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You disregard diabetes rather lightly there. Diabetes can result in amputations, blindness, heart attacks, strokes and other fun things.

Sure there are other food choices that lead to obesity, but sugar is certainly high on the list.

One thing in common though is that telling a smoker to "just quit" is about the same as telling someone who likes sugar to "just stop". Personally I'm working to "reduce my intake", slowly but surely.

Edit:but for sure there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar and that a Huge difference between the two.




> there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar

Which makes this a truly personal choice.

“Smoking is a choice, don’t ban it” always irks me because it’s a choice smokers make for themselves and everyone else in a 30m radius around them from forcing others to breathe in their polluted air.


> Edit:but for sure there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar and that a Huge difference between the two.

Obesity can cause epigenetic changes that are passed down to offspring.


True, and a person's diet choices can absolutely impact others. From a parents choice of what to feed their children to a school's selling out of all health for cheap corporate shit meals, even down to a road trip participants insistence on specific eating location. We are not always perfectly in control of our eating choices. Sure in a perfect world we'd all have the time and space and money to carry our own food but as someone who grew up with crohns' disease I think people strongly underestimate how make situations reduce eating choice to only cheap, bad, sugar filled processed foods. Every pizza or ice cream party (of which my school had many), every birthday, every sleep over, every time my brother cried about wanting to eat out. Forcing yourself to eat natural healthy food in America often involves the choice to not eat.


> there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar

But there absolutely is such a thing as a "food desert"

    an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.
particularly within the USofA, places where lack of finnacial resources across communities, lack of affordable public transport, and lack of shopping options essentially doom large groups of people to low grade high sugar foods.

Good governments that are orientated toward the well being of their citizens population tend to enact limits on sugar in food, improve transport, subsidize good food etc.

Often with the evil socialist goal of better health, improved job options via transport, reduced universal health costs, and more taxpayers ..


I still see this idea brought up but it feels like the tide has turned against the idea of "food deserts" with a lot of studies undermining it, and worth looking into if you're interested.


The raw data still appears to suport the notion:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-environment-atla...

and the various initiatives started to address the issue haven't yet had time to make significant changes in enough of the areas worst off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/29/us-food-...

It's a good start, with a way to go:

> On Sept. 28, the White House is hosted a conference on hunger, nutrition and health — the second conference of its kind in five decades — and introduced a 40-page national strategy as a roadmap toward the goal of ending hunger and increasing healthy eating by 2030.

https://journalistsresource.org/home/food-insecurity-health/




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