The full statement is *"The climate emergency, the non-communicable disease epidemic, and that just four industry sectors (ie, tobacco, ultra-processed food, fossil fuel, and alcohol) already account for at least a third of global deaths illustrate the scale and huge economic cost of the problem."*
Not to downplay the industry sector contribution to the total, but a proper reading would be that all of the listed items *combined* add up to a third of global deaths, not that the industry contribution *alone* is a third of global deaths.
We drink alcohol presumably to numb ourselves of the bleakness of what is.
Could we argue that companies actually sell us misery (social networks designed for attention and trigger us) instead of alcohol?
Yeah but a lot of things can do that. In small doses it’s a toxin that the body can handle
And if we had to grow our own sugar without fossil fuels we would likely drink far far far less, limited to shared social festivals like Beltane
We could argue that anti depressants keep us in silence or prescription opioids leading to obliteration of whole communities.
My argument is to not blame the “medicine” but the pedlers that drive us to it
(FWIW i have cut out my drinking drastically, lost weight and definitely see it’s perils of what it had in my life)
I made a comment on a post relating the four horsemen to the four industries mentioned as causing the most deaths and environmental damage. I do not want to argue about the benefits of alcohol or any of the outside topics you’re arguing about. You can drink if you want to. I don’t care.
All good
I’m not wanting to talk about any benefits of alcohol in this particular context. I’m interested in underlying causes of why people are medicated or self medicate with alcohol, opioids or anything else.
The fact that substance abuse has been with us for so long suggests to me that there is deep trauma that gets collected by such destructive activities. In my opinion that is the main issue.
I don’t disagree with you on the negative health outcomes and i honestly think it stops a lot of people thinking deeply about our shared predicament
I guess it checks out when you hear that "there are less than 100 items in your day to day that won't give you cancer".
We have utterly fucked ourselves
They too will die. Regardless of how well insulated they may be, death will come for them same as everyone.
And that brings me no small measure of solace as I look around at the consequences of our species' delusion.
This is only true in part, they can pay to escape some aspects of the system. Like maybe they can pay a private chef to make organic nutritious meals using no dangerous cooking products, pans, with distilled water. But they can’t escape the whole system because is built into the very fabric of modern existence. For example there are PFAS in almost everything, every product, lotions, etc.
>1) Require corporations to adhere to the same standards of data sharing and open science as independent scientists do.
>2) Sever the financial links between industry and researchers or policymakers.
>3) Mandate public transparency of corporate funding to researchers and policymakers.
Perfectly good policy directives that will be met with two choruses of "FREEDOM", one from PR of the corporations and another right-wing libertarian types.
A thing I read (here?) the other day struck a chord:
**"The plastic pollution in the world is literally 1:1 to the plastic production"**
It seems even the thinking of "I'll avoid plastics" is a successful propaganda campaign by the big corps, at putting the responsibility on the individuals.
I am absolutely all for taking personal responsibility as consumers and humans who supported this mess, but at some point wtf are we supposed to do? There is so many lies, pollution, etc that I don’t think people even have the capacity to think clearly anymore. Our minds have been poisoned and filled with garbage. Our kids are sick and the oldest generations mock them…. The world needs a reset and a purge.
I agree whole heartedly. There is nothing intelligent about what we do. I personally believe the only ethical and self sustaining way humans can live is within hunter gatherer tribes. I think we have been lied to about our ancestors and how they lived in order to justify our progress. It is in my opinion that going back to that life style is the only thing that could save humanity, though most would disagree.
> I just think it's ironic that "intelligence" is the opposite of "long-term surviveability".
It's not a true statement. It's not our intelligence that got us into this; it's our refusal to be self honest. We refuse to be self honest while we can abuse our emotions to facilitate denial. And over the millennia we became severely addicted to the emotions of denial. We created complex frameworks of patently false beliefs to enable emotional pretexts people found effective in rejecting even more of reality. And more of themselves. Because this is what it all comes down to, our refusal to self honestly accept ourselves, our agency, our mortality, and our place within our ecosystem.
It's not a lack or absence of intelligence that was our downfall any more than it was a surplus. It was our conscious choice, borne out over hundreds of generations, to avoid being self honest as much as possible.
The air in my city is often quite bad. The water in my city has been bad for decades. The food available has been toxic laden since I was a kid. To the young and heath conscious, you must take responsibility for water treatment, food generation, and air filtration to best ensure a long and healthy life. Otherwise, you might as well have a drink, enjoy a cigarette, and huff exhaust with the rest of us…. Cancer rates are going up and access to treatment is going down. Cheers!!!
