Sometimes the amount of sugar is also completely unnecessary.

Heinz sells ketchup without added sugar and it tastes almost exactly the same as normal, or even slightly better, half the calories though.

Yep. And also usually more expensive. I can't understand, I'm paying more for less.

I didn't belive this before but we need a sugar tax. We also need to have strict dietary guidelines on how much sugar is acceptable per gram of food.

You’re probably paying more for the same weight or volume comprised of ingredients more expensive than sugar.

I know you’re being facetious but on top of the marketing appeal: Less sugar means more tomato?

True, usually the bottles are smaller though. But I'm not sure of this.

Less buyers also means less economy of scale.

It is sweetened with sucralose. Presumably they wouldn't have been able to market a sugar-free version without sugar substitutes.

Wow, I didn't know that. I see "sugar free" I'm expecting the same thing without sugar, not a substitute.

Really more of a "diet ketchup" in that case...

I really don't think tomatoes need to be sweeter than they are naturally to make decent ketchup. I'll be on the lookout for ketchup that is "sweetener free" in the future.

I've found sauces tend to be more vinegary, at least low fat salad sauces. Salt should also be looked out for too.

It’s not hard to eat healthy at all. People are just nutritionally illiterate, and that makes it difficult for them to build proper meals.

The typical person has no idea how big a meal should be to obtain the right quantities of nutrients, because they’ve never bothered to weigh their food. They also have no idea what their daily macro nutrient goals should be.

Its not all on the people though, there are many forces bent on keeping people nutritionally illiterate. Low fat, cholesterol, its all been found to be, at the most charitable, completely wrong. When I grew up, my Mom made sure we ate “healthy” cereal for breakfast instead of eggs. She wasn’t illiterate, she was following the “literacy” of the day.

It’s not true at all. Vietnamese are one of the healthiest nations in terms of weight. They don’t weigh the food or know much more than an average person. Their diet is just culturally diverse and healthy.

I don't really buy the argument that sugar content is to blame. I buy cheap food, I live in the US, I don't eat "healthy" and never have -- and yet I'm thin. People like to hand-wave this away by telling me I must have a high metabolism, but I've never found that to be a convincing explanation.

I think a more probable reason for the obesity epidemic is the rise of food as a self-soothing device. To me, the best indicator of whether you're likely to have a weight problem isn't your activity level or the sugar content of your groceries, it's whether you turn to food as a way to relax.

Yep, I look at food as an escape and my BMI is 44.1

Lots of deli meat + wrap or 2 slices of bread + lots of lettuce.

A cheap, portable meal/snack that removes the need for fast food or "Keto snacks". Enough protein and fibre to fill you up.

Eating low calorie is not expensive, it's just not very exciting.

Until recently you could also get something like this at mcdonalds (grilled chicken burger or wrap).

Added sugar is not good, but fat free products are a great choice for dieters who want more variety. You get the same volume of food with a similar taste for much less calories.

One reason for this is that corn subsidies have created an excess supply of corn-based food derivatives (e.g. corn syrup) for years, driving down costs and creating an incentive to use cheap corn-based ingredients across the entire food supply.

Farming subsidies were originally created in the aftermath of the Great Depression. While they have their place, we probably over-subsidize today. Given the choices of widespread obesity or widespread starvation, I'd choose the former.

Another possible answer is that it's just cheaper to fill snacks with sugar than anything else while keeping them tasting good. Plus sometimes in snacks sugar plays a big role in forming the structure and it's hard to find a proper replacement for it.

I used to drink Dr Pepper 10 instead of regular, it was almost identical, how existing full sugar soda is considered normal blows my mind . Would you drink a cup of coffee with 10+ sugars? Alas it is very difficult to find now.

Sugar substitutes like Monk Fruit Extract aren't as widely produced. (There are other sugar substitutes, but among all of them, Monk Fruit is king: it tastes most like sugar and it is the least likely to cause digestive issues). If they were more popular, perhaps efficiency at scale would drive down prices. Also, carbs tend to be more shelf-stable than proteins and fats (though, beef sticks and nuts are solid exceptions to this generalization). But a long shelf life can help decrease the cost-- which is the case with staple grains like wheat and rice.

Back in the day when we were running around the Savannah foraging, fat and grease would have evolved taste buds to prefer these inputs since they are such concentrated energy sources.

Fast food takes advantage of this, and it would not be too much of an issue if not for preservatives (find a French fry under your car seat from 5 years ago and it looks the same as it did the day you bought it - we should want to eat things that will rot within a week of room temperature).

I sop up all the grease of my homemade dishes ( "Food what nearly all people eat, to me it is harmful and dangerous. Sometimes I visualize that chefs in the world are all in conspiracy against me …" Nikola Tesla thought chefs were conspiring against him [1]) because I refuse to let anything to go to waste, and I welcome all the energy I can get (fuel for the tractor). I also do not clean dishes after every meal (blender included) because I want to see what nature can throw at me tomorrow. So far so good, although my stool once smelt like sulfur after cooking with boiled/stored creek water - duckduckgo tells me giardiasis, waterborne pathogen, which my gut promptly destroyed after one digestive cycle (well rehearsed and diversified, daily probiotic reinforcements).

At this point I have an iron stomach, and I was inspired by quite the lean healthy "homeless" girl I met who was eating out of dumpsters. I refused to partake in the dripping salad offering she presented me, but I could understand that because of this lifestyle - she would be far less of a liability to the healthcare system. Meanwhile, the "housed" people are stuffing themselves with their Precious TV Dinners (Tom Green, Stealing Harvard), sanitizing every surface they can think of, and finding it acceptable and even preferable to sit in their favorite chair with their "free" time to fawn over streaming media that depicts other people living their lives.

