The article seems to be shittily written in my opinion but I figure if you watch the video (about a minute) it will get the point across.
My question lies in, do you think this will benefit the health of the people moving forward, or do you fear it being weaponized to endorse or threaten companies to comply with the mention of Kennedy being tied to its future as mentioned in the end of the article
Weird to write an article that links to the page it’s mostly plagiarized from: https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling
Thanks for posting that. Honestly I would almost guess the article was compiled by AI, as it seems to assume you know information it has not previously mentioned.
If you notice it mentions the symbol multiple times but never shows it. (Not a symbol it can type) Where as a human would have written/drawn/ known it has to be shown or none of the references make sense.
Or I’m an idiot and they just are saying the term “healthy” is the symbol they are going to use?
I read in another article that the “healthy” symbol is currently under development.
Is it an actual symbol or just the word?
No, it’s gonna be some kind of logo that can be used on labels. Like I said, it’s under development currently. What it will look like, nobody is quite sure, in the article. I read mentioned that some critics believe it will oversimplify the matter of buying healthy food, and that it should be more like a label That has some kind of explanation.
Thanks I was an ass just now elsewhere in the comments so I appreciate you being sound. I am not always lol
My understanding is it will be a symbol, kind of like the USDA Organic symbol. Not necessarily similar in design, but just that the organic symbol means it’s met USDA criteria for being organic
Okay so I’m not crazy thinking they left a very important part of the message out. To me it should have said: FDA Developing a new symbol that will frame the market for they believe is New Healthy
And it will get reversed in a month…already heard Trumpicans calling it “woke”.
Damn librulz always tryna take my trans fats!
First, they came for frogs and made them gay, and I didn’t speak up for I’m not a frog.
Then they came for my fats and made them trans.
Ooh ohh, let me play ….
I didn’t speak up because I’m not a French fry
Then they came for my weekly paycheck and made it bi
I just don’t put fats on any sort of pedestal.
They’re just part of cooking, a means to an end. Excess is the enemy of any form of health, just have a balance.
No steak cooked in butter will be healthier than broccoli boiled in it.
Sorry, trail mix isn’t healthy.
And saturated fats can be. The whole thing against sat fats is wrong, and was proven so by 1994.
The FDA is full of shit on this.
They’ve always been behind the times. If you’re old enough you’ll remember the cholesterol scare. They apparently hadn’t learned the different types of cholesterol yet. This is from my youth.
To be fair regulation will always trail research
Not really.
If you cook from ingredients, you’ll usually be reasonably healthy. It’s not impossible to make healthy prepared foods, but it’s (comparatively) expensive enough that that, not awareness, is the main limitation.
This is a good try, but no I don’t see it helping. Those of us who can afford healthier choices already do so.
My simplification is that most people fall into one of these scenarios
- just need the cheapest, possibly emphasize comfort food - doesn’t matter what’s healthy if it’s not in your budget
- proportions and quantity. This won’t help
- prepared food, whether frozen or restaurant, is a disaster.
I fall in to the second camp. I generally know what’s healthy and try to get it, but I don’t succeed with portion control or proportions. If the wrong things still dominate your plate, and your plate is too full, it doesn’t matter if some things have a healthy symbol.
I have no idea how to fix people like me, but for the first scenario I really believe we need a financial incentive. Back in the old days you ate a lot of vegetables because what came out of your garden was the cheapest food. Now thanks partly to government subsidies, corn syrup is both the cheapest food, and appeals to our evolutionary desire for sweetness. Let’s start by redirecting those subsidies to support a healthier food supply, but yeah I think we’re going to need a vice tax
- proportions and quantity. This won’t help
If we use less high-fructose corn syrup then it will help since fructose delays your body’s feeling of satiation.
I agree with most of your post except the the first 2 sentences.
We don’t know what we don’t know. You assume we already know what the healthy options are. But with 50 years of education propping up a food pyramid that was developed as a marketing tool by kellogs we don’t actually know what’s best for us.
We think grains & cereals are the best. These along with sugars have the highest caloric value. It makes absolute sense to eat these if food is scarce and difficult to get as they provide the best bang for buck.
But in modern society where food is easy to get grains and carbs aren’t good.
