Online Shopping: Hazardous To Junk Food's Health 151
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting that the trend toward online shopping is reducing the sales of impulse-purchase items, most notably candy and snacks often displayed at the checkout counter. As even grocery shopping shifts online, junk food producers are feeling the squeeze. From the article: 'Anthony Hopper, chief executive of advertising agency Lowe Open, said brands need to change how people buy chocolate, but acknowledges that it won't be easy. "If you're somebody who on average buys one bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk on impulse once a week, can I encourage you that it's actually better value to buy a pack of four when you're doing your next online shop? It's a long-term strategy," he said.'"
will it help against impluse eating? (Score:5, Interesting)
besides, you could plan to buy one at a time.
if I'd buy four candybars and they would come in the mail I would eat them all! ALL! excuse me while I go raid the fridge for some kitkat.
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Re:will it help against impluse eating? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:will it help against impluse eating? (Score:4, Informative)
I think if you're taking marketing advice form someone who says "when you're doing your next online shop" you've already lost.
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Sorry. Cadbury is way worse. We actually have Cadbury quality chocolate here in the US. It is basically sold only around Easter when people care more about the shape of the chocolate than the taste. We refer to it as crappy Easter chocolate.
That stuff is better described as "chocolate-flavored wax".
And to the GP, just FYI chocolate is from the Americas, we've actually got the best stuff on the planet. But also the worst.
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Re:will it help against impluse eating? (Score:4, Informative)
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I winced inside when I saw Daily Milk mentioned. It is Almost Entirely Unlike Chocolate[tm]. I went on a one-week trip to London many years ago, and those things infested all the tube stations. It was like something out of a Dr. Who episode, maybe one written by Douglas Adams.
Yes, there is a reason Cadbury is all but banished from the US except for novelty chocolate around Easter, when you need to satisfy your primal instinct to bite off a bunny's ears, and you don't care how mundane of a chocolate the bun
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Cadbury chocolate is made quite differently - they intentionally sour the milk a bit to give it a more distinct taste, which is why it's different. (It's also relatively popular north of the 49th).
Of course, if you're not used to it,
Newsflash ! (Score:1)
Newflash !
Online shopping does not cure binge eating.
News at 11
Re:will it help against impluse eating? (Score:5, Insightful)
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We keep plenty of snacks of all kinds at home. You get a lot of snacks as gifts here, and a lot of really high-quality chocolates are only sold here during Valentine's and White Day, so my wife stocks up then.
The trick is to set a limit, and make it a part of your routine. Convince your mind that no, it actually doesn't want any more because another piece would break the daily routine. We have a snack, candy or chocolate every evening after dinner. A snack, singular. One piece of chocolate, one candy drop,
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I can only moderate myself like that with drugs.
If it's licorice, haribos or whatever it's munching time.
Re:will it help against impluse eating? (Score:4, Interesting)
That kind of discipline is great, but our brains are hardwired to seek high calorie foods, to which snacks fit right in. Most people just aren't going to overcome the urge to eat too much at least some of the time.
Case in point, the country with the most fat people is the one with the most "all you can eat buffet"s. For most people, it is easier and better to simply limit the amount of temptation than it is to deal with that temptation when it is 10 feet away...and salty, and rich, and sweet, and chocolaty and....
Excuse me, need to grab a snack....
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Hardwired to seek high calorie foods? OK eat a spoon of unsweetened peanut butter. Or drink some olive oil. Or chew on some low sugar biltong. Does that help? :)
The real problem is sugar is addictive for many people - sugar high, then crash, then want more sugar, repeat till obese. I'm lucky that I'd prefer biltong or good beef jerky to candy, or >80% cocoa chocolate. Except that biltong and good quality high cocoa chocolate bars are a lot more expensive... So I end up not snacking much.
By the way there'
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And there are also people like me who aren't as addicted to sugar. I do not feel a great urge to consume more white sugar or a sugar solution after having a bit of it. But for
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It's not quite that simple. I mean, very few of us actually spend much time hunting for high calorie foods (or any foods) after all.
We're creatures of habit, more than anything else, and what that sugar kick does to you is reinforce a habit of snacking on sugary foods. Sugar may give you a jolt, but it's the habit that makes you snack.
And refraining from doing something can become a habit just as well; it's just not as straightforward to set up. In a w
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"It's not my fault I'm an obese pig. It has nothing to do with all the food and snacks I stuff into my fat gizzard, it's the way my brain is wired, honest!"
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"It's not my fault I'm an obese pig. It has nothing to do with all the food and snacks I stuff into my fat gizzard, it's the way my brain is wired, honest!"
