{"id":1511,"date":"2017-11-07T00:52:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T00:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2017-11-23T00:25:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T00:25:50","slug":"discuss-public-option-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/2017\/11\/07\/discuss-public-option-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Discuss: Should We Have a &#8220;Public Option&#8221; for Food?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2017\/11\/a-public-option-for-food\">A Public Option for Food<\/a>&#8221; Nathan Robinson argues that it would be a good idea to have a government run, non-profit diner that served healthy meals. Why? Because we have a serious problem with obesity that is, at root, caused and created by for-profit food companies. The case for the prosecution:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s4\">&#8220;C<\/span><span class=\"s1\">ompanies don\u2019t just aggregate consumer preferences and try to satisfy those preferences. They also try to shape those preferences through expensive scientific research. Consider the Cheeto. The Cheeto is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/24\/magazine\/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html\">specifically designed<\/a> to trick the human body through its \u201cvanishing caloric density,\u201d which means that \u201cif something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there\u2019s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.\u201d People do not just eat piles of Cheetos because they are \u201cdangerously cheesy,\u201d or because Chester Cheetah told them to. They eat piles of Cheetos because Kraft Foods consciously took advantage of an error in the way the human brain decides whether to keep eating something.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This, he argues, is one of the many things wrong with the &#8220;consumer choice completely determines the market&#8221; argument.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: Slate Star Codex posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2017\/11\/21\/contra-robinson-on-public-food\/\">brilliant response<\/a> to the linked\u00a0article. It&#8217;s excellent food for the mind, combining thoughtful political philosophy with useful information about where and how\u00a0US culture goes wrong nutritionally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In &#8220;A Public Option for Food&#8221; Nathan Robinson argues that it would be a good idea to have a government&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[392,390,290,391],"class_list":["post-1511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-government","tag-healthy-eating","tag-nutrition","tag-public-option"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1533,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/humesapprentice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}