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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • We already have a traffic light system on foods and it is largely ignored, partly because few people have the time and energy but also because you have to look at your diet as a whole and not judge it by individual items. I also think these UPF studies have a bit of a conservative agenda.

    Why do people eat more processed food? Because there isn’t a homemaker spending hours a day preparing meals as a full time job. Proceesed and convenience foods are massively egalitarian and I think let more people join the workforce.


  • The whole UFP thing is so wishy washy. It’s such a broad category it is essentially meaningless, one of the earlier guardian articles talked about sliced bread being a UPF as it has added vitamins and minerals due to law.

    If you closer at the whole topic it just comes across as saying if you are poor and eat food that you can afford you will die earlier. Writing a reminder of this on the food will not help anyone but it will make poor people feel a bit more like shit.


  • I think there was little chance it was actually about not knowing how to check tyre wear.

    Also, every tyre place I’ve ever been to has had how-to check tyre wear printed in huge posters on every surface available, it makes it easier for them to sell more tyres. This is on top of it being a requirement to get a driving license in my country.


  • This is a very well-considered comment but I don’t think this is very good advice.

    It is not reasonable to have a 30-60-minute one-sided conversation of feelings validation caused by someone asking you to do a routine task. Asking for help when you don’t know something specific is a completely normal response. Acting very aggressively to your partner when they ask if you want them to explain (Not explaining immediately) is not a reasonable or proportionate response. I can’t think of any situation where that is a justifiable response and I don’t think everyone should be “supported” in that way.

    The disproportionate response is a giveaway though that something else is wrong, either they were looking for an excuse to be angry or they were feeling especially insecure about the specific topic that they were corrected on. The relationship should be about acting as a team working to support each other, coming back and using your partner as an anger dump is a terrible behavior that will sow seeds of resentment and undermine any positive communication. That’s why I would try to work out what the real issue is next, but be clear that the initial behavior was unacceptable.

    I would also argue that the prevailing sentiment that when people come into a conversation after a bad time looking for validation of feelings giving solutions is wrong, is itself a bad take. For sure those conversations should start with validating the feelings and understanding what happened but ideally, they should finish with some discussion of solutions (If there can be one, some problems are open-ended, there may need even be a solution). I think this for two reasons, firstly it stops the topic from hanging over people by closing the topic and can give the other person a sense of having helped which alleviates the one-sided nature of the discussion. Secondly just validating feelings doesn’t scale to the harder conversations, if you can’t end a discussion about feeling insecure about car maintenance by learning how to do the maintenance, how the hell are you going to have a good conversation about whether your parent gets put into care that ends in a decision?

    There is also an undercurrent of normalizing selfishness with some of the advice given out, not you specifically but this kind of advice is in the zeitgeist. Why is the person who is upset more valued in the discussion than the person who isn’t? More specifically there is a narrative that someone that likes to give solutions to problems first is wrong and should be corrected. Which I think is a very unhealthy way of framing the issue, people need to have empathy for how others communicate and meet them halfway. “This person didn’t comfort me how I would comfort them, I will now be angry at them” is not OK. It ignores the context of the fact that they did try and comfort you in their way which is worth something and also ignores the fact that if you try and comfort someone who likes solutions by engaging with feeling you will do just as bad a job. The person more engaged with emotions is not more correct by default there is no “correct” anyway. I think any long-term relationship that asks one or both of the people to fill a role that is defined by the other person’s expectations is destined to fail. There is inherent friction in acting a part you don’t understand that eventually leads to resentment.