China Wants Hefty Fines For Viral Video Creators Who Binge Food and Drinks (gizmodo.com) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Lawmakers in China are considering new legislation that would impose fines against anyone who creates videos where people eat large quantities of food or binge drinks, according to a new report from Chinese state media outlet China News. The proposed media rule, part of broader legislation to discourage food waste, would also allow restaurants in China to charge extra for customers who don't finish their meals. The Chinese government under President Xi Jinping started a campaign called the Clean Plate Campaign earlier this year in an effort to waste less food domestically. Xi said over the summer that the goal was to create a social order where "waste is shameful and thriftiness is applaudable." Fines for breaking the new law would range from 10,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan, or roughly $1,530 to $15,300 in U.S. currency.
The draft legislation, first reported in English by Sixth Tone, was submitted to China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Tuesday, and covers "radio stations, television stations, and online audio and video service providers." An audio-only version of mukbang sounds kind of gross, but who are we to judge? Traditionally, it's very polite in China to serve guests large portions of food, a way to show generosity that would be familiar to many Americans. But that generosity is creating a culture of waste, where an estimated 17 million pounds of food in China gets thrown out every year. That much food could feed an additional 30 million people each year at the very least -- roughly the entire population of Texas -- according to a recent study from the Chinese Academy of Science and the World Wildlife Fund.
The draft legislation, first reported in English by Sixth Tone, was submitted to China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Tuesday, and covers "radio stations, television stations, and online audio and video service providers." An audio-only version of mukbang sounds kind of gross, but who are we to judge? Traditionally, it's very polite in China to serve guests large portions of food, a way to show generosity that would be familiar to many Americans. But that generosity is creating a culture of waste, where an estimated 17 million pounds of food in China gets thrown out every year. That much food could feed an additional 30 million people each year at the very least -- roughly the entire population of Texas -- according to a recent study from the Chinese Academy of Science and the World Wildlife Fund.
Math (Score:2)
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230g of food can feed a person for a year? Wait, no, it's tonnes. Do a sniff test on these numbers, Gizmodo.
What? You eat more than half a pound of food ever year? Talk about binging. :-D
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To extrapolate, a half pound of anything per year is virtually nothing, although it would still cost US$41.20 (30.5 quid) per day to consume your daily portion of .022 oz of 24k gold, at current prices, assuming there's a homeopathic treatment somewhere that encourages this in one's diet.
Protip: there almost certainly is.
For reference, you could consume .022 oz of arsenic significantly more cheaply since you'd tap out in rather short order. Contrary to what they tell you in health magazines, just as in surv
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Chinese emporers once consumed gold hoping it would bring eternal life. And a lot of mercury, apparently.
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Do you have evidence it's tonnes? Because the numbers work out even better if it's lbs/day instead of tonnes/year.
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Such habits have contributed to an estimated 17 million to 18 million tons of food being discarded annually, an amount that could feed 30 million to 50 million people for a year, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Science and the World Wildlife Fund.
I clicked on the linked study but it's in Mandarin.
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Ah, thanks. I totally missed it in the article, and assumed you were translating the mandarin.
Inventing problems (Score:2)
Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
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Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
It must be getting to their heads and blinding them from the incredible irony...a Thou Shall Not Waste mandate coming from the country that quite literally manufactures an entire planet full of pointless, wasteful electronic tchotchkes.
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Ahem.... entire Ghost Cities just to inflate GDP numbers.
No such thing. (Score:3)
Those were pre-built cities - not "ghost cities".
In fact, Wade Shepard, the very same journalist who wrote about them went back a few years later to find them full and "functioning, normal cities". [forbes.com]
Chinese have been "consolidating" their rural population into cities for a while now.
Every year since about 1990 they've been cramming some 1-1.4% of the entire Chinese population into cities.
Pretty soon, they started needing more and bigger cities to keep doing that.
So, they'd literally dump a million-two pre-bui
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coming from the country that quite literally manufactures an entire planet full of pointless, wasteful electronic tchotchkes.
