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It’s Time to End the Tyranny of Ultra-Processed Food
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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I support and agree with criticisms about food deserts and how often lower income people who have the system stacked against them are most often blamed for the poor outcomes of bad nutrition.
There is an article someone copy and pasted from another news source above though, that shows this study was an experimental design in which test subjects weren't asked to self report their food intake, they were provided prepared meals from the research team and observed for two weeks.
None of the conclusions drawn were about sociological questions, but merely about the impact on a few health metrics for the test subjects such as caloric intake and the resulting weight loss/gain. In reality, a study like this can be in major support of advocates who want to demonstrate that food deserts and the negative health outcomes from only having ultra processed food will lead to greater health disparities cross-population. I don't think this study was trying to finger wag at consumers.
I didn't say the research was trying to finger wag consumers.
I did say they didn't take in to account significant parameters (and the excerpt of research/article that provides the details of the experiment supports this), so their research is lacking at best.
And even if their intentions were to support the kind of agenda you mentioned (and they might have been, I don't know), it doesn't matter, their research is still (and was always going to) be used by those in power to create a new scapegoat to victim blame and punch down at instead of addressing the actual causes of poor health as it relates to poor diet - capitalism and those who benefit from it.
Either way - research about the harms of poor diet that ignores both the circumstances and environment that leads to the poor diet, and the impacts said circumstances and environment have on health before you even look at the food aspect of it, isn't good research, no matter what you intend to do with it.
You can't research in to a problem that stems pretty much exclusively from how our society is designed and functions without looking at the sociological aspects of it. (E: well, clearly you can, but it's an exercise in futility at best)