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What new or revised public policy/law would make it easier for people to maintain a healthy weight?
Replies
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PineAndSalt wrote: »
This is true. Most developed countries have implemented a sugary drink tax, but in conjunction some have also required the amount of sugar in those products to be reduced by a certain percentage. France also implemented a law that refills on sugary drinks are no longer allowed.Theoldguy1 wrote: »Too many loopholes around limiting size. If you want to discourage consumption, just tax it like alcohol.
I hope that the US would eventually follow the example.
Laws regulating how much of an ingredient can be used in food/beverages?
Hard pass.
What I eat and what I drink is none of the government's business.7 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »PineAndSalt wrote: »
This is true. Most developed countries have implemented a sugary drink tax, but in conjunction some have also required the amount of sugar in those products to be reduced by a certain percentage. France also implemented a law that refills on sugary drinks are no longer allowed.Theoldguy1 wrote: »Too many loopholes around limiting size. If you want to discourage consumption, just tax it like alcohol.
I hope that the US would eventually follow the example.
Laws regulating how much of an ingredient can be used in food/beverages?
Hard pass.
What I eat and what I drink is none of the government's business.
Unless the government starts paying more and more of the nation's healthcare cost and it can be reasonably determined that some items of food and drink are disproportionately contributing to health problems. In that case what you eat/drink does become the government's business. IMO, most likely in the form of taxes on high calorie, low nutrient foods and drinks.2 -
cmriverside wrote: »I think we have enough laws already.
People just need to take some personal responsibility. Anyone who's made it past fourth grade should be able to figure this out.
Eat less. Take a walk. Ta Da.
Too many laws actually.4 -
cmriverside wrote: »I think we have enough laws already.
People just need to take some personal responsibility. Anyone who's made it past fourth grade should be able to figure this out.
Eat less. Take a walk. Ta Da.
I agree. Im tired of so many people needing to have their hand held whenever they do anything nowadays. There are dozens of calorie counting and food tracking apps available now. Such as the very one we are on now ! If people cant take five lousy minutes at each meal to log and track their food then they are probably too lazy to have success with most any endeavor. Many in modern society seem to want everything done for them. Its really tragic7 -
I would say adding a health coach to each doctors office and covering health coaching with insurance so people can have the accountability, support and information they need to complete all of the suggestions they are given.7
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As kind of a corollary to this topic, how do people feel about farm subsidies and the Farm Bill in the US? What would change if these did not exist?0
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I would say adding a health coach to each doctors office and covering health coaching with insurance so people can have the accountability, support and information they need to complete all of the suggestions they are given.
People will just ignore the advice as they do that of the doctor, just adding another layer of cost.
How many people get the advice to eat less and move from the doctor and don't do it?4 -
I don't think we necessarily need more laws. I do love the calorie disclosure though. I just think society as a whole needs to adopt a better attitude regarding health and food. If you look at other countries with a lower obesity rate their portions are smaller and people bike and walk more as opposed to driving,2
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Stop subsidizing the sugar, corn and wheat industries. Let food cost what it actually cost so that a salad doesn't cost 10X as much as wonder bread. If isn't real and it forces people to make unnatural decisions2
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Regulate the labels of alcohol bottles to Express the health effects like they do with cigarettes and calories at fast food places.1
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Stop subsidizing the sugar, corn and wheat industries. Let food cost what it actually cost so that a salad doesn't cost 10X as much as wonder bread. If isn't real and it forces people to make unnatural decisions
The subsidies aren't anywhere near that level of out of alignment that I've ever seen. Grains are easy to grow even without subsidies.1 -
I find it interesting the number of times in this thread people have expressed an interest that more place be required to label calories and that calorie accuracy should be higher. I think it is easy to see how it would help someone using MFP or any other calorie tracker, but I think it overestimates how much anyone makes calorie based food decisions.
I recall (and I should probably look up) a study that showed calorie counts don't seem to impact food decisions at restaurants. The suggestion was that the numbers are just to abstract. Instead, they found there was a difference in behavior when menus were required to color code foods - low calories had green for go, while high calorie options were in red, and in between had yellow - there was a much greater change in food behaviors. I wonder how much it would work in the long run, or if it people would slowly build up blinders.8 -
Regulate the labels of alcohol bottles to Express the health effects like they do with cigarettes and calories at fast food places.
It's been there since late 1980's: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/27/215
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I tried to post a picture of canadian cigarette packages for reference but I don't seem to be able to.