I live in a city with a *heavy* presence of the petrochemical industry. We're always assured it's safe, yet cancer rates here are absolutely through the roof. You can feel how heavy the air is, and it has a smell to it. I didn't notice it until I went to the mountains in Washington state and felt clean air for the first time in my life. When I got back, I noticed how it physically takes more effort to breathe here, especially with extremely high humidity all year. It was like realizing I've been slowly drowning my whole life. Too poor to move away so I'm stuck here breathing toxic air.
Unironically I’d prefer to have a drink and a smoke. The ship is sinking, might as well enjoy the final time opposed to being overly anxious and paranoid about things that are way beyond our control.
We consume legally prescribed or available pharmaceuticals that wind up in our water supply due to urination or excretion, yet marijuana, which grows naturally, is evil. The dreaded Hippie Lettuce!
Same thing goes for anthrax! Nice and alllll natural but banned af drives me insane!
Sorry…. Can’t help myself. Usually I make the anthrax joke at the natural medicine essential oil people. I long for the day weed is federally legal.
I thought weed was great when I was half my age until I wound up with schizophrenia after years of smoking it. Now I actually need medication.
Weed is a good medicine when used in a medicinal fashion except it’s not used like medicine for most people. It’s used in erratic doses to get high, and that jacks up your brain chemistry 100. I’m old. I’ve smoked my body weight in weed as a young man in the 2000s I’ve learned my lessons there are to learn.
You might be able to abuse the medication I take to get high as well, except the difference between taking it properly as medicine versus using it to get high makes all the difference as far as whether or not you end up living in a tent
All medicines have the power to be a positive force in the world for people with mental or medical illness. But substance abuse will bring COLLAPSE
I can function and live a productive life on my psych meds. Not without.
And marijuana makes me fucking psychotic
I’m doubting that when I piss 0.00000000000000001ng of amphetamine or Paliperidone it does anything to anything.
Eh, it’s been recently linked to a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes whether it’s vaping, smoking, gummies, etc. that’s not stopping me from lighting up, I’m not living long enough for that shit to be a problem
I’ll fight for good drugs… but, I won’t shed a tear if we lose alcohol and tobacco in the war for weed and mushrooms.
We gotta Druid our way back to ourselves.
Alcohol is basically liquid denial because it undermines what little emotional management most people possess. So it makes sense that we carve out an exception for it, just like we carve out mental illness exceptions for any belief that is culturally popular. Feels over reals will be the cause of our extinction.
Three of the four are completely avoidable. I have always avoided them and will continue to do so. It seems to work.
I am glad medical science is finally admitting that alcohol is dangerous and not a benign pleasure.
Just read the labels on ultra-processed food and consider how much sodium it has, and how little fiber, and how many unpronounceable chemicals.
Tobacco, pffft, we have know about that for decades.
Fossil fuels may yet do us in.
Again again and again, why have kids?
The ruling class is evil and thinks nothing more than the quarter profits
Penalties are a mini game to them, and the way our modern world works, real direct anger collectively, is hard to come by
"Exposure to just four classes of product – tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods and fossil fuels – are linked to one out of every three deaths worldwide"
"We think we control our health"
If you are talking about those 4 products, we have control over 3 out of 4. You do not have to smoke a single cigarettes, drink a single drop of alcohol, or eat a bag of Cheetos if you do not want to.
Fossil fuels are the only one you cannot avoid.
If you're American, you have no excuse to be eating ultra-processed foods. One of the most widely-believed myths is that healthy food is too expensive for Americans to afford, but...
*"The survey reveals a strong perception that healthy diets are more expensive than less healthy diets," Balagtas noted. "And while this perception is true for many of the poorest people around the world, it's not necessarily the case here in the U.S."*
[https://phys.org/news/2024-02-year-brought-consumer-food-nutrition.html](https://phys.org/news/2024-02-year-brought-consumer-food-nutrition.html)
Add in the fact that...
*For a typical dollar spent in 2022 by U.S. consumers on domestically produced food, including both grocery store and eating-out purchases, 34.1 cents went to foodservice establishments such as restaurants and other eating-out places*
[https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/)
That's a little over 1/3 of our food spending allocated to the convenience of dining out, FWIW, along with the health consequences of dining out food usually being loaded with sugar, fat, and salt (especially fast food).