Meant to be sarcastic, but absolutely true except for some misunderstandings or misrepresentations.
Yes, your body is very keen on eating high calorie foods, because during 99% of human history people could eat all the food available to them without bad side effects, and still the majority of people on earth can.
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Why are you keeping your phone in the fridge?
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besides, you could plan to buy one at a time.
if I'd buy four candybars and they would come in the mail I would eat them all! ALL! excuse me while I go raid the fridge for some kitkat.
You just discovered why Americans are fat, yay for you.
Sad fat low income American goes to walmart, buys huge box of vegetable oil labeled as chocolate and immediately eats it all.
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Junk Food (Score:5, Interesting)
so many are struggling financially
people want to live better and feel better
Right? It's got to be because of online shopping.
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Yeah, because it's something that everyone should be buying, despite the fact that: so many are struggling financially people want to live better and feel better Right? It's got to be because of online shopping.
Yeah. We should definitely control it. That works out well for alcohol and marijuana and 32 oz cups of soda.
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Yeah, because it's something that everyone should be buying, despite the fact that: so many are struggling financially people want to live better and feel better Right? It's got to be because of online shopping.
Yeah. We should definitely control it. That works out well for alcohol and marijuana and 32 oz cups of soda.
In American legislation, you're not supposed to grasp the principle. You're supposed to keep trying many different iterations on it, until there's a War on Everything. How else are we going to dictate to people how they shall live?!
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A higher likely reason (Score:4, Insightful)
People are getting poorer.
But don't mind my life experience.
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Its poor that are getting fat because they eat cost optimized manufactured garbage thats so cheap you can eat a lot of it.
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The price of those snacks has gone up, too. That's not surprising, that's what prices do, but wages haven't gone up with them. With three applicants for every job even if they were evenly distributed, it would be surprising if people were spending a dollar on something they used to get for fifty cents.
To boot, more people are getting concerned about the amount of sugar they're consuming...
Validates what your home ec teacher said (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember your home ec class? One of the lessons was to use a shopping list -- and stick to it -- in order to avoid impulse buys.
Well an online shopping cart is, for all intents and purposes, a shopping list. Looks like your home ec teacher was right all along.
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reminds me of a story i recall reading a while back (sorry, don't have a reference) about how parents who got tivo found they were able to save money on toys, fast food/junk food, and assorted other items just because they could censor the commercials their children watched on teevee.
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Home Ec was under that cloud when I was in school; but some of us saw the writing on the wall when it came to typing. The typing class was still majority female. The teacher was this very prim, older woman--the classic professional secretary look. Taking that class "so I could use my computer better" was one of the best decisions I ever made to guide my own education. Absolutely nobody pushed me to do it. I think that fact that my father had been a Yeoman in the Navy and then later an administrator for
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Do you have a proper keyboard with clicky mechanical switches? They provide the feedback you need to reduce your typing pressure to just over the level required.
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Takes all the fun out of grocery shopping. I've tried online grocery shopping and it's really boring, plus you can't check the expiration dates or visible freshness on what you're putting in your cart. I prefer to go to the store when I'm hungry without a list and decide what to get on impulse, which makes it fun. But I'm also sane, so I limit my impulses to the things that are cheap and only spend about $150/mo on groceries.
I'd do almost any other sort of shopping online, but there's no substitute for actu
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Considering specials in the decision is important, people who shop from a list may spend more because they buy what's on their list instead of what's on sale.
Not me. I have to have a list, since otherwise it takes me 3 or 4 trips before I get everything. Leaky memory.
And if an item's on sale, I often grab it in addition to what's on the list. Plus, if I think of a specific use of something, that may require further purchases in order to use it as I wish.
Makes a lot of sense actually (Score:2)
They had all sorts of chocolates at the counter. I skipped lunch and was hungry, so I almost got a couple to tide me over.
If I was somehow buying magic alcohol that was getting delivered to me same day? Wouldn't have even considered it.
Figures (Score:4, Funny)
After that scene where he talks about eating fava beans with a light chianti, I figured he could make anything sound tasty. No surprise he ended up in food advertising.
they can just add an Halloween 2 in the summer tim (Score:2)
they can just add an Halloween 2 in the summer time
and remember kids (Score:1)
Invoking Betteridge's law in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Interesting)
No. No, you cannot. Because:
1) Most people prone to impulse-buying your crap would eat it all the same day it arrives,
2) Impulse buyers tend to act on impulse, and wouldn't actually seek it out deliberately, and
3) People intentionally buying chocolate buy chocolate. Not your "HFCS, carob and soy lecithin" garbage.
