How sweet something tastes is obviously a matter of adaptation.
When you cut sugar from your diet, your perception of sweetness will “downregulate” within a few weeks. I often taste sweet things afterwards also Sweet.
So, I have a plan to solve, or at least significantly reduce, the obesity crisis.
If all food companies used less sugar, soon everyone would taste the same and everyone would be healthier. Completely winning.
So why hasn’t this been done yet, and why does everything contain so much sugar? Why does the sugar content stabilize at such a high level, yet using half the sugar subjectively tastes the same?
There are motivation/coordination issues.
If you’re a food company and you use more sugar than your competitors, you’ll make more sales because your product is relatively sweeter, and people’s limbic systems interpret that as a good thing. The formula is simple and stupid: “Sugar = good, more sugar = better.” This is how we add high fructose corn syrup to everything—it’s a food company arms race that’s attacking your inner monkey.
The result is like the famous example of one person standing on tiptoes at a concert to get a better view, so the next person also stands on tiptoes to get a better view, and soon everyone is standing on tiptoes just to be like what they saw before, but now everyone’s feet are hurting – it’s a no-win, bad balance. Besides the negative effects of the sugar arms race are the obesity epidemic and skyrocketing medical costs, not just sore toes (unless the toes are about to fall off due to diabetes).
This is a good regulatory target. Not with idiot sugar taxbut the sugar content is limited.
Again, soon everyone tasted the same, the food companies were in their place, and for the sugar producers, the excess sugar could be made into rum, and again we won.
Of course, food companies will inevitably try to cheat, so it’s important to word regulations carefully, for example to cover all different kinds of sugar. It is also important to avoid “consulting” “stakeholders” such as sugar producers and confectionary companies and their “legitimate interests”, as expressed by regulators and legislators through thick brown envelopes and even thicker brown underage hookers. This is how regulation is usually crafted.
But assuming we do it right, this is a pure win for everyone and one of the most important wins we can get right now.
