This specific point sure, the rest not really. Peetrol is like 50x more energy dense than common batteries for example. Peak sun doesn't coincide with peak demand at all, it's a pain in the ass to store long term, it's unreliable when you need it the most, it's not as easy to transform into fertilizers/plastics/medicine
I don’t think it’s cooking the books to include economic output from the service sector in GDP. If you did this in the US you’d have a very different growth story as well
15% of the french gdp comes from rent, which basically did +30% over the last 10 years, that alone is ~0.4% of annual growth according to the official numbers... 1/3rd of the "growth" is rental inflation...
What value was added here? None, gdp is meaningless in post industrial countries, it wasn't designed to measure anything other than industrial outputs.
Most GDP numbers look at real growth, not nominal, which would filter out the 30% number you’re talking about. Under those numbers about 1/10 of the growth is rent, not 1/3
But if your core take is “GDP is meaningless in post industrial countries”, then you’re at a level of crank not worth engaging with
The crux of this post is that even publicly stated political views like DHH's shouldn't matter.
"If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side” considers unacceptable and unforgivable, [...] Should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself? [...] I don’t want to associate with any community that would insist on either of those. [...]
"The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly shamed for going there because one of the owners was an ass."
What is junk food? For example — are cheeseburgers and French fries junk food? What about when you make them at home, or at a fancy restaurant without artificial ingredients? Is it certain additives? If McDonalds makes a happy meal without additives, is it no longer junk food?
What does treat them like cigarettes mean? Tax them? Ban them within 15 feet of a building entrance? Put warning labels? Is giving or selling French fries to children a crime? Does this apply to food made at home?
Most of the time when people try to define healthy food vs. junk food in a fair and unbiased way, the line gets drawn at "whole foods" vs "processed foods".
A typical burger meal is definitely processed food because the meat is processed mechanically and mixed from different sources (usually with added fat); the bun is made from refined flour and refined oils; and the fries are thinly-cut potatoes blanched and fried in more refined oils. (Not to mention a whole bunch of chemical additives which are the norm rather than the exception; and "hyperpalatability" tweaks which means the food is formulated to taste unnaturally good.)
You could perhaps argue that a home-made burger meal made using whole cuts of meat, a lean wholemeal bread dough, and potatoes roasted in animal fat could count as a healthy/whole food meal, but it would taste different to the typical hamburger meal we all associate with fast food.
Fast food also has an enormous marketing industry behind it which pushes it in unhealthy volume, with maximum convenience, and at (until recently, at least) affordable prices.
Why does grinding the meat at home make a huge difference vs grinding it in a factory? Depending on the cut you choose, the condiments you add, and the portion size, a hamburger at home could be Lot less healthy than a McDonald’s burger. McDonald’s patties don’t have any fillers afaict.
The point is that “junk food” is a pretty amorphous and vague category. If you want to enforce portion or calorie restrictions you can do that, but it would have to be way more encompassing of a regulation than targeting “junk food”
The additives to the meat. Has to retain its color, be preserved, and they also add pink slime to it. McDonald’s adds soy, I believe, and there are all kinds of other things that go into it. If you grind your meat at home you’re going to get some delicious burger.
As of the last 10 years none of this is true for McDonalds. Their published ingredients say 100% beef with no additives, and they stopped using pink slime 10 years ago.
But we’d still designate McDonald’s as junk food, so it can’t be the additives that make the category
I don't think there's a neat categorisation. If I cook at home, starting with just vegetables and cuts of meat, at some point the food I'm making stops being "whole foods" and starts being "processed foods". But when is that?
If I cook bread at home, is that a processed food? How about if I make a steak sandwich with that bread? How about if I first pass the steak through a mincing machine? Still whole? Or processed now?
What if I add an egg, some crumbs from the bread I made earlier, and some salt and pepper. Still whole? And then I formed it into a patty and cooked it on a pan. Is it now processed?
When does it become processed and how does that look different to my stomach when I chew it?
> For example — are cheeseburgers and French fries junk food? What about when you make them at home, or at a fancy restaurant without artificial ingredients? Is it certain additives? If McDonalds makes a happy meal without additives, is it no longer junk food?
Yes, this is all junk food. It's not that difficult.
Eaten in moderation these things are fine. But they are highly palatable calorie dense meals that are not great for you over time and in huge quantity. A burger is generally speaking a burger, regardless of how fancy. Deep fried stuff is deep fried, regardless of the cut of the vegetable or how organically it was grown.
Your latter question is far more interesting to me. I don't have a solution for that really. Society gets what society demands. I don't know how you'd fix those incentives without seriously horrible second and third order effects.
Lean ground beef, bread, cheese, and a small salad are not “junk food” in themselves, but when you stack them into a cheeseburger they become junk food. Meanwhile salad entrees at several restaurants have more calories, sodium, and sugar than a Big Mac, but would be seen as healthy choices.
