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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32874 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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How bad can America’s health actually get? And what shall we do?

All kinds of ill health are steadily increasing, from age-adjusted obesity to autism and depression. Anxiety in young adults nearly doubled in the decade pre-pandemic. Type 1 and type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically. Deaths of despair have also risen. There seems to be no actionable plan, ready for implementation, to halt the rising tide of ill health. The numbers are steadily increasing adjusted for age, with some numbers rising faster in the young than in the old.

I find the willpower discussions to be missing the point. Unless there is a plan that we can implement in schools to significantly increase or teach willpower, then it hardly matters whether the will is relevant. The diseased from poor choices and the diseased from poor environment equally hurt the security of the nation, costing trillions from decreased productivity, decreased fertility, and healthcare expenditure. It is curious how much discourse in America is spent quibbling on issues that are so much less important than the health question. Health is something that directly impacts every aspect of the country, not the least of which is the plain happiness and fertility of citizens.

What I would like to see is a harm tax put in place that adds onto every unhealthy item the cost per item of its societal harm: the projected healthcare costs, the loss from intelligent citizens working for corporations that poison us, the projected loss of productivity. Now, this will always be an estimate, but so are many taxes. I think this would largely make sodas prohibitively expensive.

Concerning diabetes specifically (and of diabetics, type II is the bigger problem even if type Is are more expensive per capita as pretty much all American diabetics are type II), the numbers will only get worse even if the US does everything right due to demographics, i.e. the fact that non-Hispanic whites are much less susceptible to diabetes than most of their black and brown counterparts (Chinese-Americans are the exceptions to this, Indian-Americans not so much. A similarly huge disparity exists between Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans.). Note, I'm not sure if the ADA is adjusting (I don't think so.) for how old and fat white Americans are compared to their non-white counterparts; if not this gets worse.

I suspect the purpose of a tax on unhealthy food is not to defray the harm unhealthy food causes but instead to stop people consuming that food. I believe this because that's exactly what has happened with the similar cigarette taxes. They have escalated constantly and are now being replaced with bans on cigarettes in some countries.

I believe once the hard work of getting this tax in place has been done, it will be raised until it achieves the goal of reducing or eliminating consumption of unhealthy food.

I am against banning or restricting unhealthy food and your post does little to convince me that this is not the end point of the suggested tax. Until you have a concrete amount for these taxes and until you can signal credibly that the tax will remain at that level, I am against taxing unhealthy foods to pay for health costs.

I am against banning or restricting unhealthy food

Why are you against banning or restricting unhealthy food?

How about the government butt out of my food decisions. I want extra-rare steak and wine and I don't need a bureaucrat second guessing my eating habits. The government is not my mommy.

What food is unhealthy?

We spent how many decades with the FDA pushing a "mostly carbs" diet?

I know how this will go... the most intolerant (probably Vegans) will eventually gain control of agency tasked with restricting our food options. And now I'm penalized for enjoying steak and pulled pork.

In no particular order:

  • I think maximizing lifespan is a bad idea that makes people unhappy.

A life lived well is measured by how filled it was with things you enjoy, not by the number of years you existed on earth. Banning unhealthy food is a step away from the former and towards the latter. Banning unhealthy food would make people's lives less worth living, to a degree not made up for by the extended lifespan they'd see.

  • I think it's infantilizing and controlling to make such a decision for people.

These are adults and ostensibly ones we trust enough to vote on the direction of our country. A democratic state shouldn't be micromanaging their decisions about their own health.

Freedom is generally good and we should need a extremely strong reason and lack of alternative options to resort to having the state restrict it, especially to the degree that banning a category as wide as "unhealthy food" would entail.

  • I don't trust the science around healthy vs unhealthy food

What diets are considered good and bad for you has changed immensely just in my living memory. Trying to mandate healthy eating on such a shaky foundation is foolishness and could easily make things worse. Imagine if we mandated high-carb diets based on the food pyramid. Would this have been a sensible decision or a disaster?

  • I think restricting unhealthy food via ratcheting up a harm tax would be an extremely dishonest way to achieve that goal

In this particular case, I would also object to the dishonesty of arguing for a tax under grounds that it will be used to pay for the harm of unhealthy food if your goal is actually to use it as a slippery slope towards restricting or banning consumption.

There is no evidence that unhealthy food increases life satisfaction apart from its craving->satisfaction downward spiral feedback loop. Those who quit sugar often find themselves having no cravings after a couple months. No study suggests that sugar consumption is important for life satisfaction, but many studies suggest that health is important for life satisfaction. On your deathbed you will not wish you ate more cake, unless you are hungry, and then when you have the cake you will surely wish you had less cake, because the dissipation of the craving will allow you to see clearly how worthless it is. Also, there is no positive correlation between sugar intake and life satisfaction either on an individual level or a society level. There is instead a strong negative association between sugar consumption and levels of life satisfaction.

If you want to increase sum total happiness, banning sugar should be as obvious as banning heroin.

The obvious explanation for sugar consumption being negatively correlated with happiness is that your causation is backward; people whose lives suck eat more sugary food because it's a cheap and easy way to be happier. Eating ice cream to feel better after a breakup is a trope for a reason.

Okay, maybe not entirely backward. It's clearly possible for sugar consumption to reduce your life satisfaction by making you fat. But given the myriad confounding factors it's a big leap to go from correlation to "sugar caused this!"

The comparison to heroin is weird, since the main issue with heroin is that it reduces your baseline happiness and leaves you needing more and more of it to get to normal. Most people keep a stable level of sugar consumption over long periods of time rather than spiraling out of control and eating increasing amounts of it, so sugar doesn't seem to have the same problem that leads to heroin ruining lives.

There have been dietary interventions with controls that have shown mood increase from reducing refined carbs. Here’s one: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0222768

https://gut.bmj.com/content/69/7/1218.abstract

Even after just 10 days: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666310006963

people keep a stable level of sugar consumption over long periods of time

I dispute this given the age-related increases in obesity that are higher in sugar-filled diers

I've had a look at the studies and I'm not impressed.

I'm not sure how the second study links to life satisfaction, since it appears to be talking about gut microbes and measurements of being in good health. A quick skim of the paper body didn't show any measurement of life satisfaction either so I've ignored it.

The first and third studies cover very short timeframes. It seems obvious that health is an area where bad diet could induce unhappiness that could be resolved by a good diet, but none of these studies cover the kind of timeframe that would be required for a dietary change to result in significant health changes. Neither even covers the "couple months" you said it takes for sugar cravings to go away - shouldn't these people still be craving sugar (and therefore be unhappier than usual) on the timeframes these studies cover?

Given it can't be a major turnaround in health, what changes are being caused by the new diet that would explain substantially improved mood over such a short timeframe? The studies don't seem to have any idea what specific changes they're looking for, since they've thrown a variety of tests that mostly just return insignificant results.

Doing this scattershot approach, especially on small study sizes, is a good way to get meaningless but "statistically significant" results.

