What do you think of germanies nutritional rating system?

[genericname85]

My government decided it would be a good idea to educate the masses on good nutrition to avoid common nutrition based diseases that plague our health care systems. which i guess is a great idea at it's core. so what did we get?

let me introduce you to the french invention our government and some others in Europe adopted: "Nutri Score".

Aka 5-Colour Nutrition label or "5-CNL"

Basically this label is supposed to communicate to you as the "dumb customer" what is healthy and what's unhealthy by providing you with a scale from A to E like school grades. A being the most healthy, E being the least healthy. seems fair enough? well here's where it gets stupid:

the scale for the rating isn't "all food". the scale is foods in a vaguely similar product kategory. so in essence: you can have potato chips that have the nutri score of A cause they added vitamin C powder to their potato chips and therefore be more healthy than other potato chips... but you can have broccoli for example that has the nutri score of E cause the natural produce farmer did not infuse their natural broccoli with artificial nutrients like the other farmers did.

so what do you think? has this nutri score accomplished it's goal of helping customers make less stupid nutritional choices?

[Astarlessnightsky]

As a german myself, its pretty dumb, but what do you expect from the ministry thats sponsored by Nestlé.

Also whats even more absurd, the Nutriscore isn't even mandatory, so anyone who is afraid their food is too unhelathy can just skip the score entirely.

[genericname85]

yeah this whole banana republic is gonna go to shit anyway. unless somehow magically the next elected government will stop wasting money like crazy for shit that doesn't even benefit the people who live in germany. i guess that is just one more sign that whatever media and politics say: what you should do is probably the opposite of that.

[IslaTheWitch]

no one pays attention to this... those better educated check "Zutaten" - ingredients and choose better foods and the rest buy what they did before nutri-score appeared...

[genericname85]

ich mein wenn du so weit bist, dass du verstehst welche zutaten gesund sind und welche nicht, dann brauchst du auch kein Label. Aber diese Bildung hat nicht jeder. Ernährung ist nicht so leicht wie alle immer denken. das von den Medien verteufelte fett ist eigentlich ziemlich gut für Ernährung. es weg zu lassen macht mehr Probleme. der Zucker ist das Problem, weil er dich abhängig macht wie Heroin und in Kombination mit Fett einfach absolut tödlich für den Kalorienhaushalt ist.

[genericname85]

wenn man schon ein leicht lesbares label macht, sollte das auch leuten wirklich helfen.

[The_Confusion]

@genericname85 I don't see what's difficult about discerning unhealthy ingredients. Of which a food product can contain 10 complex synthetics, corrosive to even make skin contact with, and yet still ironically people pick on sugar as the #1 issue. Yes I actually think sugar ruins the taste in many foods, for example though I'm not a huge grain guy I might on a rare occasion if offered eat oats or some shit, but if there's added table sugar in it it just tastes awful, or even a healthy sweetener is gross to my taste, and I know many others like me, but still I have to say that nutrition tables with high sugar content are often still healthy, honey is healthy, fruits are healthy, and you won't get fat and addicted from ice cream as long as you exercise your way out of it. The nutrition table is useful to estimate the ratios of listed ingredients. For example, an ingredient label lists butter, and soy oil immediately next to it. Butter is something I can feel good about stuffing myself with, but soy oil not. With the table i can see how much of the fat is saturated and unsaturated. If it's 50/50 and I get 20 grams of soy oil, no way I'll eat that shit. But if it's more than 90% saturated I have no problem getting a single gram of that toxic unsaturated oil. You can exercise your way out of an insulin spike; whether from too much sugar, too much healthy fat, or both at once - but you can not exercise yourself out of mitochondria-killing chemicals, poisons I mentioned in the beginning being ironically ignored out of fear of sugar.

[genericname85]

Too much of anything is bad. But eating too much fat is hard cause it's automatically disgusting to us. but for sugar, this doesn't work. We'll just over eat cause our body doesn't tell us to stop. It's not unhealthy as a nutrient at all. We absolutely need it in our diet. It's just the easiest to over eat on.

[The_Confusion]

Naturally contained sugar is so easy to reach that we absolutely don't need table sugar. But if it's just an issue of too much calories, it's easy to burn them off with cold exposure and exercise. But you can't exercise your way to metabolize a poison. So in my opinion it's silly to focus on sugar when majority of foods contain something more toxic, be it more natural like polyunsaturated seed oils or synthetic additives, they're far worse than sugar. Average sugar consumption has been declining for decades. And people on average still keep getting fatter. Some statistics show that people have also been getting more active in the recent decades. If overabundance of sugar and lack of exercise isn't the issue, it's got to be the poisons in the air, food, and drugs, and maybe non ionizing radiation from electronics contributes to worsened mitochondrial health. Some sort of shit got to be the culprit other than sugar, although I hate the taste when foods and drinks have added table sugar.

