Quote:
1. Education for the public should emphasise that there is no biological need or nutritional value of added sugar. Industry should be forced to label added and free sugars on food products in teaspoons rather than grams, which
will make it easier to understand.
|
Agree with first part, disagree with second part. A "better understanding" doesn't come from using a vague unit of measure like a teaspoon, but by using a standard unit of measure like the gram. This also applies to "% of daily requirement", which also appears right next to the Xg number for added sugars on the nutritional label, as if somehow added sugars was a nutrient and had a daily requirement, which is absurd, if we accept the first part of that suggestion above.
The nutritional label itself must be changed or replaced with something more accurate and more representative of what's in the box. For example, one that indicates the % of weight of actual food in the product. From this, we'd have to devise a conventional food classification table. With tobacco, there's no need for any of this, we're just not confused in any way about the nature of tobacco, i.e. it's not air, it's not food, it's not water, it's not medicine, it's not essential, and so forth. Nevertheless, tobacco label indicates quantity of what is believed to be the most dangerous element inside like tar and nicotine for example. With food, there's obvious confusion. Case in point, ask anybody what food is, we'll get a thousand different answers. Proof, there's hundreds of diet books. Further proof, there's tens of thousands of "food" products (claimed to be edible and nutritious by the nutrition label), yet only a handful of actual ingredients, and even fewer actual raw foods on the grocery shelves by comparison. Further proof, there is no curriculum in any school on this planet that teaches what food is, and what is not food. The only curriculum teaches the official guidelines, and we know all about those.
As I'm writing this, I just came up with a brilliant idea about food. It occurs to me that our entire knowlege about food is in fact empirical, just like it's ever been historically with our ancestors. Our parents taught us what food was - edible - and what was not food - inedible. This mechanism still exists and we are still bound by its simple rules (the authority teaches the facts of survival because it's his biological duty to do that, and those facts are derived from direct experience), but it's been usurped to instead push what is otherwise inedible like grains and sugar. The mechanism has been usurped, but the underlying truth doesn't support any of it - the things we're told to eat aren't actually food by any measure. So, we get all kinds of embelishments to convince us that it is food, like the nutritional label that lies on its face when it states the nutritional value of sugar as a % of daily requirement on a label that indicates nutritional value. It doesn't matter that for sugar, it says "n/a", what matters is that sugar is indicated by a nutritional label such that sugar is deemed to be food.
Quote:
6. We recommend the discontinuing of all governmental food subsidies, especially commodity crops such as sugar, which contribute to health detriments. These subsidies distort the market and increase the costs of non-subsidised crops, making them unaffordable for many. No industry should be provided a subsidy for hurting people.
|
That's it that's all. Nothing else need be done really. Do this for all crops, not just sugar. Let actual production costs influence retail price, to in turn influence consumption. Before industry, that was the single most effective means to influence consumption of anything. The greater the production cost, the lower the consumption. With industry, it retains its effectiveness due to incentive for profit by carrying production costs to retail.
An effect of the above will be to illustrate the unmistakable luxury status of expensive "food" products, which was in fact the situation before industry and subsidies. From that point forward, it will be that much easier to illustrate the true non-food status of those luxuries. Then from there, nobody will need to be convinced of anything, which means that any further argument against those luxuries - it's not food because of such and such - will be accepted with little or no opposition. Then from there, when you're hungry and all you got is 5$, you'll go for the actual food, not for the luxury.
The other side of the coin is that imports of same products must be taxed to same luxury level.