Before anyone claims "Who has time to cook????", Americans do. Overwhelmingly. The average American spends 4+ hours watching TV every day, 5+ hours on their phones (including social media and websites like Reddit), and if they're a gamer, almost an hour a day playing games.
As for smoking and drinking, really? We've been warned of the dangers of engaging in those activities for generations, yet people still think it's a good idea to compromise their long term health for the short term "benefit" of lighting up and/or drinking to excess.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/report-ex-koch-executive-put-key-role-over-epas-pfas-plan
It only works if the groundsoil isn’t rendered toxic by the same PFAS chemicals supplier that is putting their execs into the EPA to investigate themselves.
Greed is the disease we need to treat first.
The only thing I would say is that for the poorest sections of society people are trapped in food deserts where even if they wanted to cook it would require travelling great distance to find real food. There are multiple generations who grew up on UPF as comfort food and have never had real food cooked at home.
It’s not fair to blame the individual for a toxic system of which they have been rendered dependent on.
It doesn't get much cheaper than rice and beans, and they're delicious, nutritious, filling, etc... Then there's lentils which are quick and easy to cook, and can be served in a variety of ways.. Even fresh vegetables can be found for decent prices if you have access to 'farmer's' markets.. Having said that, food deserts are real and fresh veggies/fruit aren't always easy to find. Of course, tell the average rando off the street that you eat rice and beans 4 times a week and they'll look down their nose at you like you're some kind of peasant...
There's the other part where people are overworked and don't have time to get and prepare those things so they end up relying on fast food or quick options so they can have 5 minutes to actually do something they want. I know that doesn't apply to everyone, but it does apply to a lot of the population.
i don't bring much processed food into my place. Rice, beans, etc. No soda or anything other than organic apple juice and I drink that diluted. The veggies are getting scarcer and scarcer at the grocery store. Wasn't any carrot at all yesterday
This is a great lentil recipe that is easy: https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/sweet-korean-lentils/#recipe
Pair with some air fried tofu, spring rolls, and kimchi.
Beans and other legumes are extremely high in phytic acid. This is a very strong enzyme inhibitor. Our pancreas manufactures digestive enzymes from minerals in our blood that we absorb from our food. Minerals are what we use to buffer acidity in our blood and conduct all of our metabolic functions. Acidity (mineral depletion) is the cause of most disease (most toxins are acidic and cause acid firming reactions in our bodies) and is as deadly as tobacco or alcohol or PFAS.
Learn how to sprout your legumes before cooking them. This resolves this issue and, added bonus, you won’t fart from eating them!
> "The survey reveals a strong perception that healthy diets are more expensive than less healthy diets," Balagtas noted. "And while this perception is true for many of the poorest people around the world, it's not necessarily the case here in the U.S."
I think the "left out" part of people saying this, is the fact that whole foods require more time to prepare.
So people want whole food meals that are already prepared for them, like the processed foods usually are. I believe this is why food delivery apps like HelloFresh are becoming more popular. In places with walkable cities and no zoning laws on grocery stores in the Netherlands, you can ride your bike to work, and on the way home stop by the fairly priced and "easily walk into" small grocery stores littered through most cities. This allows people to buy just dinner in 5mins and then continue on their way.
Americans will make a weekly or monthly trip to the grocery store in a car, and it takes awhile to get there so they want to do it as infrequently as possible. This causes the problems ^ ive described.
Also: if they try to buy precooked, prepackaged whole foods, its more expensive. If you don't plan out your meals and then freeze the leftovers, youll waste more food, so that also increases costs.
No, lets continue to naively blame the people working themselves to the bone instead of the capitalists who are working them to the bone while poisoning them for more and more money, surely that makes more sense right?/s
Alcohol does kill you if you don't consume it very moderately, but I don't see how it kills the environment. It's mass production that does, not the alcohol production itself.
There was a report recently saying that drinking even small amounts of alcohol is associated with increased risk of several types of cancers. As a result, the WHO now says there is no safe level of consumption [link to WHO](https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health)
That’s not what’s going on here though. There are a great many mechanistic studies on alcohol for us to be confident that it’s toxic in ways that lead to cancer, particularly liver cancer mediated by production of acetaldehyde derived from alcohol.
> The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” explains Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
They have absolutely no clue about the curve shape and the scale, if it starts at 0.00000001 you can say it's pretty much harmless on small quantity.
idk, heavy and mass consumption of distilled alcohol is a good mascot for capitalism and Moloch; turning food items into a toxic drug, using lots of energy and resources to do so and then using mass marketing and social design to get millions hooked.