I dispute this given the age-related increases in obesity that are higher in sugar-filled diers

I'm asking you to just look at the people around you. Unless you're in a particularly strong bubble then most of them will be eating sugar at least some of the time. Are they constantly eating more and more sugar? Do children brought up occasionally eating cookies eventually graduate to eating whole packets of cookies by adulthood? An addictiveness even a tenth of heroin's should be readily apparent.

If you need to apply statistical tools to populations over years to find see the effect then that already puts its addictiveness leagues away from heroin.

healthy microbiome is associated w well-being, the reason short time frames are used is that these are intervention studies and it’s difficult to tell a person to eat a new diet for years. We know from correlation studies that refined carb intake is associated with poor well being. A short time frame can induce changes in inflammatory markers and some gut changes. For instance iirc there are profound mood changes from 10 days of very low caloric fasting

then most of them will be eating sugar at least some of the time. Are they constantly eating more and more sugar?

Yes? Look at the obesity epidemic. Addiction is not linear. Maybe only 10% of those who take opioids become addicted. But opioids are addicting. There’s a study on heroin users in Vietnam which show only a minority continued their addiction on returning home

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.64.12_Suppl.38

Do children brought up occasionally eating cookies eventually graduate to eating whole packets of cookies by adulthood?

Yes, statistically, given the rise in obesity

More comments

Why are you against banning or restricting unhealthy food?

Idealistic reason:

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a0/a0278d6ebd9591c39e398b65ed9c5dd9d7d6ea7686578f1088d41908c6b92ca4.jpg

Pragmatic reson: Who gets to decide what food is "unhealthy"? You can bet it will not be you.

Once the mechanism for restricting and banning "for your good" starts rolling, it will not stop at foods you do not like. I am sure there are many scientific studies that prove your favorite food causes cancer, impotence and baldness.

Remember when deplatforming happened only to few terrorist, nazis, and other bad hombres?

Junk food already exists on the spectrum of enjoyable, but harmful substances together with tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs (and non-substances like gambling), a lot of which are restricted or banned "for our good". So I can agree with the idealistic reasoning if it also extends to fentanyl and meth.

And speaking pragmatically, I am quite sure that the US has learned enough from its war on drugs and prohibition to not go full retard. After all, food is one of the normiest things in existence, so when the BATFE&JF starts enforcing the regulations against southern tea and kids' lemonade stands I expect to see strong bipartisan pushback.

I am quite sure that the US has learned enough from its war on drugs and prohibition to not go full retard

But they clearly have not. Weed is still schedule 1. Mild hallucinogens very illegal to own. Etc.

Let's not step onto that slippery slope with food.

I am quite sure that the US has learned enough from its war on drugs

The US hasn't even learned enough from the war on drugs to be smarter about the war on drugs. I can't even really blame politicians for this one either; the populace is extremely divided on it all, too.

And speaking pragmatically, I am quite sure that the US has learned enough from its war on drugs and prohibition to not go full retard.

I laughed, but it was not a happy laugh.

I dunno, I could totally see the transplant contingent of Seattle or San Francisco mocking and sneering at southerners getting fined or imprisoned for bootlegging sweet tea. Culture War schadenfreude runs deep.

It's a good point. I can support jacking up taxes on foods no one can credibly deny are unhealthy (donuts, soda, bacon), but not so far that it's a de facto ban (like the marijuana stamps they used to technically require weed dealers to buy, but which no one actually bought because it would entail admitting to a crime).

But you do get into problems when health authorities operate based on outdated, incorrect ideas: like "low fat" being the be-all, end-all (as opposed to aiming to eat good fats like in olive oil, nuts, etc.), or insisting on lowfat dairy even though there is much research showing full-fat dairy (particularly if it's from grass-fed cows) being healthier.

foods no one can credibly deny are unhealthy ... bacon

I deny this. Maybe there is a weak point to be made about nitrate free bacon being better. But bacon is healthy.

Right off the bat we're missing the mark and proposing sin taxes on the wrong things. And I know that the nannies of the nanny state would make this error but worse.

Bacon is healthy?!? Uhhh...got a cite for that?

Soda isn’t unhealthy when consumed reasonably. I drank a ton of it when I was a kid; I also had a paper route and walked for an hour a day doing that. And then I played outside everyday.

Perhaps we should just tax people everyday they don’t get an hour of quality exercise.

An hour a day running >>>>> eating foods you say are bad.

What makes bacon unhealthy? Fat? Fat is not in itself unhealthy. Eating nothing but bacon is not great for you, generally, but neither is eating nothing but lettuce.

Fat is not in itself unhealthy.

BTW, it's weird that you didn't seem to read my entire comment, even though it was fairly short. It included these words: "outdated, incorrect ideas: like 'low fat' being the be-all, end-all (as opposed to aiming to eat good fats like in olive oil, nuts, etc.)"

Yet you still thought you had to explain to me that "fat is not in itself unhealthy"? Srsly??

It's the type of fat (saturated nondairy fat), and the chemicals added in the curing process. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/are-all-processed-meats-equally-bad-for-health/

The nitrites are proven carcinogens

And not relevant to a discussion based on nutritional content. Also overblown. Everything is a carcinogen.

Nitrates and nitrites.

Uncured bacon exists. And the risk from nitrites is not a nutritional one like is being discussed.

Have you seen the new Equity-Centered Food Health Scale that puts Corn-syrup Nut Cheerios and frozen yogurt above eggs and milk? (Iou link)

Implementing any pigouvian tax system in a non-insane/currentyear manner is a coup-complete problem; if you had the power to do it, you'd already have the power to seize the assets of the coca cola corporation and sentence all their executives to a lifetime of community service cleaning your state-run gyms.

you'd already have the power to seize the assets of the coca cola corporation and sentence all their executives to a lifetime of community service cleaning your state-run gyms.

This sounds crazy but if the costs of treating obesity and other chronic health effects of bad food is in the trillions per year, a cost vs. benefit analysis could justify such a proposal. The food industry is small compared to finance or tech. The govt. effectively already crossed the socialism Rubicon in 2008-2009 with the former. Coca Cola and other companies would be re-purposed to produce healthy food, and the loss of profit would be covered so shareholders are still made whole. However, people are getting obese not from just junk food or sodas, but too much food overall. Pasta...anything carb heavy can easily produce obesity.

Why don’t we just tax fat people. That’s a direct tax on what we want to limit.

Many people enjoy all those foods and are not fat.

Never happen because the current ideology won’t admit that fat is unhealthy, it had to blame foods associated with obesity. And because a lot of those are typically black foods, they have to blame stereotypically red tribe stuff(sweet tea and BBQ) which are probably less harmful than the ultra processed food that they’ll be contorting themselves to avoid blaming.

Oh, that wasn't sarcasm, I'd be all for it. But shareholder compensation would ruin the goal of discouraging investment in industries that threaten the nation.

You don't make people whole after a proscription; cutting bits off and letting everyone know why is the whole point!