Manufacturing WESTERN designs, DESIGNED to be completely irreparable. Funny how you blame the Chinese for a WESTERN mindset.
Funnily enough, people like Louis Rossman gets electronics info from China in order to help his repairs because a lot of the time the Western sellers don't want people to have that information. You can bet that in China there's a side industry of cheap electronic repairs because they have all the info and equipment to do so.
Even base Lenovo laptops are more rugged (but also more
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coming from the country that quite literally manufactures an entire planet full of pointless, wasteful electronic tchotchkes.
Manufacturing WESTERN designs, DESIGNED to be completely irreparable. Funny how you blame the Chinese for a WESTERN mindset. Funnily enough, people like Louis Rossman gets electronics info from China in order to help his repairs because a lot of the time the Western sellers don't want people to have that information. You can bet that in China there's a side industry of cheap electronic repairs because they have all the info and equipment to do so. Even base Lenovo laptops are more rugged (but also more repairable) than the high end flimsy shitty Mac laptops. So get off your high horse and realize you are still the culture or wastefulness.
Not sure how or why you went down the Apple fanboi rabbithole on this (even though I happen to enjoy Louis' rants), but China having a war on waste while continuing to participate and profit in the manufacture of it is still a fucking kettle calling the pot black. Doesn't matter who they're manufacturing for when you understand why they're manufacturing and will continue to manufacture; Greed.
And quite honestly, all laptops are becoming a rather wasteful design IMHO when 99% of users could probably use a
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but China having a war on waste while continuing to participate and profit in the manufacture of it is still a fucking kettle calling the pot black.
That's... not even wrong. This proposed law is about food wastage in China. There's no hypocrisy there because they're not talking about the West. They're not allowed to propose laws on their own soil addressing one area of wastage? You don't even know what you're criticizing. It's like another country can't make its own laws if triggers you.
And quite honestly, all laptops are becoming a rather wasteful design IMHO when 99% of users could probably use a tablet
There are still laptops designed to be upgraded, and are powerful enough to start off with so they don't become obsolete by the next release. Tablets cannot be upgraded
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>Go worry about real problems.
you *cannot* do that there: criticism of the grand Pooh-bah, or any aspect of the absolute rule of the chicom dictatorship, tends to get you a bullet in the back of the head . . .
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Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
It's a communist country. Their main concern is telling everyone what to do.
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Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
Their leader at least believed in science, and while brutal at least forced the country to do the right thing to stop the virus. Amazing how many less problems the people have when the leader isn't just watching cable news and playing golf.
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Re:Inventing problems (Score:5, Insightful)
I was brought up to not waste food, because part of my family escaped communism and they had to save every bit of food they have. It's a good habit, even if you aren't escaping from communism.
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Meanwhile this camwhore wastes food by not eating the banana she shoves up her cunt.
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You thought mukbang was western?
LOL
https://youtu.be/2kRsqDJj44M [youtu.be]
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I was addressing a comment written by someone who is most probably from the West, criticizing the idea that food wastage is not a problem. So my reply was about Western attitudes to food wastage. Their comment is written by someone who has never had to endure food shortages because they are living in a country where obesity is normalized and so cannot perceive the idea that food wastage can ever be a problem.
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Did I say anything about Mukbang, you idiot?
No, that's why I didn't read any more than what I quoted, moron.
Try harder if you want to communicate. And figure out what the fuck mukbang is.
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Nope.
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Given that floods and typhoons have wiped out huge amounts of China's domestic crops, and trade wars with the US have hurt their foreign supply, lack of food is a very real problem. What makes you think that bureaucrats invent problems to solve? It's already an authoritarian dictatorship, they want to keep it that way via bread and circuses.
