Should Unhealthy Food Be Banned/Regulated?

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

As the title says. Talking with raeg and it got brought up. But what does YCM think? Should there be some sort of ban or strict regulation be put on unhealthy food sale/production? I mean, clearly we can't prevent people from making unhealthy food at home out of ingredients that could go either way, but is there something that should be done about it?

 

Not gonna put my own thoughts because there's a lot of ways to think about it and I'm curious what you all have to say without any bias.

[ENMaker]

No. BANNED FOR 1 WORD POST

[VCR_CAT]

As a man from Canada; regulations on unhealthy food is generally a good idea, and considering the overall decline in national health on both the US and Canada, the question starts to become "Do I want my tasty salty snacks as they are now, or do I want to be healthier?"

 

I mean, it's not like delicious healthy food doesn't exist, or that it's beyond the capabilities of fast food or junk food companies to tweak their recipes to be even a little healthier; it's just that they won't so long as they don't have to.

[Trebuchet MS]

I feel that a form of regulation is already underway, although it's only to prohibit the use of ingredients that have been found to be downright harmful to the consumer.

 

Trying to extend it any further than the status quo could feel like an infringing on autonomy. The ideal method is to educate people on healthy eating and lifestyles, though the effectiveness of such tactics are varied.

[VCR_CAT]

I feel that a form of regulation is already underway, although it's only to prohibit the use of ingredients that have been found to be downright harmful to the consumer.

 

Trying to extend it any further than the status quo could feel like an infringing on autonomy. The ideal method is to educate people on healthy eating and lifestyles, though the effectiveness of such tactics are varied.

 

Considering that unhealthy foods are not only way cheaper but way more accessible is something that needs to be addressed in this. Education on healthy eats and beats is very important; but it's a hard battle to fight when making smart choices.

 

Just to note; I'm against banning the food; but I do feel regulation is important.

[Mutant Monster RAEG-HAPYP]

I brought it up with CowCow because of the obesity issue in the U.S., although it seems other first world countries might have a similar issue since I did look it up.

 

Stuff like those unnecessarily huge burgers from a fast food place is really bad for you. Yeah, you can try to educate, but how do you know they'll listen? It's like smoking. We all know what it does to you, but people still smoke.

 

It's more of a "should portion sizes at restaurants be regulated" sort of thing for me, living in the U.S. and all, but, the ingredients definitely need to be regulated for all foods.

[Just Crouton]

No. It's should be a person's choice to put what they want in their body, whether it's Vitamin C and Calcium or Red 40 and Trans Fats.

[Halubaris Maphotika]

I believe in overpopulation and I personally feel that we need unhealthy food to trim down the population through the poor health effects it does to human beings. Cancer and Diabetes can both be gained by unhealthy diets and I believe these things are mother natures way of trimming down the population to acceptable levels.

[Thar]

Even if that's the right thing to do for society, imagine how many jobs will be lost from all the fast-food places going out of business.

[mitchermitcher]

Reducing obesity is a nice thing and all but when it's not done by choice but by unhealthy sheet becoming harder to get, that really, really bothers me. It's an easier solution than making healthy sheet easier and more economically sound to get, but I'd support the latter over this any day.

[Halubaris Maphotika]

Even if that's the right thing to do for society, imagine how many jobs will be lost from all the fast-food places going out of business.

Except it's not.

 

More people don't die from these effects, the population grows beyond proportions, the Earth suffers for it. Right now fighting these things is going to only hinder the planet.

[Tentacruel]

Should "unhealthy" food be banned?  No.

 

Should the FDA have power and force food corporations to tell us exactly what's in their products?  Yes.

 

The problem with banning unhealthy food is that the idea of what's healthy and what's not is WAY too debatable.  In some cases like trans fats I do think it is reasonable to ban them when they are straight up not safe for consumption. 

 

 

tl;dr

Banned: No

Regulated: Yes

[Progenitor]

to 0 next banlist plox konoomy

[Halubaris Maphotika]

In a hypothetical situation where Overpopulation is not a problem; I wouldn't want unhealthy food banned until cigarettes were banned first.

[Night]

We need to stop coddling grown funking adults, you want to be obese? Cool, that's your prerogative.

We should hope, for humanity's sake, that people are intelligent enough to make their own decisions and not overeat themselves like funking goldfish. 

[Icy]

Given how much the evidence tends to flip/flop historically, I'd consider it a bad idea to do so. The logistics for all involved the next time a new report backed by multiple sources comes out would be extreme. Never mind that it might happen once, twice a year at minimum.

 

Private Regulations are fine though since its not difficult for one area to do it on its own.

[Tentacruel]

We need to stop coddling grown funking adults, you want to be obese? Cool, that's your prerogative.

We should hope, for humanity's sake, that people are intelligent enough to make their own decisions and not overeat themselves like funking goldfish. 

To play Devil's Advocate, there's a lot of misconceptions floating around about obesity and overrating.  People need to be able to make their own informed decisions.

 

For example, I am totally in favor of calorie count being printed on everything. 

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Still not discussing personal ideas on it but

We need to stop coddling grown funking adults, you want to be obese? Cool, that's your prerogative.