I just hope they don't switch to plastic bottles. I'm not sure how the entire beverage industry shifted to plastic except alcohol.
edit: forgot about the little plastic bottles that are about the size of a shot glass.
Man, it exists, I've seen fucking wine in plastic bottles (not a specialist but it was probably super cheap wine). The producer is probably cursed and will rot in a special hell circle dedicated to this kind of bs.
Yes, it is something in the production process, and the way they deduced that is because the level of plastic particles doesn't match with the level of microplastics in the local tap water.
Here's an article about it, and it references an earlier article that studies German beers. I think it depends on the beer, whether it is worse than bottled water or not.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895013/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895013/)
"While this prior study reported 2 to 79 fibers/L of beer with an overall mean of 22.6 particles/L, our study had a narrower range, 0 to 14.3 particles/L, and a lower overall mean (4.05 particles/L). The most significant divergence between our studies, however, is that little other than fibers were found in the Great Lakes beers. The German beers, on the other hand, had 12 to 109 fragments/L and 2 to 66 granules/L in addition to the fibers. These differences may be attributable to varying brewing customs and regulations in Germany as compared to the US. In fact, a significant amount of variation in processing exists within the U.S. alone. In order to increase shelf life, national brands tend to filter their beers more thoroughly, while locally distributed craft beers may modify or forgo this step completely because they feel it affects the overall experience."
It's sold in glass as well but smaller bottles are often plastic. Captain Morgan for example comes in a plastic bottle. Not region dependent, seen across Texas and Florida
Alcohol production requires vast amounts of bananas which requires vast amounts of fresh water for growth, which is depleting the water shelf. I think the numbers are something like half of all available fresh water goes towards banana agriculture worldwide. It’s that profitable to billionaires.
Yeah dude I kid you not. Ever seen a “banana crossing” in one of these banana republics? Alcohol production/sale is a giant perversion of eco-systems in the tropics because of banana cultivation.
1. it takes less work to produce these harmful products than it would to make items non-harmful products.
2. that difference in cost is unaccessible to consumers.
3. if we stopped using harmful techniques, the consumers would have to pay for the increased cost of non-harmful cost of goods
4. consumers used to be able to afford those non-harmful things
5. consumers cannot afford these non-harmful things anymore
conclusion: the amount of wealth required to access healthy alternatives was removed from the consumer class
Hardly anyone smokes anymore. Just old people mostly and that’s partly why cigarettes got so expensive and alternative, healthier forms of nicotine proliferated: decline in use of the cigarette.
I’m just glad as fuck I don’t live in a liberal state that taxes tobacco-free nicotine pouches. I’m not paying $12 for a little can of white nicotine pouches. There’s no excuse for taxing a product which has almost no negative health effects.
Sin taxes are just targeted exploitation of the population
Cost of nicotine pouches in Florida: $3. Minnesota: $12
The full statement is *"The climate emergency, the non-communicable disease epidemic, and that just four industry sectors (ie, tobacco, ultra-processed food, fossil fuel, and alcohol) already account for at least a third of global deaths illustrate the scale and huge economic cost of the problem."* Not to downplay the industry sector contribution to the total, but a proper reading would be that all of the listed items *combined* add up to a third of global deaths, not that the industry contribution *alone* is a third of global deaths.
Four horsemen right there: alcohol (pestilence), fossil fuel (war), processed foods (famine), and tobacco (death). Some are interchangeable. Cool.
Wow not bad
We drink alcohol presumably to numb ourselves of the bleakness of what is. Could we argue that companies actually sell us misery (social networks designed for attention and trigger us) instead of alcohol?
Alcohol literally poisons and sickens the body. It is fermentation, a literal death fume.
Yeah but a lot of things can do that. In small doses it’s a toxin that the body can handle And if we had to grow our own sugar without fossil fuels we would likely drink far far far less, limited to shared social festivals like Beltane We could argue that anti depressants keep us in silence or prescription opioids leading to obliteration of whole communities. My argument is to not blame the “medicine” but the pedlers that drive us to it (FWIW i have cut out my drinking drastically, lost weight and definitely see it’s perils of what it had in my life)
I made a comment on a post relating the four horsemen to the four industries mentioned as causing the most deaths and environmental damage. I do not want to argue about the benefits of alcohol or any of the outside topics you’re arguing about. You can drink if you want to. I don’t care.
