Just in case you had any confidence in the conventional wisdom WRT nutrition

[jducoeur]

h/t to siderea for the pointer to this beautifully horrifying little article about a visit to a nutritionists' conference. I disagree with Mother Jones' view on a number of issues, but have to agree with the upshot here, that this pretty terrible from a public-information and policy standpoint.

(It's worth reading, but the summary is that a lot of big food companies sponsor the convention, and apparently pack it with very slanted information. Sounds like a very subtle version of regulatory capture, essentially...)

Comments

[serakit.livejournal.com]

I take back what I said about the conspiracy theorists; apparently organizing and keeping it secret is unnecessary if you can organize, tell everyone what you're doing, and mask it with enough money that nobody cares, and this is evidence there are groups out there which are plenty competent enough to do that.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Not all evils come from conspiracies, but conspiracies *do* exist. As Adam Smith said centuries ago "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…"

[jducoeur]

It's true, but my rule of thumb, based on what I've observed, is that running a conspiracy *well* is fairly hard. In particular, keeping a conspiracy actually secret is difficult. (Maintaining sufficient plausible deniability isn't nearly as hard, of course, which is why writing laws about conspiracy is tricky...)