And non-sugar products are...?

A part of the publication explained how large lobbying efforts are made to make labeling systems less accurate or get rid of them altogether. So, in short, the industry spends a lot of money so consumers don't even know which foods are "suger foods" and which aren't.

That requires humans to be perfectly rational like a homo economicus [1], but in reality people aren't.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

Your alternative with regulations requires politicians to be perfectly rational. Checkmate.

The argument that people can't be rational and think for themselves, therefore they need other people (a political class) to decide for them, is, frankly, disgusting. No thanks.

They just need to be more rational than the general population. Usually politicians don't really decide things though, but they're putting the stuff experts tell them into laws and arbiter between interests.

You'll need governments deciding things anyway. Otherwise you can't come up with fair contracts when there's a difference of power in the parties of the contract (think e.g. costumer and manufacturer and food safety regulations), even when both sides are rational.

No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. Just live healthy and promote your lifestyle to other persons, that is the best thing you can do for yourself and for any other person without harm.

> You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them

It's not that simple. For instance, kids aren't free to choose what they eat or drink and they can't make rationale decisions. Many adults lack the proper information and so on...

I don't think promoting your lifestyle to others is something that has any force, even if any of us were interested in evangelism. People pick up their everyday behaviour largely from what they perceive as normal, and mass media, which is filled with adverts and even the programming heavily decided by commercial factors, has enormous power to dictate what is normal. At the grass-roots, parents have a degree of power to set a concept of normality for their kids, but that's also strongly driven by peer-pressure which is in turn driven by mass media.

>No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them.

Forced for humans is not just "gun in the head", and it's not a binary either.

E.g. constant hammering with advertising on TV and internet can be an effective force for forcing people into stuff they wouldn't otherwise do.

Without a government, there can be no corporations. A corporation is a creature of regulation. You can already operate a business under fewer regulations by forming a sole proprietorship or general partnership. Why don't people do that? The entitlement of liability limitation afforded by corporate regulation is what makes it possible for businesses to be bigger than a certain nominal size. Something like the "sugar industry" might not exist at all without that entitlement.

Likewise, if the individuals forming a sugar industry marketing or lobbying entity could be held personally liable for the actions of that entity, it probably wouldn't exist. That's the closest thing I can think of to a concept of business law in a libertarian sense: If you own a certain fraction of General Motors, then you're responsible for a fraction of GM's debts, if those debts exceed its assets.

How could we not buy "sugar products" when it is added without knowledge everywhere? Wouldn't your point of view also require removing labels; after all gov. regulation put them there. Sugar corp would sell to ag corp, with no transparency. How would we know how much sugar and compare? I know that humans over the past 50 years have been terrible judges on their own.

Yes, this is a big problem, but if you're waiting for the government to solve this problem, you'll wait a long time.

The humanity have to build new organizations that help the masses in picking up the right choices and we need new corporations that we can trust. Just have a look at the open source movement, where even commercial companies are opening their source code to improve to build up on trust. We need corporations that put labels of ingredients on their products. But if we force companies to do so, we're destroying the start up resources a new company needs to grow.

WHAT?

By forcing accurate labels we are disadvantaging small companies?

I am quite sure that, in a month of work, a well intentioned NGO with 1 or 2 people could develop a hand-holding website that every company could follow, for labelling.

Can you clarify?

No it isn't added everywhere. Not to fruit, vegetables, raw cereals, dairy products, meat or fish. If you feel you have to buy food industry products (those that undergo some kind of processing) then don't most of them offer low sugar or sugar free options? Finally it comes down to industry meeting human preferences. Change those and the industry will change.

I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.

Yes, it is added everywhere, by often by methods you cannot tell. Fruit for example, is selected and bred for more sugar. Cows can be manipulated for more sugar, then dairy products. And again, since no government regulation was allowed, there will be no labels to even read, in that world. And I kindly disagree you can change human, innate, preferences on the whole. Unless you regulate them, which I understand is an anathema.

:P

A 'lens requirement' cuts the effectiveness of any information in a package. I'd wager to less than a tenth of readers, compared with readable packages.

Yes, those of us with disposable time and disposable income are able to avoid food industry products and/or to research those we ingest.

Just few not buying is not enough, some measure is needed to promote and market it to significant mass, counter advertisement to children...

So go out and promote again big corps. Only education and enlightenment can build up a better world. Governments won't, governments are going to be bought by big corps.