a similar path and the addition of sugar and how that came about as described in the article above is a fascinating insight into marketing. Quote:Someone with serious qualifications in psychology planning the layout of a supermarket in order to maximise the spend of anyone who walks through the doors. What about the responsibility there? I also saw another program very recently that was debating the obese issue and the right wing libertarian nut case on the show was saying "If poor people want to get fact that is their right". He had put forward the notion that the richer you are the thinner you are. That is not strictly true as obesity is at a level it can't just be confined to the less well off but that was his argument. Anyway the point he was missing was that marketing does work. It isn't the simple choice thing as he wanted us to believe. If it was there would be no point paying anyone to market anything in the way they do. The opposing view was we need to stop people getting obese via legislation as it's going to cost us a fortune on the NHS. This cut no ice with our libertarian but then he probably thinks we should all pay for our own health care directly so if we "choose" to get fat we can pay for the treatment if there are consequences. I am not sure a sugar tax is the right way to legislate because we simply need less sugar (and salt and other rubbish) in food. The traffic light system that got kicked out would IMO change the nations diet in a very short time but as you can see if you read the article I linked above cereal companies deliberately adopt a more confusing and misleading approach. Corporate responsibility? Yeah right. Cereal companies are the last place to look for that.

Mintball wrote:The recent discussion by the Fabians/Labour over placing a cap on the amount of sugar that could be included in breakfast cereals: I mean, I know that the majority of cereals, no matter how much they are portrayed as healthy, contain sugar (and salt). But it was still a shock to discover that some cereals – particularly those marketed specifically at children – contain more than 30% sugar. Loathe though I am to invoke any idea of 'morality', there is not a single, solitary shred of moral justification for that. And for all that we talk about personal responsibility, why not corporate responsibility too? If responsibility is good, then it should be good per se, large companies shouldn't be exempted from it. I saw a TV program some months ago about marketing cereals to people and in particular into the UK. There simply wasn't such a market for sweet cereals untiil just after WWII. What the program pointed out was that the companies started adding sugar and removing fibre. That is the cereals were processed as opposed top pre-war cereals which were mostly not. The addition of sugar was a deliberate attempt to appeal to children and Sugar Smacks introduced in the 1950's were actually 56% sugar. It also mentioned that for a company, selling processed cereals is a real money spinning exercise because they basically turn what is virtually a useless commodity (the type of grain used) into a highly profitable end product. There is a very good an d in depth article here that describes the history very well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence As it points out it is just amazing we eat the stuff given the manufacturing process takes all the goodness out (in order to make the product stable with good shelf life) and then they put "goodness" back in chemically. Made me laugh when the man from Kellogs said if they took too much salt and sugar out of cornflakes the packet would taste better. Quote:And it is worth repeating that the sort of companies we're talking about employ people with Phds etc to do their marketing; to work out how to sell to people without Phds. This is also true and is along the same lines as marketing such as "Have a break, have a Kit, Kat" or "Milky Way, the bar you can eat between meals". As a country we never used to eat between meals and so marketing was set the task of creating such a market. Cereals have gone down a similar path and the addition of sugar and how that came about as described in the article above is a fascinating insight into marketing. Quote:Someone with serious qualifications in psychology planning the layout of a supermarket in order to maximise the spend of anyone who walks through the doors. What about the responsibility there? I also saw another program very recently that was debating the obese issue and the right wing libertarian nut case on the show was saying "If poor people want to get fact that is their right". He had put forward the notion that the richer you are the thinner you are. That is not strictly true as obesity is at a level it can't just be confined to the less well off but that was his argument. Anyway the point he was missing was that marketing does work. It isn't the simple choice thing as he wanted us to believe. If it was there would be no point paying anyone to market anything in the way they do. The opposing view was we need to stop people getting obese via legislation as it's going to cost us a fortune on the NHS. This cut no ice with our libertarian but then he probably thinks we should all pay for our own health care directly so if we "choose" to get fat we can pay for the treatment if there are consequences. I am not sure a sugar tax is the right way to legislate because we simply need less sugar (and salt and other rubbish) in food. The traffic light system that got kicked out would IMO change the nations diet in a very short time but as you can see if you read the article I linked above cereal companies deliberately adopt a more confusing and misleading approach. Corporate responsibility? Yeah right. Cereal companies are the last place to look for that.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that the corporations producing and marketing this muck don't have some responsibility, but is there genuinely anyone left in the UK who doesn't know in general terms what foods are 'good' and what are 'bad?' The 'low fat' yoghurt scam for example, is hardly breaking news, nor is the sugary breakfast cereal. Equally, the message about taking a reasonable amount of exercise couldn't have been made clearer; you can't turn the telly on these days without seeing a programme about fat people, detailing either their faddy diets, their embarassing bodies or their attempts to lose weight - they've even been turned into reality TV shows, to target the lowest common denominator.