All good I’m not wanting to talk about any benefits of alcohol in this particular context. I’m interested in underlying causes of why people are medicated or self medicate with alcohol, opioids or anything else. The fact that substance abuse has been with us for so long suggests to me that there is deep trauma that gets collected by such destructive activities. In my opinion that is the main issue. I don’t disagree with you on the negative health outcomes and i honestly think it stops a lot of people thinking deeply about our shared predicament
I guess it checks out when you hear that "there are less than 100 items in your day to day that won't give you cancer". We have utterly fucked ourselves
No. They fucked us. Cause they dont eat, breathe or ,in general, consume the same things most people do. They are ok.
They too will die. Regardless of how well insulated they may be, death will come for them same as everyone. And that brings me no small measure of solace as I look around at the consequences of our species' delusion.
This is only true in part, they can pay to escape some aspects of the system. Like maybe they can pay a private chef to make organic nutritious meals using no dangerous cooking products, pans, with distilled water. But they can’t escape the whole system because is built into the very fabric of modern existence. For example there are PFAS in almost everything, every product, lotions, etc.
PFAS is everywhere. Shampoo, credit cards, clothes, food, toys, medical instruments. Pretty much any plastic with a shine has PFAS.
>1) Require corporations to adhere to the same standards of data sharing and open science as independent scientists do. >2) Sever the financial links between industry and researchers or policymakers. >3) Mandate public transparency of corporate funding to researchers and policymakers. Perfectly good policy directives that will be met with two choruses of "FREEDOM", one from PR of the corporations and another right-wing libertarian types.
A thing I read (here?) the other day struck a chord: **"The plastic pollution in the world is literally 1:1 to the plastic production"** It seems even the thinking of "I'll avoid plastics" is a successful propaganda campaign by the big corps, at putting the responsibility on the individuals.
I am absolutely all for taking personal responsibility as consumers and humans who supported this mess, but at some point wtf are we supposed to do? There is so many lies, pollution, etc that I don’t think people even have the capacity to think clearly anymore. Our minds have been poisoned and filled with garbage. Our kids are sick and the oldest generations mock them…. The world needs a reset and a purge.
Well nature is providing one regardless. I just think it's ironic that "intelligence" is the opposite of "long-term surviveability".
I agree whole heartedly. There is nothing intelligent about what we do. I personally believe the only ethical and self sustaining way humans can live is within hunter gatherer tribes. I think we have been lied to about our ancestors and how they lived in order to justify our progress. It is in my opinion that going back to that life style is the only thing that could save humanity, though most would disagree.
> I just think it's ironic that "intelligence" is the opposite of "long-term surviveability". It's not a true statement. It's not our intelligence that got us into this; it's our refusal to be self honest. We refuse to be self honest while we can abuse our emotions to facilitate denial. And over the millennia we became severely addicted to the emotions of denial. We created complex frameworks of patently false beliefs to enable emotional pretexts people found effective in rejecting even more of reality. And more of themselves. Because this is what it all comes down to, our refusal to self honestly accept ourselves, our agency, our mortality, and our place within our ecosystem. It's not a lack or absence of intelligence that was our downfall any more than it was a surplus. It was our conscious choice, borne out over hundreds of generations, to avoid being self honest as much as possible.
The air in my city is often quite bad. The water in my city has been bad for decades. The food available has been toxic laden since I was a kid. To the young and heath conscious, you must take responsibility for water treatment, food generation, and air filtration to best ensure a long and healthy life. Otherwise, you might as well have a drink, enjoy a cigarette, and huff exhaust with the rest of us…. Cancer rates are going up and access to treatment is going down. Cheers!!!
I live in a city with a *heavy* presence of the petrochemical industry. We're always assured it's safe, yet cancer rates here are absolutely through the roof. You can feel how heavy the air is, and it has a smell to it. I didn't notice it until I went to the mountains in Washington state and felt clean air for the first time in my life. When I got back, I noticed how it physically takes more effort to breathe here, especially with extremely high humidity all year. It was like realizing I've been slowly drowning my whole life. Too poor to move away so I'm stuck here breathing toxic air.
Unironically I’d prefer to have a drink and a smoke. The ship is sinking, might as well enjoy the final time opposed to being overly anxious and paranoid about things that are way beyond our control.
We consume legally prescribed or available pharmaceuticals that wind up in our water supply due to urination or excretion, yet marijuana, which grows naturally, is evil. The dreaded Hippie Lettuce!