To be clear I think ALL the health problems with direct links should be included and that advertising, in giving packaging, and enticing children should be actively banned.
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Great topic. I would like to see more nutrition education for school aged children to teach them good eating habits and about macronutrients. Eliminate fried foods at schools (like fries, corn dogs, etc) and only serve non processed fresh food. Require schools to teach basic gardening and cooking. Free lunches in all schools regardless of income. Provide additional food (in form of food pantry) to families that may need it to ensure students have proper nutrition. A program to eliminate food waste, support composting & encourage eating vegetables/fruits that are not "perfect". One can dream right?!
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Oh and mandate all cities to provide better/safer walk/bike routes to school. 6
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To clarify>>>I believe maintaining healthy weight starts with how we learn to eat as children. Hence my focus on children.3
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magnusthenerd wrote: »I find it interesting the number of times in this thread people have expressed an interest that more place be required to label calories and that calorie accuracy should be higher. I think it is easy to see how it would help someone using MFP or any other calorie tracker, but I think it overestimates how much anyone makes calorie based food decisions.
I recall (and I should probably look up) a study that showed calorie counts don't seem to impact food decisions at restaurants. The suggestion was that the numbers are just to abstract. Instead, they found there was a difference in behavior when menus were required to color code foods - low calories had green for go, while high calorie options were in red, and in between had yellow - there was a much greater change in food behaviors. I wonder how much it would work in the long run, or if it people would slowly build up blinders.
I strongly suspect that most people don't know how many calories is a reasonable amount for a meal. They may know the general guidance of '2000 for women, 2500 for men' (which I think is too high, but that's another subject), but they've certainly never thought about how that would actually divide up into meals, snacks and drinks.
It probably doesn't help that restaurants seem to think that 'low calorie options' mean anything below 500/600 kcal. Whereas for most people, that's not low, that's about right...2 -
Great topic. I would like to see more nutrition education for school aged children to teach them good eating habits and about macronutrients. Eliminate fried foods at schools (like fries, corn dogs, etc) and only serve non processed fresh food. Require schools to teach basic gardening and cooking. Free lunches in all schools regardless of income. Provide additional food (in form of food pantry) to families that may need it to ensure students have proper nutrition. A program to eliminate food waste, support composting & encourage eating vegetables/fruits that are not "perfect". One can dream right?!
So in your scenario you couldn't feed frozen vegetables at school (note the ingredient list)?
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Isnt things like cal count displays what makes a restaurant stand out or chosen over eating somewhere else? Its called competition, stop medling. You want to spend OPP (other peoples property) to pass regulations to make life more convenient by having calories displayed on food?. Some people dont want their taxes wasted and can figure it out them selves so stop regulating and increasing costs. If you want a public policy that will work provide tax incentives for restarants that DO provide that health info, we already have ratings and labels and omg the regulations. Who in here actually reads the federal register daily and looks at what the rules n reg being passed say anyhow? Not to mention they pretty much ALWAYS have different meaning and far reaching implications if you actually read it (the entire thing including definitions) other than what you see or hear on TV or advertising media? Probably the corporate entity who hired a lobbyiest and can afford to keep up with all the mind boggling rediculous laws and regulations that do nothing more than cause small business and individuals confusion, cost, time, pain while guaranteeing more gov. paid employees and attnys to interpret, apply, monitor and follow these rediculously complex regulations.
You want to TRIM FAT? How about figuring out a way to incentivize government budgets to actually SAVE money, lower spending. In our gov. dept. every year its the same thing. "Hey we have x amount of dollars left in the budget this year, be sure to go out and buy everything you possibly can (figure out a way to justify it) because you know if you dont spend it all the city or state or fed dept. will reduce our budget and give it to some other dept. (oh hey how about the tax payers who are being robbed manipulated and used by our media for their own financial gains). This is why we have competition and private companies that actually look at spending, costs, bids and the bottom line. Regulating and taxing are NOT the answer in this pork belly broken gov. system we have.
Provide incentives, rewards, tax discounts, for people who voluntarily choose to eat well, post progress, join fitness communities, reg. work out, and contribute to society. And the fed agency can design these incentive programs (lower taxes for auto ins. co. who give discounts for people who reg. excercse, or restaurants that post cal. counts) then you need a health tax incentive bill that is tied to federal funds going to the state, for any state that adopts and impliments the federal example program.
Because as we all know from learning administrative law (which they should be teaching to kids at age 5+ instead of sex education) the fed gov and all our administrative dept. dont have power (thank god) under the constitution, it places limits to government control over our individual liberties and freedoms, (commerce clause) fed gov. cant pass or enforce a food, health, or water quality standard.
