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Food and Drink

An appetite for food addiction?

Natalia Lee and Adrian Carter, from the Neuroethics group at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Australia and Members of the International Neuroethics Society

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Many of us enjoy foods that are high in sugar, fat, salt, or a combination of the three; take savoury biscuits for example. Dr. David Kessler’s The End of Overeating explores in detail the art and science behind the creation of highly palatable foods. Despite their appeal, most of us are able to exhibit adequate control when consuming or over consuming these foods. However, there is a subset of the population for whom control over these foods becomes problematic and can result in unhealthy weight gain or obesity. For these individuals, consumption can become life threatening. Why is it that some who wish to reduce their intake of these foods are not able to do so? Read More »An appetite for food addiction?

Salt in the Wound, or the Sweetest Thing? On Placing Legal Limits On the Sugar, Salt and Fat Content of the Foods We Eat.

Last week, in the light of the UK’s growing obesity problem, the shadow health secretary Andy Burnham called for a debate on the question on whether a legal limit ought to be introduced on the amount of sugar,salt and fat that manufacturers can put into the foods that we eat, particularly those foods aimed primarily at children. In calling for such a debate, Mr Burnham pointed out that the obesity epidemic can no longer be ignored, given the challenges that widespread obesity will raise for the NHS. Furthermore, he suggested that the current government’s ‘responsibility deal’ , which aims to tackle the obesity problem by collaborating with food manufacturers to improve food content and labelling,  is simply not working.Read More »Salt in the Wound, or the Sweetest Thing? On Placing Legal Limits On the Sugar, Salt and Fat Content of the Foods We Eat.

Want to increase breastfeeding? Then shut up about how it saves money!

by Rebecca Roache

UNICEF today announced research showing that increasing breastfeeding rates in the UK could save the NHS tens of millions of pounds. The report notes that investing more money in encouraging more mothers to breastfeed, and for longer, will pay dividends.

Is this likely to get more mothers breastfeeding? Well, I don’t think we’re off to a very good start. Take a look at some of the headlines used to report this story:Read More »Want to increase breastfeeding? Then shut up about how it saves money!

Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

 By Charles Foster

Fast food permanently reduces children’s IQ, a recent and unsurprising study reports.

What should be done? The answer is ethically and legally simple. Parents who feed their children junk food, knowing of the attendant risks, are child-abusers, and should be prosecuted. If you hit a child, bruising it, you are guilty of a criminal offence. A bruise on a child’s leg is of far less lasting significance than the brain damage produced by requiring a child to ingest toxic junk. A child injured by a negligent or malicious parent can also bring civil proceedings against the parent.

The findings of the recent study mirror those in other jurisdictions. And now that they have been widely disseminated it will be hard for parents to plead ignorance.Read More »Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

Should you take ecstasy to improve your marriage? Not so fast …

Love drugs and science reporting in the media: Setting the record straight 

By Brian D. Earp, Julian Savulescu, and Anders Sandberg

Love. It makes the world go round. It is the reason we have survived as a species. It is the subject of our art, literature, and music—and it is largely the product of chemical reactions within the brain.

No wonder science is starting to unravel the ways in which we can influence it, and perhaps even control it.

Just as Darwin’s finding that we are descended from apes shocked people in the nineteenth century, so people will be shocked to find that our most lofty social ideal is something we share with our mammalian cousins and which is the subject of scientific scrutiny and even chemistry-book manipulation.

In 2008, two of us (Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg) published an article in the journal Neuroethics on the topic of “love drugs” – a term we use to refer to pharmacological interventions based on existing and future bio-technologies that could work to strengthen the bond between romantic partners. All three of us have an article just published in the journal Philosophy & Technology in which we build upon that earlier work. Interested readers will take the time to study those papers in full, but we have a feeling that much of the population will stop at a handful of media reports that have recently summarized our ideas, including at least one article that we think has the potential to mislead. Let us set the record straight.

Read More »Should you take ecstasy to improve your marriage? Not so fast …

Banning Junk Food Ads On Disney Media Outlets: A “Game-Changer”, or a Mickey Mouse Measure?

Yesterday, with the help of first lady Michelle Obama, the Walt Disney Company announced that from 2015, it will no longer allow the advertisement of junk food on its media outlets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18336478). This announcement has been lauded by those who are alarmed by the colossal statistics regarding childhood obesity in the USA. Mrs. Obama herself hailed the initiative as a “game changer”.