The reason point 2 is hard is because it’s really difficult to actually draw the line between normal food and junk/ultraprocessed foods in a way that can regulated. You can give guidelines on what a balanced diet should look like and warn away from excess consumption of certain foods, but bans or restrictions are hard.
People have tried. Any time the government tries to do anything a substantial portion of the electorate throws a childish hissy fit and tries to make out that the Bolsheviks are coming to make their fries less tasty for no good reason.
What's interesting is that it's different parts of the electorate that get upset. When Republicans wanted to make junk food/soda ineligible for food stamps, Dems got upset. And when Dems wanted to tax large sodas, Republicans/libertarians got upset.
I think the former makes much more sense than the latter, since it is literally being funded by the govt. That's a reasonable first step, or possibly only step, especially considering that most people on food stamps are also on govt-funded/subsidized healthcare (meaning taxpayers will end up footing the bill when they require expensive treatments resulting in part from an unhealthy diet).
Feel free to elaborate on my alleged insincerity. Was I insincere in noticing that there are partisan patterns at play, or insincere when pointing out that the govt should have more control over govt-run/taxpayer funded programs, as opposed to transactions between private parties?
Amazing that you again allege insincerity, with zero evidence. You then go on to make false claims about what I said and avoid the obvious point that my problem is not with the historical figure that you quoted, but the fact that you injected race into a conversation that was about food.
As for whether you violate the HN guidelines, the number of your recent comments that are greyed out tends to indicate that I'm not the only one who thinks you're out of step here.
Even today, a Soda with 'real sugar', at least for me, is far more satiating for thirst or a 'quick sweet treat' than the same brand/'flavor' using corn syrup, that includes both the big chains as well as the local names.
If I drink a soda with sugar in it, I usually wind up wanting water after. If I drink something with corn syrup, I usually just want more of whatever I just had.
No, the evidence is that there is no significant difference in satiety. HFCS is 55% fructose / 45% glucose, while sucrose is 50% fructose / 50% glucose.
Not saying Sugar itself is much better, however, yes, there is research indicating that the two are metabolized differently, so that difference in composition should be considered.
I am entirely unconvinced that a 5% difference in fructose vs. glucose is a meaningful difference.
They carry the same health risks if eaten in the same amounts. The only thing that corn syrup could be blamed for here is being too cheap so it shows up in greater quantity and in more products than cane sugar might otherwise.
HFCS is just one of those fashionable things to be "concerned" about so we can all miss the forest through the trees.
Research results notwithstanding, my anecdata suggest that sugar soda tastes better, and I am not quite sure why. I think it might have better flavor overtones or better mouth feel or something. Less gluey somehow even though there shouldn't be any difference. Maybe the sugar recipes are better in ways unrelated to the sweetener (and bottled soda is also usually better than canned, but fountain sugar soda still seems better than fountain corn syrup soda) or maybe the processing is subtly different.
Real sugar in your soda pop? What are you, a health nut? Must be a real my body is a temple sort.
Seriously though, it's a dogshit thing to consume whether it is sweetened with HFCS or sucrose.
"Even today, a Soda with 'real sugar', at least for me, is far more satiating"
Did you know that in the acidic environment of a cola, sucrose quickly degrades into fructose and glucose (and if it didn't, your enzymes literally immediately crack sucrose into them). You know, exactly the same fructose and glucose that would be added by HFCS. The proportions differ a tiny amount, but this notion that one is satiating and the other isn't should really send you down a path of self-discovery, where you determine how you fell for nonsense.
I have thus far been unsuccessful at carbonating tea and coffee, and I have tried. Carbonated stuff tastes better, to me. And I love iced tea. However at night a diet caffeine free soda is much nicer to drink than decaf tea, and I always have said the day I drink decaf coffee is the day I give it up, as coffee isn't that delicious.
The production of corn syrup is disgusting and its weird we don't talk more about how it is made. Enzymes are for cheese and fermented foods not for subsidizing the manufactured food industry!
this is exactly right. We've got this society that readily accepts unpleasantness as what you need to do to get ahead(I'll question that but it's beside the point). People regularly accept suffering of all sorts. However, ask someone to eat a boring meal. that's a hard no. So, you've got large parts of society that won't accept that perhaps they shouldn't eat like children.
Unfortunately in most countries the blocker is politics, not the desire of public health officials to do anything. See the current US admin going after vaccines while declaring open season for peptides.
Maybe free market principles apply here: if Anubis fails to reduce scraper/bot load on servers, or blocks too many desired users, then the sites that adopt it would probably scrap it.
If they’re keeping it even after all these posts, it must be stopping _some_ sort of undesirable traffic without costing too much desirable traffic.
Ah yes, oil extraction, refinement, and transport is a famously simple and low-capital process.