[HN Gopher] Revealed: Group shaping US nutrition receives millio...
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Revealed: Group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big
food industry
Author : sahin
Score : 128 points
Date : 2022-12-29 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| magic_hamster wrote:
| The title might be overblown but I've come to fully expect every
| government agency is somehow influenced (to say the least) by
| some organization or another with an ulterior motive.
|
| It appears this is just the way the system is set up. Everyone
| has something to gain from this influence (except the public of
| course). I've come to accept this as a fact of life and think for
| myself. Do my own research, consult professionals in matters that
| are important to me.
| m463 wrote:
| This is true and I wonder if government in the future - maybe
| on some other planet - may have the equivalent of "separation
| of church and state".
| uoaei wrote:
| I think there is a big step made from recognizing the issue to
| concluding that it is normal. Indeed, scratching beyond the
| surface, the entire concept of normality _per se_ is pretty
| difficult to justify.
|
| First, let's call it what it is -- corruption -- and let's not
| pretend that "the American project" makes it morally any more
| appropriate than corruption in, say, eastern European or
| African governments, to reuse old stereotypes.
|
| Yes, special interests have captured the levers of power. It
| seems as if the Framers had the idea to structure government in
| such a way that there is a healthy separation between the
| _demos_ and the control of governmental policy, but they only
| imagined landed gentry, and not abstract superstructures-cum-
| monopolies of the rich and powerful, would be the managers of
| this "democracy".
| iudqnolq wrote:
| > Yes, special interests have captured the levers of power.
| It seems as if the Framers had the idea to structure
| government
|
| Or the government was captured back then, too, and special
| interests lobbyied for structural weaknesses.
|
| Quit a lot of compromise and last-minute editing went into
| our Constitution.
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| [dead]
| objetovoador wrote:
| > It appears this is just the way the system is set up.
|
| The wisdom of limited government is that any sufficiently
| powerful political organization will be corrupted and abused.
| There is no force worse than corrupted political power.
| Businesses come and go relatively quickly but governments
| metastasize and ossify.
| xapata wrote:
| Limited by what? There's a bit of a who-watches-the-watchman
| problem.
| objetovoador wrote:
| Limited in scope, it's an important ideal, hard to ever
| achieve. The more an organization expands its scope, the
| more certainly it will not only fail to achieve its goals
| but do great harm.
| kaibee wrote:
| > The wisdom of limited government is that any sufficiently
| powerful political organization will be corrupted and abused.
|
| When accumulated political power is broken up, it doesn't
| magically return to individuals who are then able to
| consciously and intelligently allocate it better. It creates
| a power vacuum (this is one of those terms that was named
| backwards imo, because its more like a power feeding frenzy).
| The result is that that power is most likely to be captured
| by the next most interested actors, only now they aren't even
| beholden to democracy.
|
| This is, imo, an equally convincing 'just-so' story about
| political power, but I'm humble enough to recognize that (but
| not so humble that I won't reply at all).
|
| The thing with these political/organizational structure
| things, is that they're very complicated and fuzzy. There is
| no one size fits all prescription that fixes everything. You
| have to look at all of the underlying incentive structures
| and untangle them. Otherwise you won't understand what the
| problem was to begin with. This sucks and is hard.
| objetovoador wrote:
| > only now they aren't even beholden to democracy
|
| Except practically everyone considers our representatives
| next to useless - look at congress's approval rating.
| That's why if anything local government is the most
| important. It's the most limited, fundamentally, and
| capable of being reformed & truly representative.
|
| Democracy doesn't even ensure that power isn't abused, if
| anything it gives the false impression that abusive power
| is legitimate because there was an election.