Now, if we consider junk foods beyond just candy, let's consider margins of impulse-buys vs planned buys. I happen to like Doritos. Yeah, complete crap, and bad for me, but I intentionally (whether impulse or actually on the list) buy them every now and then.
As an impulse buy, I pay basically a buck for a 1.5oz bag of their crap. For two bucks, I can get a full-sized bag. So, Frito Lay needs to ask itself something - Can you afford to sell Doritos without the insane margins on your "vending-machine" sized packs? Or do those basically subsidize the price of "family packs" that you may well only sell for the purpose of keeping us "hooked"?
Because the same logic applies to almost every less-than-bulk sized junk-food out there. Sodas make a great example - a 20oz soda at the register costs MORE than a 2-liter bottle. A 3-pack of gum in the candy aisle costs less than a single pack of the same gum at the register. Can "impulse-buy"-centric companies actually afford to sell only their more economical sizes?
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Dear Anthony (Score:2, Interesting)
Vegans in small towns
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This is very true. I am also lactose-intolerant and I've noticed dairy or dairy derivatives in the places you'd least expect, one of them being chips, another being meat (!?), and even some sweets that, as a pastry chef, I know it shouldn't use milk at all.
Re: Dear Anthony (Score:4, Funny)
You are saying "I am a vegan" as if it is a disease and not your own choice. Nobody is forcing you to be a vegan. If there aren't enough vegan products, the solution is simple: don't be one.
I am in a much more difficult situation myself: I only eat foods which contain meat. I have to tell you, no food producers and no restaurants are sensitive to my needs! Those bastards. I have been asking for meatball bread at my local Safeway for years, but they simply ignore me and laugh at me. Insensitive clods!
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Cadbury Dairy Milk... (Score:5, Informative)
"If you're somebody who on average buys one bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk on impulse once a week, can I encourage you that it's actually better value to buy a pack of four when you're doing your next online shop? It's a long-term strategy,"
If you're somebody who on average buys one bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk on impulse once a week, can I encourage you to try some decent chocolate.
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Not necessarily. There would certainly be an initial bump, but if the demand was consistent, then production would roll out to match. Maybe more fields (people buying more "pure" chocolate might require more plants to supply it), re-tooling, or whatever. Eventually the price would stabilize, and might even be lower, if the new demand levels allow for economies of scale and competition is cutthroat.
On a scale of 10... (Score:5, Insightful)
On a 0..10 scale of problems to worry about, this ranks around 0.01.
The dynamics of on line food ordering could get interesting. Has anyone noted interesting suggestions from Amazon Fresh?
Yeah right, online purchases... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, It's not "online purchases" or "healthier eating" that's causing the drop in prices, it's the doubling or tripling prices for chips and soda.
Most folks who are middle class can't justify spending 4.50 on a 12-14 ounce bag of chips on their salary. Living where I do, the only ones spending that are using the link card (welfare cards for food) to get chips, pop, ice cream, and other junk foods.
The folks whining about declining sales just need to wait until more folks are on government subsistence, then
Here's a theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you're actually better off not buying the junk food after all. You don't need to buy in bulk.
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Perhaps you're actually better off not buying the junk food after all. You don't need to buy in bulk.
But does the lack of junk-food compensate for the loss of exercise walking round the supermarket?
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An 80g chocolate bar has 400 calories in it, 1/5th of a average daily intake. I doubt walk around the supermarket burns that much energy.
You'd be lucky if it burnt 100.
shifts online (Score:2)
Still waiting for that ... granted, I choose not to live in a hive of extreme population density that is probably required to make it work.
But dang, there are days I would love to just place an online order and have some milk and bread show up.
Not a problem! (Score:2)
Just display candy-ads on a page on the way to checkout. You'll still get impulse buys.
Make what people want (Score:2)
How about you make what people want instead of trying to get them to buy what you want to make. Just saying.
So online shopping is healthy? (Score:2)
So sitting on one's couch Internet shopping is actually healthier than the alternative?
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Honestly it's starting to irk me a bit when people are against processed food. Most people have no idea what it even means and what the concerns might be (actual or merely perceived.) You can live perfectly healthy on processed foods. In fact, people who don't eat processed foods are extremely rare, even indigenous tribes devoid of modern technology process their food.
http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/food%20columnist0/Beware_Processed_Foods.shtml [healthnewsdigest.com]
It also irks me a bit when I hear people say you need to s
Re:Or, maybe (Score:5, Funny)
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Even if it was, does the source of information make it any less true? If so, you might want to check out a pamphlet called 100 scientists against Einstein.
