It's easy to come down hard on the smoking industry due to the chemically addictive nature and serious health hazards of the product, but there are many consumers who moderate their fat and sugar intake. And then there are diabetics who don't consume any Nestle products - so why can't they be given treatment manufactured from a conglomerate?
As someone with Type 1 diabetes (look up the difference if you don't know), I'm always interested in this distinction. Sugary foods neither "give people" nor cause Type 2 diabetes. A person consistently consuming too many sugary foods over a long period of time causes themselves to be at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes.
Cigarettes are a different beast, due to the chemically-addictive nature of them (although in this day and age, one could make the argument that people of all ages should know better than to start smoking, and should thus bear responsibility for the outcome - but that's another discussion for another time).
Cigarettes != sugar. End of story.
It's interesting how hyper-aware western and particularly U.S. cultures are of sugar and fat. From the 1990's there's still the stigma that eating any sugar and fat will make you fat.
High Sugar Consumption Linked To Type 2 Diabetes http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257108.php
"For a while the association between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes was thought to solely relate to weight gain, but new research conducted at UC San Francisco indicates that sugar intake may also be directly linked to diabetes.
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"This suggests for the first time that not all calories contribute to diabetes risk in the same way.
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"Diabetes rates increased the longer a population was exposed to excess sugar and it decreased when sugar availability went down.
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"Mation Nestle, PhD, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said:
'As far as I know, this is the first paper that has had data on the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. This has been a source of controversy forever. It's been very, very difficult to separate sugar from the calories it provides. This work is carefully done, it's interesting and it deserves attention.'
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"A previous study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a similar association, revealing that added sugar and high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of obesity and diabetes."
Their point was that consumption behavior causes Type 2 diabetes, not the substance alone.
"For a while the association between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes was thought to solely relate to weight gain, but new research conducted at UC San Francisco indicates that sugar intake may also be directly linked to diabetes."
"As far as I know, this is the first paper that has had data on the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. This has been a source of controversy forever. It's been very, very difficult to separate sugar from the calories it provides. This work is carefully done, it's interesting and it deserves attention."
Here's more on the study:
Quantity of sugar in food supply linked to diabetes rates, researcher says https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/02/quantity-of-s...
"Does eating too much sugar cause diabetes? For years, scientists have said 'not exactly.' Eating too much of any food, including sugar, can cause you to gain weight; it’s the resulting obesity that predisposes people to diabetes, according to the prevailing theory.
"But now the results of a large epidemiological study suggest sugar may also have a direct, independent link to diabetes. Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-San Francisco examined data on sugar availability and diabetes rates from 175 countries over the past decade. After accounting for obesity and a large array of other factors, the researchers found that increased sugar in a population’s food supply was linked to higher diabetes rates, independent of obesity rates. Their study was published Feb. 27 in PLOS ONE."
This is so easy to blame though, it is a cop out. Yes, lets spend more on education, but lets not raise taxes.
I did not in any way say Nestle is not selling the cause and the solution, I was trying to make that point that this in itself is meaningless and in no sense immoral.
As kazinator brilliantly put it:
"Yamaha wants to sell you noise-canceling headphones, and a motorcycle."[1]
We can talk about a tax on sugars, we can talk about a different regulatory framework, but I see nothing wrong with what Nestle is doing here given the current legal and regulatory situation.
And people make their choices, if Nestle wouldn't sell product x, someone else would in some form, they are trying that you choose their product, that's all, that's called competition.
I would hazard to say that the analogy I've chosen aligns more closely with the stance of the article and the posters taking a condemnatory tone than your Yamaha analogy does.
The parent opinion is that Nestle is a large corporation and they are diversifying their revenue streams as every profit-seeking company is entitled to.
The other opinion elsewhere on this thread is that sugar is the enemy and therefore Nestle should be held accountable for first causing a problem then charging people for offering the solution.
