[HN Gopher] Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributa...
___________________________________________________________________
Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar
beverages
Author : tchalla
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-01-07 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| sitkack wrote:
| > Burdens of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease
| attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages in 184 countries
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4.pdf
|
| The data and the code used for the analysis appears to be
| available.
|
| ----
|
| One of the reasons that we don't have Universal Healthcare in the
| US is that things that are categorically unhealthy would be
| prohibited from being sold. Afterall, it would benefit not only
| the receivers of care but also the people funding the healthcare
| system. The sellers of those things will fight (to their death)
| to prevent that environment from existing.
|
| Not allowing something to be mass produced, marketed and sold is
| different than banning it outright.
|
| I personally think mass scale tobacco and soda should not be
| sold, at the same time I think people can hand roll and pack a
| pipe into the grave. Same for their at home bathtub soda.
| malux85 wrote:
| I think you strike a good balance between personal freedoms and
| health of the population.
|
| You're right in that availability is the problem.
|
| If I go across the road to the store, there's a whole WALL
| covered in hundreds, maybe thousands, of sugar drinks, all very
| very cheap.
|
| You know what there isn't any of in the whole store? Something
| healthy and low sugar / high protein.
|
| I have the luxury of time and a little bit of money so I can
| choose, but what about the busy parent who just needs energy?
| The busy office worker with a bunch of projects due, or just
| the poor individual with not much money, I don't think it's
| fair to setup these kind of situations and then blame the
| individuals for their choices, we have to step in at a
| governmental level
| firesteelrain wrote:
| FWIW - the convenient stores near me sell the Core Power
| Elite Protein drinks. I have picked them up and it helps make
| my protein goals on days where I come up short. They do taste
| pretty good but more expensive than a soda.
|
| It's possible people are depressed and looking for the most
| tasty option.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| One thing 7-11s have started stocking in recent years is
| packaged hard boiled eggs. The price is insane if you
| compare it to boiling your own, and they are a bit
| tasteless, but you don't have to peel them and the price is
| reasonable compared to other stuff there if you're stuck
| eating lunch from 7-11.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It is more than twice the price of Wal-Mart! Well, I
| guess that's the price of convenience.
|
| 2/hard boiled eggs - $2.09 @ 7/11
|
| 6/hard boiled eggs - $2.96 @ Wal-Mart
|
| 6/raw eggs - $2.62 @ Wal-Mart
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Next compare the price of a donut vs the price of a bag
| of flour and sugar ;)
| arcticbull wrote:
| You're paying for footprint. There's 320 Walmarts in
| California and almost 2000 7-Elevens. There's zero
| Walmarts in SF and San Mateo county, and at least
| 50-Elevens. Those 7-Elevens are often in premium
| locations downtown.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I am not sure I follow the discussion and its tie into
| California - I am in the South US
| arcticbull wrote:
| I just picked a market.
| hilux wrote:
| Nice. "Tea eggs" are big in East Asian corner stores.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Two hard-boiled eggs and an apple is a pretty nutritious
| lunch for about $2-$3 tops.
| nnurmanov wrote:
| I went little further. I could not find low or no sugar
| Nestle cereals at the local supermarket, then I asked their
| support if they have something with low sugar. Their rep
| wrote that they have lowered the sugar amount by 34% from
| 2000 to 2010, but it is still not clear if those amount are
| OK, when I taste the sugar amount is definitely high. I do
| think the government should step in and promote healthy food
| and habits
| cogman10 wrote:
| So many of these "we lowered X" things are simply "We cut
| the portion size down by 34% to hit calorie/sugar goals".
|
| That's where you get dumb things like "Here's a candy bar
| with 3.5 servings" to try and trick a consumer into
| thinking it's not as calorie dense as it is.
| samaltmanfried wrote:
| It's really tragic that lots of Americans think this kind
| of garbage is a healthier alternative to other kinds of
| breakfast. It may actually have less sugar than pancakes
| drenched in some disgusting syrup, but it's still garbage.
| There's a real problem with nutritional literacy in this
| country. The manufacturers of these products really aren't
| helping here either. Cheerios have a big 'CAN LOWER
| CHOLERSTEROL' plastered on the front of the pack, but the
| contents are still literally 24% added sugar.
| zargon wrote:
| From the Cheerios box in my cupboard: 140 calories per
| serving, 1g added sugar per serving. 1g carb = 4
| calories. 4 / 140 = 3%.
|
| I would not be at all surprised if some flavor of
| Cheerios is 24% added sugar, but regular Cheerios are not
| so bad in the sugar department.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _1g added sugar per serving_
|
| That is still a good amount of sugar given it's every day
| and setting your morning baseline. If taken with _e.g._ a
| refined juice or sweetened coffee, that's probably
| setting one up for sugar cravings in a few hours.
