this is why schools still assign upton sinclair

Adulterating consumable foods has been a thing for a really long time. From tea having poisonous weeds mixed in the 1600s to milk having chalk or other toxic stuff in it. Commercial interests put profit first and “cut” the product to extend profitability.
Good thing they’re cutting oversight like the FDA in the US. That’ll work out great.
- This reminds me of a story my dad told me. His school went on a field trip to an ice cream factory and he was, of course, expecting this to be the best day of his life. What he discovered, though, left him mortified. They were taking poor-selling flavours and running them back through the machine to change them to something better. If you buy some store brand chocolate and it has undertones of mocha, now you know why. I think of this now whenever I see a product that "may contain peanuts". Like they're not sure.
  
  I don’t know how that’s possible with shelf life considerations, but I guess it could happen? Usually the rules are it has to be thrown out.

Corporations would sell you a bag of dirt and gravel from the lot outside and call it granola if they could get away with it.
- We literally had to outlaw slavery. That should tell you everything you need to know about supposed self-regulation.
  
  Well, we didn't really outlaw it. We made it only legal under certain conditions.
  "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." - emphasis mine
  Your point still stands though
- Elon Musk's original pitch for the underground hyperloop system / boring company included the claim that the dug out dirt would be repurposed as super building bricks, and that this would keep the projects at or under budget.
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almost-7-years-ago-elon-145526694.html?guccounter=1
  He literally did this, sold reformed, shitty dirt and called it a miraculous building material.
- They kind of already do that. Not sawdust but just take a look at the list of ingredients in most of the food you buy. A lot of those ingredients are banned in most countries and pose health hazards for consumers, yet we still use them. We need not only tougher regulations, but to also properly fund the FDA so they can inspect properly. Of course companies lobby heavily against that, and with our current administration, there is a bigger chance they kill of the FDA than that happening.

William Osman did this experiment a few years ago. (YouTube link)
- Most entertaining 12 minutes of my life i will never get back.
  
  You're welcome!
- This video will forever be a certified classic in my mind.
- He shows this exact picture in the video as his inspiration

I think I remember someone on reddit actually doing this and the result was waaaaaaaay more than you think.
- Libertarian sub reddits don't self regulate
- I thought it was pretty obvious after like 10%?
  
  10% sawdust before people notice sounds pretty fucking high to me :/

It's fine, just list it as "cellulose" on the ingredients list.
(It's not technically sawdust anymore after processing, but it's still gross even though it's food-safe.)
- It's free fiber!
  
  I mean, it's not free, but yes, edible sawdust would be good for the health of most people in the western world. Though they tend to get cellulose from cheaper sources like straw or chaff.

I've seen a youtube video about that, and from what I remember it's was detectable as soon as it went over 10% or so. Although a corporation could easily get it over 10% without issue if they used the right particle size, mixing technique and treatement of the sawdust.
It honestly wouldn't surprise me if some cheap seasoning is partially sawdust or similar.
- There's a bag of "bacon flavored bits" at Walmart that's just sawdust seasoned to taste like bacon.
  
  Now to be fair, freeze dried bacon bits in general tastes worse than animal feed. So if you ground it up and covered it in the anti-clumping agents, it is basically sawdust without containing any wood.
  
  Check out what cheap pepper is made of some time.
  
  Is it vegan?
- e.g., cellulose, added to kraft parmesan as an "anti-caking agent."
  
  I love how they insist it's not sawdust - since they don't literally use the byproduct of lumber milling, like the shit they sweep up from the floor. But it's still wood turned into a powder, which the term "sawdust" is perfectly valid for.
  
  It's crazy to me that they try to sell that shit as anti-caking because any time I've ever tried to use that garbage it's always caked anyway.
- 10% is massive too

I sort of picture this when I see bread or tortillas marketed as high fibre even when they contain no whole grains.
- Tortillas made from 100% recyclable, free-range, gluten-free, non-GMO, hand-raised sawdust that complies with the Geneva Conventions.

Talking to a Libertarian is like talking to a child.
- Every self-proclaimed libertarian I ever met gave me a different reason why they're a "libertarian", bashed fake libertarians, say they're the only TRUE libertarian, then voted Republican.
  
  Yeah, they're Republicans with even more brain damage and not a single one understands how societies work.
  
  I remember thinking I was a libertarian for a few years after I realized the conservative world I was raised in was nuts.
  What I had essentially done, though, was shed the bigotry first because I cared about people, while keeping the conservative/capitalist economic mindset because accumulation of assets and efficient use of capital are just what good human beings strive for in that world. I’m a Libertarian! I am pure and very intelligent!
  But then that pesky thing about respecting the lives of other people never left my head. And my eyes and ears kept working while the last couple decades happened. And I unfortunately value annoyances like high quality evidence, demonstrated expertise, and the scientific method.
  It didn’t take long to connect the dots that the policies that are best for short-term capital and those that are best for sentient human beings (never mind all other life) may not always align, and that choosing the former over the latter is kinda… what’s the word… evil.
- Libertarian: I can't hear you with so much money I have!
  Libertarians are only in tiny minority of US population, and most of them are earning roughly $100,000 a year. Of course they will support absolute laissez faire society.
- Is that why they're all into children?

