Junk food

[jeznag]

How about banning producers of junk food? (Not sure how to precisely define this)

[chrisjensen]

Open to this, but would need some serious consideration how to define it. Also if we are able to define it, for companies like Unilever, is it a 51% majority of income from junkfood where we draw the line?

[milesrout]

Obviously any income at all from junk food is unconscionable.

[nafg]

How about processed food, bleached flour, trans fat, and takeouts?

[chrisjensen]

Baby milk formula is processed food but is a necessity. Bleached flour covers the majority of breads.

I'm assuming @milesrout's comment was sarcastic, but he highlights an important issue with these discussions: as much as there is a case to made for excluding junk food from an ethical license, aside from the issue of definition, including it in a license that excludes torture, warcrimes and the destruction of the systems that support life on earth creates a false impression of equivalency, and muddy's the waters for serious discussion of this license. I'm not sure that time spent on trying to define and include this will be worthwhile.

[jeznag]

@chrisjensen do we need to worry about equivalency? Gambling/pornography has much less potential for harm than weapons manufacturing/fossil fuel usage - should we take them off the list :P? Obesity has a bigger public health burden than tobacco: https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article-abstract/125/1/131/4847358?redirectedFrom=fulltext

How about adding a section to exclude lobbying for actions that promote obesity (e.g. advertising of "junk food" to children)?

[nafg]

Can you prove that a specific food does or does not cause obesity?

[jeznag]

There is a strong correlation between consumption of ultra-processed foods and obesity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743515002340

and high energy density foods: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-014-0685-0