So they're not encouraging people to consume sugary stuff, they're encouraging people to consume a category of food where people prefer sugary stuff?

This is about as sensible as saying that Krispy Kreme isn't pushing sugary foods, people just happen to prefer donuts with lots of sugar in them.

What would you have Krispy Kreme do? Pivot to Kimchi Kombucha?

I don't know. I just think that if we're going to talk about what companies encourage customers to do through their marketing, we should be straight about it.

The market forces companies to peddle garbage to children who generally lack the capacity to make a healthy informed decision in the face of multimillion dollar campaigns designed to get them to consume sugary cereal?

> He said everyone tells them to do so, but once it's on the shelves it does not sell. People want less sugar in the abstract. But they love sugar in their shopping carts, in the mornings, and in their mouths.

This sounds a little too just-so.

> peddle garbage to children who generally lack the capacity to make a healthy informed decision

I don't know many kids that do the shopping :)

It's parents that choose the sugary breakfast cereals for their children. I think many have the capacity to make a healthy, informed decision, but for some reason they do not. Marketing is likely at least part of the reason.

How many cereal advertisements do you see marketing towards parents vs their children?

Companies know they influence purchasing decisions through the manipulation of children.

...extra tax for high-sugar products?

We tried a tax on fatty foods in Denmark and it was a huge mess. People would just drive to Germany to get the stuff, and managing it was an administrative nightmare: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/global/fat-tax-in...

Interesting anecdote, but

1. It's quite possible (though it's a huge rabbit hole we shouldn't plumb here) that they were taxing the wrong macronutrient entirely, that is to say, that fat on the body is more a factor of sugar going in than fat going in. So in addition to imposing costs it may have failed to give benefits (whereas had it worked to improve health outcomes maybe it would have been worth the costs of enforcement etc.)

2. The Danes taxing butter?!? That seems extremely odd given the dairy industry and culture. But I suppose major kudos for being able to overcome such prior biases to even run the experiment.

That's like taxing it only in Idaho. Of course it must be done in an economic block, like the US or the EU or China.