Those laws (Health and saftey) are left to the states to pass and enforce. (Why? Go learn constitutional law. So you can actually be w/in x miles of the actual door where you elect people, have meetings, and have more oversight and less cost and its good and healthy for people to socialize with their community IN REAL FACE TO FACE communication (read book "lost connections") and for people to be more involved in their own community, passing laws that make sense for that area, landscape and type of town, and taking care of each other locally. Point being, if the fed is is going to adopt a policy for food n health, fine, use incentives not regulations. Its not going to be enforceable or constitutional or required unless its adopted by a state volunarily as a condition to get some type of federal incentive or funding (same with water quality standards, air quality, education standards and all the pork belly administrative agencies we invented to do congresses job for them), then gave the agencies all three powers (judicial, legislative rule making, and executive enforcement) which totally adds layers of unneccesary costs, duplicates states responsibility in most cases, and violates the separation of powers provision if there is no right to appeal an admins decision to a REAL court of law.
So good luck with that 3000 page new rule your administrative agency is writing to pass new regulations and increase your deptartments spending so the budget isnt cut next year, its got to feel great knowing 50 gov. lawyers will have job security fighting over definitions, exemptions, how the rules effect other laws, all while, rest assured, it wont be adopted by most places unless the STATE that has constitutional power to regulate in that area actually adopts ur admin dept. 3000 page rule in their next general legislative session. INCENTIVES not regulations. You workout not to avoid a negative consequence (getting fat) but because of the incentives and rewards it brings you. Otherwise working out becomes mentally difficult, same with gov. policies. (Sorry not spell checked or with emphasis on gramatical correctness).13 -
janicejjanice wrote: »You want to spend OPP (other peoples property) to pass regulations to make life more convenient by having calories displayed on food?. Some people dont want their taxes wasted and can figure it out them selves
...they can? Accurately? How?8 -
Great, now I have that Naughty by Nature song running through my head. (Pretty sure it meant something different that could definitely not be written on MFP, however.)
Not really seeing why having calorie counts in chains is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Most chains around here already have calories available and it's great.1 -
Great, now I have that Naughty by Nature song running through my head. (Pretty sure it meant something different that could definitely not be written on MFP, however.)
Not really seeing why having calorie counts in chains is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Most chains around here already have calories available and it's great.
So you're not down with OPP then?
Yeah, chain restaurants have been required to post calories in NY for a number of years now, and I've never heard of any struggling to do it.
It is problematic for a lot of smaller businesses, which is why they are always (to my knowledge) excluded by theses laws.
I mean, I don't really think the calorie counts on menus are really helping fight the obesity epidemic, as either the numbers are meaningless to most folks I know or they are being willfully ignorant anyway and ignore them. They're great for those of us keeping track though <shrug>.4 -
Great, now I have that Naughty by Nature song running through my head. (Pretty sure it meant something different that could definitely not be written on MFP, however.)
Not really seeing why having calorie counts in chains is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Most chains around here already have calories available and it's great.
It isn't hard to accomplish at all. There are software programs that make it fairly simple. Cheftec for example, the one I worked with in the past when I managed a the flagship location of a small chain of restaurants. It's simple, you plug in the ingredients and amounts and is spits out the nutritionals. For chains that have a mostly stable menu with seasonal items and a few coming off and on the menu based on sales, it's pretty easy.
The thing is, as kimny pointed out, it hasn't really changed consumer behavior. The Cheesecake Factory has published their nutritionals for years. Their "Wellness Salad is" 840 calories. Their "Mushroom Burger is 1400 calories. Their "Pasta Napolitana" is 2470 calories. Their sales remain high and growing slightly (To be expected that the growth has slowed. They are a mature chain at this point) not dropping.
Plain fact is people don't really care. It proves the point that you can't legislate morality or personal judgement.
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Great, now I have that Naughty by Nature song running through my head. (Pretty sure it meant something different that could definitely not be written on MFP, however.)
Not really seeing why having calorie counts in chains is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Most chains around here already have calories available and it's great.
It isn't hard to accomplish at all. There are software programs that make it fairly simple. Cheftec for example, the one I worked with in the past when I managed a the flagship location of a small chain of restaurants. It's simple, you plug in the ingredients and amounts and is spits out the nutritionals. For chains that have a mostly stable menu with seasonal items and a few coming off and on the menu based on sales, it's pretty easy.