The USA (but not only the USA) is facing an epidemic of childhood obesity. 17% of all children and adolescents in the USA are clinically obese, triple the rate of what it was one generation ago (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/index.html). This percentage might even be higher according to a recent study (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033308). Given the numerous health problems associated with obesity, this is clearly a cause for grave concern.Read More »Banning Junk Food Ads On Disney Media Outlets: A “Game-Changer”, or a Mickey Mouse Measure?

Sustainable Fish Week at Ghent University

This week is ‘Sustainable Fish Week’ at Ghent University in Belgium. All fish on the university restaurants’ menus come from sustainable fisheries or fish farms (with practices that can be maintained without reducing the ability of the target fish to maintain its population and without threatening other species within the ecosystem, for example, by removing their food source, accidentally catching and killing them, or damaging their habitat). Tuna sandwiches will be taken off the menu and a sustainable alternative will be provided instead. Those who take their meal at a university restaurant will receive a free ‘fish guide’ with helpful information for making responsible fish choices at home. Those with strong stomachs may also enjoy the opportunity to taste jellyfish at the university restaurants. The message is that, if we continue to eat unsustainable fish, then soon jellyfish will be the only alternative to fish left on the menu.

Read More »Sustainable Fish Week at Ghent University

Animal antibiotics

Suppose that a despotic political regime is keeping its citizens in cramped and unhygenic labour camps. The survival and and economic productivity of the incarcerated individuals is sustained only through the widespread administration of antibiotics which helps to prevent epidemics. It is difficult for international organisations to do anything about these work camps, but one thing they could do is cut off the supply of antibiotics. This would risk the lives of thousands of inmates in the short term, but can also be expected to put an end to the work-camp system in the longer term, since it would render the camps uneconomic.

Should the international organisations cut-off the supply of antibiotics? It is doubtful whether they should.

But now suppose we replace the work-camps with chicken houses and sow stalls, and the citzens with farm animals. Many farm animals held under cramped and unhygenic conditions are kept alive, and economically productive, only through the widespread administration of antibiotics. Restricting access to these antibiotics would force the agricultural industry to reform these practices. In this case it seems more plausible that antibiotic use should be restricted. At least, this is what Robert S. Lawrence writes in The Atlantic.

Read More »Animal antibiotics

‘Please drink responsibly’: voluntary intoxication and generating responsibilities

A scenario:

You are with a group of friends in a bar on a Friday night and one of them has had rather a lot to drink – much more than he usually does. He seems happy, despite slurring his words and taking a few moments to get his balance. But, as he slurs his goodbye at the door of the bar, it flashes through your mind that maybe you should walk him home. ‘Nah’, you think, ‘he’ll be fine’ – and he would certainly protest. Ten minutes later he stumbles and falls into the river and drowns. Did you have a duty to walk him home? What about the others in your group? Moreover, might that duty have been a legal one?

 

Read More »‘Please drink responsibly’: voluntary intoxication and generating responsibilities

In vitro meat, new technologies, and the “yuck factor”

In vitro meat, recently discussed on this blog by Julian Savulescu, is gradually becoming a reality. It holds great promise, notably considering that billons of animals are slaughtered for food every year, often after spending miserable lives in factory farms, and that the current production of meat contributes significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases. In spite of those facts, it seems highly unlikely that most meat-eaters will agree to give up meat anytime soon (though the success of the “meat-free Mondays” initiative in a number of different places should be saluted), yet they might well prove more willing to switch from traditionally produced meat to in vitro meat, if the latter were as healthy (or even healthier), reasonably priced, and tasted the same as the former.

 

Discussions of in vitro meat in the media most often cite the so-called “yuck factor” as a major obstacle to its general acceptance: i.e. the instinctive revulsion that many people feel at the idea of eating “unnatural” meat grown in a petri dish. I am inclined to be cautiously optimistic about the prospects of overcoming that obstacle: “unnatural” meat substitutes have already become popular among vegetarians, and some meat-eaters do consume them as well occasionally. Although in vitro meat should bear even more of an uncanny resemblance to the real thing than those substitutes (which might be why some people are revulsed by the idea), I would expect it to find success if issues of health and taste can be adequately dealt with. Now what if the yuck factor were to prove more of an issue than I anticipate? I believe the following points deserve to be emphasized:

Read More »In vitro meat, new technologies, and the “yuck factor”