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0 pointsFricken9y ago0 comments

Obesity rates have tripled in 3 decades, I don't think we can blame Soylent for that, but clearly something major has gone terribly wrong with the industrial food system and it's approach to food safety. That's the hilarious and scary thing. I don't worry too much about what's going on at some small scale esoteric meal replacement startup.

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maxerickson9y ago

The problem isn't safety, it's poor alignment of incentives.

Food companies optimize for palatability and against satiety. Then they brag about it, advertising that you will never eat just 1.

Why do they do this? Because the food market is saturated and getting people to consume more is a good growth strategy.

teslabox9y ago

> Obesity rates have tripled in 3 decades, I don't think we can blame Soylent for that, but clearly something major has gone terribly wrong with the industrial food system

We can blame the paint industry and the cotton industry for the food industry's mistakes. Paints & stains used to be made from "drying oils" (soybean oil, linseed oil, etc), now they're made from petroleum. Cotton production creates a lot of cotton seed as a waste product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil

Instead of going quietly into the night, the seed oil industry now sells "vegetable oil" for human consumption. Crisco was made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil until it was reformulated in 2007. IMHO, Crisco is still not appropriate for human consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisco

Charlatanism: it's what's for dinner.

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