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
No
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).
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.
thanks for sharing this