The thing is, as kimny pointed out, it hasn't really changed consumer behavior. The Cheesecake Factory has published their nutritionals for years. Their "Wellness Salad is" 840 calories. Their "Mushroom Burger is 1400 calories. Their "Pasta Napolitana" is 2470 calories. Their sales remain high and growing slightly (To be expected that the growth has slowed. They are a mature chain at this point) not dropping.
Plain fact is people don't really care. It proves the point that you can't legislate morality or personal judgement.
I agree with this. What it does it make it easier for those of us who do care, and removes an excuse. (I do think it also sometimes leads to restaurants adding some lower cal options. I've seen that with some places, and it also helps you figure out whether a quick serve place like Pret a Manger or Potbelly's or whatever will have workable options. Both do, IMO.)
My argument (such as it is, I'm not really arguing) is NOT that it's some miraculous public policy that will solve the obesity crisis (like I said, calorie counts have been common around here for some time and people don't seem to have gotten thinner), but that it's not some hugely awful and burdensome thing.
I also would never suggest that the requirement should extend to all restaurants, and most of the restaurants I personally go to don't have them.3 -
Great, now I have that Naughty by Nature song running through my head. (Pretty sure it meant something different that could definitely not be written on MFP, however.)
Not really seeing why having calorie counts in chains is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Most chains around here already have calories available and it's great.
It isn't hard to accomplish at all. There are software programs that make it fairly simple. Cheftec for example, the one I worked with in the past when I managed a the flagship location of a small chain of restaurants. It's simple, you plug in the ingredients and amounts and is spits out the nutritionals. For chains that have a mostly stable menu with seasonal items and a few coming off and on the menu based on sales, it's pretty easy.
The thing is, as kimny pointed out, it hasn't really changed consumer behavior. The Cheesecake Factory has published their nutritionals for years. Their "Wellness Salad is" 840 calories. Their "Mushroom Burger is 1400 calories. Their "Pasta Napolitana" is 2470 calories. Their sales remain high and growing slightly (To be expected that the growth has slowed. They are a mature chain at this point) not dropping.
Plain fact is people don't really care. It proves the point that you can't legislate morality or personal judgement.
I agree with this. What it does it make it easier for those of us who do care, and removes an excuse. (I do think it also sometimes leads to restaurants adding some lower cal options. I've seen that with some places, and it also helps you figure out whether a quick serve place like Pret a Manger or Potbelly's or whatever will have workable options. Both do, IMO.)
My argument (such as it is, I'm not really arguing) is NOT that it's some miraculous public policy that will solve the obesity crisis (like I said, calorie counts have been common around here for some time and people don't seem to have gotten thinner), but that it's not some hugely awful and burdensome thing.
I also would never suggest that the requirement should extend to all restaurants, and most of the restaurants I personally go to don't have them.
Yes, we are in total agreement. Interestingly, down here in Oaxaca there are very few chain restaurants. so you just need to exercise your best judgement and make good choices. One thing that does stand out though is that the trend of huge portions is not a thing here as it really has become at many chains in the U.S. Some of those The Cheesecake Factory meals are enough for 2 or more people. I went to a BBQ place here yesterday afternoon and got beef ribs. 4 good size ribs with a side salad. It was a lot by Oaxaca standard but less that I would see in a typical U.S. BBQ place.1 -
Copper_Boom wrote: »As kind of a corollary to this topic, how do people feel about farm subsidies and the Farm Bill in the US? What would change if these did not exist?
Not a fan of farm subsidies either. However, I think the food stamp program is attached, so good luck getting rid of such subsidies.1 -
To the OP question, laws only work if people obey them. People can't follow simple traffic laws, don't know how any food consumption law would work.
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tbright1965 wrote: »Copper_Boom wrote: »As kind of a corollary to this topic, how do people feel about farm subsidies and the Farm Bill in the US? What would change if these did not exist?
Not a fan of farm subsidies either. However, I think the food stamp program is attached, so good luck getting rid of such subsidies.
The school lunch program is also tied to it.1 -
tbright1965 wrote: »Copper_Boom wrote: »As kind of a corollary to this topic, how do people feel about farm subsidies and the Farm Bill in the US? What would change if these did not exist?
Not a fan of farm subsidies either. However, I think the food stamp program is attached, so good luck getting rid of such subsidies.
Farm subsidies are about $20B a year, around $60 a person. When you think about it, not bad insurance to make sure the US has all the food it needs and we're paying far less as a percent of our income for food than anywhere else in the world.0
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