29 September 2021. Obesity | Music
Obesity is linked to highly processed carbohydrate foods; the rise and fall and rise of the music industry
Welcome to Just Two Things, which I try to publish daily, five days a week. (For the next few weeks this might be four days a week while I do a course: we’ll see how it goes). Some links may also appear on my blog from time to time. Links to the main articles are in cross-heads as well as the story.
I don’t have much time today, because I’ve just started a course, so both posts will be short. But there are some Notes from Readers below as well.
#1: Obesity may be caused by processed carbohydrates—not ‘energy balance’
New research suggests that over-eating isn’t the primary cause of obesity, according to a report on the Sky news’ website.
According to the report, the paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that the so-called ‘energy-balance model’, which links obesity to more sedentary lifestyles and less exercise, is a poor explanation. (I haven’t tracked down the paper yet).
Instead, they point the finger at the effect of
"modern dietary patterns characterised by excessive consumption of foods with a high glycaemic load: in particular, processed, rapidly digestible carbohydrates".
The process by which this happens is described as follows:
"When we eat highly processed carbohydrates, the body increases insulin secretion and suppresses glucagon secretion. This, in turn, signals fat cells to store more calories, leaving fewer calories available to fuel muscles and other metabolically active tissues.
"The brain perceives that the body isn't getting enough energy, which, in turn, leads to feelings of hunger. In addition, metabolism may slow down in the body's attempt to conserve fuel. Thus, we tend to remain hungry, even as we continue to gain excess fat."
There are some immediately obvious points here, if this model becomes the best explanation of obseity.
The first is that the ‘energy balance’ model was very convenient for the food industry, because it pointed the blame for obesity in the direction of individuals and away from the industry and its production practices.
The second is that—given the cost of obesity in terms of health impacts, and health costs—this is the sort of research that leads, sooner or later, to regulation.
And the third is that if there are any documents sitting around in the archives of the food companies that suggest that they knew this already, that would be the sort of finding that might open them up to the risk of class action suits. Especially in America.
If I were working at a big food company, I’d be re-formulating my products as quickly as possible, despite the easy margins in highly processed carbohydrates, to make sure that the legal and regulatory risk was reduced.
SOIF’’s Urban Food Futures report, which touches on some of these issues, and which I worked on, can be found online here.)
#2: The rise and fall and rise of the music industry
There’s a terrific chart at the newsletter chartr showing the fall and rise of the music industry.
It’s US data, from the RIAA—the Recording Industry Association of America.
It tells us a few things. One, that—as chartr observe in their commentary, most music formats—with the exception of the CD—have not been dominant for much more than a decade.
Second, that it’s almost impossible to imagine how profitable the music industry was in the 1990s, and therefore, perhaps, how surprised they were by the rise of MP3 in the 2000s. (One of the heuristics the management academic Peter Drucker used to suggest to test whether your ‘theory of the business’—aka business model—was broken was unexpected success.) In the slump, “(a)t one point ringtones were once worth 11% of the entire US recorded music industry. That's how bad it got.”
Third, in a month when Universal Music Group hit a valuation of $54 billion after being spun out by their parent company, you have to admire them for holding their nerve at the depth of the trough:
Eight years ago SoftBank tried to buy Universal Music, offering a bid of $8.5bn to its then owner Vivendi. Vivendi hit skip, much to the confusion of many industry analysts who pegged Universal's value a little lower, at just $5-6bn. Rejecting that offer turned out to be a very good idea, as streaming has revived the industry and Universal's prospects within it.
There’s still a question about streaming, though. It seems to be fabulous news for the industry majors, but good for a tiny fraction of recording artists. (More did well out of earlier music formats). There’s a gap there that suggests that something might break.
(H/t The Browser).
Notes from readers
Gig workers: My futurist colleague Maggie Greyson, in Canada, responded to last week’s post about gig workers by mentioning a research report she’d been involved in about microwork—that fraction of the gig economy that breaks jobs down into specific isolated tasks and outsources them to individual workers.
(Imagine what Adam Smith would have made of such a division of labour).
We’re talking about platforms like Amazon Turk and Figure Eight. The research here was initiated by the Toronto Workforce Innovation Group, but goes beyond Canada:
microwork involves workers that provide and transform data destined to train and improve machines. These independent contractors work remotely and perform fragmented tasks – often requiring just a click – through online digital platforms. Their actions are essential for automated and intelligent systems since they play a part in the learning and correction of these systems, sometimes even impersonating these systems when they fail to provide results.
A lot of microtasking involves training AIs—another example of every digital supply chain having a host of badly paid humans holding it together. There’s a host of resources on the website.
And on cars and aliens: My ex-colleague Ben Wood wasn’t able to track down a clip of Bill Hicks saying that aliens would think that cars were the dominant species on the planet. But—proof that all jokes endlessly reconfigure themselves—it turns out that a New Yorker cartoonist has had the same idea recently.
(Copyright New Yorker)
j2t#177
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