| feoren wrote:
| And yet there _are_ effective governments in the world; even
| in the U.S. (NIST, USGS, FAA, many others). No country has a
| perfect government, but for any given government function,
| you can find a country or state that is doing it well. We can
| examine why it 's working well there and try to improve our
| own government. But that takes a lot of work, and it's much
| easier to just say "Government bad; burn it all down". Of
| course when you do that, you're usually just transferring
| power from an entity that the public has _some_ limited
| control over, to an entity that the public has _no_ control
| over. This is, of course, what the very-most corrupt want to
| happen. Dissolving government and giving that power to
| profit-seeking corporations is the _result_ of extreme
| corruption, not the _solution_ to it. Can we instead just all
| agree to actually try to make things better, instead of
| constantly burning down anything that 's not perfect and
| telling ourselves Ayn Randian bullshit to make us feel good
| about it?
| objetovoador wrote:
| I never said we need to burn down government.
|
| That's a very large strawman you just argued.
|
| I'm saying that successful government is limited in nature.
| And that overgrown government usually not only fails to
| achieve its goals, it does more harm than were they absent.
| Look at the past 20 years of military intervention, for
| example.
|
| > Of course when you do that, you're usually just
| transferring power from an entity that the public has some
| limited control over, to an entity that the public has no
| control over.
|
| This isn't even remotely true. All if not most of our
| regulatory bodies & bureaucracies are beholden to lobbyists
| and special interests, so how exactly is that entrenched
| and unimpeachable corruption more accountable than private
| interests that are at least subject to competition? Say
| what you will, but the monopoly power of government is far
| greater than any private business in my opinion. One has a
| world-dominating military.
| feoren wrote:
| You spoke in extreme absolutes and called it "wisdom".
| You said:
|
| > any sufficiently powerful political organization will
| be corrupted and abused
|
| > There is no force worse than corrupted political power
|
| These are your words:
|
| ANY powerful political organization will become
| corrupted. Every single one, every single time, no matter
| what.
|
| Corrupted political power is THE WORST force in the
| universe. It is IMPOSSIBLE to IMAGINE a worse force than
| corrupted political power. Therefore it's worse than Boko
| Haram warbands roving around raping villages and forcing
| children to become their soldiers. That's awful, sure,
| but it's not as bad as BIG GOVERNMENT! This is a direct
| and obvious consequence of the words that you wrote; it
| is not a strawman. Unless you include Boko Haram as
| "corrupted political power", in which case everything
| that's bad is defined as corrupted political power and
| your actual statement is "bad things are bad".
|
| This is a favorite of libertarians. They'll say things
| like "Truly wise and smart and good-looking people all
| know that Thing X obviously always definitely happens as
| a result of Thing Y. Therefore I shouldn't have to pay
| taxes." Then they vaguely hand-wave at cherry-picked
| pseudo-evidence like "the last 20 years of military
| intervention", relying on the reader's brain to conjure
| up a couple of salient instances like Iraq and
| Afghanistan and ignoring everything else that's happened
| in the entire world and outside of their cherry-picked
| window (Kuwait would like a word about whether U.S.
| military intervention is always bad).
|
| > That's a very large strawman you just argued
|
| I'm arguing against generic libertarianism, because the
| hallmark of generic libertarianism is the extreme
| absolutist statements exactly like the ones you made. If
| you'd like me to argue against a more nuanced point, you
| should make that point instead.
|
| > All if not most of our regulatory bodies &
| bureaucracies are beholden to lobbyists and special
| interests
|
| This is such a _lazy_ take. There is an enormous number
| of different government agencies in the U.S. and in the
| world, and they all have their own, different issues, to
| different degrees. The world is complicated. Advocating
| the dissolution of regulatory agencies because "I'm sure
| they're all corrupt; I mean, just look at 'em!" is lazy
| and reactionary. It's like saying "All politicians are
| liars". You're _helping_ the agencies that are most
| corrupted by lumping them in with the ones that are
| actually doing a good job. Again: the dissolution of
| these agencies is the desired _outcome_ of extreme
| corruption, not the _solution_ to it.
|
| Stop being such a lazy thinker. The world is complicated.
| robotnikman wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I look at nutritional and
| medicinal guidelines recommended by other countries outside the
| US.
