The settings - they're all wrong!

Senior research officer Edo checked the dials again. The settings were all wrong. 

With mounting panic, he started through the checklist of the Sentient Life Research Protocol for planet Sol972P3 for the third time.

The vast array of dials and flickering lights on the control panel didn't change. All the settings were way out. The planet was in deep trouble. And so was he.

Walking along the well-worn corridors of the Academy to see his supervisor, Edo tried to think back to his last review. He couldn't even remember the last time he checked P3. Had he made a mistake with the adjustments back then? Did his hand slip on the dials? Did someone else touch the settings? 

Edo scrolled back through the research review screens, looking for the reason for the mess. The pages of data outputs showed P3 gradually had become more and more unstable under the extreme settings. Dangerous settings. Settings that had probably voided the whole research program, more than likely contravening all sorts of research ethics. 

But it didn't matter really why. It only mattered that it had happened. It was Edo's responsibility to keep on top of the adjustments. Zolic, the program coordinator, would be furious. 

The implications were clear - obvious to any student of Sentient Life Adjustment 101. The settings on P3 had created conditions that were sending the dominant sentient life form to self-destruction.

Nutrition 2 - the fish tank of neoliberalism

Part 1 of this article explored how food industry bodies influence the advice and information we get about nutrition and healthy eating.

I used the metaphor of a wily octopus for the food industry bodies - bent on its own survival (i.e. profit) and using its many arms infiltrating research, policy, non-government agencies and more to ensure its own interests (again, profit). Misinformation is better for the bottom line of those companies, but an epidemic of diet-related disease is forcing us to sit up and pay attention.

In Part 2, I want to take this metaphor further. 

But before I do, here is yet another book debunking yet another nutrition factoid that justifies a multi-million-dollar industry. Yet again.

Source: Suma Aqualife Park

In a book about omega-3 fish oil supplements, Paul Greenberg describes an industry based on faulty and untested assumptions about human health. No evidence at all actually supports the health claims for omega-3 pills from fish oil. Independent research has found no benefits for heart, brain or mental health. The industry's own research reported 'a non-statistically significant reduction in coronary heart disease risk', which means 'did not find a link.' But nothing has stopped the health claims. Marketing alone fuels the US$15 billion industry, despite no benefit to human health. In fact, the industry is creating vast destruction of the ocean systems from which fish oil, and therefore its ongoing profitability, is extracted.

The octopus will do whatever is necessary to survive, even wreck our health and wreck the natural life systems which sustains it. We need to find another approach besides debunking each dubious claim. 

I need some way to understand this behaviour.

To do so, I look at the broader context - what else is in the metaphorical fish tank with the food industry octopuses.

Nutrition 1 - getting advice from an octopus?

Where do you get good advice and information about healthy eating, about nutritious food?

Good advice on healthy eating and nutrition??

Very few of us are still cooking and eating like our grandparents. Very few of us learn about nutrition within the food culture of our family, the way it used to be. 

Nutrition advice is everywhere - media articles, friends, celebrity cooks, advertising, government guidelines, online health gurus and more. 

What if I tell you that you are probably really getting your information about healthy eating and nutrition from the food industry bodies... yes, from those corporations set up specifically to maximise profit. 

This article explores the food industry's numerous strategies to maximise profit using the metaphor of an octopus that spreads confusion and clouding ink all over advice about nutrition. Nothing against the amazing octopus; it just has conveniently numerous tentacles and is so flexible that it can get into any space.

As a result, confusion about healthy eating abounds. 

And it's having a seriously bad effect on our health.

TATKOP 114

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who are pretty damn sure they are right.

See more in the TATKOP series.