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Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
It's not a real problem issue. China's going/will go through a food shortage. Due to the high number of floods ruining tons of crops (rice and other grains as well as vegetable and fruit crops.), the 3 gorges dam letting out water to prevent the dam from breaking and them not telling the residents down river when this is happening, tariffs and/or limited imports, China currently might not have enough food to feed it's people in the coming year. Although Xi seems indomitable to people outside of China, there
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That's what economists often cite as one of the main reasons that the Soviet system failed; many of the required areas of expertise are not viewed as Virtuous, so without market-based rewards for those specialties, the quality of the work goes down. And when the system tries to correct it by punishing them all, the specialties become even less Virtuous and the quality of the work goes down further. And then there is a brain drain, even if the field is something simple like refrigerated trucking. You fire th
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Just to be devil's advocate thought, I feel like your comment of social control through economic central planning doesn't apply any less to how capitalism these days. Am I wrong? Like, I feel the art of troubleshooting technical issues is being lost. So few tech support is actually about understanding and troubleshooting and more about following
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Yeah, you're totally wrong, you can make all the bad decisions you want in the West, you don't get sent to the gulag. In fact, in the US, even the most stubborn asshole can probably run a small business and prosper.
If I call somebody to fix the AC, the do just fine at troubleshooting it. If I called somebody I thought was good. If I price shopped for the cheapest per hour in town, of course they didn't actually troubleshoot anything, they just replaced the most commonly failing part, then the next most comm
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Central planning of an economy will always be less efficient than millions of farmers all going their own way and doing their own thing.
Too right, you can never have too many tulip bulbs.
The tulip depression is a myth, dumb ass. No matter how many times people point that out, you're incapable of research.
Some rich fuck-head wrote a letter describing a minor financial loss related to a tulip investment as the end of the world, and hundreds of years later, a quarter way around the world, some dumb fucks think a major economic disruption happened that year. But they refuse to cross-reference with other historical records, so they never learn; there was no financial upset at that time. None. No
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That's right, only those who are Good enough have a need to eat.
Even the perceived need for life is dictated by the Han. Why would a 6' Manchurian have any right to more food than a 4' Han? They'd need half-again as much Social Credit.
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China is way ahead of USA in all areas.
They're certainly ahead in the categories "widgets cast," "widgets extruded," and "imports assembled for export."
They also have the "cheapest undocumented MIPS-ish microcontroller" on the market, down to 2 cents per unit.
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Food shortage still seems to me like a real problem and certainly will become one with more and more people around. it's better to only create the food that's actually needed than having to ditch it. More and more countries are putting laws in place where you can get a fine if you throw away too much food. Overproduction (like the case is now) is causing lot's of problems (enviromental and health).
So yeah, in this case the Chinese goverment is actually doing a good thing..
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Seems these bureaucrats have too much time on their hands. Go worry about real problems. Is Covid isolation getting to their heads also?
They really should have such a policy. The past year was a year full of upheavals, bringing unprecedented challenges like the Covid 19 pandemic. And accompanied by natural disasters such as major floods and storms that swept, causing heavy damage in many aspects. , especially in agriculture and has a direct effect on food sources. If they continue to waste food like before and now, they will face many difficulties during this period. But not only in the current situation, it is necessary to save food, but s
Re:Food Control (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, if you think people starving and not having enough to eat is a positive trait.
Socialist governments ensure that citizens have enough to eat. Communist governments make sure everyone eats the same amount.
Authoritarian governments and dictatorships control their citizens period. China is a dictatorship.
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Communist governments make sure everyone eats the same amount.
More like "everyone eats as much as they need".
E.g. Not the same 2000 kcal for every single person, as some people burn more through labor, growth or due to health issues.
And the only way to do that is to actually accept some waste in the system.
Manage it through recycling - not by adding calorie counters to people's plates.
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Donating "waste" to charities is how we handle it.
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1.) China is a communist dictatorship, not socialist at all.
2.) Wall street (Chicago branch) is already putting up water as a commodity on the futures market. There is much more danger there.
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Communism is the degenerate form of socialism.
CCP is communist.
Wrong thinking (Score:4, Informative)
>"Xi said over the summer that the goal was to create a social order where "waste is shameful and thriftiness is applaudable."
Right thinking will be rewarded.
Wrong thinking will be punished.
