Would you support a ban on processed food

[Anonymous]

What if government tries to make healthy food ingredients affordable and heavily taxes unhealthy packaged and processed food and beverages ? Would you support any such effort?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if government tries to make healthy food ingredients affordable and heavily taxes unhealthy packaged and processed food and beverages ? Would you support any such effort?

The problem is that the government currently subsidizes most of the crops that highly processing foods are made from.

How about we stop subsidizing those and subsidize regenerative farming and whole food production with fewer chemicals.

I would support food stamps to only go to Whole Foods rather than processed junk which would alleviate food deserts as retailers would have to adjust.

[Anonymous]

Define “processed food”.

[Anonymous]

Healthy food already is relatively more affordable than processed food.

[Anonymous]

A ban on soup or flour? No, I would not support that. “Processed” is a ridiculous thing to focus on.

[Anonymous]

I mean, almost all food is processed.

Do you mean processed foods of little or harmful nutritional value (Little Debbies, Dippn Dots, Takis, sugar sodas, etc....) or do you mean all processed foods (dried pastas, frozen lasagna, sliced bread, canned pineapple juice, etc...).

If the former, there are ways to do that well if the prices of more nutritious foods become more affordable and accessible. If the later, that creates a societal shift towards the trad wife stuff, which is really problematic socially, economically, and ethically.

[Anonymous]

Idk about "processed" food. Even fruit and veggies can be made unsafe by pesticides and lack of control leading to e.coli, listeria... I'd support better environmental regulations and controlling certain additives, sure.

[Anonymous]

Yes. People do what’s cheap and easy. The problem is that eating crap is cheap and easy NOW but is very expensive for us later when it comes to paying for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, other conditions. It’s also not easy, as we need to consider what our limits as a country will be in supporting people who are expensive to care for and don’t have possibility of a healthy recovery. We need to make junk as hard for people now as their medical care will be for us in the not too distant future.

And the idea of teachers handing out junk food in school classrooms as rewards and incentives is completely outrageous and needs to be banned TODAY.

[Anonymous]

They will have to pry Reese's Cups out of my cold dead obese fingers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Define “processed food”.

Therein lies the issue. What is “processed”? What is “healthy”? How can we craft these definitions without pissing off key constituencies? Who will do that work? And how long will it take to complete?

[Anonymous]

No. Get rid of tobacco products and alcohol first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Healthy food already is relatively more affordable than processed food.

Wrong. An apple costs more than a bag of doritos.

[Anonymous]

Processed foods:

All cheeses
Italian prosciutto
All yogurts
Heck, even a black bean burger

It is extremely hard to define processed foods when people have been eating cheese and cured hams for 1000 years. It is still processed.

[Anonymous]

Processed, not completely, but it could use revisions.

Ultra-processed, definitely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Define “processed food”.

Therein lies the issue. What is “processed”? What is “healthy”? How can we craft these definitions without pissing off key constituencies? Who will do that work? And how long will it take to complete?

This- we already have to do individual research on organic, free range, no antibiotics, gmo-free. There's already loose regulation and so much liberty taken. We need a european-style czar to handle it to be honest and unbiased, and the kapitalists would not like that one bit