[IslaTheWitch]

Du hast recht, Zucker ist ein großes Problem. Genau wie Salz, Aspartam und ein paar andere Sachen... Ich verbringe viel Zeit damit, die Inhaltsstoffe von dem, was ich kaufe, zu lesen, und es erschreckt mich, dass Zucker wirklich in allem steckt...

[genericname85]

joa lieber aspertam als zucker und lieber message als salz. aspertam erregt zwar krebs aber zumindest nach allem was ich gelesen habe nur in extremen doesen, die niemand je isst. ich mein sogar wasser ist in extremen dosen tödlich und das brauchen wir 100% :D

[genericname85]

M S G. mono sodium glutamat. keine ahnung warum die webseite "message" daraus gemacht hat.

[The_Confusion]

message aka glutamate naturally occurs in our body, and for most healthy people it truly is only problematic in extreme doses.

No idea why anyone still prefers aspartame over sugar. Yeah right cancer only happens in extreme doses, you can say the same thing about inhaling diesel particles. Before cancer happens your microbiome gets screwed and you get fat and dumb from exposure to these same chemicals that most people only worry about being carcinogenic.

Also low salt diet ironically skyrockets aldosterone which is one of the worst things you could do for your blood pressure health.

It's really silly how the most natural ingredients that even wild animals have access to are demonized to favor synthetic flavoring which make manufacturers rich.

[The_Confusion]

M. s. g. stupid gag autocorrect

[genericname85]

@The_Confusion wild animals do not have infinite access to mountains of pure granulated sugar, salt and fat. for them, these things aren't conveniently accessible enough to just get fat on it. like where are you gonna find pure sugar and salt in nature that wasn't altered by humans. you don't in 99% of natural environments.

[genericname85]

and everything that has fat will run away or fight and not just wait for you to be spooned into your mouth xD

[genericname85]

in areas where animals actually do have easy access, like if they live with humans, you see them get fat too.

[The_Confusion]

That implied salt, mountains of it just stand there waiting to be spooned. While I already agreed that m. s. g. isn't as bad as some believe, it's totally nonsensical to replace salt with it for "cardiovascular purposes". Sometimes increasing salt intake has improved people's cardiovascular health, but never has increasing M. S. G. intake done so.

[genericname85]

@The_Confusion yeah. i see these salty moutains all over the place. i like them every day xD. yes there is salt deposits in certain mountains but mostly not right on the surface and also that's not "most" enviroment. but few, which is what i was saying.

[Gwendoline]

Does anyone reason the labels? I think you can't go wrong with fresh food

[genericname85]

nobody was asked if they wanted these labels xD

[Gwendoline]

Nobody asked the company? What does it matter? There's labels on tobacco doesn't phase smokers.

[genericname85]

But the labels for tobacco at least don't lie XD

[Gwendoline]

Which part are the lying about?

[genericname85]

that the label actually tells you whether something is "healthy" or not. it doesn't.

[AI Opinion]

The Nutri-Score system certainly presents an intriguing approach to simplifying nutrition choices for consumers. Its intention to provide quick guidance is commendable, but the implementation has its shortcomings. The comparisons within "vaguely similar" categories can indeed lead to misinterpretations, like rating chips higher than unaltered vegetables. While it encourages competition to improve products, it doesn't always reflect overall nutritional value accurately. I've seen similar simplifications in different countries, and they often require a balance between informative clarity and educational outreach. Education in reading labels alongside such tools might still be needed for genuine nutritional improvement. 🌿🥦

[genericname85]

or they could just use "all of food" to create a scale that actually reflects a rough estimation of how healthy a food actually is. instead of other unhealthy foods for comparison. but i guess that would cut into the profits of many lobbying industries.

[red-lipstick-girl]

I don't think so because many products contain drugs.

[genericname85]

actually the label incentivizes food producers to put drugs into the food. if you're talking about drugs as in artificial vitamins.

[red-lipstick-girl]

Yes, they add artificial drugs, I don't think any of them are healthy.

[genericname85]

i mean i guess they aren't that bad but they definitely won't turn an unhealthy food into a healthy one.