Re:Or, maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Even if it was, does the source of information make it any less true?
No, but the fact that ascorbic acid isn't an amino acid [slashdot.org] makes
sound, at best, like an odd combination of two sentences talking about different unrelated things.
Re:Or, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, people who don't eat processed foods are extremely rare, even indigenous tribes devoid of modern technology process their food.
When people say to avoid processed food, they're not talking about some tribeswoman grinding it up with a mortar and pestle. They're talking about things like Cheez Whiz, which despite what you may think, is not a healthy food source.
Words you don't recognize, or even things that aren't "natural" aren't inherently bad, in fact most of them are fine to consume.
I'm sorry, but "most" isn't good enough. When you're talking about things that people stuff into their bodies, they damned well better all be fine to consume.
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I'm sorry, but "most" isn't good enough. When you're talking about things that people stuff into their bodies, they damned well better all be fine to consume.
All of them are fine to consume, it just depends on the quantity. Trace amounts of hydrogenated oil are harmless, but large quantities are probably not a good idea. Along that same line of thought, few people know that too much potassium can have very deadly short term consequences that can kill without warning, even deadlier than too much hydrogenated oils.
Foods you pick off of the vine contain these things. The fact that something on the shelf might also contain them doesn't make it inherently bad.
Re:Or, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Trace amounts of hydrogenated oil are harmless, but large quantities are probably not a good idea.
Gee, and guess what a lot of "processed foods" contain?
Large quantities of hydrogenated oils.
Foods you pick off of the vine contain these things.
In general, they contain trace amounts of bad things, and a large number of essential things.
Processed foods, OTOH, tend to include large amounts of bad things and omit many of the essential things you'd find growing on a vine.
The key is in the amounts, not whether they or not they can be detected in one food or another.
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Processed foods not only tend to contain high levels of bad stuff, they have the double whammy of also containing less good stuff. All those vitamins and minerals that appear in natural foods? Processed out of processed foods.
Look up the history of "fortified" foods. Manufacturers spend time and energy removing nutrients from foods, then more time and energy adding
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Some of these you kind of have to, though for differing reasons. Just as an example, part of my diet requires me to avoid bran (high in phosphorus,) which e.g. requires removal from brown rice to make it white rice. At that point, fortifying nutrients back into it only serves to benefit.
Re:Or, maybe (Score:4, Informative)
A truck driving friend of mine once sent me a photo of his delivery - pallets full of pharmaceuticals being delivered to a breakfast cereal plant in time for the sticky kids cereal batch run. The cereal box says "fortified with iron and vitamins". Why not just have the HEALTHY and NATURAL option of bran and sliced fruit? That's good for your colon, heart and tastebuds. Why? Because the advertising industry is employed by these food companies to brainwash kids (and apparently people like you) into believing this processed sticky shit is somehow healthy.
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Let me tell you a joke I once heard.
A guy goes to a doctor's office once after watching Dr. Oz and asks if reducing the sodium, trans fats, msg, and sugars in his diet would I live longer. The doctor thinks for a second and replies "Hmm...well, it'll certainly seem longer."
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Actually, as cereals/grains make up a large part of the modern diet, the fact that they are poor sources of certain vitamins becomes relevant. For example, breakfast cereal commonly has folic acid added, not because it was lost during process (although some is), but because it is an important public health measure. Same for flour for bread making.
Additionally, some nutrients will be lost from processing - usually cooking, as most breakfast cereals are baked. Many vitamins are heat unstable and are therefore
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The point is that the term "processed food' is inaccurate speech at best, and complete bullshit at worst. There are planting of "processed" things (e.g. E-350/Asorbic Acid) that are things you absolutely want to be consuming plenty of, there are plenty of unprocessed things (e.g. Cyonide found in apple pips) that you absolutely don't want to consume any of.
What they *should* be saying is not to consume poisons, or not to consume sufficient volumes of the good stuff that it becomes poisonous. Neither of th
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What they *should* be saying is not to consume poisons, or not to consume sufficient volumes of the good stuff that it becomes poisonous. Neither of these has anything at all to do with the level of processing involved.
They don't in theory.
In reality, the two are very highly correlated. So in the real world, for real people, the advice about processed foods is valid.
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And over the many years that humans have lived on this planet we have learned which naturally occurring items should not be consumed. That's why only some naturally occurring items are considered to be "food" and other things are not.
