logoalt Hacker News

bruceblast Wednesday at 5:40 PM4 repliesview on HN

Pure partisan spite. The gov't not spending money on candy and sugary drinks is good. Just like when Michelle Obama pushed for better school lunches.


Replies

dmschulmanlast Wednesday at 8:38 PM

When Michelle Obama pushed for better school lunches she was excoriated for trying to get healthier foods into the hands of children. Glenn Beck's response was "Get your damn hands off my fries, lady. If I want to be a fat, fat, fatty and shovel French fries all day long, that is my choice!". Seems partisan spite cuts both ways.

I'm glad to see this announcement and despite the leadership in Washington right now I don't think these adjustment will be seen as too controversial by the American public. The recommendations are based on a lot of good nutritional science that's been out there for years, but the buck seems to stop at the conversation around fat.

They went to great lengths to remove the debate around good fat vs bad fat from this discussion. Even reading the report, emphasis is put on the discussion of why we use so many pressed oils in the food chain, but not why we phased lard and shortening out of the American diet.

"Eat real butter" is ostensibly a recommendation presented at the bottom of the webpage, but butter is not a healthy fat. Same with some people's obsession with frying in beef tallow, but the report doesn't want to dig into this distinction for obvious self interested reasons. They even recommend:

> When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.

Which is a good recommendation. But no, you don't want to replace olive oil with butter or beef tallow. There's a lot of good nutrition science to back this up, but the report would prefer to not go there. Maybe "eat some butter" is appropriate, but unless the FDA wants to have an honest conversation around HDL and LDL cholesterol and saturated fats, I don't see this inverted pyramid doing too much good for overall population health (besides raising awareness)

show 1 reply
ecshaferlast Wednesday at 6:15 PM

One of the best litmus tests for Democrat or Republican I have found is "Should people on food stamps be able to buy mountain dew / candy / etc with them?", very low false positive rate in either direction.

But regardless I have it on very good authority that with the BBB some within the Republican party wanted to limit EBT to only be able to purchase healthy food. No soda, no candy, no chips, etc. A couple calls from Coke, Pepsi, etc lobbyists shot that down.

show 7 replies
onetimeusenamelast Thursday at 3:35 AM

I go on HN to read thoughtful non-partisan commentary but the general mood seems to be "everything is bad" in certain threads even if that contradicts a previous popular HN consensus.

theLegionWithinlast Wednesday at 11:52 PM

Lol I forgot about that. What was it? Pizza is a vegetable?

show 1 reply