raisely/NoHarm

Junk food

Closed this issue · 7 comments

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

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?

Obviously any income at all from junk food is unconscionable.

nafg commented

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

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.

@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 commented

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

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