We should hope, for humanity's sake, that people are intelligent enough to make their own decisions and not overeat themselves like funking goldfish. 

Just to devil's advocate for a moment, like Tenta, lol nice timing

Isn't letting people have access to easy crappy sheet food more coddling?

[Thar]

Not to mention unhealthy food is cheaper, plus it's pretty delicious depending on the place, so I ain't complaining.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Not to mention unhealthy food is cheaper, plus it's pretty delicious depending on the place, so I ain't complaining.

Not cheaper, but infinitely more convenient.

[Neochu-H]

no, unhealthy food is a way of life

[Icy]

Still not discussing personal ideas on it but

Just to devil's advocate for a moment, like Tenta, lol nice timing

Isn't letting people have access to easy crappy sheet food more coddling?

 

We don't make the "crappy s*** food" so easy to access. The purchasing data does.

[VCR_CAT]

We need to stop coddling grown f***ing adults.

 

This is a very poor outlook that I've seen crop here way too many times. It's not good to just jump to the conclusion that people are being coddled at any hint of something being regulated in any manner. Nothing gets achieved besides insulting other people for their ideas for no good reason. If you have a proper reason for why food and health regulations are a bad idea, then go ahead and let's here it. Otherwise, this is pretty much as good as shitposting.

 

Regulations are pretty dang important, and kind of well needed. Like I said before, existing unhealthy foods are some of the cheapest and most readily available foods for someone to purchase, and as great as proper health and food education is for helping people make educated decisions; wanting the junk food is practically ingrained in the average american since childhood thanks to what foods they prefer and like.

 

I mean frick; food isn't just the place the stop, but over-the-counter pills and supplements have been needing a proper crack-down in the US for some time. Did you know that a given supplement doesn't need to have safety approval by the FDA before being marketed? For something like vitamin tablets this isn't as big of a deal, although there's still matters in question if they actually need to fully provide the service that the product implies it will, but for larger products this becomes a big risk, such as how many deaths and incidents have been related to adverse reactions to supplements that have not been properly evaluated/labeled/etc. Of course, they did try to crack down on this a few years ago, but thanks to an ad campaign against this bill headed by the companies featuring fallacious information and Mel Gibson, it wasn't passed.

 

If at the very least corporations are required to post the calorie counts and nutritional information on their products and fast-food restaurants having this information very easily and readily available, that's great for consumers looking to make informed decisions on their diet. But, it would be much better if regulations were upped to get rid of crap like high-fructose corn syrup or at least make it so that buying and eating healthy food was as financially and practically convenient as unhealthy food was, that would be fantastic.

 

I mean, honestly, it sucks enough that my lunch options on-campus are between a $3 carb-laden calorie dream lunch, or a $10 healthy alternative that provides as much food-matters to place in mah tum-tums without all the crap I don't want to put in my body.

[Aix]

Think unprocessed food is already tax exempt in Canada, but some sort of tax thing that would properly even the playing ground should work. Ideally, I'd agree with Night, but in practice, I think people would be better off if there was some intervention. Nothing extreme though.

[Halubaris Maphotika]

This is a very poor outlook that I've seen crop here way too many times. It's not good to just jump to the conclusion that people are being coddled at any hint of something being regulated in any manner. Nothing gets achieved besides insulting other people for their ideas for no good reason. If you have a proper reason for why food and health regulations are a bad idea, then go ahead and let's here it. Otherwise, this is pretty much as good as shitposting.

 

Regulations are pretty dang important, and kind of well needed. Like I said before, existing unhealthy foods are some of the cheapest and most readily available foods for someone to purchase, and as great as proper health and food education is for helping people make educated decisions; wanting the junk food is practically ingrained in the average american since childhood thanks to what foods they prefer and like.

 

I mean frick; food isn't just the place the stop, but over-the-counter pills and supplements have been needing a proper crack-down in the US for some time. Did you know that a given supplement doesn't need to have safety approval by the FDA before being marketed? For something like vitamin tablets this isn't as big of a deal, although there's still matters in question if they actually need to fully provide the service that the product implies it will, but for larger products this becomes a big risk, such as how many deaths and incidents have been related to adverse reactions to supplements that have not been properly evaluated/labeled/etc. Of course, they did try to crack down on this a few years ago, but thanks to an ad campaign against this bill headed by the companies featuring fallacious information and Mel Gibson, it wasn't passed.

 

If at the very least corporations are required to post the calorie counts and nutritional information on their products and fast-food restaurants having this information very easily and readily available, that's great for consumers looking to make informed decisions on their diet. But, it would be much better if regulations were upped to get rid of crap like high-fructose corn syrup or at least make it so that buying and eating healthy food was as financially and practically convenient as unhealthy food was, that would be fantastic.

 

I mean, honestly, it sucks enough that my lunch options on-campus are between a $3 carb-laden calorie dream lunch, or a $10 healthy alternative that provides as much food-matters to place in mah tum-tums without all the crap I don't want to put in my body.

You don't think that more humans who are healthy and living longer, and giving birth, aren't going to cause problems in the coming decades?