Schools still assign Upton Sinclair? I can tell you for certain that mine did not, likely because they were busy suppressing any mentions of socialism.
Hey why do they call it an "ecomomics" class anyway, shouldn't they just call it capitalism if that's the only thing they teach?
- at my high school they made us read fucking ayn rand
  
  Jesus
- We were required to read Ayn Rand.
- yeah it's wild how many schools skip over Sinclair! The Jungle literally led to the creation of the FDA because people were horrified by the meat industry. Schools that only teach "economics" without covering labor history are missing half the story. My high school tried that too - all Adam Smith, no context about why regulations exist in the frist place.
- I heard his wife was Meta.

Back in my day, we just discussed what wrote in The Jungle. They didn’t have us read it.
- Probably because of all the socialism.
  
  I didn't learn until well into adulthood that food safety wasn't actually the message Upton Sinclair was trying to get across.
  
  This was early 2000s.

Apparently a lot of artificial flavors are used to mask the taste of industrial metals and chemicals. So, yeah...

Yes, that is how the free market works. If people don't notice or are entirely focused on price, then they'll accept the lower-quality product. There will be a place in the market for luxury goods, but cheap alternatives need to exist as well for the price-conscious.
- Yes, and that's why, even in brutal hypercapitalist America, we fucking regulate the free market.
  And why we should abolish the free market in the long run, for that matter.
  Because having the "freedom" to buy poisonous adulterated foodstuffs, if you're too poor to buy real good food, is like having the "freedom" to accept sub-minimum wages if you're desperate enough for money. Not freedom, but exploitation.
  
  I wish we were hyper-capitalist, what we really have is privatized profits and socialized losses.
  If we were hyper-capitalist, we would have let banks and businesses fail in 2008.
  The problem is we have a system that is protects businesses, and antagonizes individuals.
  
  I don't know about that. The current administration are definitely trying to nuke out every regulation they can, starting by shutting down the regulating agencies. A law that isn't enforced is a polite joke - every one of the people in charge have seen that, so they're ending enforcement.
  
  And why we should abolish the free market in the long run, for that matter.
  Abolish free market?
  You want the government to control all the means of production and the distribution of wealth, and be able to dictate the prices of goods and services and wages?
  Like it sounds nice, just like communism in theory.
  Could it work out? Sure. Would it? I don't think so
- I think one important point is that we have nutrition labels mandated by regulation so that consumers can see how much sawdust is in the rice crispie they're buying.
  The logical extreme would be no regulation at all and expecting consumers to scientifically test every rice crispie they buy to determine the amount of calories in it.
  
  See, that's why the current admin wants to abolish the FDA. The food manufacturers consider that accurate labeling law onerous, and want it gone. Caveat emptor, etc.
- Corporations sell inferior product, it kills hundreds of people. They claim no responsibility and move on without any government intervention. Maybe a few lower level employees lose their jobs, despite the choice to release the deadly product coming from above.
  People are dead. People are unemployed. Wealth shifts upward. No accountability. “ThAt’S HoW the FrEe MaRkEt WoRkS!”
- But I thought the blessed capitalist optimization was all about providing the best possible product at the lowest possible price, so why do we pay the full price for the shittiest product possible for which the customers are still willing to pay?
  
  Best possible, yes; but you're defining it wrong. The best possible product is always the thing that makes the thing that makes the most profit. The ideal is to generate massive profit for zero cost. And if the company has the sense to corner the market and create an irreplaceable product, the will of the consumer ceases to matter.
- I feel you are making a good point, in a free market people will choose, it is literally in their best interest to choose, and if someone produces a sub par or even poisonous product, the people will choose not to use the product and basically self regulate. Our country had this sudden boom of Shein clothing, they were cheaper so of course they dominated. The government tried exercising control by confiscating the clothes or adding extra tariffs on the clothes and it really was ineffective, our ports are basically so corrupt anything gets through. But now two to three years later even the newspapers are picking up on the growing textile industry thanks to everyone buying locally made clothes that are higher quality that lasts more than 5 washes. Yes there was a market disruption but the market is regulating itself, and cheap clothes from China or Pakistan will have there place, they will only have enough space the market decides for itself.
  Here is an opinion piece regarding the recent shifts, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-07-07-after-the-bell-shopping-sucks-but-sa-is-stitching-a-comeback/
  
  Ah yes, the blessed "self-regulating market". So when will we finally reach it? It's been some time after all, like hundreds of years now. We went through slavery, robber barons, gilded age, we're going through deregulation, enshittification, rise of fascism, rush for recession. Oh man, we're getting there, the bubble is about to burst and we're about to witness the American dream for everyone!