So reeducating everyone using the understanding science has developed oner the last 50 yrs is hugely important. We’ve been feeding ourselves based on misinformation.
So are my cheerios healthy? They not only make that claim on the box but I was raised with that knowledge all my life, as were my parents. And it is oats, and does have what used to be a decent amount of fiber. And I eat it with yogurt and fruit. Yet it’s another carb, and has much less fiber, vitamins, protein than many modern breakfast cereal.
Are my eggs healthy? Or do they raise cholesterol? Or am I likely to cook them with less healthy choices? Is my toast more carbs than cereal or less? More fiber or less? Is butter bad or good this week? What if I pair with sausage or bacon?
Not subsidizing corn would be a good start. Why is HFCS shit cheaper than vegetables? Rhetorical question.
OP, please reword title of your post to be an open-ended question.
Ah, I just clicked the copy button as I thought it was one of the communities that required the title to match the articles title. (Jerboa doesn’t show community rules on the side). Sorry about that
Edit: done
I know I’m an awful pedant who doesn’t wurd gud either half the time, but you meant to say populace not populous in the title. Hope you don’t mind me pointing it out :-)
Haha thanks. Nah I added that part in to make it fit the community rules I violated by accident. Thanks for the heads up.
Constructive critiques are always good in my book. (Wish I always kept that demeanor)
Bad nutrition both in the comments and the FDA. :-\
Care to elaborate on what you are referencing?
Just focusing on the article and FDA statements - it reminds me of a chapter in Colin Campbell’s book, The China Study. He was part of some of the committees that were involved in drafting dietary guidelines, which ended up including the now-infamous idea that fats should be reduced. In his own book he lamented how it turned out, but from his perspective it had more to do with the over-emphasis on specific nutrients (like fat, but it’s also worth noting that these early guidelines did contribute to the rise of the supplements industry as well).
When these guidelines are made, what they become is essentially a hodgepodge of ideas that try to placate both nutritional professionals, as well as industry lobbyists (who are always involved in these committes and aggressively try to push their own recommendations).
So in the case of these new guidelines what I think we’re seeing here is more of the same. In nutritional science there is a scientific consensus on which overall dietary pattern is considered most appropriate for the wellbeing of the general population (which is to say it currently has the largest body of evidence to support it’s benefits and efficacy). That would be the Mediterranean diet, as described by Ancel Keys. Contrary to popular belief this is not a diet that’s all about eating chicken all the time and guzzling olive oil by the gallon. “This approach emphasizes a plant-based diet, focusing on unprocessed cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruits. It also includes moderate consumption of fish, dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt), and a low amount of red meat.”
(As a sidenote recent research on a new “green Mediterranean diet” variant has been demonstrating that these dietary patterns produce even greater health benefits when the plant-based side of the diet is emphasized even more).
If you squint hard enough you can still see the bones of the Mediterranean guidelines in these new FDA guidelines. But now where things get self-contradicting is their statements on saturated fat. To be clear, no matter what any half-baked health influencer spouts, the evidence on saturated fat is so voluminous and thorough it could not be more concrete. Saturated fat absolutely increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, and should strictly be limited. The recommendations from Harvard:
“The American Heart Association advises a limit of 5% to 6% of your daily calories, while the Dietary Guidelines for Americans says 10% is fine. Registered dietitian Kathy McManus, who directs the Department of Nutrition at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, suggests a happy medium of 7%. That happens to be the typical amount of saturated fat in the heart-friendly Mediterranean-style diet.”
And yet in these new guidelines you get misleading recommendations to, on the one hand, limit saturated fat, while on the other hand, they’re now going to promote potentially high sources of saturated fats as “healthy”; those being dairy, eggs, and nuts and seeds.
Some things are a step in the right direction. The emphasis on whole foods is good. But I think ultimately it’s going to lead to more confusion, and it’s dubious as to how helpful it’s going to be. It also still makes the mistake of overemphasizing single nutrients rather than overall dietary patterns.
And I dunno, it probably doesn’t matter. Unless we can truly eliminate the toxic food environment (that is, the absolute cornucopia of harmful “foods” that completely dominate every grocery store shelf and other food menus, oftentimes being the most deceptively inexpensive choices), then that’s what the vast majority of people are going to keep choosing.