| zargon wrote:
| A slice of bread (in the U.S.) has more than 1g of added
| sugar (and less than 140 calories). (If you know of any
| besides Ezekiel that have less sugar, I would like to
| hear about it.) I don't think it is fair to villainize
| Cheerios when it is one of the least offensive options
| among ultraprocessed breakfast cereals. Especially based
| on... other things that aren't Cheerios? Juice (20+ g
| sugar) and coffee sweetener (4+ g sugar) would be the
| villains in this scenario.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't think it is fair to villainize Cheerios when it
| is one of the least offensive options among
| ultraprocessed breakfast cereals_
|
| You're correct. I'm damning the whole category within the
| context of this discussion.
| Xeronate wrote:
| 1g of sugar per serving is hardly anything. You are
| weakening your argument by being hyperbolic.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _1g of sugar per serving is hardly anything_
|
| I'll stand by it being "a good amount" given it's
| incorporated into a daily ritual.
| bluGill wrote:
| What is the serving size and more importantly how does
| the serving size compare to what people actually eat?
| zargon wrote:
| Serving size is 1.5 cups. Regardless of how much people
| eat, it's still only 3% added sugar.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with the "can lower cholesterol"
| banner on it because it's a source of whole grains and it
| has no saturated fat. That combo generally does lower
| cholesterol when put to the test, and it probably is one
| of the best cereals in the aisle.
|
| Directing people towards better alternatives is a good
| thing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Is this regular Cheerios, or Honey Nut?
|
| The Honey Nut Cheerios are glazed in sugar, but the plain
| Cheerios (to my taste) don't have much if any. Don't have
| any here to check the ingredients though. If I want
| cereal for breakfast I generally make plain oatmeal.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Can you not buy more or less as unhealthy products in countries
| with universal healthcare as in US?
|
| e.g. smoking rate is considerably higher in France or even in
| Spain
|
| Sugar consumption isn't relatively that high either compared to
| most European countries:
|
| https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > smoking rate is considerably higher in France or even in
| Spain
|
| But they somehow compensate with other good habits
| considering that lifespan and healthspan is greater than the
| US.
|
| Then we can get into a whole different conversation about the
| intensity of one's life in the US v. Europe not just the
| lenght, but that is a whole different conversation.
| Eumenes wrote:
| America's poor use EBT/food stamps to buy massive amounts of
| junk food, including billions on soda. Those same people are
| almost 100% on ACA or state health insurance plans and
| milking the tax payer on treatment for obesity, diabetes, and
| cardiovascular disease. There is no way, in my mind, it is
| feasible to fund these lifestyles and provide the treatment
| for it. Its absolutely insane.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| The soda is not consumed by the food stamp holder. It's
| used as a medium to convert the balance to cash.
| bluGill wrote:
| Do they? Food stamps in most states have restrictions on
| what you can buy with them. My impression is soda is not on
| the list. Of course this is (mostly?) the states and every
| state has different rules so you probably need to cite 50
| different state rules to verify this and thus an exception
| state is likely.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| This is an ongoing debate, but afaik you can use them for
| soda [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-
| stamp-snap-...
| sitkack wrote:
| That isn't the argument I made. Processed food industries
| actively block healthcare reforms because they fear being
| regulated for the now obvious public good.
| tanaros wrote:
| > One of the reasons that we don't have Universal Healthcare in
| the US is that things that are categorically unhealthy would be
| prohibited from being sold. Afterall, it would benefit not only
| the receivers of care but also the people funding the
| healthcare system. The sellers of those things will fight (to
| their death) to prevent that environment from existing.
|
| Perhaps you're implying something unique about the US, but
| those products are still sold in other countries that have
| state-funded universal health care.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It's just your normal run-of-the-mill HN posting that makes
| no sense and doesn't match reality.
| sitkack wrote:
| This argument by massive processed food industries, that if
| we get Universal Healthcare, that their products and
| practices will be curtailed because it will be for the actual
| monetary public good says nothing about what is sold in
| countries with public healthcare.
|
| Are you saying that corporate processed food manufacturers
| are not making that statement?
|
| Clearly there is a problem with soda consumption leading to
| obesity in countries with Universal Healthcare, but that
| isn't the argument I am making.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > One of the reasons that we don't have Universal Healthcare in
| the US is that things that are categorically unhealthy would be
| prohibited from being sold.
|
| For the most unhealthy class of people that are most affected
| by things like T2 diabetes, we have universal healthcare. At 65
| you get Medicare which covers diabetes treatment.
|
| We have yet to ban sodas despite the added cost to the
| taxpayers.