We want to blame it on the food, but the propaganda on phones and public wall-mounted screens is orchestrated by those who themselves are fearful of the world around them. The ones that follow suite are going to acquire a gut, high blood pressure (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers), and dulled senses.

[1] https://garylite.com/2019/08/21/everything-is-the-light-an-i...

It seems like you made a choice that lowers your life standard. If you want lots of money while living healthy, move to Switzerland. But of course there are many other options.

I'm imagining the Swiss watching in horror as a caravan of thousands of obese American refugees arrives at their frontier...

I mean, if they're gay, moving to the US from Iran probably did not lower their life expectancy.

But more generally - we can't ask everyone in the US to move out of the country, can we? So it seems worth figuring out how to get the US to be healthier.

(And in any case, the linked study happened in Spain.)

It’s not about asking people to do something.

I lived 6 years in Switzerland and a guy who moved from London to Zurich told me that he lost 10kg in a year just because people don’t let him eat crappy food, and on the weekends people go hiking and skiing, not to pubs.

Sometimes changing the situation is the easiest way to change someone’s lifestyle.

>Why does EVERYTHING have sugar in it?

I suspect that added sugar increases sales.

> Why does EVERYTHING have sugar in it?

Taste, mainly, because all the fat has been removed.

Thanks. This advice is literally useless for millions of working class people.

Fast food can be healthy. We're doing a disservice to our public health by not making it be healthy.

If you're affording to eat out at fast food restaurants, you're probably not as working class as you think you are.

You...do realize that around 30% of people in every economic level eat fast food right? It's how a third of the population gets their food.

Stop being a dick.

I agree fast food can be healthy. When you meal prep it ahead of time and throw it in the microwave straight from your lunchbox.

There's nothing wrong with snacking in itself. Arguably, it's better than three or so heavier meals. There's nothing wrong with fast food either, if we encompass, say, a healthy sandwich or salad from Subway, Chipotle, or Panera in it.

These attitudes purely stem from the way these are dominantly present in our society.

> There's nothing wrong with fast food either, if we encompass, say, a healthy sandwich or salad from Subway, Chipotle, or Panera in it.

I don't know what to say apart from this baffles me. These aren't healthy options. They're processed junk food.

What’s wrong with Chipotle?

A typical Chipotle order is 1,000 calories, an entire day's worth of salt, and most of a day's worth of saturated fat. Just for lunch. That's insane. Almost nobody needs that unless you're an athlete.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/17/upshot/what-d...

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/food-cocktails/news/a36622/chip...

I think it's also pretty gross, greasy, sloppy food in general - they've caused e coli breakouts in the past it's so bad.

The higher-end numbers from the NYT article come from chips and guac. If you're ordering fast food from these places you of course have to watch that you're not ordering calorie-heavy foods like you also have to in restaurants. But their menu also has lighter-calorie options.

What I'd also question is how much of these numbers are due to the portion sizes vs. nutrition per calorie.

Thanks, I didn’t realize this. I appreciate the sources

> There's nothing wrong with snacking in itself. Arguably, it's better than three or so heavier meals.

There have been studies purporting to show benefits from having either more or fewer meals per day and overall there isn't really strong evidence either way.

Regarding the point about cheap and healthy fast food, wouldn’t it be awesome to have the convenience of something like that? No need to be so dismissive.

Easier said than done for some. Many snacks are chemically engineered to subvert your rational mind.

It's yet another thin person thinking they've discovered the magic to life.

It's always this dismissiveness of real issues that has led to obesity becoming such a massive national and international crisis.

That's exactly the response that does not solve systemic problems. It is unconstructive, unhelpful, and most importantly ineffective.

Just don't go to fast food restaurants. Just don't. That's the advice. How much more clear do you want it to be?

"Just don't drink alcohol. Just don't. That's the advice. How much more clear do you want it to be?"

"Just don't use addictive drugs. Just don't. That's the advice. How much more clear do you want it to be?"

"Just don't smoke. Just don't. That's the advice. How much more clear do you want it to be?"

This is how you sound.

What do you think the advice should be?

Snacks and fast food are harmful. So don't do them. The same way we say cigarettes are harmful and tell people to avoid them.

I don't know how else to dress it up? What are you expecting? The advice is 'don't do it'. Seems hard to pretend it's anything else?

what,s wrong with that advice?

we live in an unsafe world...

you either make these hard choices, or you suffer the consequences...

These aren't solutions to systemic problems.

People like doing stuff that is unwise/unsafe/destructive, acting like they don't (ignoring the problem) and then throwing out dismissing quips isn't even an attempt at a solution.

Nudge theory[0] has worked in the past (within the limits of the problems). Dismissing those problems as trivial while waving them away as an individual choice hasn't been and cannot be because it doesn't even attempt to address the underlying issues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#Types_of_nudges

If there are systemic problems, there's nothing an individual can do about it today, apart from following my advice - abstain. That's the best advice there is today, for an individual.

If I was advising a government for how to change things in the next decade I might have some more ideas I could share!

i can,t solve systemic problems. no one can. each of us can only solve problems locally.

If more people thought like you we wouldn't have an obesity problem.

Thank you. Seriously.

Thank you.

meh, I think this rant is a little dated. The FDA recently started requiring an "added sugars" line item on nutrition labels, which is a step in the right direction. In my city there's now a tax on sugary drinks. People have never had more options for what to eat and drink, however we (Americans) don't live in a nanny state, thankfully, and some people will make choices that you consider unwise.

To your last point, I live in the US and have a healthy diet and lifestyle and waistline. So don't be so quick to blame your environment.

I live in the US and I have a healthy diet and lifestyle but I definitely spend 3-10 times more than most of my friends that don’t on food and exercising

Good for you.