Putting right wing bodybuilder twitter in charge of the department of health would be a huge step up from Obesity Pride Parades in schools, but it'd still get pretty crazy when they banned seed oils and cooking meat to over 115F. Or whatever the hell they're on about at this point.

What I would like to see is a harm tax put in place that adds onto every unhealthy item the cost per item of its societal harm:

You are not the first person to think an excise tax is some galaxy brained proposal. And definitely not the first person to propose it for sugary drinks as the one solution to fix the obesity problem in America once and for all.

Please convince me how this one specific tax will save the trillions you claim are lost to "bad health". With evidence/reasoning, instead of just hand waving at TRILLIONS of dollars. Let's put aside the fact that this nanny state you propose can just about tax anything good/fun ever because anything ever done not in service of the GDP is technically wasting TRILLIONS of dollars.

Poor health costs trillions, not the consumption of sugar. I do not know who believes a sugar tax would solve all of obesity, that seems as unlikely as it solving all literacy issues.

I think a sugar tax would make a dent in the problem by (1) taking the money going to companies that sell harmful foods and using it for the costs associated with the foods, which disincentivizes the sale of healthy items and incentivizes intelligent people to work in a prosocial industry, (2) reducing the number of unhealthy food items purchased by citizens.

Coca Colas profits are 22bil yearly, so they have the funds to give back to society what they take out. If they want to sell things that cost society, they should pay for that cost.

Coca Cola is in the service of GDP. I hate the GDP metric. The difference between sugar and fun activities is that no significant margin of people looking back at their life would ever consider sugar consumption a good lifestyle choice. Fun you can argue is why we live, it is prosocial and even has health benefits and is, well, fun. Sugar transiently satisfies the dumb animal part of humans and in exchange leaves one less likely to experience future fun. So the difference between “fun things” and “bad pleasant things” is stark. We want more fun! Healthy humans with more resources = more fun. Unhealthy humans hooked on superstimuli sugars manufactured by food scientists to hook them is not very fun at all. It is just poison.

Poor health costs trillions, not the consumption of sugar. I do not know who believes a sugar tax would solve all of obesity, that seems as unlikely as it solving all literacy issues.

I think that is clear as much. Something that can be proven to cost billions can be hand-waved into costing trillions by invoking the n-th order effects. People are unhealthy this actually costs billions in healthcare -> But unhealthy people are less productive -> trillions in unrealized productivity.

Makes sense if you squint hard enough, but isn't convincing even said argumentation can be made for almost any widesweeping policy proposal.

Coca Colas profits are 22bil yearly, so they have the funds to give back to society what they take out. If they want to sell things that cost society, they should pay for that cost.

Yeah they "take out" from society just like every other company. I'm a dirty free market capitalist so this line of reasoning isn't all that convincing.

Coke isn't taking anything out of society, coke isn't making "society" drink 6 cans of coke in a day, its societies problem not cokes. Also you are not taking anything from coke, you are taking from "society" with a tax. As with any taxes ever, the cost is passed onto the consumer. If its not a pos tax, it will be passed onto the customers.

The difference between sugar and fun activities is that no significant margin of people looking back at their life would ever consider sugar consumption a good lifestyle choice.

What about video games? Or movies? Or spending time in online forums? I am sure if "society" spent 1 more hour at work instead of having fun billions could be realized in GDP.

But that isn't appealing to a lot of people who don't like the government having that much control over what they do.

This tax is unappealing to anyone but the most online of social conservatives who think making enough things illegal will bring forth the utopia.

Coke isn't taking anything out of society, coke isn't making "society" drink 6 cans of coke in a day

This is exactly what advertising is; their billion-dollar marketing team would be very disappointed to hear that they're all, what, playing make-believe? The entirety of marketing and advertising is just a big ineffective scam, and no-one has ever noticed?

Coke might not be "making" people do something by putting a gun to their head, but it spends over a billion dollars to get a certain social outcome, and then every year that outcome happens. I don't know what else you'd call that, David Hume

Advertising is to make you drink Coke over Pepsi or {insert soda brand} that X'th time you drink soda, or the more galaxy brained take is that for the reason we are mentioning Coke and not Pepsi [mind share].

It has little to do with making you drink it 6 times or 7 times or 5 times or 0 times.

Choice to drink is decided by you, choice on WHAT to drink is somewhat decided by the advertiser. At least to a much larger degree and is the entire point of advertising.

For sure the main focus in a market as saturated as that for soft drinks in the US is more focused on expanding a slice than growing the pie, but both effects are there.

Coke still spends $x to shift y units of Coke; it's largely immaterial to them whether those concumers would otherwise drink Dr Brown or nothing.

If there were no advertising for soft drinks in the US, what do you think the effect on overall consumption would be?

As with any taxes ever, the cost is passed onto the consumer. If its not a pos tax, it will be passed onto the customers.

Standard econ 101 arguments show that the cost of the tax will be split between the consumer and producer depending upon the elasticities of supply and demand. Demand for sugar is not perfectly inelastic so some of the tax burden will be shouldered by the producer.

Can you think of >0 ways in which participation in an online forum has more benefit in one’s life than sugar? If not, it would definitely be better to stop participating in them.

Honestly online forums are probably far worse for society than sugary foods. It’s borderline leading the country to civil war versus some miserable poor people getting cheap tasty food and dying at 60 instead of 85. Atleast the poors got to enjoy life till 60.

Sugar is plenty beneficial to my life. Some of my favorite foods are made with a lot of sugar. It makes almost everything I make taste better.

And no I am not fat, My health is pretty good given I lift 5 times a week and have been doing so for 8+ years now. Why should I be punished because others lack willpower, isn't that already being done with literally every other tax?

One of the reasons I do lift so much is that I can enjoy GOOD TASTING food with less guilt. If the government got in the way of that, I wouldn't be a big fan of them. O

Forums are plenty benefitial too.

When I have a ridiculously difficult to solve programming bug, I go to StackOverflow, etc.

I can't think of >0 ways in which forums have more benefit than sugar, and which couldn't be ignored by someone who wanted to ban or tax forums instead of sugar.

the solution to the real problem with this is to privatize the medical industry. then people would have to pay for the costs of their unhealthy behaviors themselves. the other problems you listed are not externalities, if poor health lowers someone's productivity, that means their income is lower than it would otherwise be so the costs are borne by themself, and it doesnt impose costs on other people. maybe you think that people have a duty to not behave in ways that decrease their productivity and fertility, for the sake of the tribe/nation/race, but i disagree with that because that ideology denies people freedom and involves interfering in their property rights.

Now, this will always be an estimate, but so are many taxes

That reads more like a mark against those taxes than a mark in favour of this one.

Your proposed tax is so ambitious that I think it would be fair to cite the socialist calculation problem and say that the government can't possibly know the tradeoffs involved.

Let me propose another tax: the social good tax. Where we calculate exactly how much is needed to achieve some social good, say health, and let the burden fall in such a manner that it is not completely counterproductive. Once we have achieved this we might look into expanding it to other social goods, say fertility, no more ambitious a good than health. In fact if we can achieve most social goods this way we can just do away with the market economy altogether.

