nachos4ever

“queer love saves lives.” [analog] collage. 2025. created by me.

availble in b&w + color on inprnt

I can think of a hundred things we could do to improve our collective health a hundred fold more than replacing sugar with a slightly different sugar that breaks down to be the same sugar in our bodies.

Free cancer screenings.

Eliminating food deserts.

Free vaccines.

Free birth control.

Drug treatment.

Naloxone to anyone who wants it.

The popular food of today was designed and made and a time period where starvation and privation was a simple fact of life. And it is taking a great deal of heroic efforts from a lot of people who we give our thanks to for ending this cycle of history of famines and overpopulation and famines we broke the cycle gentleman we broke it now we know periods in which the human population is not defined by periods of rapid starvation but prosperity.

That being said I cannot as I've said condemn any of the moves people have done over the past to make these foods what they are knowing what came before because if I have to choose one or the other kind of existence I'm picking the one in which I'm fat unhealthy but I ain't starving.

If the choice is between fake sugar that tastes bad and real sugar that tastes good, and both are just as bad for you, why is it wrong to say "I'd rather have the good tasting stuff? Which should also be cheaper?"

>Eliminating food deserts.

How, exactly?

A food desert isn't 'people are starving', it's 'lack of access to healthy food'.

Do you want the government to force supermarket companies to open branches in unfriendly neighbourhoods? Subsidize those stores with taxpayer money?

As for food deserts, the simple way to solve that problem is for the people living in them to request the products they want to have and then purchase them at a rate where the store they get them from isn't losing money in the process.

Stores will stock what people purchase provided the product is available.

A year ago they were the ones bitching (quite rightly, in my opinion, they were just annoying in the way they did it) that the US didn't have enough restrictions for harmful ingredients in the food industry.

They would also bring up how much different it is in Europe (it is) a lot of studies keep being made every year (they are) and all the chemicals that are discovered to be dangerous are banned (tis true). These people would point out (whine about) how in the US, soooo many of these chemicals are allowed without any sort of restrictions, and said (cried) that the US should be more like Europe.

Now that something similar to this is being presented by a right wing government though... Now it's bad! Now it's an awful idea and, "why would you force Coca-Cola to change its formula?"

Oh woe is the poor innocent multi billion dollar company! Why would anyone force them to use something that won't cause kids to develop diabetes at an early age!!! How could this evil, evil man impose such a restriction when Coca cola is already struggling so much????

But holy shit is OP retarded?

“I think we should do X.”

“UH WHY ARE YOU DOING X? YOU SHOULD DO A, B, C AND D YOU FUCKING MORON DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?”

@khorneschosen said:

if I have to choose one or the other kind of existence I'm picking the one in which I'm fat unhealthy but I ain't starving.

I would choose that too, but that is a false choice. Our country has plenty of food. No one has to starve.

But the cheap, calorie-dense, high-fat, soft, and easy-to-prepare foods are killing us. Heart disease is the number one cause of death. And commercial food industries are trying to engineer this unhealthy food to be as addictive and easy as possible. We have these ancient food-motivated drives telling us to eat as much as possible so we don't starve. And for many, it is difficult to ignore that instinct. And we shame folks for succumbing to that survival adaptation.

People get hung up on the "processing" of it all. They think industrial process is tainting the food in some way to make us all sick. But it is so much simpler than that.

It's full of fat and calories and it's soft.

Don't sleep on the softness. It is easy to eat quickly before we feel full. And many working class people gravitate towards these foods because they are so tired from the grind of capitalism, they never have the energy to prepare their own food with individual ingredients.

If you're happy our society solved the problem of not starving and want to call the issue resolved, that is up to you. But man-made food processes have long stopped caring about feeding people and moved on to overfeeding people for profit.

@siryouarebeingmocked said:

If the choice is between fake sugar that tastes bad and real sugar that tastes good, and both are just as bad for you, why is it wrong to say "I'd rather have the good tasting stuff? Which should also be cheaper?

High fructose corn syrup is not fake sugar. It is just very concentrated sugar. But chemically they are pretty much the same. In fact, when the body breaks it down, it is functionally identical to cane sugar. Our body sees it all as fructose and glucose.

As far as it "tasting better," that is a myth. People are biased toward the "organic" version always being better, but blind tests do not show a huge difference in taste and it usually comes down to a preference of how sweet you like your drink. The American brands often pump up the sweetness in soda and candy—probably to make it more addictive.

When people do a blind taste test, they often pick the American version as "better" most likely because they prefer it a little sweeter.

