50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by merb on Saturday February 13, 2021 @07:03PM (#26128319)

> 4. Force companies to color their containers according to plastic type. I.e no more clear Pepsi or Coke bottles - all PE products are color, say green. All PP colors are red, etc.

well I'm no expert in this topic, just a little bit more engaged with the topic. the biggest problem is that companies save tons of money not from different colors, but from different components. most cheese products for example have different types of plastic (MA/MH packaging, compound structure plastics are just cheap and easy to do), and most people do not know that if you don't separate them that it is way harder to recycle (some also just don't care). it's a hard topic and I've seen countries like sweden who tackle that problem by teaching everybody how to recycle plastics (they have multiple containers), but I do not thing that this is feasible worldwide. I mean I live in germany and my governement does not tackle the problem, they do not invenst, they do not regulate, all they do is calling itself "world champion of recycling", but what do they do? they declare burning waste as recycling (called thermetic recycling, point 3. but it's not recycling and we do not care about the emission when it comes to burning) or better, we declare it as recycled but ship it to africa / asia and don't look what they do with the waste at all. waste management is something that most countries don't feel pressured to change something. mostly because you would need to change multiple industries, the packaging industry and the waste management industry.

> Frankly I’d ban perfluorinates except for use in critical industries. That chemistry is ecologically nasty.

well a lot of things are nasty, but as long as they print money. it won't be banned/changed that fast.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by throwmtlsPhD on Saturday February 13, 2021 @07:29PM (#26128473)

Excellent point about the multiple components in products. Ppl don’t realize that there’s a plastic liner on their can of Coke (of course, that just gets burned off when the Al gets recycled)

About Germany’s “recycling” I despise it when “experts” talk down at ppl saying “white lies” because we’re too stupid to understand (Dr. Fauci, I’m looking at you buddy).

Burning plastic isn’t recycling and Germany’s neologism is sophistry.

But it is a decent solution short of significantly increasing the price of plastic. That’s assuming you burn it correctly. And correctly burning it requires very high temperatures to get rid of dioxins. It means making sure to reduce as much as possible Chlorine sulphuric and Fluorine in the feedstock. It means having excellent NOx filters. It means having super tough monitoring of the emissions

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by Qwertious on Sunday February 14, 2021 @12:12AM (#26129872)

>I despise it when “experts” talk down at ppl saying “white lies” because we’re too stupid to understand (Dr. Fauci, I’m looking at you buddy).

What lie id Fauci say, that you're annoyed at?

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by snovv_crash on Sunday February 14, 2021 @12:26AM (#26129936)

I believe GP refers to the early lies about masks, so that people wouldn't buy them, so that there would be more available for health care workers.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by mjevans on Sunday February 14, 2021 @02:39AM (#26130425)

I blame the person in charge at the time, who widely under-reported and downplayed everything the entire time they were in office.

All of the ills in policy and lack of transparency flowed down from that malignity of leadership.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by rorykoehler on Sunday February 14, 2021 @04:29AM (#26130865)

Not in this case. The WHO also pushed the same charade.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by TheAceOfHearts on Sunday February 14, 2021 @06:24AM (#26131408)

When he gets asked about what percentage of people need to get vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity he keeps pulling out different numbers from his ass until he's pressed to give a fully accurate and honest answer. The truth is that we can't know for certain, but we can use models from existing diseases in order to try and make guesses which gives us a range which will vary in magnitude depending on the accuracy and correctness of the underlying model and its parameters. I don't think it's such a complex concept that people would be incapable of understanding a high level overview. Then as more data comes in or newer models are developed, you can tweak the range while providing a simple explanation for why the newer changes are believed to be more accurate. Fauci is a bad faith science communicator.

Edit: He has also admitted to providing different numbers over time in order to get people more comfortable with the idea. He needs to cut that paternalistic bullshit and just be straight with us.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by deanCommie on Sunday February 14, 2021 @03:03PM (#26135720)

When 1/3 of the country thinks the pandemic danger is already exaggerated if not completely made up, how can you possibly expect him to be honest about the harsh realities of what is still ahead?

Hell, what in the last 4 years has made you believe that half of the country ISN'T worth talking down to...

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by account42 on Monday February 15, 2021 @05:46AM (#26141412)

> When 1/3 of the country thinks the pandemic danger is already exaggerated if not completely made up

Maybe they think that because people in power keep lying to them.

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by darkerside on Sunday February 14, 2021 @09:27PM (#26138394)

That may work with you, but what makes you think it's the right approach for communicating to everybody? Public health reminds me a bit of behavioral finance, in which we admit that people don't act rationally in all cases and give advice accordingly. You can argue it's a cop out, that it's paternalistic, that is morally wrong. You'd be at least partially right about all of those things, but what if people achieve better outcomes?

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Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B... by im3w1l on Sunday February 14, 2021 @12:50AM (#26130025)

I think people in Sweden will typically recycle (in separate bins) paper, paperboard, clear glass, colored glass and metal. Bottles and cans with deposit are returned in a machine for that purpose. Recycling other plastic containers is not as common, but I suppose some do.

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