from Hacker News

It's a knowledge problem Or is it?

by 0xKelsey on 2/12/25, 9:28 AM with 17 comments

• by angarg12 on 2/15/25, 6:43 PM

  > the color coding program was completely misguided because it assumed that we didn’t know what healthy food was. I challenged the nutritionist to an experiment: Make two plates of food, go into the restaurant at lunch time, and ask people to point out the healthier plate. My bet was that if you did not purposefully make it very tricky, people would unfailingly point to the right plate.

  I wholeheartedly disagree.

  I used to struggled with weight most of my young years. No matter what I did I achieved incremental advances at best. At some point I decided to start "counting calories", something that I used to frown upon.

  To my shock some foods that I ate that I considered "healthy" weren't so much so. This isn't even counting the fact that most experts can't even agree what is healthy or not, and opinions change over time.

  Just like with coding, there are some black/white examples where the average person could make an easy distinction, but then there is a wide range of greys in the middle where people might not really know what's "good/bad".

• by xg15 on 2/15/25, 6:56 PM

  OP indeed misunderstood the color coding program by treating it as a knowledge problem. Looks to me like it was much more about "nudging": It's one thing to decide for yourself, in your head, whether to have the tofu bowl or the fries for lunch. It's another to have both next to each other in the cafeteria, one authoritatively labeled with a green, the other with a red dot. Sure you can still choose the fries, but it will feel much more directly like "bad choice" than without the markers.

• by firesteelrain on 2/15/25, 6:34 PM

  Blog makes some good points with limited application of this knowledge problem. Sometimes it is a a knowledge problem like not having the knowledge (read: experience) or critical skills to make the time to research or do a trade study on the right approach. Even if given the time, the wrong decision or action might still be taken. But then you have the knowledge for next time.

• by epolanski on 2/16/25, 12:12 AM

  I love how this ended about the color coding of food and not the valid points about code quality being a byproduct of mental status.

• by codr7 on 2/16/25, 12:59 AM

  There are better indicators for healthy food that many aren't so aware of.

  How many ingredients, how processed, amount of sugar/salt/worse etc.

• by LeroyRaz on 2/16/25, 12:54 AM

  I'm all for informing people. A lot of people (myself included) are generally pretty ignorant.

  As to traffic light systems: I think they should be transparent, and linked to easy-to-verify information.

  An example of a good food one is the UK: They have a traffic light system for various macros. For each of the chosen macros (fat, sugar, etc...) the symbol displays the macro amount along with an associated colour.

  This system is great because it is a systematic and consist visualization of an objective fact (e.g., more than 20 grams of sugar is always red). While the consumer might be influenced by the colour, it is extremely clear what the colour means and they can make up their own mind (e.g., how much fat do I want to consume?)

  An example of a bad one: Germany has a traffic light system for food too. But here it is just a colour (with no clarity as to how the colour/rating is calculated). The rating seems arbitrary and strange (for example smoked salmon gets a red rating, while a slice of pizza might get a yellow rating, etc...). The consumer has no insight into what the rating truly means and hast to either trust it, or ignore it.