Thread "Discussion on future tech and society - Monday Musing - "Healthy" junk food" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 5:08PM, Aug. 13, 2018

Here's the topic for today - please share your thoughts in a comment!

I probably would, assuming there weren't side effects to whatever is stopping you from gaining weight. Things like sugar and fat subsitutes have a history of causing problems, and I'd rather not deal with that if I don't have to.

Posted at 7:08PM, Aug. 13, 2018

OK, HUGE myths and misconceptions here.

Junkfood does not make you gain weight more than any other kind of food.
It tends to have less nutrients. The extra sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat MORE of it. It's also super convenient, very cheap and preprepared so it's easy to just fill up on it.

It is food that is specifically designed to make you want to eat more of it and that makes you fat, not anything special about the content of the food.

If you took out most of its caloric content somehow of course people would continue to chow down on it.
But sugar and fat are the reasons it's so tasty so that sort of defeats the purpose. :)

BTW, sugar substitutes don't have much of a problem. They have had public relations issues more that real ones. Things like aspartime are safe.

Posted at 4:08AM, Aug. 14, 2018

They won't have changed the food, they'd probably have developed a way to improve human metabolism. That way you could eat all the junk but not gain any weight.

If there are adjustments made to human genes, that'll be in there. Stem cell therapy to adjust metabolism to work faster and more efficiently to minimize weight gain is a possibility.

Depending on how much of a nanny state there is, it could be mandatory to lower health care costs. Imagine universal health care where just like there are vaccinations today, there are gene therapies someone gets to prevent future illnesses. And a lot of illness is connected to obesity. So prevent that and future health care becomes cheaper.

And you can have all the junk food you want.

Since the invention of agriculture humans have not been eating what humans evolved to eat. So either everyone is forced to live as a hunter gatherer or the human must be evolved to match the current diet. Natural evolution is to slow. So it gets helped along by medical science. It's my own take on transhumanism.

Posted at 8:08AM, Aug. 14, 2018

It wouldn't make sense to increase people's metabolic rates because the purpose would be to make them waste resources.

If you were to gene edit you'd make it so that people felt full quicker and weren't susceptible to the lures of tasty fats, sugars and salts -because that is a remnant of a time when humans weren't civilised animals and instead had to forage for food.

Posted at 9:08AM, Aug. 14, 2018

ozoneocean wrote:
It wouldn't make sense to increase people's metabolic rates because the purpose would be to make them waste resources.

If you were to gene edit you'd make it so that people felt full quicker and weren't susceptible to the lures of tasty fats, sugars and salts -because that is a remnant of a time when humans weren't civilised animals and instead had to forage for food.

There's a reason I reversed the logic. I'm thinking of how it would be sold and how some industries would be coerced into going along with it.

Besides the metabolism increase would naturally include feeling full with less as well as making metabolism more efficient. But you're not going to be able to sell anyone on getting rid of the human appetite for sugars, salts and fats.

Considering that many of the most talented chemists and chemical engineers go into flavors, fragrances and make-up? This won't be done in a way that makes sense but makes cents.

Posted at 7:08PM, Aug. 14, 2018

This is an economics question, really. If you reduce the cost of something (in this case, health cost rather than monetary cost), then will people consume more of it? The answer of course is yes, for pretty much everybody, unless they just don't care for junk food. You might as well ask people if they'd buy more stuff if everything were cheaper.

There's plenty of ways they could make this happen. New food preparation techniques could make food taste like it has more sugar or salt or fat than it actually does, or they could synthesize more potent spices that give more bang for your buck. Or in a transhumanist future, people could program their senses to convince themselves they're eating some exquisite pasta dish when in fact they're eating tasteless gray gruel.

Posted at 1:08AM, Aug. 15, 2018

In conspiracy theorists speak, it's already happening sheeple, just not how you think. The corporations are selling us "healthy" junk food and making us all diabetic to sell more medicine. Big pharma has has you where it wants, buy or die. Go natural, eat raw, it'll cure diabetes, even type one. Don't believe the paid for doctors, their te same ones poisoning you at birth making you autistic and calling ut a vaccine to a fictional disease.

In non lunatic speak, I think El cid has a good point about it being economic. That and convenience. It's two pronged. People are often lazy so junk food is a quick and easy method if eating wuthout effort. Health risks pose a sales risk so they offer more healthy option to keep up sales. What any individual does depends on taste. Last year I was eating a lot of junk food because I didn't want to prepare food just for me and ordering food was easier than going to shops, buying ingredients and then cooking.

Posted at 3:08AM, Aug. 15, 2018

Big Pharma is already going into the genetics market. So if there are gene therapies for anything they stand to profit. Now people are notorious for eating past feeling full. If as everyone here has said, consumption goes up – sales go up!

Or we could end up in a socialist workers paradise where moderation is strictly enforced even to the point of mandatory gene therapies to change metabolism and so on to conserve scarce resources. It's for the good of the republic comrades.

Remember the catch phrase of all future extrapolation: " if this goes on–"

Just for the heck of it, what if the right wings worst fears come true? What if there's such a blow back to someone like the current freak in the White House that the USA becomes everything Antifa and the Occupy movement wants it to become?

Maybe not this election cycle but fifty years from now?

Posted at 5:08AM, Aug. 15, 2018

El Cid wrote:
There's plenty of ways they could make this happen. New food preparation techniques could make food taste like it has more sugar or salt or fat than it actually does, or they could synthesize more potent spices that give more bang for your buck. Or in a transhumanist future, people could program their senses to convince themselves they're eating some exquisite pasta dish when in fact they're eating tasteless gray gruel.

We can already do this. In China they even often sell fake food :D

Posted at 4:08PM, Aug. 15, 2018

Well, I know they're building fake cities in China, so nothing going on there would surprise me.

YOUTUBE: GHOST CITY - Inside the Chinese Housing Bubble