If you can tax in exactly the right place, and spend in exactly the right place, why complicate things?

What I would like to see is a harm tax put in place that adds onto every unhealthy item the cost per item of its societal harm: the projected healthcare costs, the loss from intelligent citizens working for corporations that poison us, the projected loss of productivity.

This is regressive and will just make it so the lives of the poor are even worse. The amount of money some poor people spend on smoking and alcohol, most of it going to taxes, is likely enough to buy a house.

Further, most vices aren't increasing healthcare costs. Smoking doesn't. Most people will get cancer in their lifetime. Smokers will usually get it around the age of 65. In a few years they croak. We save on their future nursing home costs, their social security, etc. Similar with the obese. They are unlikely to make it much past 65. Old age is the most expensive period for healthcare.

Honestly, smoking should be encouraged, maybe even subsidized. It barely impacts productivity during one's work life, and it kills when people are more likely to retire and start hoovering up resources.

There seems to be no actionable plan, ready for implementation, to halt the rising tide of ill health. The numbers are steadily increasing adjusted for age, with some numbers rising faster in the young than in the old.

I'm cynical. I believe the plan is to get people so fucked that they need the government, and specifically a nanny-state, far-left, socialist government. It seems to me that activists push to make problems worse, so they can claim they are the solution. Find a thing you want to eliminate (single family homes, meat, cars), attribute everything bad in the world to it (climate change, cancer, inequality, racism, etc), and then work make those things worse (endless bureaucracy and permitting, dysfunctional layouts, taxes) so that eliminating it looks like a viable option. When it's gone, you apply all the bad things to a new target you want to eliminate.

Having a grand plan is antithetical to this.

single family homes, meat, cars

No-one wants to get rid of single-family homes. The goal is only to make it so that building other types of homes isn't restricted. If you want to buy a single-family home, no-one wants to stop you; the problem is when people start demanding everyone in their neighbourhood must not live any other way.

It's a similar story with cars. Drivers have been favoured for so long at the expense of transit, pedestrians and cyclists levelling the playing field a bit is now an unconscionable attack on cars. Again, if you want to drive a car that's fine but don't design cities such that the car is the only viable means of transportation.

Fair enough. But I want a single family home in a single family neighborhood. So I will advocate that my local government enforce strict rules to keep it that way. We should build more apartments and condos. Just not in my neighborhood, and enforced by law.

Just not in my neighborhood

Well, that's the problem, no-one wants new apartments in their single-family neighbourhood. If you live in a genuinely rural area, then that's more reasonable, but you can't expect to live within striking distance of a major city and demand that no new housing is built.

I believe the plan is to get people so fucked that they need the government, and specifically a nanny-state, far-left, socialist government.

It's funny because this is the exact opposite of a common left-wing theory here in Finland; that right-wing governments are consciously allowing the state-run health system to get underfunded and worse precisely so that it can be then be "rescued" by increasing the role of private, profit-oriented health care companies.

Both can be true. The malevolent actors in America need not be identical to the malevolent actors in Finland.

They're both right! The goal is to have the services run by some dystopian "private-public partnership" that can cut you off because of your tweets, or something.

Not everything is about culture wars. People can, in fact, has opinions on health policy without having some hidden agenda.

If the last decade or so has shown me anything, it's that it's an extremely small amount of people has any such opinions.

On top of that, even the ones that actually do have them, might not be able to resist the temptation of using the healthcare system to their political advantage.

If you adopt this kind of attitude, I don't know how you can do any sort of policymaking. At some level if you don't look at policies directly on the merits and start suspecting that everything is a secret plot by your culture war opponents, you would never be able to actually govern.

I'm growing increasingly convinced that "policymaking" is a rather vapid exercise. Sure, over the years we identified some bad policies you should steer clear of, but you can't say much beyond that. It's pretty trivial to twist any policy into something worse than the problem it aimed to address, and that sort of stuff has been happening regularly for decades now (or possibly for all of human history).

Find a thing you want to eliminate (single family homes, meat, cars), attribute everything bad in the world to it (climate change, cancer, inequality, racism, etc), and then work make those things worse (endless bureaucracy and permitting, dysfunctional layouts, taxes) so that eliminating it looks like a viable option.

I find this kind of a bizarre position to hold, because several of the alleged (and, in my opinion, quite possibly real) downsides of all of the 3 things you mention are the exact thing you claim are trying to be achieved.

Car-dependent sprawl and single-family-only zoning means nobody walks or bikes, which causes obesity. It also makes children less independent and capable, both physically and emotionally/psychologically. If someone is trying to make you more dependent on the government and less capable of being independent, then getting you away from a sprawling suburb is mostly counterproductive. Meat is more debatable, but meat with a high fat content is probably not great for you and at the very least we could use fewer agricultural subsidies. Moreover, getting completely rid of cars and single family homes is a weakman of most urbanists; to the extent that anyone is trying to achieve that, they're about as close as conservatives are to taking over academia. Right now, the overwhelming majority of bureaucracy, permitting, and taxes is applied to everything except single family homes and car infrastructure.

Car-dependent sprawl and single-family-only zoning means nobody walks or bikes, which causes obesity.

I've found single-family zones to be much more active. It only seems like dense areas are more active because of the higher population. But people feel less and less safe in high density urban environments.

  • It also makes children less independent and capable, both physically and emotionally/psychologically.

I wouldn't ever consider someone who grew up in a city to be more independent or capable. My experience has been the opposite; people in cities are highly dependent on others, and far less capable. They have to rely on others, because they have less experience having to depend on themselves. They only feel independent because of systems that the government has built. I'm sure some people feel independent hopping on the subway to go get groceries. But those living with yards can be independent by growing their own food. Hell, I've noticed that most city folks don't seem to understand how to do this. Cities aren't even great places to grow gardens, since the fluoridated water absolutely ruins the yield. So you have to use a rainwater system, which needs a bit more space. Composting in dense cities? Nope. Can you keep a bunch of random crap to reuse at some point in your life? Doubt it. It all goes in the trash.

Dense cities suck. You're more dependent on the government. You only feel independent because you don't know your neighbours. And that's another major downside of cities. In a zombie apocalypse, I know my neighbour isn't going to rob me blind, they are going to help me build the barricades.

I've found single-family zones to be much more active.

I can't speak to your experience, but I think the available evidence says that people are generally more active in walkable places. e.g. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/activity-inequality-nature17.pdf

See also this video more generally.

But people feel less and less safe in high density urban environments.

Being near other people makes things safer. Think about an empty parking lot compared to a town square full of people. Which is safer? Urban environments only feel unsafe to walk in when everyone except the poor and homeless are in cars.

I wouldn't ever consider someone who grew up in a city to be more independent or capable. My experience has been the opposite; people in cities are highly dependent on others, and far less capable. They have to rely on others, because they have less experience having to depend on themselves.