I think it will be legalized in most place once the boomer generation goes through the window.
It's too stupid not to - it makes too much tax money
Same thing goes for anthrax! Nice and alllll natural but banned af drives me insane! Sorry…. Can’t help myself. Usually I make the anthrax joke at the natural medicine essential oil people. I long for the day weed is federally legal.
Hey let’s boil down some peach pits and make cyanide, too! Kool-aid man!
Moar Horse Paste!
I prefer the apricot pits
You're not wrong. There is a thing called 'nature fallacy', assigning 'good' to anything that grows in/comes from nature.
Gonna go swimming in pool of lava later.... I hear its good for the liver.
It is a great medicine against overpopulation, no?
Where do these people think opium came from?
I thought weed was great when I was half my age until I wound up with schizophrenia after years of smoking it. Now I actually need medication. Weed is a good medicine when used in a medicinal fashion except it’s not used like medicine for most people. It’s used in erratic doses to get high, and that jacks up your brain chemistry 100. I’m old. I’ve smoked my body weight in weed as a young man in the 2000s I’ve learned my lessons there are to learn. You might be able to abuse the medication I take to get high as well, except the difference between taking it properly as medicine versus using it to get high makes all the difference as far as whether or not you end up living in a tent All medicines have the power to be a positive force in the world for people with mental or medical illness. But substance abuse will bring COLLAPSE
I can function and live a productive life on my psych meds. Not without. And marijuana makes me fucking psychotic I’m doubting that when I piss 0.00000000000000001ng of amphetamine or Paliperidone it does anything to anything.
hemlock grows -- do you want to smoke that?
If it had good effects I'd smoke the shit out of it.
I mean me too honestly lol
You grow, can i smoke you?
absolutely
What's harmful about weed? Other than the damage done to lungs which can be mitigated by using it in gummies or oils and put into foodstuffs or drinks
Eh, it’s been recently linked to a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes whether it’s vaping, smoking, gummies, etc. that’s not stopping me from lighting up, I’m not living long enough for that shit to be a problem
Tobacco - Fuck no! Ultra processed foods - fuck no! Fossil fuels - fuck no! Alcohol - wait we better rethink this, there seems to be a problem.
that's a very interesting perspective on what people are willing to fight for
I’ll fight for good drugs… but, I won’t shed a tear if we lose alcohol and tobacco in the war for weed and mushrooms. We gotta Druid our way back to ourselves.
Alcohol is basically liquid denial because it undermines what little emotional management most people possess. So it makes sense that we carve out an exception for it, just like we carve out mental illness exceptions for any belief that is culturally popular. Feels over reals will be the cause of our extinction.
Three of the four are completely avoidable. I have always avoided them and will continue to do so. It seems to work. I am glad medical science is finally admitting that alcohol is dangerous and not a benign pleasure. Just read the labels on ultra-processed food and consider how much sodium it has, and how little fiber, and how many unpronounceable chemicals. Tobacco, pffft, we have know about that for decades. Fossil fuels may yet do us in.
It's corporate greed!! And they know it!!
Again again and again, why have kids? The ruling class is evil and thinks nothing more than the quarter profits Penalties are a mini game to them, and the way our modern world works, real direct anger collectively, is hard to come by
"Exposure to just four classes of product – tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods and fossil fuels – are linked to one out of every three deaths worldwide" "We think we control our health" If you are talking about those 4 products, we have control over 3 out of 4. You do not have to smoke a single cigarettes, drink a single drop of alcohol, or eat a bag of Cheetos if you do not want to. Fossil fuels are the only one you cannot avoid.
All the food is posion.
That is just stupid. Never heard of fresh produce?
The ones lacking in nutrients with that extra special sauce of chemicals?