It's probably going to be hard to reconcile either opinion given the subject of sugar in diets is already quite divisive, but is an attempt to illustrate the anti-sugar camp's perspective through an extreme but easily understood example not constructive?
To be sure, this isn't a natural right. The entitlement is entirely a creation of policy and legislation, both of which can be modified or rescinded.
Every company has to have a social responsability, I don't see it here. They are causing harm with their products and they also sell the 'cure'. (actually the best is not to eat any of their products, then you don't need anything they sell, just eat 'real', non processed, food).
About Yamaha, motorcycles shouldn't make that many noise, that is the main problem, not the headphones.
I question it.
There appears to be little-to-no scientific evidence that there are "bad" sugars and "good" sugars. From what I understand (I'm no doctor, just a person who reads a lot) the main problem is the volume of consumption, not "good" vs "bad" sugars. There's nothing wrong with a normal, healthy person having sugar in any of the forms Nestle sells, only with having too much of it.
Now, you could argue that they sell it in quantities that make it easy to have too much, but that's different from saying the sugar itself is bad.
Meaning a can of soda has a whacky amount of sugar to begin with, but also, if compared to say an orange, has no fiber/roughage (which helps the insulin spike supposedly, plus orange will have good micro-nutrients and antioxidants).
I think people should be much more mindful of these manufactured processed foods and drinks, and why sticking to whole foods just makes sense.
but not the sugar itself -- it's the same chemical. (There are those who believe certain types of sugar are processed differently in your body, which is actually not true, at least based on the large body of scientific evidence available thus far.)
* I have no proof of this. I'm making an uneducated guess that the insulin spikes aren't as steep or high with sweet fruits and vegetables compared with a spoon full of sugar.
Again, is Nestle's sugar somehow chemically different than ordinary sugar?
I dunno, I think sugar is pretty delicious. Not everything has to be about maximizing your lifespan, you know. A balanced life can include tasty stuff.
At the end it is all about balance as you say, but I really prefer to be balancing between meals that are too caloric than processed foods which we don't even know which ingredients contain.
The reason why they exist at the level they do is because of the economies of scale you gain from being able to order millions of tons of grain, sugar, milk, etc., then processing them in huge factories, then distributing them to other huge companies that own grocery stores and vending machines, etc. It doesn't strike me as morally questionable to include other products, including medicine (OTC or not) in that process. In fact, if it makes the medicines more affordable it can be more beneficial for the people who need it than not.
The reason why activists keep going after them and other large corporations is because getting them to change their behavior, when they're one of the largest purchasers or creators of something, can make more difference than lobbying the government to make every corporation follow suit. Which is why we should try to encourage them to do better about issues that matter, including changing packaging and contents of "junk" food.
You can make the same argument about low cost sugary foods that originated from the same conglomerates - trade lower prices & time to avoid starving... if you can't afford to eat healthy you eat what's fast, affordable and tastes good.
You can have your cake and eat it too, you just won't live very long...
I agree there isn't a 'sickle' marketing department where in the company creates the problem and caters at every stopping point until your ultimate demise - unless of course Nestle owns a collection of funeral homes...
Hanlons razor: never assume bad intentions when assuming stupidity is enough
SFAIK, the principal ... principle driving this was administrative cost reduction on the government side - reuse existing buildings and people.
And then it ties into the crop subsidy system, which is generally awesome in that it prices risk from shortage almost to zero at a cost in mild to "OMG!" overproduction.
Beyond that, however, I see a pretty big flaw in your reasoning here. Given your argument, can you not then extend your theory on guaranteeing future profits to also include the strategy of selling both the problem and the solution? This, too, is a very 'normal' thing for large, multi-national manufacturers of consumer goods to be engaged in.
Nestle, along with Coca Cola and Kroger, is a well-known corporate supporter of programs such as SNAP in the US, and is also one of the largest benefactors from said programs. I am a full-on capitalist, but that does not mean that we ought to give a pass to the morally-flawed existences of companies like Nestle, which leverage its influence in the State to reap greater profits.