Again, I can't speak to your experience; perhaps we're using different definitions of "independent." In my experience, there are a lot of these people, who now live in the city as a young adult, but grew up in suburbs.

Being able to walk to school is one of the best things for children's independence and growth; see e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494402902434 or https://www.utoronto.ca/news/why-walking-school-better-driving-your-kids. And as one would expect, walking to school is correlated with living near school and low car traffic.

But those living with yards can be independent by growing their own food.

Ok, but what portion of them actually do this? It seems like you're using notions of independence that most people don't actually experience or engage in, regardless of whether they theoretically could or not. I grew up in the suburbs and I doubt anyone in my neighborhood could grow more food than a handful of tomato plants. Not one of them would survive a zombie apocalypse; to the extent they had extra space for storing things, it went to holding the kid's car, or a lawn mower, or useless old crap, not canned food and jugs of water (and I'm not sure anyone other than our family had ever even fired a gun).

The notion of independence I'm thinking of is making people capable of making their own decisions, evaluating and dealing with risks, handling disagreement, controlling their emotions, etc. But mostly in the context of every day life; I think a lack of independence in this sense is largely at the root of recent spikes in childhood depression and anxiety, in anti-free-speech behavior, in refusal to engage with the outgroup, etc. Being driven everywhere until you're 16 and not being allowed out on your own prevent children from developing these skills.

You're more dependent on the government

This is such a silly thing to say in the modern day - everyone is dependent on government. In fact, the very existence of single-family neighbourhoods is dependent on government regulation and the banning of other types of housing.

They have to rely on others

As if you don't. Who maintains the suburban roads without which you wouldn't be able to get anywhere?

But those living with yards can be independent by growing their own food.

Growing vegetables in your garden is a hobby. A very pleasant one to be sure, but not a means of subsistence.

Further, most vices aren't increasing healthcare costs. Smoking doesn't. Most people will get cancer in their lifetime. Smokers will usually get it around the age of 65. In a few years they croak. We save on their future nursing home costs, their social security, etc. Similar with the obese. They are unlikely to make it much past 65. Old age is the most expensive period for healthcare.

I dunno about that. Cancer treatment is insanely expensive, so is treating long-term health consequences of obesity or smoking. Some may drop dead at 60, but others get sick at 50 and then die at 70. Old age is not that expensive, its old people getting sick which is expensive.

But most old people are going to get sick. Most people who don't die young will get cancer. Most will die of cancer (or heart disease). So whether you get it at 50 or 70 or 90, it doesn't matter. The cost is the same. But if you get it around 65 and croak, then that's potentially a couple decades of social security saved. A decade of nursing homes expenses. A couple decades of medicare. And most of these people aren't contributing to society, they are just consuming.

It seems mostly tied to an old Dutch study. Many health services come to opposite conclusions using different methodologies. I think many of them don't even factor lifetime costs of care and simply report certain amount of costs associated with treating the health conditions of certain socially disapproved lifestyles.

How exactly do cars, single family homes, and meat (of all things) make people harder to control?

Also, are you saying single family homes and car culture are not a cause of poor urban planning, which makes housing inaccessible, worsens people's health (as they just drive a car everywhere instead of walking) and contributes to climate change (as people need to drive everywhere, hence using more fuel)?

There are greener options for vehicles these days. I don't think climate change is the existential risk that it's made out to be; I think it's made out to be an existential risk to further policy goals.

Poor urban planning really comes down to the government meddling and trying to create 'livable' neighbourhoods that fall apart. Housing is inaccessible because meddling bureaucracies have made it that way. If you can build what you want on your land, suddenly housing becomes really accessible and very affordable.

If you can build what you want on your land

And isn't that what the activists are asking for? Lifting restrictions on construction?

‘Houston’ is not what Yimbies have in mind.

And isn't that what the activists are asking for? Lifting restrictions on construction?

No, they just want to change the restrictions on construction.

OK then, "easing" or "partially lifting" the restrictions?

Or are they planning to implement some entirely new restrictions?

Summarizing that post: The cars, houses, and meat aren't what make people harder to control. They're the things that the activists want to control. The activists want other problems to be worse so they can use those problems as an excuse to control those things.

Single-family homes seems like a poor example compared to the other ones, since the main thrust of the pro-density activism is loosening control -- giving people more scope to do with their property what they wish

It gives people more scope to create externalities. The activists wish to control the people affected by the externalities, not the people who produce them.

since the main thrust of the pro-density activism is loosening control -- giving people more scope to do with their property what they wish

No, it isn't. It's marketed that way, but it really means "giving people more scope to do with their property as the activists wish". None of them is going to be OK with my building a 10-foot fence or a 6-car garage or just parking my cars on the lawn or building a building for a business or any of the various other things I'm not allowed to do. All they want to do is "allow" more dwelling units.

Maybe this applies to some people but not all of us. I consider myself a YIMBY and I support your right to do all of those on your own land. Principled libertarians are not a myth

And more flexible setbacks, and mixed-use, and less arduous parking minimums, etc etc. Even if you think the position is too minimal or cynical, the net result is certainly not an expansion of state power.

Setbacks are one of those weird things where they don't seem like they matter until they really really do. Like when putting up a barn on the border of your property in violation of local zoning washes out your neighbors drive way. (The #barnlaw saga has been a trip but @morlockp went private when he started running for state office.)

But are rigid setbacks (as the lawyers say) the least restrictive means of preventing your land from draining to somebody else's land? Instead, the code could say something like:

Your site plan should include a hydrologic study showing that your proposed building will not shed additional water onto any adjacent property. If your site plan does not include such a hydrologic study, then it must adhere to this table of default setbacks, which will produce a presumption (rebuttable by a hydrologic study) that your proposed building will not shed additional water onto any adjacent property.

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I'm cynical. I believe the plan is to get people so fucked that they need the government, and specifically a nanny-state, far-left, socialist government.

BZZT! You have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute.

I wonder how many downvotes are from people who don't know how to use the three seashells.

Avoid low-effort snark.

Sorry, the parent post just reminded me so much of Lenina Huxley's litany of things that are bad, and therefore banned.

I think this would largely make sodas prohibitively expensive.

Sure. And people might switch to drinking plain water. Or they might spend more of their food budget on sodas and skip buying any vegetables at all. And people who earn enough won't be hurt by a soda tax, just the very poor, who are already eating badly and living in bad conditions.

Cigarettes are one of the "old reliables" in Irish budgets, where the government increases taxes on them every year in order to 'encourage people to stop smoking'. The rules around advertising have been tightened, and cigarette packets have to be in standardised packaging (so no more brand logos, instead health warnings with graphic imagery ).

Has it helped? Yes and no. People moved on to vaping and to roll your own cigarettes, and of course there is always the trade in smuggled cigarettes/selling loose cigarettes. Smoking has declined, but the gap between the better off and the worse off is stark:

A new report published today to mark World No Tobacco Day reveals that there is a three-fold difference (11% versus 31%) in smoking between the highest and lowest socio-economic groups.

