Chocolate Underground
With the establishment of the Good For You Party's authoritarian regime, unhealthy foods and sugar have been banned. As a result, the bakery Smudger Moore's father owns is suffering financially from being unable to sell any of their typical sweet menu items. Smudger's friend Huntley Hunter is also frustrated by the prohibition, as he cannot keep a promise he made to his late father. Angered by the unjust world they live in, the two young boys set out to break the new social order—but the uphill battle they are faced with is a lot more than they bargained for.
-MAL
It's a running joke in Judge Dredd that the illegal white powder he confiscates is (strictly illegal in MC-1) sugar.
I remember one comic where he arrested a fellow Judge for torturing a false confession out of a suspect, and then arrests that suspect for admitting he had some table sugar in his kitchen. Still not as funny as when he arrested himself and all his friends for a petty noise violation on Christmas.
Lmao the "boohoo my treats are more important than everyone's health and safety" types will always be the most pathetic brand of privileged person that think's they're oppressed. I wonder if they would make the same kind of show but about a poor widdle smol bean cocaine pusher being oppressed because he can't sell his addictive drugs to the people?
"LOOK PEOPLE LIKE MY ADDICTIVE UNHEALTHY SLOP, THEREFORE IT MUST BE GOOD!"
Also like, if you can't make your slop taste good without sugar than maybe you're a just shitty baker.
I'm pretty sure Marx had some things to say about "treats" (not the "opiates of the masses" and whatnot, but the genuine enjoyment of and engagement with life and good things).
The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being
Humans are genuinely designed to like and seek out foods with sugar (though the modern refined version is absolutely disastrous, I agree), and foods with sugar/sweetness exist in nature all around us. Just like how most humans (and even some animals and plants) have an appreciation for, I dunno, the beauty of nature and art and music. Similarly, coca has its own history within the indigenous peoples of Latin America (as do other addictive substances, or substances that get refined to such an extent that they become addictive because of capital and capitalism). Sugarcane has a long and delicious history without being refined into white sugar, and if you've ever had sugarcane juice it's absolutely delicious.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be limitations on things that can take on addictive and harmful qualities- because there absolutely should be (sugar, coca, and other such drugs being around the top of that list for needing considerable management- though sugar certainly can't feasibly be just erased from human culture within the foreseeable future- hell, it's part of our biology, it's literally how our bodies are fueled).
Yeah, I think the biggest problem isn't that some foods are calorie dense, it's that "calorie dense to make shelf-stable, cheap slop palatable, and as not-filling as possible to drive more sales" is the norm and a serious systemic problem with large parts of the modern food supply. That and that people are actively taught and conditioned to eat pure sugar for breakfast and then snack on pure sugar in between meals and drink straight corn syrup for hydration and then cap dinner off with more tasty desert treats.
The problem goes so far beyond "some foods are fatty and sweet" that the notion that improving the situation would have to involve getting rid of the smallest and rarest of rich and sugary treats instead of just getting literal syrup out of the staple foods and not teaching people that they should start the day with sweet fried cakes drenched in syrup and cuts of meat that are 50% fat and not allowing "it's literally just syrup you're drinking syrup instead of water" to be the norm for hydration. Western consumption patterns have been driven by a century of companies trying to sell as much of the cheapest slop they possibly can, with catastrophic results.
None of the overly rich foods (except filling everything with syrup to try to make cheaper slop more palatable which is bad and should stop completely) are even really a problem on their own, they just shouldn't be the standard and should be occasional treats instead of regular parts of people's diet.
That may be a fairly hot take for some people here, but I could do a slightly cooler one with the treatbrains that simply must blast out high bass floor-rattling BWOOMBWOOMBWOOMS well after midnight. Unlike the sugar, it instantly becomes everyone's experience in a wide radius.
Pretty sure this was the plot of every other direct to video move in the 90s.
I remember during the Chapo podcast episode where they're reviewing Ready Player One movie and Amber is mentioning that it's an improvement over past movies because it has a slight increase in class consciousness by having the villain be a corporation over the concept of government regulation or whatever movies like it before would have had.
