HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Same with salt [0].

After 6 weeks of abstinence, your salt sensation is recalibrated downwards.

[0]. https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...

> Finally, sweets and junk food in America are like crack.

They are literally engineered this way and companies spend billions on the process.

Everyone should read the book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (2014)

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...

The Michael Moss book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us"[1] really opened my eyes to how the cereal giants hooked kids and their parents on sugar. It's eerily similar to the tobacco companies manipulation of nicotine.

It explains how manufacturers make clever misdirections away from sugar such as adding verbiage about "fortified with 20 essential vitamins" on the box. It's insidious because the companies are preying on parents' intentions to feed their kids something nutritious when in fact, the very opposite happens. Excess sugar is causing obesity, early diabetes, and cavities.

A healthy alternative for breakfast is slow (not instant) cooked oatmeal with no sugar added. (If the kids absolutely have to have something sweet, cutting a few slices of fruit is better than dumping sugar into it.) I've been eating that every morning for decades with no weight gain.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...

⬐ dredmorbius

Former FDA administrator David Kessler also.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/your-food-is-fooling-you-how-y...

And it doesn't help that the industry specifically designs foods to not fill you up, so you continue to eat more.

Check out Salt Sugar Fat if you haven't read it yet. Good stuff: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...

Sure but what if it was never a fact. 'Fat makes you fat' or similar falsification that have real impact to society[0]

We shouldn't attribute everything to malice, but there are clear issues in science:

'Too many of the findings that fill the academic either are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis

Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.

Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page.

Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already investigated by other scientists.'[1]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129... [1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re...

[2] Alan Sokal - Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Cultur... [3] How to Lie with Statistics - https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03... [4] Nassim Taleb 'Incerto', twitter.com/nntaleb

⬐ splawn

Despite all of your examples, science is still the best way we have for understanding the universe. If you have a better way then by all means enlighten us.

⬐ Chris2048

OP posts about the current state of science, A better way of doing science is needed.

⬐ 551199

Exactly, we could do some much better. Religious attitude is really hurting science.

⬐ splawn

Sure, there will always be room for improvement. However, I disagree with your latter point, putting ignorant, anti-science, religious, magical thinking people into power is really hurting science. Unlike religion, philosophically, Science is always open for improvement.

Edit: I had a comma party.

⬐ 551199

Repeat of study should be the bare minimum. We are in a situation where lot of underlining assumptions are false. It's hard for common people to experiment science but lets examine something that everybody can experiment daily. Nutritional science. It turns out most of the findings are complete bs or paid by special interests. Probably its not as bad elsewhere but faces similar issues presented in The Economist article.

Salt, Sugar, Fat is a great book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/081298...

That might be linked in the article, but even clicking thru via a google search it is locked down now so I can't check.

⬐ DanBC

Those foods are hyper-appetizing but they're not what most people call delicious.

⬐ res0nat0r

That comment is more about how companies create and hook us on mass market food using those three properties in the book title. There also is specifically a lot of talk about food chemistry and their use of the "bliss point".