Also its not necessarily "processing" that people have a problem with, its the underhanded and greedy methods of the food processing companies who will mix in all manner of nasty crap that we wouldn't normally want to eat. Some of us like to know exactly what we're eating.
What
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When people say to avoid processed food, they're not talking about some tribeswoman grinding it up with a mortar and pestle.
When most people say to avoid processed food, they're repeating some propaganda they heard somewhere. Sad but true.
One way to distinguish those who are clueless is to ask them if they'll eat any ingredient they can't pronounce. If they say yes, then just smile at them politely and move on.
Re: names people can't pronounce (Score:2)
> ...what they think of ascorbic acid,... they'd avoid anything containing it.
> Not a very good idea to completely shut out one of the most important amino acids from your diet.
BTW, ascorbic acid is not an amino acid.
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There is nothing wrong with processed food in theory, but in practice a lot of it has been optimized more for low cost than for health or taste. For example, a minimal amount of the taste-providing ingredients and then a lot of salt and MSG to compensate for that.
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...but not as much sodium.
Re:Or, maybe (Score:5, Informative)
I've asked said people what they think of ascorbic acid [wikipedia.org], to which most of them effectively say they'd avoid anything containing it. Not a very good idea to completely shut out one of the most important amino acids from your diet. [wikipedia.org]
Would you please show me the amino (NH2) group specific to aminoacids in the C6H8O6 molecula formula of the ascorbic acid?
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It also irks me a bit when I hear people say you need to stay away from ingredients whose names you can't pronounce. I've asked said people what they think of ascorbic acid, to which most of them effectively say they'd avoid anything containing it.
Heh.....as a result of this comment, I just posted on Facebook a 'warning' to avoid ascorbic acid, which is in many packaged foods. We'll see how many bites I get.
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There's a word that can be ascribed to the condition in such people: chemophobia
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I've asked said people what they think of ascorbic acid, to which most of them effectively say they'd avoid anything containing it.
What can you say? The average person off the street is an idiot. If you told them to avoid dihydrogen monoxide too, they would probably agree with that as well. In fact, they would even probably sign a petition on the spot to ban dihydrogen monoxide if you asked them to..
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While that piece of junk is technically right that "processing food" is an expression too wide to base any descision on (it DOES range from cooking or canning to adding 99% artificial ingredients and still call it food) it completly leaves out the problematic processes. The basic claim is that just because cooking food is also a kind of process, all processing done to food is harmless. Well yeah. sometimes my life would be easier if I was dumb enough to believe such BS.
But what you mentioned is still a good
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I've asked said people what they think of ascorbic acid, [wikipedia.org] to which most of them effectively say they'd avoid anything containing it.
Do you also ask people if they are worried about Dihydrogen Monoxide and if we should end the suffrage of women? Also, protip: it's not an amino acid, it's vitamin C.
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Oh okay, so then corrupts and broccoli become unhealthy the moment that a large factory start cranking them out? Sounds reasonable. Better steer clear of pretty much any carrots of broccoli sold in a supermarket, because guess where they came from!
Re:Or, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more likely that a large food processing factory will do several things with the carrots and broccoli...
1, use more of the spoiled/bad vegetables that most people would discard
2, use less vegetables and add more cheap filler materials to bulk out the product
3, use more fat, salt, msg etc to improve the flavor (which may have been ruined by the filler materials) in the cheapest way possible
4, replace other ingredients with cheaper substitutions wherever possible, again using more salt/fat/msg/etc to try and disguise the difference
If carrots and broccoli are sold in their original form you can see what they are, and you can see that unknown substances have not been mixed in to bulk them out. The same can't be said of a processed product, where the end result will usually make it very difficult if not impossible to identify the source ingredients and processes used.
Companies want to reduce costs in order to increase profits, and profits are considered far more important than customer satisfaction or health. Processed foods allow them to hide all manner of things that people would disapprove of and which might alter their purchasing decision. I doubt you'd buy a 200g pack of broccoli if it came with 50g of broccoli and a 150g blob of grey paste and instructions to blend them together and then reform it in broccoli shaped moulds to get the final product.
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Well, feel free to live without street lighting, rubbish collection, or sewers and drainage if you don't like paying your $3000 ;) Off you go to the woods to live like a hermit.
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sell it to the bank and rent from them then.
technically you own it - unless you break the mortgage contract(if the contract is so screwed up that they can one handedly without you breaking the contract cancel that contract and take the possession then it's a pretty fucked up contract).
maybe stop waging expensive wars? and fuck your taxes are pretty low on international scale anyways..
and I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be paying taxes on royalties..