{"id":88097,"date":"2024-03-18T03:00:08","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=88097"},"modified":"2024-03-17T17:10:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T21:10:37","slug":"slimy-nudgers-want-to-manipulate-the-food-you-buy-by-denormalizing-what-you-enjoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/03\/18\/slimy-nudgers-want-to-manipulate-the-food-you-buy-by-denormalizing-what-you-enjoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Slimy &#8220;nudgers&#8221; want to manipulate the food you buy by &#8220;denormalizing&#8221; what you enjoy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/snowdon.substack.com\/p\/the-food-reformulation-delusion\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher Snowden<\/a> on the self-imagined elites&#8217; desire for you dirt people to eat a different diet than you would voluntarily choose for yourselves:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf-480x325.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"325\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-88098\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf-480x325.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf-150x102.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf-768x520.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Screenshot-2024-03-18-at-17-05-23-nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf.png 822w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On Thursday, Legal &#038; General Investment Management&#8217;s senior global environmental, social and governance (ESG) manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/business\/2024\/03\/14\/britain-biggest-investor-nestle-sell-less-chocolate\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Nestl\u00e9 to sell less sugar<\/a>. It&#8217;s not for want of trying. In 2018, Nestl\u00e9 launched <em>Milkybar Wowsomes<\/em> with 30% less sugar than a <em>Milkybar<\/em>. The company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nestle.com\/sites\/default\/files\/asset-library\/documents\/media\/news-feed\/nestle-uk-news-release-milkybar-wowsomes-27-march-2018.pdf\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">described<\/a> it as a &#8220;great tasting product&#8221; that was the result of &#8220;a scientific breakthrough&#8221; but when it was discontinued in 2020, Nestl\u00e9 lamented that demand for it had been &#8220;underwhelming&#8221;. In 2021, it launched a non-HFSS version of <em>Shreddies<\/em> called <em>Shreddies The Simple One<\/em> which contained just four ingredients. The company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nestle.co.uk\/en-gb\/media\/news\/shreddie-simple-one\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>We know that consumers are looking to eat more healthily, especially following the pandemic. <strong>Shreddies The Simple One<\/strong> is an exciting new addition to the breakfast table that caters to growing demand, with a delicious taste consumers will love.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Consumers did not, in fact, love it and it was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegrocer.co.uk\/cereals\/nestle-ditches-non-hfss-simple-one-shreddies-after-just-one-year\/669413.article\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">withdrawn from sale<\/a> the following year.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the King&#8217;s Fund has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2024\/mar\/16\/tories-and-labour-urged-to-show-courage-to-act-on-unhealthy-food\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">added its voice<\/a> to the call for mandatory reformulation targets enforced with heavy fines. The King&#8217;s Fund&#8217;s job has traditionally been to get more money for the NHS but it is under new management with Sarah Woolnough, a former trustee of Action on Smoking and Health and former CEO of Cancer Research UK, so it is now involved in lifestyle regulation.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Compelling food manufacturers to strip out large amounts of fat, salt and sugar would help &#8220;denormalise&#8221; the routine consumption of unhealthy food, Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King&#8217;s Fund, told the <strong>Guardian<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The word &#8220;denormalise&#8221; is taken straight from the <a href=\"https:\/\/tobaccocontrol.bmj.com\/content\/tobaccocontrol\/17\/1\/25.full.pdf\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">anti-tobacco playbook<\/a>. See how it works yet?<\/p>\n<p>As the <em>Guardian<\/em> points out, the King&#8217;s Fund has done some polling which finds that reformulation is hugely popular in the abstract.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Overall, 67.3% of Britons agree that the government should require companies to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar they put in their products, a survey for the influential health thinktank undertaken by Ipsos Mori found. Only 5% disagreed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a beautiful example of the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences. People love the idea of fat, salt and sugar being removed from food. Who wouldn&#8217;t, so long as the food tasted the same? But it doesn&#8217;t taste the same. It tastes considerably worse. And when reformulation isn&#8217;t physically possible &mdash; for example, with nearly all confectionery, biscuits and cakes &mdash; the only way to meet the target is by shrinking the product. Some chocolate bars are now so small that a dual pack is the default (and so, as with the sugar tax, big business is doing rather well out of it). And, yes, <a href=\"https:\/\/capx.co\/our-food-products-are-getting-smaller-and-brexit-is-not-to-blame\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that <em>is<\/em> because of the government&#8217;s reformulation scheme<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If pollsters asked people if they are in favour of shrinkflation, I doubt many would say yes. As for reformulation, the only way to get an informed opinion would be to do a taste test using the &#8220;before&#8221; and &#8220;after&#8221; versions of popular food products and ask people whether the government should mandate the reformulated version and ban the original version. Again, I doubt many people would give unqualified support for reformulation.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, we don&#8217;t need to carry out such experiments because the public have been offered reformulated products many times in the real world. Sometimes they become popular &mdash; in which case there is no need for government coercion &mdash; but very often they are a flop, and in many cases they cannot even be attempted.<\/p>\n<p>The British public have put up with a lot from meddlesome puritans in the last 20 years, but I strongly suspect that if the government tried to force us to eat the likes of <em>Milkybar Wowsomes<\/em> and <em>Shreddies The Simple One<\/em>, the thin blue line would finally snap. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Snowden on the self-imagined elites&#8217; desire for you dirt people to eat a different diet than you would voluntarily choose for yourselves: On Thursday, Legal &#038; General Investment Management&#8217;s senior global environmental, social and governance (ESG) manager told Nestl\u00e9 to sell less sugar. It&#8217;s not for want of trying. In 2018, Nestl\u00e9 launched Milkybar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,831,74,28],"tags":[97,1026,322,289,139],"class_list":["post-88097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","category-food","category-media","tag-advertising","tag-microeconomics","tag-nannystate","tag-polls","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mUV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88099,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88097\/revisions\/88099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}