He got it wrong.

And so did he.

Both preferred the US version.

This video busts the myth of cane sugar being superior due to its "natural" chemistry.

And this video is full of comparisons and experiments on this issue. In the end he eliminated all variables and tasted sugar against HFCS and found no difference between them.

As far as cane sugar being cheaper, that is just not true either. It is cheaper in Mexico for Mexicans. It is more expensive in the US. Switching to cane sugar would increase the prices of soda for US consumers.

I think lobbying for lower sugar versions might be better.

Or we could stop demonizing aspartame. Because, guess what, it's fine.

All forms of sugar are the bad thing people are over-consuming. There is no distinction in their overall badness.

Spending our tax dollars on resources to legislate a pointless switch from sugar to sugar is wasteful.

It is... inefficient.

>Eliminating food deserts

How, exactly?

A food desert isn't 'people are starving', it's 'lack of access to healthy food'.

Do you want the government to force supermarket companies to open branches in unfriendly neighbourhoods? Subsidize those stores with taxpayer money?

Or just to give out free food?

There are plenty of experts with great ideas for how to reduce food deserts. Here is a handy list I smooshed together from a few different sources.

Subsidize Grocery Stores Offer tax incentives and grants to attract full-service grocery stores to underserved areas.

Mobile Markets & Food Trucks Fund pop-up farmers markets and food trucks that bring fresh produce and healthy foods directly into low-access neighborhoods. Ya know, like the ice cream truck, but with tomatoes and shit.

Urban Agriculture Support community gardens, rooftop farms, and local food co-ops to increase local access to fresh produce. Vertical farming and hydroponic technology offer a way to grow fresh vegetables at scale in an urban setting.

Improve Public Transportation Enhance routes and reliability so residents can easily reach grocery stores outside their immediate area. Trains and buses and subways, let's go!

Cooking and Nutrition Education Teach people how to cook nutritious food. Focus on low cost meals with accessible ingredients that can be prepared with minimal effort.

Free Food Yes, free food. We should expand SNAP and make school lunches free. There are 14 million kids living in food-insecure homes. Kids should have access to nutritious meals.

@beardedmrbean said:

Never thought I'd see the day when people on the left started to defend HFCS, guess all it took was the right person suggesting reducing it.

No one is defending it. It's bad. But it is not *worse*. Our understanding has evolved. We realize that replacing sugar with sugar is not going to solve our sugar problem. Eliminating HFCS and replacing it with an identical amount of cane sugar will not have any noticeable health improvements.

@robert-the-foul said:

Another big thing to end food desserts is for fucking junkies and assholes to stop stealing. Then, stores won't close due to a huge money loss.

Poverty is a huge causal factor creating drug addicts and desperate people who have to steal to eat. Right now this country is trying to treat its addiction issue by sending kids and grandmas and pesky protestors to another country.

That's the strategy for the opioid crisis.

Deporting migrants is going to solve everything... because reasons.

*whispers* Most drug smugglers are American citizens.

People are always going to have access to drugs. If you want less addicts, we need to treat them. We need to keep them out of severe poverty and desperation. They need Narcan to stay alive and healthcare to get better. We've tried rounding these people up and putting them in jail and it doesn't work. It's time to take a different approach.

As for the stealing, Universal Basic Income could really help with that. When people aren't desperate, they don't feel compelled to do desperate things to survive and stay fed.

@libertarianbean-plz-dont-step-sh said:

A year ago they were the ones bitching (quite rightly, in my opinion, they were just annoying in the way they did it) that the US didn't have enough restrictions for harmful ingredients in the food industry.

They would also bring up how much different it is in Europe (it is) a lot of studies keep being made every year (they are) and all the chemicals that are discovered to be dangerous are banned (tis true). These people would point out (whine about) how in the US, soooo many of these chemicals are allowed without any sort of restrictions, and said (cried) that the US should be more like Europe.

Everything is chemicals. Chemophobia is an unhelpful approach to food safety. There are plenty of chemicals that are great and plenty of natural ingredients that will kill us.

Europe and the US both have their own food safety systems. And both are pretty good when they are well run. The US does some things better. Europe does some things better. But this idea that Europe is banning more harmful ingredients while the US allows them is mostly wrong. It's complicated and nuanced.

The gist of it is that Europe regulates more with an "abundance of caution" approach. If there is a small chance that something might be harmful and people won't miss it much, they will try to ban or limit it. Sometimes they will ban something just because of public demand despite little evidence to back it up. Which is what happened with food dyes—as there isn't much evidence to support that they are actually harmful.

