16 oz. Soda Ban Approved By NYC Board of Health

I for one would favor the government stop dicking around with portion sizes and start laying the hammer on such Blatant Lies.

Start with those low-fat dinners, which are basically the same not especially healthy foods, just in skimped amounts, therefore tangentially being low in fat.

Just tangentially relevant, but since this thread has broadened past the title for quite some time now....

Went shopping at Save A Lot's last night. Only saw one 'apparently healthy' canned drink to contrast all the sodas and energy drinks: green tea with ginseng and honey.

Picked it up, looked at the ingredients. Second one was High Fructose Corn Syrup. But somehow I doubt 'Green tea with high fructose corn syrup' would sell particularly well.

Save A Lot's is the cheapest grocery store for miles around. I imagine it's the shopping point of preference for quite a lot of people as poor or poorer than myself. And after looking at that tea I can safely say the only drink they have that isn't loaded with sugar is the friggin' milk.

edited 29th Mar '13 8:43:22 AM by Karkadinn

Mislabelled fish slip into Europe's menus ...it's not just meat, it's fish as well.

This'll do wonders for Europe's increasing insularity and anti-foreigner bias.

Right, soda. I gotta say...I find it truly bizarre how much effort has gone into both sides. As the Onion pointed out, it's depressing proof that Americans still care about politics. They just care about stupid stuff.

Change Americans to All Humanity and accurate post is accurate.

Like one of those Fish & Chip shop owners said, he knows the exact Trawler a shipment of fish came from, and I have heard an advert mentioning the exact Farm a cut of meat came from — it's more than anti-foreigner bias, people like food grown in their own Region, if not closer.

It's probably because there's a feeling that people have lost touch of where their food comes from and how it got there*

edited 2nd Apr '13 6:48:32 AM by Greenmantle

Hey, I like food TV. It's a hell of a lot better than reality TV.

It's nice to be able to get locally produced food, but many people lack that luxury, whether because it's simply not available or because they can't afford it.

Would you say that's a result of the machinations of Big Food, 'Teer?

Partially, but also just economies of scale. People used to spend a lot more of their money on food. Now we don't, but that saving's gotta come from somewhere.

edited 2nd Apr '13 6:56:30 AM by Ultrayellow

Interesting. I ask because any troper in the Big Applesauce knows there's actually a big move toward farmer's markets and organic food and a huge backlash against Big Food and GMO's (the hipsters are good for something )

And one of their big points is how farm-to-table is either just about the same cost as store-bought or actually cheaper in the long run. I don't know if New York's location surrounded by much ariable farm land (upstate, Long Island, New Jersey) is a factor.

Around where I live, farmers' markets are popular but it takes a great deal of dedication to get all your food from them. You still need to grocery shop to fill in the holes, especially out of season.

The simple fact is that local small farms can't produce enough food for the planet's population. I have nothing against economies of scale and "agribusiness" per se, only that they must be held to the same levels of social accountability as the mom & pop farms.

edited 2nd Apr '13 7:06:13 AM by Fighteer

@Starship: Nah, I don't think that's it. The Midwest has much better farmland than the Northeast, for instance.

I think it's more that Big Food got the prices way down, took over the market, and then jacked a bunch of stuff back up, accidentally letting small farmers become competitive again.

edited 2nd Apr '13 7:08:07 AM by Ultrayellow

And people say capitalism doesn't work.

The same thing is happening in Europe (well, Britain at least). Here, the backlash is against the major supermarkets and their worldwide purchasing policies*

But I guess something like this is easier this side of the Atlantic, since countries are smaller and the climate is better for more types of food.

With the squeeze of peoples' incomes, the percentage of income spent on food is increasing...

Or Farmers can make more money from Farmers' Markets and selling directly to customers then by selling to the Supermarkets? Remember, some Farmers need two jobs to get by...

edited 2nd Apr '13 7:11:36 AM by Greenmantle

Hey, that's true.

Quite. In British terms, the hardest-off farmers are the Hill Farmers. Here's a quote about their situation*

It's not any better in the US. Over here, farmers are exempt from a lot of labor laws, so they usually wind up making less than minimum wage, and they don't get overtime.

Resurrecting this thread because of a recent Nytimes post titled "Learning to Cut the Sugar which recommended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Sodas are even worse than I thought. I already knew sugar was a toxin but I just learned now that sodas actually have high salt content to make drinkers thirsty so they'll drink more soda.

Also, fructose is basically like ethanol. Shit, for years I was proud of not being at all interested in alcoholic beverages, so it's not easy to discover that frustose is like an alcohol.

You process Fructose to make ethanol. It's not alcoholic under normal circumstances or you could get drunk from eating fresh fruit.

edited 22nd Feb '14 9:20:49 AM by Zendervai

Fruit comes with a lot of fiber. Just fructose alone is bad bad bad. Fructose is also definitely not like glucose.

God, the portion of the lecture which had charts about how the liver processed glucose vs how it processed ethanol vs how it processed fructose felt like a horror movie to me.

I knew it was bad. I just didn't expect it to be that bad.

Bloomberg's soda ban bubbles back to life under Mayor Bill de Blasio administration.