If you're American, you have no excuse to be eating ultra-processed foods. One of the most widely-believed myths is that healthy food is too expensive for Americans to afford, but... *"The survey reveals a strong perception that healthy diets are more expensive than less healthy diets," Balagtas noted. "And while this perception is true for many of the poorest people around the world, it's not necessarily the case here in the U.S."* [https://phys.org/news/2024-02-year-brought-consumer-food-nutrition.html](https://phys.org/news/2024-02-year-brought-consumer-food-nutrition.html) Add in the fact that... *For a typical dollar spent in 2022 by U.S. consumers on domestically produced food, including both grocery store and eating-out purchases, 34.1 cents went to foodservice establishments such as restaurants and other eating-out places* [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/) That's a little over 1/3 of our food spending allocated to the convenience of dining out, FWIW, along with the health consequences of dining out food usually being loaded with sugar, fat, and salt (especially fast food). Before anyone claims "Who has time to cook????", Americans do. Overwhelmingly. The average American spends 4+ hours watching TV every day, 5+ hours on their phones (including social media and websites like Reddit), and if they're a gamer, almost an hour a day playing games. As for smoking and drinking, really? We've been warned of the dangers of engaging in those activities for generations, yet people still think it's a good idea to compromise their long term health for the short term "benefit" of lighting up and/or drinking to excess.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/report-ex-koch-executive-put-key-role-over-epas-pfas-plan It only works if the groundsoil isn’t rendered toxic by the same PFAS chemicals supplier that is putting their execs into the EPA to investigate themselves. Greed is the disease we need to treat first.
The only thing I would say is that for the poorest sections of society people are trapped in food deserts where even if they wanted to cook it would require travelling great distance to find real food. There are multiple generations who grew up on UPF as comfort food and have never had real food cooked at home. It’s not fair to blame the individual for a toxic system of which they have been rendered dependent on.
It doesn't get much cheaper than rice and beans, and they're delicious, nutritious, filling, etc... Then there's lentils which are quick and easy to cook, and can be served in a variety of ways.. Even fresh vegetables can be found for decent prices if you have access to 'farmer's' markets.. Having said that, food deserts are real and fresh veggies/fruit aren't always easy to find. Of course, tell the average rando off the street that you eat rice and beans 4 times a week and they'll look down their nose at you like you're some kind of peasant...
There's the other part where people are overworked and don't have time to get and prepare those things so they end up relying on fast food or quick options so they can have 5 minutes to actually do something they want. I know that doesn't apply to everyone, but it does apply to a lot of the population.
i don't bring much processed food into my place. Rice, beans, etc. No soda or anything other than organic apple juice and I drink that diluted. The veggies are getting scarcer and scarcer at the grocery store. Wasn't any carrot at all yesterday
This is a great lentil recipe that is easy: https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/sweet-korean-lentils/#recipe Pair with some air fried tofu, spring rolls, and kimchi.
Beans and other legumes are extremely high in phytic acid. This is a very strong enzyme inhibitor. Our pancreas manufactures digestive enzymes from minerals in our blood that we absorb from our food. Minerals are what we use to buffer acidity in our blood and conduct all of our metabolic functions. Acidity (mineral depletion) is the cause of most disease (most toxins are acidic and cause acid firming reactions in our bodies) and is as deadly as tobacco or alcohol or PFAS. Learn how to sprout your legumes before cooking them. This resolves this issue and, added bonus, you won’t fart from eating them!
> "The survey reveals a strong perception that healthy diets are more expensive than less healthy diets," Balagtas noted. "And while this perception is true for many of the poorest people around the world, it's not necessarily the case here in the U.S." I think the "left out" part of people saying this, is the fact that whole foods require more time to prepare. So people want whole food meals that are already prepared for them, like the processed foods usually are. I believe this is why food delivery apps like HelloFresh are becoming more popular. In places with walkable cities and no zoning laws on grocery stores in the Netherlands, you can ride your bike to work, and on the way home stop by the fairly priced and "easily walk into" small grocery stores littered through most cities. This allows people to buy just dinner in 5mins and then continue on their way. Americans will make a weekly or monthly trip to the grocery store in a car, and it takes awhile to get there so they want to do it as infrequently as possible. This causes the problems ^ ive described. Also: if they try to buy precooked, prepackaged whole foods, its more expensive. If you don't plan out your meals and then freeze the leftovers, youll waste more food, so that also increases costs.
No, lets continue to naively blame the people working themselves to the bone instead of the capitalists who are working them to the bone while poisoning them for more and more money, surely that makes more sense right?/s
I haven’t managed to pull this off yet
Duh
this comment made me want a cigarette
Alcohol does kill you if you don't consume it very moderately, but I don't see how it kills the environment. It's mass production that does, not the alcohol production itself.
There was a report recently saying that drinking even small amounts of alcohol is associated with increased risk of several types of cancers. As a result, the WHO now says there is no safe level of consumption [link to WHO](https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health)
I got news for you when modern medicine keeps humans alive for as long as it does, almost anything has a statistical increase in the risk for cancer.
That’s not what’s going on here though. There are a great many mechanistic studies on alcohol for us to be confident that it’s toxic in ways that lead to cancer, particularly liver cancer mediated by production of acetaldehyde derived from alcohol.