This gap has widened considerably as prevalence among the highest socio economic group in 2015 has dropped from 16%, while smoking among the lowest socio-economic group rose by 2%.

Dr Paul Kavanagh, HSE Public Health Medicine Specialist said overall the proportion of people who currently smoke reduced from 23% in 2015 to 18% in 2021.

So "don't be naughty" taxes may work, but the biggest shift in behaviour is likely to be amongst those who are already trying to make healthy choices, and the effect will simply be punitive but not behaviour-changing on those who are least healthy.

Maybe this time, the carrot (pun intended) is better than the stick. Somebody lecturing and finger-wagging about 'don't drink soda' is going to go in one ear and out the other; getting directly involved with people who, for instance, will give a baby soda in their bottle and teaching them how to live normally will do much more. But that kind of community nurse regular visits programme would cost a lot more than simply slapping on a soda tax, so I don't think it's likely to happen.

Tax soda and people will just make sweet tea(unless you plan on taxing retail sugar as well, in which case, good luck) to drink.

That's work though, so my first guess would be, no they won't.

Making sweet tea is both a trivial amount of work and extremely common among the poor, because it’s a cheap way to make shitty tasting tap water drinkable.

Replacing soda consumption with sweet tea among more working class consumers is probably not a large public health win.

Is that a thing in the South of the US? I never saw it growing up fairly poor in Canada, nor did I see it in when I lived in California.

In the south and culturally similar communities(blacks), yes. And it’s usually far sugary-er than cola.

Primarily in the American South, yes. Though it is much more widely available now than it used to be; I believe you can get sweet tea at McDonalds considerably outside the South today.

This here. When you're talking about changing the behaviour of the lower classes, focus on adding things that cost people time and effort rather than money, it'll be the most effective intervention.

Ironically the lower classes are those whose time and effort is worth the least amount of money per unit, but they are still dissuaded the most relatively by extra effort being needed vs extra money...

people who, for instance, will give a baby soda in their bottle

Do people actually do this? Why would anyone ever do this?

I give my kid fruit juice and it's not much better for ya.

Maybe stop doing that?

Nah, it tastes good and I do it sparingly or water it down. Life's too short even if you're two.

That seems fine then, as long as it's freshly-squeezed natural juice and not industrially-produced junk.

I'm told my grandmother gave me Dr. Pepper in a bottle long after I was otherwise done with bottles. This was blamed for the wretched state of my teeth when I started Kindergarten, though I've personally believed that the part where nobody told me that rensing your mouth with Dr. Pepper immediately after brushing your teeth is a bad idea had something to do with it.

(I feel obligated to defend myself by pointing out that I quit sodas when I was 13 and haven't looked back since. It's just that, when I was 5, I started school with no upper incisors and silver canines making me look like a sleepy robot vampire.)

I was skeptical myself. This survey looked at three different locations in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam and asked parents to report whether different high calorie beverages (HCBs) had been introduced to their child:

HCBs, such as cordial, flavoured milk, 100% fruit juice, fruit drink, and non-caffeinated soft drinks ... were introduced at an early age in all localities, but more frequently in Vietnam. 36.9% of respondents in HCMC [Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam] reported giving HCBs to children at six months or less, compared with 13.0% in Campbelltown [Australia] and 12.1% in Singapore. At one year, 72.6% of participants in HCMC had introduced HCBs, compared to 32.4% in Campbelltown and 36.3% in Singapore.

The most common high calorie beverage seems to be fruit juice. In Campbelltown and Singapore, soft drinks appear to be fairly uncommon before age 1 -- maybe around 5 percent in Singapore and well under that in Campbelltown.

I can't be sure what the numbers would be like in the USA, and they would probably vary by region.

Also, note that the numbers before 6 months are even smaller, and that 1 year olds are often not bottle fed any more, for what it's worth.

Edit: Actually, reading further, it appears that none of the parents in Singapore or Campbelltown gave their children soft drinks of any kind by 6 months:

Non-caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 8) were introduced by 2.4% of participants in HCMC by six months, but none were introduced in Campbelltown and Singapore. At one year, the rate rose to 11.9% of participants in HCMC, compared to 1.9% in Campbelltown and 5.5% in Singapore.

...

Caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 9) were introduced by six months by 3.6% of participants in HCMC, but by none in Campbelltown and Singapore. By one year, 9.5% of participants in HCMC had introduced caffeinated soft drinks, compared to 0.9% in Campbelltown, and 1.1% in Singapore.

This reinforces my skepticism about soft drink bottle feeding, I have to say.

Yes, people do this. Underclass women without good role models make absolutely horrendous childbearing decisions and that’s one of them.

I had an accident one winter and damaged a part on my car just before spring break. So I took greyhound that trip. I learned many things about people, and I'm pretty sure Greyhound should change their motto to, It's not just a ride, it's an adventure.

One of the many memorable people was a young lady with a roughly 6mo old baby. Who she said cried if her baby didn't get a bottle of cola about once an hour (I kept my guess about caffeine withdrawal as the cause to my self).

(I kept my guess about caffeine withdrawal as the cause to my self).

Are not babies crying every hour the default? Regardless of caffeine withdrawal or not. Babies cry if they are hungry, sleepy, in an uncomfortable position, need their diapers changed, etc.

My guess (yet to have a baby) is that the baby was crying because hungry, and the mother in question discovered that soda works in replacement of milk.

It's abnormal for a six month old to need to eat that often, six month olds eat about 4-5 times a day (with 3-4 hours between feeds) and nap 3ish times a day.

Usually a watchful parent can tell if a baby needs something (food, sleep, etc) before it reaches the point of crying. If a baby cries, a parent should be able to resolve the issue without soda. A six month old is past the point of colic.

That's a pretty short time for a child older than a few months to be getting hungry or sleepy in my admittedly limited experience. Yeah, babies seem to love all things sweet, so I'm sure soda was pretty easy to get him to drink.

Based on Philadelphia's soda tax, people either bought sodas outside the tax jurisdiction or switched to sugar in untaxed forms (like candy).

What is the “community nurse” doing other than “finger wagging about dont drink soda”? Why won’t her words go in one ear and out the other? The fact that people continue smoking despite all the well-known harms and warnings suggests that a mild-mannered suggestion from some obese nurse will have no greater effect. What revelatory information about cigarettes or soda is the nurse going to provide? If you are so stupid as to give your baby soda rather than breast milk nothing can help your baby short of losing custody

Most of these people are underclass women who literally just don’t know how to take care of a baby because they’re low IQ and not around other parents. I’m skeptical that a middle class woman lecturing them about proper formula is going to make any difference, but better information would probably help.

These women are too stupid to be taught. They need to be sterilized because you will never otherwise stop them from abusing their kids.

No, my experience has been that fairly stupid and immature women can dramatically improve their mothering in the presence of good role models or accessible information. Maybe not to win parent of the year, but enough to not abuse the kids by accident.