| tabtab wrote:
| Eat & exercise like a medieval peasant to be healthy. Oil/fat,
| sugar, salt, starch (bleached and de-fibered flower) should be
| avoided. However, these things make food taste good. The ugly
| truth is healthy food is bland. Any "trick" wears out fast, as
| you grow tired of it.
| snowpid wrote:
| " The ugly truth is healthy food is bland. "
|
| I doubt it.
| [deleted]
| Darwingirl11 wrote:
| This is common complaint at science conferences. Research dollars
| often go towards shiny things instead of knowledge that will
| advance diagnostic theory and serve the highest good. Without
| accurate theory, we cannot advance. The Mediterranean diet is a
| classic example. Once the researchers were able to show it had
| some health benefits, it received huge amounts of funding for
| years. They were able to publish again and again, gaining
| publicity, gaining more funding and giving the illusion of
| superiority over other, less-researched, dietary and nutritional
| tools. Imagine if they had sought to understand how it actually
| works? We need to ensure that research dollars go towards
| meaningful projects that seek truth, maintain objectivity and
| advance knowledge, not agendas.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| This has to have implications on why no two studies are ever
| quite the same, and rarely reproducible. Yet another "study":
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26980822/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is a lobbying group, why
| would this be surprising to anyone? They have no official
| government function.
|
| Edit: It appears I am wrong, and it is not just a lobbying group.
| They also issue the licensing needed to sell diet advice in many
| states.
|
| https://www.cdrnet.org/#
| smitty1e wrote:
| This would be surprising to those not paying attention, who
| ascribe noble intent to those in offices.
| kemitchell wrote:
| You'd have to pay little attention indeed to ascribe inerrant
| nobility to public office.
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| The Academy and nutrition and dietetics depend on dietitians
| renewing their Registered Dietitian credential. That's how they
| make money.
|
| In order to force the issue, the AND's lobbyists have gone around
| the country and made it so that you are required to have a
| license in 14 states to talk with another individual about food
| and nutrition.
|
| The AND made it so that in order to get that license you must be
| a registered dietitian, in other words, you must pay a private
| organization for the privilege to pay the government for a
| license to talk about food and nutrition.
|
| It's a classic government back monopoly that has no positive
| impact on society, other than protectionism of an outdated
| business model.
|
| https://ij.org/client/heather-kokesch-del-castillo/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is interesting, and would have been the relevant
| information for Guardian to provide in the article.
| mythhouse wrote:
| How is this group "shaping US nutrition". Thats quite a claim.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If you want to sell diet advice in many states, you have to be
| certified by them:
|
| https://www.cdrnet.org/#
| mythhouse wrote:
| right but what fraction of ppl follow these dieticians. Let
| alone whole of "us nutrition"
| spfzero wrote:
| They are considered "experts" by the media, for one thing.
| So if you read an article on nutrition and some "expert" or
| other is quoted, and you act on its advice, then you might
| be in that fraction.
| iosono88 wrote:
| [dead]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know, but the people they certify, and only they
| are allowed to certify, are working in hospitals and
| advising patients, and their advice is legally protected by
| various state governments.
|
| I doubt the dietician giving advice to patients is
| announcing the conflict of interest.
| mfer wrote:
| If you lookup the histories of the people making the decisions
| you'll see their connections to industry.
|
| The chair of the committee who oversees dietary recommendations
| is listed as a professor. She got that for filling for retirement
| as a professor more than a decade ago. Has worked in industry
| lobbying and funding industry studies prior to gov work. Not an
| impartial person.
|
| Edit: her LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-
| schneeman-ph-d-a99b6829. The Damon institute funds stuff for the
| yogurt company
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I thought this had been common knowledge for years.
| fsflover wrote:
| Just like Snowden's revelations?
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| That's funny, I was just thinking about that the other day,
| how fine the climax of Catch-22 is. Shame about all the
| misogyny.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think the flesh and blood Snowden is meant here
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| The who now?
| [deleted]
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