|
| > I personally think mass scale tobacco and soda should not be
| sold, at the same time I think people can hand roll and pack a
| pipe into the grave. Same for their at home bathtub soda.
|
| For tobacco, the age restriction has been the thing that has
| limited use more than anything. People don't tend to pick up
| smoking once they hit 21. Millennials by and large do not smoke
| and the anti-tobacco legislation in the 90s is a large part of
| that.
|
| Unfortunately, because the legislation didn't target all
| nicotine products that left the door open for vape companies to
| come in and get Gen Z and Alpha addicted to nicotine all over
| again.
|
| A broad ban on the sale of nicotine products to minors should
| be in place. It certainly shouldn't be sold over the internet.
|
| Soda is trickier. I don't think an outright ban would be right
| (though it would have a fair number of positive health
| benefits). A sin tax would likely be ineffective and age checks
| seems like it would be somewhat burdensome.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't think people realize the scale of soda consumption that
| needs to happen to have health issues. By and large the people
| in these affected studies are not drinking water at all. They
| are getting all their thirst needs met by a sugary drink. That
| is so overboard. You can have a can of coke every now and then
| and not have your enamel slough off.
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| We had a family friend who is in her late 50s stay for a
| couple of days over Christmas, all she drunk was Diet Coke.
| Even going to bed at night she took a bottle of Diet Coke
| with her. The thought of waking up through the night for a
| swig of Coke grosses me out a bit. And yes, she is the
| absolute picture of health...
| neom wrote:
| eh, Diet Coke is primarily water, aspartame, phosphoric
| acid and caffeine. I drink 5/6 of them a day (don't like
| water much). The paper linked actually says short term
| effects of diet soda are less problematic, but recent
| evidence suggests that aspartame may have harms on the
| microbiome and glucose tolerance generally.
|
| That said, the idea of drinking anything either sweet or
| carbonated before bed, during the night, or in the morning,
| mind boggling to me, that does sound really gross.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Have you ever tried plain carbonated water? It's more
| interesting than still water, and for me more thirst
| quenching. Easy to make at home with a Soda Stream or
| similar, just don't add any of their syrup.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I mean, diet coke explicitly doesn't have the kind of sugar
| in this study.
| ozim wrote:
| Mostly from own experience I know poor people drink sodas and
| as you get used to the taste you don't like taste of plain
| water - even when you have decent tap water.
|
| As an adult I started drinking tap water and now I don't like
| taste of sodas anymore. I am happy that I got over with it
| but still have some people I know stuck on sodas and
| disliking plain water taste.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I don't know that that's true. Most healthcare is subsidized.
| And so is the sugar. There's very little movement to restrict
| the sugar. There are profits to be made on both ends (selling
| the sugar and the insulin for example) by those who have
| captured the relevant parts of the government.
| bagels wrote:
| Canada has universal healthcare and they drink plenty of sugary
| drinks there too.
| officeplant wrote:
| >I personally think mass scale tobacco and soda should not be
| sold, at the same time I think people can hand roll and pack a
| pipe into the grave. Same for their at home bathtub soda.
|
| I'd be fine with that to be honest. I'd drink soda water going
| forward just to not have to smell cigarettes, but be fine with
| people backyarding some tobacco to make their own cigars.
|
| It would probably even be healthier to force people to make
| their own syrup for soda at home vs the ease of obtaining it
| now.
| bluGill wrote:
| Before we go here, what is the alternative. If restrict soda
| and people switch to beer even if they will be driving that
| could be much worse. (I don't otherwise know how the effects of
| alcohol vs soda come up but that too is a question worth
| asking)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what is the alternative_
|
| Shrubs [1]!
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrub_(drink)
| bluGill wrote:
| There are many alternatives, but what is important here
| isn't what you recommend, it is what people choose.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what is important here isn 't what you recommend, it
| is what people choose_
|
| Do we have any evidence soda drinkers sub Coke for
| alcohol? I'd have guessed artifically-sweetened soft
| drinks would have been the substitute.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly
| news. Researchers have known for quite some time now that there's
| an entire constellation of diseases (diabetes, stroke, certain
| cancers, fatty liver disease, heart disease, etc, etc) known as
| metabolic syndrome that are all caused by diet and lifestyle.
| interestica wrote:
| > It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not
| exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now
|
| A growing body of studies signals consensus - that's
| newsworthy. This ties two specific factors together rather than
| any general metabolic syndrome.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Just to clarify metabolic syndrome isn't the umbrella term for
| all of these things.
|
| Metabolic syndrome is when you have 3 or more of: central
| adiposity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high
| triglycerides and low HDL.