Food scientist Ann Reardon breaks it down well.

Oh woe is the poor innocent multi billion dollar company! Why would anyone force them to use something that won't cause kids to develop diabetes at an early age!!!

Switching to cane sugar will not prevent diabetes in kids.

Less sugar will.

@siryouarebeingmocked said:

"you only know what the right wingers want"

Not even that. They regularly hallucinate sinister motives for right-wing people.

There are plenty of sinister motives on the Right. I don't have to hallucinate extras.

In this case, RKF Jr. is a conspiracy-brained nut job. He thinks scientific consensus cannot be trusted and will only entertain dubious evidence that goes against that consensus. For him, the truth must always be hidden or hard to find. He needs to be the hero who uncovers it and saves the day. He spits in the face of millions of working-class researchers who have spent their lives building up preponderances of evidence and data to help create the best medicines and treatments in human history.

He wants to burn it all down and have his every conspiracy theory entertained as if it is valid and worthy of consideration. He is cutting the funding of vital research and prioritizing solutions that are either pointless or will make such a small difference that the beneficial health outcomes will be imperceptible.

Spending time, money, and resources switching seed oils to beef tallow is stupid.

If you are deep frying French fries and chicken wings changing to beef tallow isn't going to make them any healthier. You are far more at risk from the fat and calories than what oil is used.

Spending time, money, and resources changing sugar to sugar is stupid.

Spending time, money, and resources banning food dye is also stupid.

Spending time, money, and resources removing fluoride from the water is *very* stupid.

But it gets worse than RFK Jr. wasting time with his pointless crusades.

Many of his crusades are very dangerous. He has already laid off thousands of people in important healthcare roles. He has cut funding for important research.

And he is handling the measles outbreaks about as well as you might expect. He is recommending people take Vitamin A as a treatment.

Whoops!

This isn't the first time his advice has harmed people.

And now he is talking about scouring the private health data of autistic patients to come up with some magical cause for autism in September.

@lordascapelion said:

But holy shit is OP retarded?

“I think we should do X.”

“UH WHY ARE YOU DOING X? YOU SHOULD DO A, B, C AND D YOU FUCKING MORON DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?”

But honestly at this point political propaganda blogs are fueled by retard logic

No, I am not retarded.

Though I am very tired of people trying to force that word to have a comeback. I know you think it signifies you are rebelling against the woke crusade to censor language. But in reality you just immediately let everyone know you are a cringe-lord dipshit.

I think my logic is sound. The government has finite resources. They only have so many employees. They only have so much time to accomplish important work. They only have enough budget to address a handful of major issues.

A good leader of a government department will triage. They will figure out which problems are urgent, which are easy, which are near impossible and then adjust the department's goals and priorities to efficiently address what needs to be done.

Spending time, money, and labor on pointless endeavors robs resources from the more important causes. He's fixing hangnails while the country is bleeding out.

I want him to fix things that are actually broken. I want him to take action that will improve health outcomes on a population scale. We need more research, not less. We need the 5 million kids without health insurance to get care. We need drug costs under control. We need more nurses in hospitals. We need a pandemic response team.

The list of needs is sooooo long and he wants to waste time adjusting the hue/saturation of Froot Loops.

RKF Jr. is picking easy performative actions that will do nothing except satisfy those who believe in conspiracy over actual evidence. Many people are convinced that all of our health issues are due to these inconsequential factors. So when he addresses them and these fools give him a big "attaboy," he will increase his political capital and feel emboldened to tackle bigger conspiracies...

His white whale.

Vaccines.

Actually his white whale was an actual whale that he beheaded.

Okay, vaccines are his OTHER white whale.

He wants to disrupt the most successful medical treatment in history.

Did you know we used to have constant dead babies? Before 1900 people just assumed a few of their kids were gonna die. People think the average lifespan used to be 40 and no one ever made it to old age. Nope... there were just so many dead babies it skewed the statistic. If a person survived childhood, they had a very good chance of living until they were old and gray.

"Vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives over the past 50 years. This includes 146 million lives among children under 5, with 101 million being infants under 1 year. Increased access to crucial vaccines means that infant mortality rates are 40% lower than they would be in a world without vaccines."

The spirit of Diogenes is alive and well

But it's not a chair. It's a bar stool.

This, however, are all chairs:

Each one is missing at least one component of the chair definition above.

transphobe with a separate

seat for one person