I do not think that any community nurse program in the USA would constitute those two things, because it would be a woke middle class woman giving a condescending lecture and then quitting for higher pay before being able to form a relationship with these women.

I admire your optimistic belief that you could tutor the underclass and make them not garbage. How I wish that optimism was, even once, justified.

It is definitely possible that someone lecturing them might cause them to change their behavior. It definitely did and does happen in many contexts and for many behaviors. Humans behavior is most definitely malleable.

Now, will this cause the outcomes to converge across the board? I wouldn’t bet on this.

It's interesting lumping in type 1 with type 2 diabetes as one of those societal harms that members of society are potentially responsible for even though the best guesses at cause are genetic predisposition with some environmental factor triggering. If anything, the parents should be the ones to be bear the costs (and they do for the most part as with many other hereditary diseases). Why should general healthcare costs be counted as a societal harm? Those costs are typically borne by the same person who made the decision in the first place. Are people not allowed to make poor decisions and then reap the consequences? If the appeal is from the perspective of publicly covered healthcare costs, then that sounds like the mirror of right-wing economic critiques of those options warning that it justifies the state intervening in your personal life decisions to control those costs. Your productivity loss and what looks like opportunity-cost based taxes are indirect forms of the state deciding what a person should be doing with their life rather the tax bill instead of the more direct truncheon. I think Douglas Powers said it best.

Type 1 isn't autoimmune ?

Autoimmune is a description of a mechanism, not the description of the cause. Saying that a person's immune system attacked their vital organs does not explain why the thing happened. Holding society at large accountable would certainly be novel.

Type 1 is majority environmental: https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/54/suppl_2/S125/12859

It isn’t lifestyle related like Type 2, and nobody’s quite sure what the environmental triggers even are (except that they don’t seem to be present in less industrialized regions- for example, Karelians on the Finnish side of the border have 6x the incidence of those on the Russian side, despite similar diet and genetics…).

Holding society at large accountable actually seems pretty appropriate in this case.

Americans drive everywhere, sit down to work, and feel too frazzled to cook for themselves so they eat foods designed to be addictive. They're getting poorer year over year and worry about whether they'll ever get to have kids, own a house, or retire. Anything less than total societal restructure is not going to put a dent on those problems.

On the plus side, we still have working antibiotics.

Somewhat surprisingly, only 1/150 kids are diagnosed with autism. I thought it would be higher than that given all the attention it has gotten and the alarmist language by the media when talking about it. This is still really rare compared to diabetes and other problems.

I wonder how much the increase in diabetes is due to increased diagnosis such as borderline diabetes cases that would have been ignored 20 years ago.

I don't see any reasons for these problems to get better. Food is too tasty and cheap and abundant. People don't seem that cornered about these health consequences, because someone else will always pay for the treatment. It's like a bottomless pit of money.

I wonder how much the increase in diabetes is due to increased diagnosis such as borderline diabetes cases that would have been ignored 20 years ago.

There is no such thing as borderline type 1, and symptomatic type 1 diabetes is very easy to diagnose (and kills you within months if you ignore it). So increased diagnosis is not the cause of increased type 1 diabetes.

Where I live (New Jersey) the autism rate is already 1/32 and rising. I think we may deal with more pollutants than other states.

It will be interesting to see the societal effects of the soon coming shortage of low dose amphetamines in the population given how widespread their usage.

This is just the externality problem writ large, and the usual problem applies: Nobody knows the value of the net externality, not to an order of magnitude and usually not the sign either. Furthermore, externalities are related to transactions, not products, and your "harm tax" can't take that into account. A carb-loaded energy drink being sold to a fitness fanatic to fuel his pastime may have negative harm; the same drink sold to an already-obese couch potato may have positive harm. The same goes for basically everything less bad for you than cigarettes, including soda.

In short, this is just the authoritarian impulse, and whatever the other drawbacks of authoritarianism are, neither you nor Michael Bloomberg nor anyone else is smart and knowledgeable enough to make it work as described.

An “authoritarian” solution by better than no solution, especially when your absence of a solution is annihilation of the population.

I am sure if we can go to the moon that we can establish a useful “harm tax” which, given the usual complexity of tax law, would never be fully justifiable on a web forum. But I’m not at all persuaded by your criticism.

First, one one carb drink is identical to all carb drinks. Carb drinks do not necessarily have to contain HFCS or simple sugars.

Second, there are a number of viable workarounds that can be implemented such as doctor’s permission or write-offs for healthy people.

Do you have another criticism? A trillion dollar problem can have a 20 billion dollar solution and be well worthwhile.

An “authoritarian” solution by better than no solution

As a long time libertarian, I'll say that is certainly one opinion.

An “authoritarian” solution by better than no solution

No, that is exactly what it is not.

especially when your absence of a solution is annihilation of the population.

You have failed to demonstrate this, certainly.

I am sure if we can go to the moon that we can establish a useful “harm tax”

Oh come on, that was a canard before I was born. And we could still go to the moon then.

given the usual complexity of tax law, would never be fully justifiable on a web forum.

A most marvelous formulation which, unfortunately, will not fit in the text box of this post, right?

First, one one carb drink is identical to all carb drinks. Carb drinks do not necessarily have to contain HFCS or simple sugars.

A carb drink for an athlete has to contain "fast carbs", simple sugars and/or short-chain polysaccharides. But the point is more general; there are many common products (including bulk flour and sugar) which are bad for some, good for others, and which therefore cannot be properly handled by any sort of "harm tax" on the product.

Second, there are a number of viable workarounds that can be implemented such as doctor’s permission or write-offs for healthy people.

These are not viable workarounds. If they were, you wouldn't need your "harm tax", you could just tax unhealthiness directly.

A trillion dollar problem can have a 20 billion dollar solution and be well worthwhile.

If the solution does not work, that its cost is less than that of the problem it fails to solve does not make it worthwhile.

It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight. This, plus the fertility consequences of poor health, predicts future annihilation.

A carb drink for an athlete has to contain "fast carbs", simple sugars

It has unique benefits to the athlete, but we do not base the legality of things on what benefits an athlete. Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

X should be legal for Y therefore we can not make it illegal for non-Y

There are many medications and so on that are limited to certain groups of individuals. This is just not a strong criticism.

These are not viable workarounds

Why are they viable in so many contexts today, whether we’re talking about special allergy medications or special ADHD medicine?

It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight.

There is no "our health". My health is excellent and not much changing presently.

It has unique benefits to the athlete, but we do not base the legality of things on what benefits an athlete. Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

Taking the position that I can't take Gatorade on a bike ride because someone else consumes too much sugar is part of the memeplex that has cemented my enmity against the public health complex.

There are many medications and so on that are limited to certain groups of individuals.

I don't think literally requiring a loicense to buy sugar is where I want society to go.

The loicense would be for non-taxed simple sugars for athletes

I don’t think ‘creating a black market in untaxed Gatorade’ is the best answer to obesity as a social crisis.

