DailyDirt: Warnings Are Not Hazardous To Your Health

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Cities have enacted laws against smoking, salt, sugar, trans fat... and it's raising awareness of these unhealthy habits. But is it really effective at improving general health? Maybe not. It's difficult to actually measure what effect these health warnings have when the result is essentially a decades-long experiment on participants that aren't monitored that well. However, smoking is down, diabetes is no longer on the rise, and consumption of sugary soda is also down. (NB: It probably wasn't warning labels alone that caused these trends.) After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our holiday gift ideas for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
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Filed Under: ban, diet, education, fat, food, food label, health, high blood pressure, policy, salt warning, sin tax, sugar


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Dec 2015 @ 5:07pm

    calories on menus...

    putting calories on menus was proven to be ineffective for getting consumers to eat any healthier too......

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 11 Dec 2015 @ 6:39pm

    Warning

    Car doors are dangerous! Don't slam them on:

    Your fingers

    Hands

    Other body parts

    Friends

    Neighbors

    Relatives

    Enemies

    Acquaintances

    Pets

    Other warnings I have seen are about as useful. They tend to be more about attempting to limit liability than protecting people. What else does one expect with too many lawyers.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 11 Dec 2015 @ 8:40pm

    Fat Is Not As Fattening As Sugar

    Sugar is easily absorbed directly into the bloodstream, fat is not. In fact, dairy fat is even less fattening, because the high calcium content inhibits your body’s ability to absorb it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Dec 2015 @ 3:40am

    Trans fat was for decades promoted as a HEALTH FOOD!

    "Food labels warning about trans fat might not actually make us measurably healthier. Eaters gonna eat. But education can't hurt, right? [url]"

    "Education" can sometimes be in vain. I'll just repost something I said earlier this year, in Michael Ho's "DailyDirt: Eat This, Don't Eat That":

    For many years the manufacturers of margarine and shortening relentlessly touted their laboratory-created products as healthier alternatives to the saturated-fat rich natural products they simulated, butter and lard. But the transfat they contained (previously categorized as "unsaturated") turned out to be far unhealthier than saturated fat. So, ironically, the people who made extra efforts to "eat healthy" were actually killing themselves, while the so-called "conspiracy kooks" who didn't trust Big Science had some major "I told you so" moments.


    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100726/02464710360/dailydirt-eat-this-dont-eat-that.shtm l#c21

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Glenn, 12 Dec 2015 @ 4:22am

    Having too many laws is probably even more unhealthy than any of the things for which all of these laws have been passed. Basic human rights are violated, causing stress, resulting in early death.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Dec 2015 @ 7:02am

    Sugar? I saw that last week (tonight)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2015 @ 3:44am

    no GMO labelling though!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    nasch (profile), 15 Dec 2015 @ 8:09am

    High blood pressure

    While sodium intake can contribute to high blood pressure and complications

    Last I heard, the correlation between salt and high blood pressure was only that - a correlation. For decades, doctors had assumed a causal relationship where none had been shown.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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