this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Healthy food is absolutely not a luxury item. I'll accept the argument that the time to prepare healthy food is a luxury, but in almost every corner of the US you will find basic ingredients (eg rice, beans, carrots, celery, corn, potatoes, pasta) are way less expensive than the pre-prepared slop in boxes in the middle aisles of the store. People are addicted to that sugary shit and actively choose it
You just used addicted and choose it in the same sentence.
I don't think those are mutually exclusive. However, it takes energy and willpower to make a choice that goes against the nature of the addiction.
Addiction means you have a strong impulse for it, but at the end of the day you're still choosing.
That is not, at all, the meeting of addicted.
Addiction is the inability to stop doing something.
With the acknowledgement that addiction is a disease, what's happening is a part of the brain cannot stop choosing to do something, for a variety of legitimate chemical and habitual reasons
"Cannot stop choosing"
Come on.
You choose to walk a direction, you choose to look out a window. Choice is a critical component of being human.
Addiction is the chemical overriding of the prioritization of choice.
"compulsively committed or helplessly drawn to a practice or habit or to something psychologically or physically habit-forming "
Again: "compulsively" "helplessly".
Look, if you're not interested in admitting that words have meaning, you're not arguing in good faith and I'm done with you. Have a good one.
Lol yes. Choice has meaning. Choice here being dictated by compulsive behavior, or dominant chemical signaling is still choice. Like, your brain is doing it. Choice is not just "what color shirt will I wear today", it is far deeper.
I'm not victim blaming or trying to fuck with you, I am focusing on the fact that words have meaning, and choice isn't just a surface level, front brain thing. Choice is integral to the human condition, and choice and addiction are bedfellows. The latter dominating the former.
Choice is, by definition, not subject to compulsion, and if it is subject to compulsion is not a willing choice, it is forced and influenced. If you want to be a pedantic asshole at least have the intellectual integrity to be right first.
Compulsion is overridden choice!
I'm not suggesting addiction is done flippant thing, it's a serious disease.
Quit throwing around insults then claiming I'm the one lacking integrity.
And not a choice.
Yes, action against compulsion is an active choice, but to not do so is not suddenly a lack of active choice, just a lack of ability to enforce it.
If you're concerned with what you are, be different.
I'm certainly not concerned, just making clear your ad hominem devalues your position.
Consider this paper regarding the very overlapping and complicated relationship between addiction, choice, and compulsion.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736117/
Consider a dictionary.
I'll repeat myself for your own benefit.
Yes, action against compulsion is an active choice, but to not do so is not suddenly a lack of active choice, just a lack of ability to enforce it.
Wilful ignorance devalues your position far more than an ad hominem ever will.
Mmk I'll Google those for you
Compulsion: an irresistible persistent impulse to perform an act
Impulse: a sudden desire, whim, or inclination
Inclination: a preference or tendency, or a feeling that makes a person want to do something
Preference: the power or opportunity of choosing
Addiction is the loss of power or opportunity to CHOOSE.
You seem obsessed with the assumption that I think addicts are just weakly choosing the wrong thing, or something. That's very much not my suggestion. Deep in the core of the brain, chemical dependence pathways influence decisionmaking in a way the victim is unable to override.
Now Google choice.
As someone who has had physical and psychological dependency on substances I guess I've never been addicted
Psychological dependency is described in my comment via chemical and habitual
"People are addicted" and "actively choose it" are contradictory statements. Addiction is a disease, not a personal failing.
I'd only refute the "active"part.
You physically choose to locomote towards the counter to make the purchase, you physically choose to lift the cup to your mouth.
The problem is your own mind is working against you to make that physical choice seem absolutely mandatory, via the importance of chemical signaling
They still are choosing sugar?
I'm addicted to nicotine and I actively choose to hit my vape, for example.
Agree it's a disease, but it's also a choice. You choose to buy a big gulp when you crave it.
That's like saying losing chess against a grandmaster is a choice because you pick where the pieces go.
How is choosing to buy a sugared drink instead of water the same as playing a game of chess against a grandmaster? What exactly about it makes your analogy fit?
