Eliminating Heart Disease / Cancer

[Al6200]

Recently I was looking at what amazing lengths the government is going to to prevent future terror attacks, and wondered how centralized government action could best use its resources to save lives.

The top causes of death in the US are heart disease, stroke, and cancer. All of these diseases are a direct result of our modern high-fat diet. Saturated fats lead to arteriosclerosis, the disease that cause heart disease and stroke (technically stroke can have other causes, but arteriosclerosis is the big one). Unsaturated fats cause cancer.

In nations that do not have a high fat diet.

So here's the solution: label food so that people are encouraged to eat a healthy amount of fat (40 grams/day, although consuming less than that could confer additional health benefits). To do that, we:

1. Put a Surgeon's General warning on all food products where more than 20% of the calories come from fat, telling the consumer that the product should not be consumed by itself. The packaging should have a clear red and black stripe design on it to alert the consumer to the warnings.

All food products would get the warning, but people would be told that a raw ingredient like butter may be acceptable because it is only meant to be an ingredient, and not consumed by itself.

2. Put the fat percentage in very large font on the front of the food package, with a clear message that a fat percentage exceeding 20%, if consumed consistently, has a high chance of causing brain damage, heart damage, or death.

[catman03]

Yeah OR we could just leave people alone and let them eat whatever the fuck they want. What you're talking about is a good idea but it won't accomplish anything because the people who try to stay healthy already avoid the foods that cause those health problems, and everyone else will continue to eat whatever they want no matter what you do. So yeah, the government's time and money WOULD be better spent on preventing such things, but at this point there's little we can do.

[hrb5711]

I don't think that would be a good use of time and money. Look at cigarettes and alcohol, they have warnings on them and everyone knows they are bad for you, but we still use them.

Besides I would rather enjoy my food rather than count calories. And if that means I don't live to be 80, I would rather have a shorter and enjoyable life than a long one worrying about how much fat is in my mac n cheese, or BBQ.

[Gunter45]

The government already requires nutrition labels on food. The government is not our babysitter.

That's already a good enough reason not to. However, I'm just getting started. People already know that certain foods are bad for them. Being told that they're bad isn't going to change shit. The issue isn't an informational one, we are inundated with information about what's bad for us. However, people still shovel shit down their gullets because we're too apathetic to care and too lazy to assume responsibility.

The very notion that the government needs to be responsible in telling us what's good for us is not just childish, but it sets a dangerous precedent.

[n64kid]

At 7/10/08 04:54 PM, Al6200 wrote:

2. Put the fat percentage in very large font on the front of the food package, with a clear message that a fat percentage exceeding 20%, if consumed consistently, has a high chance of causing brain damage, heart damage, or death.

Right, we should treat food like smoking and use misleading labels that can deem healthy food as unhealthy and vice versa. An oily product high in poly and mono unsaturated fats are high in healthy fats, while a product with 15% fat, all saturated in hydrogen molecules, would be far more hazardous than the former snack. Enough with labels and educate people on what's healthy and to look at the nutritional guide already posted on virtually every food product. Unless they don't do even that in other countries... I never go shopping abroad.