For all the power of advertising that apparently forces people to buy high fat, high sugar products, there is a similar weight of information out there to advocate eating those things in moderation and taking exercise; I'm not convinced that people have become so deskilled in the areas of health and nutrition that the power of advertising has mesmerised them into stuffing their faces so full of junk that they have become clinically obese and are unsure how it happened or what to do about it.

So why are manufacturers and supermarkets so anti clear concise labelling of products?

There is far more dubious marketing going on beyond "The 'low fat' yoghurt scam". In any case when you go to a supermarket you are presented with a range of food and unless you scrutinize every product in detail you can't tell if its good or bad for you (not talking about the obvious stuff here but things marketed as low fat, low salt etc that end up being high in sugar and so on). Even if you do this as the article I linked to pointed out, the fact cereal companies quote content as what % of your daily limit of sugar or whatever does not equate to giving you clear information as to how healthy a product is.



That is another triumph or marketing isn't it. It doesn't mean the marketing of unhealthy cereal (for example) is any less effective. Fat people in the gym or on diet plans equals good marketing from both ends of the spectrum.



It is not so clear cut. As I said even those aware of the issues find it hard to get the information to follow a healthy diet and like it or not there are a lot of thick people out there and marketing is also aimed at kids.

I suggest the number of deliberately obese people is actually a very small percentage of the overall total. Most people do not live a "Man v Food" lifestyle when they actually know better. It's quite difficult even if you are conscious of the issues to purchase low sugar, salt and fat products unless you go back to making everything yourself from base ingredients.

I would agree about the "deliberately" obese comment, most people I come across that are even just overweight are there because of habit and laziness. As I believe I have mentioned before on other threads (in the past) people are always telling me "you need to eat more", I don't, my weight is in the right range, my blood pressure etc. is as it should be, when I am working I largely "fly a desk", why is my RDA the same as someone who mixes mortar by hand and carries bricks/pushes wheel barrows?

It's time people took personal responsibility and stopped just listening to "expert advice".

DaveO wrote:... There is a very good an d in depth article here that describes the history very well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence... I think I may have read this at the time, but thank you for linking to it here – I've ordered the book too. DaveO wrote:... Made me laugh when the man from Kellogs said if they took too much salt and sugar out of cornflakes the packet would taste better... More than once I've described Special K as being sugared cardboard. DaveO wrote:... As a country we never used to eat between meals and so marketing was set the task of creating such a market... It's been staggeringly successful. By 2005, the UK was consuming 51% of all the snacks/crisps sold in the whole of Europe (Blythman, Bad Food Britain). DaveO wrote:... I also saw another program very recently that was debating the obese issue and the right wing libertarian nut case on the show was saying "If poor people want to get fact that is their right". He had put forward the notion that the richer you are the thinner you are. That is not strictly true as obesity is at a level it can't just be confined to the less well off but that was his argument... Someone needs to tell Eric Pickles, Nicholas Soames, Anne Widdicombe, Ken Clarke ... Anyway, gout was always a rich man's problem, just as it was the wealthy/rich who got fat – most certainly not the poor. DaveO wrote:... I am not sure a sugar tax is the right way to legislate because we simply need less sugar (and salt and other rubbish) in food... Same here on the tax – I'd say the same of a 'fat tax'. Although it's worth noting that we do need salt – we don't need sugar. Ever. DaveO wrote:... The traffic light system that got kicked out would IMO change the nations diet in a very short time but as you can see if you read the article I linked above cereal companies deliberately adopt a more confusing and misleading approach. Corporate responsibility? Yeah right. Cereal companies are the last place to look for that. The new traffic light system is utterly dreadful. As just one example, it gives four green lights to a diet fizzy drink, but two amber to a fresh mackerel, FFS! It was almost as though they sat down and thought: 'What can we do to help Big Food?' Unbelievable!

DaveO wrote:... There is a very good an d in depth article here that describes the history very well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence... I think I may have read this at the time, but thank you for linking to it here – I've ordered the book too. DaveO wrote:... Made me laugh when the man from Kellogs said if they took too much salt and sugar out of cornflakes the packet would taste better... More than once I've described Special K as being sugared cardboard. DaveO wrote:... As a country we never used to eat between meals and so marketing was set the task of creating such a market... It's been staggeringly successful. By 2005, the UK was consuming 51% of all the snacks/crisps sold in the whole of Europe (Blythman, Bad Food Britain). DaveO wrote:... I also saw another program very recently that was debating the obese issue and the right wing libertarian nut case on the show was saying "If poor people want to get fact that is their right". He had put forward the notion that the richer you are the thinner you are. That is not strictly true as obesity is at a level it can't just be confined to the less well off but that was his argument... Someone needs to tell Eric Pickles, Nicholas Soames, Anne Widdicombe, Ken Clarke ... Anyway, gout was always a rich man's problem, just as it was the wealthy/rich who got fat – most certainly not the poor. DaveO wrote:... I am not sure a sugar tax is the right way to legislate because we simply need less sugar (and salt and other rubbish) in food... Same here on the tax – I'd say the same of a 'fat tax'. Although it's worth noting that we do need salt – we don't need sugar. Ever. DaveO wrote:... The traffic light system that got kicked out would IMO change the nations diet in a very short time but as you can see if you read the article I linked above cereal companies deliberately adopt a more confusing and misleading approach. Corporate responsibility? Yeah right. Cereal companies are the last place to look for that. The new traffic light system is utterly dreadful. As just one example, it gives four green lights to a diet fizzy drink, but two amber to a fresh mackerel, FFS! It was almost as though they sat down and thought: 'What can we do to help Big Food?' Unbelievable!