Here's a few ways:
Information: does an individual know chess rules? Openings? En passant? Do they want to spend the time and effort to learn? Are they getting their info from reliable sources or are they learning bongcloud and knooks?
Difference in skill level: the food and diet industries have thousands of specialists on their side with experience in psychology, advertisement, economics, lobbying, etc. Grandmasters can set up traps that new like a good idea to their opponent while thinking 10 steps ahead.
Complexity: chess and diet are not a single choice, but a series of choices, some of which make later moves more difficult.
Effort: it takes a long time to learn enough to even put up a decent resistance to a grandmaster, let alone win. It's more than I'd care to put in. I don't want to think about chess all the time. That's called a chessing disorder.
So your point is that it's difficult to resist the urge to buy sugared drinks due to distinct factors such as lack of information about it being unhealthy (which I seriously doubt nowadays) and people being psychologically manipulated through advertisements and making their product economically competitive. I agree some of these factors make it easier to be unhealthy, but I disagree that it's enough to say people don't have and make a choice. The choice to be healthy is just a harder one to make than it should.
You're straw manning me. I'm not saying people don't have a choice. But they're still going to lose. It doesn't matter that I have a choice of which piece to move when the point is not to move pieces, but to checkmate. Saying there are choices misses the point.
No it doesn't because you're arguing as if choices were dependant on one another. Choosing to avoid a coke one time doesn't mean you're now in a bad position to avoid another coke later on. It's not about winning or losing it's about building habits and keeping them, which I have agreed is made hard in some people's environment.
So one choice doesn't impact another unless it's to make a habit? Come on, you can't have a rule apply to my point but not to your point.
The point I'm making is that a game of chess has a conclusion, a destiny if you will, in which you'll lose even if you make a good choice right now. Real life is not like that, your choice to be healthy now does not mean you've lost the opportunity to do so in the future, ultimately leading you to your "destiny" of being unhealthy. That is victim mentality and we shouldn't endorse it. Still, I completely agree that making the unhealthy choice has become easier in recent times, and we should strive to reverse that trend.
Oh, sorry, I didn't know that's what real life was like. Thanks for setting me straight.
But yeah, being talked down the like that means I'm done with you. Try to be less condescending when you disagree with people.
I don't believe I talked you down or stayed from a respectful tone, but if I made you feel like that I just want to say it was not my intention. In any case, have a good one!
Someone never heard about food deserts.
Way to victim-blame both addicts and people with little to no healthy choices available.
Huh, guess I might technically live in a food dessert
More than 1 mile in suburban areas is extremely common, but I wouldn't consider most of them to be good desserts.
Low healthy food demand == choosing sugar
First of all, that's one "devil's advocate however" in an article full of information to the contrary.
Second of all, I'd be interested in seeing who funded those studies. Lobbying groups for different unhealthy foods as well as grocery stores looking for excuses to not cater to poor people often fund junk studies that say exactly what they want them to. Just like Big Tobacco did and political groups still do.
Third, addiction still ≠ choice and sugar is more addictive than most narcotics.
Just on your last point, sugar is not more addictive than narcotics. That's complete bunk. Provide a primary source for that claim if you want to refute me, but all those headlines about that topic were sensational and were basically based on sugar lighting up the same part of the brain as narcotics, namely the pleasure areas. So we like them both, but that has no bearing on addictiveness.
I know about the uk but not USA. Food inequality is quite a big problem for low-income households.
https://www.turn2us.org.uk/T2UWebsite/media/Documents/Communications%20documents/Living-Without-Report-Final-Web.pdf
(Millions of Britons live without a freezer or oven)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976549/
(A large number of britons who dont own a car live over a mile from an outlet selling healthy food)
Etc
I was also reading an article about nutritional quality of food itself has been declining over the last 50 years. So to get the same nutritional amount, you need to eat more food period.
There’s also bigger systemic issues about food access that is driving people to “choose” it. Lack of time, cost, availability, transportation all factor in that are beyond a simple idea if a person having a pure choice between two equal (or even somewhat equal) options.
Totally agree with this
Many people in the US also live in food deserts where easy access to healthy food IS a luxuary due to simply not being able to buy it where they live or work.
"potatoes and rice and corn and pasta" HEALTHY INGREDIENTS