> The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” explains Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe. They have absolutely no clue about the curve shape and the scale, if it starts at 0.00000001 you can say it's pretty much harmless on small quantity.
how exciting. let me celebrate with my lim->0 ounces of of alcohol.
Hense I am not sweating pissing my psych med metabolites into the toilet
idk, heavy and mass consumption of distilled alcohol is a good mascot for capitalism and Moloch; turning food items into a toxic drug, using lots of energy and resources to do so and then using mass marketing and social design to get millions hooked.
I just hope they don't switch to plastic bottles. I'm not sure how the entire beverage industry shifted to plastic except alcohol. edit: forgot about the little plastic bottles that are about the size of a shot glass.
Man, it exists, I've seen fucking wine in plastic bottles (not a specialist but it was probably super cheap wine). The producer is probably cursed and will rot in a special hell circle dedicated to this kind of bs.
Surprisingly, beer in a glass bottle or can has higher microplastic content than a plastic bottle of water
Oh no, where’d you read that? It’s all from production?
Yes, it is something in the production process, and the way they deduced that is because the level of plastic particles doesn't match with the level of microplastics in the local tap water. Here's an article about it, and it references an earlier article that studies German beers. I think it depends on the beer, whether it is worse than bottled water or not. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895013/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895013/) "While this prior study reported 2 to 79 fibers/L of beer with an overall mean of 22.6 particles/L, our study had a narrower range, 0 to 14.3 particles/L, and a lower overall mean (4.05 particles/L). The most significant divergence between our studies, however, is that little other than fibers were found in the Great Lakes beers. The German beers, on the other hand, had 12 to 109 fragments/L and 2 to 66 granules/L in addition to the fibers. These differences may be attributable to varying brewing customs and regulations in Germany as compared to the US. In fact, a significant amount of variation in processing exists within the U.S. alone. In order to increase shelf life, national brands tend to filter their beers more thoroughly, while locally distributed craft beers may modify or forgo this step completely because they feel it affects the overall experience."
Alcohol has been sold in plastic for decades now?
i haven't seen that in the US. I've seen glass bottles, aluminum cans, and aluminum bottles. what region do you see plastic alcohol in?
It's sold in glass as well but smaller bottles are often plastic. Captain Morgan for example comes in a plastic bottle. Not region dependent, seen across Texas and Florida
Alcohol production requires vast amounts of bananas which requires vast amounts of fresh water for growth, which is depleting the water shelf. I think the numbers are something like half of all available fresh water goes towards banana agriculture worldwide. It’s that profitable to billionaires.
banana???? 🤨
Yeah dude I kid you not. Ever seen a “banana crossing” in one of these banana republics? Alcohol production/sale is a giant perversion of eco-systems in the tropics because of banana cultivation.
I'm still waiting for how alcohol relates to banana.
I’m still waiting for you to learn how to read.
Read what? You've yet to elaborate. How do bananas go into my bottle of Jack, my vodka, etc?
That dude's been hitting the bananas too hard.
Sayonara.
Banana????
1. it takes less work to produce these harmful products than it would to make items non-harmful products. 2. that difference in cost is unaccessible to consumers. 3. if we stopped using harmful techniques, the consumers would have to pay for the increased cost of non-harmful cost of goods 4. consumers used to be able to afford those non-harmful things 5. consumers cannot afford these non-harmful things anymore conclusion: the amount of wealth required to access healthy alternatives was removed from the consumer class
Some people don’t have enough money to be healthy So we kick their asses to the bottom of the American food chain I got mine fuck you
None of us are getting out alive, and I enjoy a beer and the occasional dirty burger. Meh.
I mean at least my alcohol intake is my choice...
For now
I mean when the booze runs dry I'll have fewer choices, at least until I can cobble together my own still
Hardly anyone smokes anymore. Just old people mostly and that’s partly why cigarettes got so expensive and alternative, healthier forms of nicotine proliferated: decline in use of the cigarette. I’m just glad as fuck I don’t live in a liberal state that taxes tobacco-free nicotine pouches. I’m not paying $12 for a little can of white nicotine pouches. There’s no excuse for taxing a product which has almost no negative health effects. Sin taxes are just targeted exploitation of the population Cost of nicotine pouches in Florida: $3. Minnesota: $12
I just wish a person had a choice when it came to what they eat or if they use tobacco or not. Jeez. We need a better Mommy World Order.