Why are you getting mad a position I wasn't even taking in my post? If you want to be mad at @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net go for it, though that's also probably silly.
Read it again. Direct quote.
That may be a fairly hot take for some people here, but I could do a slightly cooler one with the treatbrains that simply must blast out high bass floor-rattling BWOOMBWOOMBWOOMS well after midnight. Unlike the sugar, it instantly becomes everyone's experience in a wide radius.
Again, I stated the take I could do instead of a take that I didn't agree with.
absurd take lmao
Foaming with rage at anyone even vaguely adjacent to someone that set you off is more absurd. "lmao."
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i won't be embarrassed for having emotions, even over silly things
Then spare me the "lmao" while you're firing rage posts off at the hip. Just say you're mad because sugar was criticized.
I could have said there's some grounds to do just that, especially considering where it's harvested and under what conditions and how much suffering and exploitation is involved in a capitalist system, but I didn't because that wasn't directly related to @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 's take.
Considering how reactive and volatile you're being over fucking sugar, I just made that take just now anyway. Because I don't back down from bullies, especially over something as petty and divisive as treats.
how literally everyone on the internet phrases it
Look at your entire delivery system so far, including the "lmao," and remove that fucking plank from your eye first.
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textbook Redditor way to enforce an echo chamber
Trying to scream someone down for criticizing fucking sugar is a demand to do just that. Again, remove that fucking plank from your eye first.
I'm not being evasive here. I do not support the banning of sugar. It'd be almost entirely futile to try even if I wanted to and had some sort of political position where I could try to make it happen. The production of sugar is a concern of mine, as is the corporate empires that command its production and distribution, but that falls outside of @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net's take, though perhaps it still fits within the basis of this thread's topic considering the heavy-handed "no veggies at dinner, no bedtimes" baby libertarian idealism that seems apparent at a glance in "Chocolate Underground."
i was more concerned about the implication it just shouldn't be in baked goods at all, like straight up banned, because of the context of the weird anime and the whole 'if you can't make it taste good without sugar' sort of vibe. criticizing it as an industry as well as it's pervasiveness in almost every product produced that people eat is not just reasonable but an obligation we all have.
None of that is my take, even now. When the person you're arguing with comes back from exams, feel free to direct that anger there. Or don't. I'd suggest the latter.
well, thank you for replying to me despite my hostility. at this point i highly doubt dirt_owl intended to make any point like the one i was saying i was concerned with. this seems like a classic case of my inner reactionary falling for the framing of cringe propaganda like the weird anime, as i realize i was thinking in that sense (as in, accepting it's inflammatory rhetoric) this entire time despite disagreeing with the depiction of regulation it seems to have. i'm considering deleting my comments but i don't want to remove that responsibility or shame entirely. i might just leave this one up only, so that dirt_owl doesn't have to come back to three or four comments yelling at them.
I appreciate your reply. I can only speak for my own take, but maybe there is something worth arguing with with @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net after all, if hopefully from a less incendiary position. It isn't my take to argue; I don't even know what western baking goods would look like without sugar (pre-colonial honey, maybe?).
there ARE genuinely tasty vegan non-sugar sweeteners that afaik don't even feed into diabetic conditions so i have no idea what i'm arguing about in the first place
I somehow forgot about those myself until now.
I'm not actually that big into sweets in general; I prefer other flavors overall, even for pleasure/comfort food.
ok, maybe there is a point to be made about banning Big Sugar
edit: ok, but seriously, neither you nor @Dirt_Owl deserved that. I'm really sorry. I hope both of you are happy and safe and don't let my cringeposting drag you down or hurt you. Thank you all for being patient
Yeah, go for it guys. I'm more than okay with people educating me when I say something silly. People are more than welcome to disagree with me on this one.
I don't think unhealthy foods are the hill to die on considering 1.3 billion people will be diabetic by 2050