You raise a number of question, and I'll try to give my opinions in something like a coherent fashion (no promises though).

IMO, diet/nutrition advice is still massively conflicted and massively contradictory.

It's interesting having this discussion here because I suspect that, because of the sports connection, a higher percentage of posters actually have some knowledge about nutrition (although even then there are disagreements, and it's also mostly sports-related nutrition).

From what I see and hear around me, there are still plenty of people who think that the 'cut fat, fill up with complex carbs' mantra is the one that works. That message was, in its way, incredibly, incredibly successful. That some of us now have a comprehension of how counterproductive it was (and why) is besides the point.

And there remains a widespread and close to abject terror of natural fats, while people happily spend more buying poison like marg and spray-on oil, because much (not all) mainstream medical advice has, in effect, been supported by Big Food. And they do that because they believe that they're being healthy. As only a very slight aside, I'm appalled to see the British Heart Foundation currently in bed with Unilever, the manufacturers of Flora. Indeed, if you look at their website, they have loads of 'corporate partners'. How can they claim to be independent, in that case? And indeed, the same issue has cropped up with ADD in the US – it has vast numbers of corporate, Big Food sponsors.

Anyway ... many people also eat tons of fruit, thinking it healthy, when because of sugars, you actually need to be very careful of just how much fruit you eat.

My second sort of general point would be that, the more stories people read about or see or hear about, say, how many minutes of X level of exercise they need to do every single day – I think people shut off.

As someone who has struggled with my weight since before the age of 12, it makes me vexed off.

Most of the dialogue may not intend to, but it demonises people. It degrades them. It treats fat people (yeah, let's use the word) as stupid, lumpen, lazy, greedy – etc etc etc. The dialogue is simplistic in the extreme and is, in oh so many ways, a damned fine charter for bullies.

And indeed, I wonder how much people really wonder how on earth our grandparents etc ate bread and dripping and we didn't have an obesity crisis . But then – see the French Paradox (which isn't really a paradox

And I also see people who are far, far from chavvy (for want of a better phrase), who struggle with their weight, and dear Christ ... I've lost track of the number of women I have known and encountered, who pretty much put off life, waiting for the one diet that will solve it all.

I'm damned lucky – and relatively rare – in that I broke that cycle myself, with the help of friends. But seeing it in other women since is really quite heart rending. And that the simplistic rhetoric doesn't – in effect – allow for them (or for me, a decade ago) makes me both angry, but sometimes makes me weep.

The simplified rhetoric of 'oh, you're just lazy, lacking in discipline, greedy' etc – all that simplistic bunk; I doubt any who come out with it have a clue about the damage it does. And I'm talking about deep, deep emotional and mental damage. Really, really life-limiting. And the sheer suggestion that one person can look at another and know, with certainty, their life – and judge accordingly.

It's effing obscene.

But then again. every generation needs a new scapegoat, eh?

I think I've at least touched on a lot of what you said earlier in that post in my response to Bren.

On this, however, I'd say that, on a very personal level, I was brought up to listen to what certain authority figures in society told me. Unquestioningly.

And one of those figures was doctors.

So when a doctor told me that, because I could never get below 9st (although close to athletically fit at the time) I should diet to 800kcals per day, I did so.

I really wish I'd known what I knew now. But I doubt that the information that I am now reading was actually around then. And to be fair, doctors themselves have been misled by a range of sources – including Big Pharm.

It can take a very long time to get over that.

And it's not just on weight issues. I read Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma last year and, to be honest, I'd recommend it to everyone as a form of vital self-education. But if you go to a doctor, it doesn't seem radical to expect them to deal with your situation on the basis of science/medicine – and not big business. But that is not the reality.

But surely it's not wrong to suggest that, in a good society, we should be able to do that? We shouldn't have to spend swathes of our lives becoming conversant with every subject where we might have to be involved in a decision, on the basis that we can trust nobody?

That seems, to me, to be a pretty rubbish situation, where nobody can be trusted to be independent, informed and not simply interested in their own bank balance.

Completely OT but I couldn't resist: Ben Goldacre's mum



In case anyone is wondering, she's Noosha Fox (real name Susan Traynor) from 70s band Fox

Still wearing the same hat too by the look of it.