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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It is mandatory for the manufacturer to make an affirmative claim as to the cholesterol and trans fat content (along with several other items) of every food product sold in the US. The manufacturer is only liable for what they actually claim; this labeling standard forces them to make certain claims.

    With the labeling you describe of the EU, I could look at every item in my pantry and refrigerator, and not realize that my diet is entirely missing any source of vitamin D, for example. If nothing in any of my labels even mentions vitamin D, I might not even realize it is something I should be looking for in my diet.

    When every single item in my diet affirmatively claims “Not a significant source of vitamin D”, it’s a big clue that I’m not eating right.

    There is a distinct difference in liability between “accidentally” forgetting to include the sodium content of a product, and affirmatively claiming it has no significant amount of sodium.

    When I’m on a low sodium diet and a soy sauce manufacturer fails to list its sodium content on the label, I bear a large part of the responsibility. It is common knowledge that soy sauce is usually extremely high in salt, so I can’t reasonably claim their mislabeling was the cause of any harm I experience. But, if they were to affirmatively claim “not a significant source of sodium”, I’ll own their asses.

    Mandating claims of these specific, important nutrients certainly does add meaningful information.



  • The listed items are all mandatory parts of all labels. Everything inside that box is required, in that format. “Nutrition Facts” boxes are highly regulated. Remove those statements, and this label is no longer legally compliant.

    You’ll note that “good” content (dietary fiber, vitamin d, calcium, iron, and potassium) are also listed, even though this product does not contain them.

    Because all of these items are mandated to be present inside this box on all products, there is no implication that another product may or may not contain these items.

    The content of that box is not considered “advertisement”. It’s just a simple, consistent, statement of facts.


  • and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.

    That’s not true, especially for cans. It’s more effective to sort trash at a central location than to have consumers do it beforehand. Aluminum recycling alone turns a significant profit. Glass is also profitable by itself.

    Waste management companies should be paying you for your cans; if they are charging you for recycling, you should consider taking your cans to a scrap yard rather than leaving them in your trash.



  • You would have a point if the recommendation was a minimum daily intake. It’s not. It is a maximum. A recommended limit that you should not exceed.

    The USDA recommendation is that sugar should make up no more than 10% of total caloric intake. The percentages you see are based on a 2000 (kilo)calorie daily diet.

    That recommendation is perfectly consistent with your assertion that “we can do perfectly well with zero grams of sugar every single day”.