Consider (1) prohibitions are meant to reduce, not eliminate, (2) prohibitions have always worked to reduce in America, whether for alcohol or marijuana use (the latter having risen in legalized areas).

Black market would be a non-issue for Gatorade, which is a specially tailored product made by food scientists to cause habitual use. The black market would be for sugar, but since obesity is in part a problem of convenience, it’s still a non-issue. As someone who has smoked, I can assure you that tax-free tobacco is hard to come by.

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It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight. This, plus the fertility consequences of poor health, predicts future annihilation.

We're not seeing infertility due to poor health. And no, we don't see that our health is "ever worsening with no end in sight".

Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

And now your "harm tax" is itself causing harm, of the same sort it purports to prevent.

Why are they viable in so many contexts today, whether we’re talking about special allergy medications or special ADHD medicine?

Special allergy medications being by prescription actually turned out to be unworkable; most of them are over the counter now. The reason special exemptions to your various taxes for healthy people, gated by doctors, are not viable is that the scale of the exemption would need to be far too large.

We're not seeing infertility due to poor health

We sure are.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1701216318303694

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reproductive-problems-in-both-men-and-women-are-rising-at-an-alarming-rate/?amp=true

And no, we don't see that our health is "ever worsening with no end in sight".

We sure do, see OP post.

And now your "harm tax" is itself causing harm of the same sort it purports to prevent

This is genuinely nonsensical. An endurance athlete not having access to simple sugars might reduce performance, but the magnitude of the harm of sugar is, man, something like 100,000x the benefit it gives to endurance athletes (who are already healthy). You can be perfectly healthy without access to simple sugars, but obviously access to simple sugars is making many people grossly unhealthy.

but the magnitude of the harm of sugar is, man, something like 100,000x the benefit it gives to endurance athletes

I'd like to see a source for this bizarre statistic.

Why would you expect there to be a pre established source for such a comparison? Luckily for us we can reason without sources.

Sugar is not making the difference between an athlete improving their health or not. Sugar is for performance gain among vigorous exercisers. If they did not have sugar, their health would not reduce significantly, although their transient performance might. Sugar has led to obesity, though, which is 100,000 times worse for health averaging out across the population than the performance gains of sugar in exercisers. Eg, if you take out sugar, obesity will decrease, but exercisers won’t take anything approaching a hit that would cancel out the decrease in obesity

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I am sure if we can go to the moon

We used to be able to do that, but in 2022, it takes us a decade-long project to get to the point where we keep cancelling unmanned rocket launches. The Artemis Project is a perfect encapsulation of why I might have trusted the United States Federal government with a Something Must Be Done plan in the 1962 but want to tell them to fuck off and stop taking my money for useless make-work in 2022.

In principle, such a tax is a fine idea. In practice, I can go to the CDC website and see that their nutrition recommendations are terrible. Worse still, I can see from Covid policies and noises being made around climate change that these taxes would be selected based on so many biased political preferences that I'm skeptical of whether they'd make any sense at all. You're not getting a reduction in estrogenic microplastics, you're getting bans on beef because The Science^tm says that red meat is bad.

On a personal level, I would resent being taxed for other people's bad behavior. During long runs and bike rides, I eat packets that are literally just pure sugar, because if you fail to do that, you will run out of energy. These would be labeled as "bad for you" by pretty much any broadly applied nutrition standard and I'd be charged more. This is an example that I'm personally familiar with, but I'm sure there are a million more that people with different circumstances could come up with.

I have no suggestions that I think are useful, scalable, and politically plausible. Things will simply get worse unless a wild deus ex machina appears to bail us out.

In practice, I can go to the CDC website and see that their nutrition recommendations are terrible

The first page I found seems reasonable?

  • Emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products
  • Includes a variety of protein foods such as seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), soy products, nuts, and seeds.
  • Is low in added sugars, sodium, saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol.
  • Stays within your daily calorie needs

[ hmm - I can't seem to get lists to work well inside quotes ]

Sorry, forgot this was sitting in my inbox.

My objections are to the anti-fat, low-meat, anti-sodium pieces. I'm extremely skeptical of that being good advice. The food safety pages are comically risk averse, although I suppose that's only adjacent to nutritional advice. I'm not going to trust nutrition advice from someone that tells me raw eggs are unreasonably dangerous, that I should eat 6 ounces or less of lean meat per day, or that I should drink skim milk.

How is it anti-meat?

  • Re anti-fat, I thought trans fat was emphatically bad? The advice to avoid saturated fats seems like the most plausibly bad advice in the list, but afaik the jury is still out there.

  • The balance of the evidence seems to suggest sodium is also bad?

  • Where does the CDC advice eating 6 ounces or less of lean meat per day?

  • I think, given most people consume too many calories, recommending skim milk over whole milk makes good public health sense

Re anti-fat, I thought trans fat was emphatically bad? The advice to avoid saturated fats seems like the most plausibly bad advice in the list, but afaik the jury is still out there.

Not sure on trans fats, I haven't gone back to at any point recently. Recommending against saturated fats is what I was complaining about on that line.

The balance of the evidence seems to suggest sodium is also bad?

The majority of studies I've seen that show any benefit are looking at sodium reduction for hypertensives. To my knowledge, there is no compelling evidence that metabolically healthy people benefit from reducing sodium consumption. One of the main reasons I'm skeptical of the generalized claim is noting that East Asian countries with very high life expectancies have high sodium consumption. On a personal level (again, the main thing I'm arguing is that public health advice is bad for individuals) I suffer from muscle cramps during hard workouts if I don't intentionally consume more extra salt.

Where does the CDC advice eating 6 ounces or less of lean meat per day?

That number came from punching my numbers into their calculator. Again though, I see no need to restrict to "lean" meat.

I think, given most people consume too many calories, recommending skim milk over whole milk makes good public health sense

Yeah, this is why I suggest that healthy individuals ignore them. Something can make good public health sense (I'm skeptical, but whatever) while being useless or deleterious for people that aren't in the relevant treatment group. Skimping on full fat milk, butter, and fatty meat would do literally nothing to improve my health. Really, this gets back to the core of how this discussion started - maybe the CDC could create some tax scheme that improves health in aggregate, but I thoroughly resent being punished for other people's bad behavior.

I will scale back my claim above that their nutrition recommendations are terrible though - these aren't completely crazy, they're just pointless advice for healthy individuals.

That's half good, half bad advice. They still are riding the "fat is bad" train and wrongly advising against fatty milk and meat. They are hopeless and should never be given legal authority over food.

Given that most people eat far too many calories and fat-free milk has 25% fewer calories than 2% milk, isn't it reasonable to advise against fatty milk? I know the jury is still out on saturated fats, but I thought trans fat was almost universally considered bad?

So, from my perspective, I see them batting 17.5/18, which seems pretty good

Milk's a good source of fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin K, but these are obviously found in the fat portion of the emulsion and removing the fat removes them. So milk is one of the worst places to try to cut calories.

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