Here are some more applicable thoughts: https://inktank.fi/13-quotes-f... [inktank.fi]
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In all societies, right thinking is rewarded and wrong thinking is punished. Or tell King George in 1750 he's not the divinely appointed head of the church and state. Or, to be US-focused, talk about being a Communist in the 1950s
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More over it's hard to argue with the idea that people shouldn't be wasteful.
It's interesting though that the same people who complain about any social pressure on them to behave a certain way usually also want to create social pressure on others to behave a certain way.
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I agree with this. *mods up and tags: underrated* ;-)
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In 1750 the King was only "head of State" in name; his dictatorial powers were limited to overseas Colonies. England itself was ruled by Parliament. That's why the King instituted such horrible and destructive colonial laws; it was the only place he was allowed to extract personal wealth from somebody else's work. He could order the Army to attack things... outside of England. He could choose where to send them, but only if they could support the campaign through plunder. Otherwise, he'd have to get money f
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And according to the Treason Act of 1547 (in force in 1750), you would have just committed high treason (several different ways), and, according to the revision of 1708 I would be guilty of treason simply for not reporting what you said. (Laws, as applicable in the 1750s, many since changed.)
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Irrelevant; with the execution of King Charles I in 1649, none of those laws were relevant in England, and neither in the Colonies, for Treasonous there was whatever the King said.
In the good old Colony days,
When we were under the king
Lived a miller and a weaver and a little tailor,
Three jolly rogues of Lynne
Three jolly rogues of Lynne,
Three jolly rogues of Lynne
Lived a miller and a weaver and a little tailor,
Three jolly rogues of Lynne
Now the miller he stole corn,
And the weaver he stole yarn
And the little tailor he stole broadcloth
To keep these three rogues warm
To keep these three rogues warm,
To keep these three rogues warm
And the little tailor he stole broadcloth
To keep these three rogues warm
Now the miller was drowned in his dam
And the weaver was hung in his yarn
And the devil got his paw on the little tailor
With his broadcloth under his arm
With his broadcloth under his arm,
With his broadcloth under his arm
And the little tailor still runs through hell,
With his broadcloth under his arm.
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I do like your "argument from irrelevant poem". Also, your thought that the treason act of 1708 was overturned by actions in 1649. Or that a rebellion negated the laws in force once the rebellion was put down.
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It is a song.
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Unfullbellythink (Score:2)
Finish your meal ... (Score:3)
Think of all the starving children in America!
[ I think I saw that in Crazy Rich Asians [wikipedia.org]. :-) ]
Re:Finish your meal ... (Score:4, Informative)
Uhh, yeah, https://mashable.com/2016/07/1... [mashable.com]
"According to Feeding America, 1 in 7 people in the U.S. face hunger every year. The rates of hunger in children are even higher, with about 1 in 5 lacking proper access to food at some point during the year."
And here's a BBC article from earlier this month:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
"One in eight Americans reported they sometimes or often did not have enough food in November, according to a recent census survey.
Nearly 26 million adults - 12% of all adults - reported in that their household had food shortages in the past week, according to Household Pulse Survey data collected in November."
Only in the USA it's not lack of food being available that's the issue, it's the lack of money to BUY it, because, not being a socialist country, there is little welfare to support people when they lose their jobs.
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Statistics are fun! Just the other day I was facing a food shortage in my house. So I went out grocery shopping to get some more :)
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It's not just food availability, it's having the right kinds of foods as well.
Junk food and heavily processed foods are cheap, but not good for you in the long run.
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The USA seems superficially much like Australia, but... wow, the differences go very deep...
In theory at least, Aussies get free healthcare (not dental, oddly) and govt unemployment benefits (though below the poverty line) and our cities and towns have public toilets. Some have public showers, too - there may be a small fee for these.
Food availability IS an issue in the US too... (Score:2)
Only in the USA it's not lack of food being available that's the issue
Food deserts [wikipedia.org] exist in both rural and urban areas. And it is not a problem only in the USA. It is a global issue. [wikipedia.org]
It is just another feature of capitalism.
Accumulating capital in the form of the means of production reduces the profit gained per unit produced, which comes from labor.
I.e. Automation makes human labor obsolete and thus cheaper.
Thus you now have laborers producing products they can never afford and you're leaving all that money on the table - in the game of "get it all". And we can't have that.
S
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It is true; drug addicts in America have so much freedom they often fail to arrive at the free food warehouse during the correct 6 hour window on the correct days of the week.
Also, prideful Americans often refuse to accept charity, even if it means eating beans and rice all month. Their neighbors should probably not be "blamed" for not force-feeding them.
Bio Security (Score:4, Interesting)
Too me this seems like a bio security measure for a bit down the road where China is worried that it might not be able to grow & source enough food for it's citizens so getting them to be less wasteful now makes harsher measures down the road more palatable or maybe not even needed.
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Or they could just let the price of food rise a bit due to higher demand.
This would induce farmers to grow more food, *increasing* food supply rather than decreasing it.
This is bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, people grossly underestimate the cost of logistics to take the food to someone that needs it (it usually doesn't work).
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Your takeaway from this is the portion size stays the same and people must eat everything brought to them? And customers have no responsibility to order a reasonable amount of food?
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Your takeaway
No, he said something more, but you didn't listen. That's why you didn't even come up with a question that, if answered, would increase your understanding.
News from the future: Obesity Pandemic in China (Score:2, Interesting)
allow restaurants in China to charge extra for customers who don't finish their meals
So people will force themselves to finish their plate, getting used to eat too much, and ending up like the average Americans.
And among other unforeseen consequences, if a restaurant doesn't like you, they will put extra on your plate so you get stuck with the fine.
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And among other unforeseen consequences, if a restaurant doesn't like you, they will put extra on your plate so you get stuck with the fine.
And the extra costs at the water treatment plants and for oversized sewers because people going to the restroom to force themselves to throw up just so they can finish their plate.
Preparation for the coming famine (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: free press? you take the piss (Score:1)
punish Australia for having a free press PMSL. You must read The Australian if you believe that Australia has a free press. I mean FFS entire elections have been swung by a conglomerate of "newspapers" that have their editorials phoned in by an honorary Jew who lives in New York. Do some wider reading and change the tv from 7/9/10.
Damn imperial units (Score:3)
Looks like the pound has been redefined again. I mean I know imperial units have a history of no being exact, where a foot could be 6" or 7" or 5" depending if you were a ship builder, a baker, or if you happened to have big feet, but common redefining the pound to be 2204x larger than it used to be? Do you want to crash another rover into Mars? Because this is how you crash another rover into Mars.
fines will come out of the server tips (Score:2)
fines will come out of the server tips
Local problem? (Score:2)
...kind of how in Korea players of MMOs play until they *literally* drop dead in front of their computer monitor?
I find watching people eating is gross and I can't stand it myself, but people will watch anything.
The challenge is food *distribution* (Score:1)
The bigger challenge to feeding every human is not so much food production but rather food distribution. Unless China is using the money from those fines to fund things like food banks, it's not going to actually help solve the problem of getting food to the people that need it.
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China is likely worried about reducing food waste in populated areas with an expected population increase, feeding more people with the same infrastructure. And when people stop with the mukbang, there's no high visibility of the food divide. So the lack of food in some areas doesn't seem so extreme.
They might say otherwise, there's just no way they can be serious about major changes to distribution. Large cities getting larger is the obvious low hanging fruit to try fixing, as the people complaining will j
kids are starving in Texas! (Score:2)
China: Please send your leftovers to Texas. People are wasting away!
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I imagine COVID-19 victims don't have much of an appetite.
Sounds like California. (Score:2)
Will people get fatter? (Score:2)
Because they (think they) have to clean the plates?
There's this proverb in German (that is really hard to translate) that basically says: "Better ruin your stomach rather than gifting something to the inkeeper".
That said, this makes a lot of sense - imagine you much food gets thrown away there, with 1.something billion people?
Or rather, it makes a lot of sense on the surface - how practical it will be remains to be seen. But at least, they are acknowledging that the problem exists and want to tackle it.