|
| You can have any of these independently, it becomes metabolic
| syndrome when you hit the bingo.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Also good that GLP-1s have been found to help people patch the
| reward center around unhealthy diet demand signals. We know
| these things are bad, we know will power isn't a solution, and
| we have a fix we can deploy at scale relatively inexpensively.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988285 ("HN: GLP-1 for
| Everything")
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579445 ("HN: Weight loss
| drugs seem to be driving down grocery bills")
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5073929 |
| https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5073929 ("The No-Hunger Games:
| How GLP-1 Medication Adoption is Changing Consumer Food
| Purchases")
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Saying will power isn't a solution is insulting to everyone
| that successfully made lifestyle and diet changes to become
| healthier without pharmaceutical intervention.
|
| It may not work for everyone all the time, but I know a lot
| of people that have made these changes.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| This is just an uncharitable / strawman interpretation of
| what they said. They are concerned with all the people left
| over once you remove the people that just had to muster up
| "willpower". And they are concerned for the people who
| weren't dealt the same hand of traits that us fit people
| have.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Their willpower doesn't appear to have solved the issue on
| a societal level, and it is not an insult to say that.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If one is insulted, they should revisit their mental model
| and emotional state. There is no gold star for will power
| because someone lucked out with genetics and brain
| chemistry/structure. "Be more lucky" is not actionable for
| the body you are issued.
|
| We can patch bugs in the human, and we should whenever
| possible and desired by the person. This helps them make
| their own luck.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| You are transferring the problem from the foods industry
| to the pharmaceutical industry. I hope "one" knows that.
|
| The "bugs" are not in "the human," they're in the food
| industry. Fixing our food supply would be far better for
| individuals and society than fighting fire with fire by
| leaving our food broken and using drugs to work around
| it.
|
| In the meantime, doing what you can to unbreak your diet
| without using drugs is still far smarter than relying on
| an artificial "fix" for the "machine" that is literally
| you (and can't be tossed and replaced when you find out
| your "fix" caused other issues, which happens almost
| every time the pharma industry provides shortcuts for
| people). Doing it this way also moves your demand as a
| consumer to the unbroken parts of the food supply, which
| will help everyone else as food companies are
| incentivized to cater to that instead of continuing on
| with what they're doing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If this is your belief, then you do not understand the
| mechanisms by which GLP-1 agonists work. They silence the
| signals in the brain craving the unhealthy foods in
| question. You will never win against your brain
| chemistry.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| "You will never win against your brain chemistry" is a
| defeatist way to dismiss taking basically any action,
| ever. People _selling_ you artificial solutions will, of
| course, be incentivized to convince you that it 's true.
|
| Humans lived for thousands of years (without the
| widespread diet-related ailments we're seeing epidemics
| of today) without artificially "fixing" their own brain
| chemistry. This is not an internal medicine problem, it's
| an external food supply and societal lifestyle problem.
|
| If you want to say it's _too hard_ for you (you, only) to
| do what 's required to not get sick and you'd rather rely
| on medicine, fine. But it is actually insulting to
| pretend like everyone needs a crutch just because you do.
| The main thing is that the crutch should be a last
| resort, and "willpower isn't a solution" should not be a
| common mantra to push the crutch as the first option.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is this why GLP-1s are so effective at scale and your
| theory is not? We tried the silly will power way, that
| did not work. We tried GLP-1s, and they clearly work
| because industries are shifting because of it. If you
| want to ignore data out of a belief system, that's a
| choice. You believe the intervention is inferior to will.
| But the evidence clearly shows the vast majority of
| humans are assisted by an intervention versus "will
| power" which does not work (gold stars to those who need
| to feel better about themselves they don't need an
| intervention).
|
| I don't take GLP-1s, but I support getting them to
| everyone who wants them and ignoring anyone who tries to
| stop that, or says that is a lesser path for lesser
| people. I hope you learn to give grace, because lucky
| people are just lucky, not special.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > We tried the silly will power way, that did not work.
|
| They still work for plenty of people, just not you. They
| _can_ work for more if we enable healthy diets and
| lifestyles as a society.
|
| And no, that's not a "gold star" to the people who were
| able to literally have their "machine" work as designed.
| It's rather a gold star for you to not acknowledge if you
| needed artificial assistance to exist.
|
| > Is this why GLP-1s are so effective at scale... We
| tried GLP-1s, and they clearly work because industries
| are shifting because of it.
|
| None of the articles you cited in your earlier comment
| address "scale" at all, nor provide evidence of "shifting
| industries." Two of them address changes in the spending
| patterns of high-income consumers who are already using
| the drug (unrelated to the proportion of the total
| population using the drug), and the third is a blog post
| by a doctor literally selling GLP-1s as a miracle drug
| ("It's getting to the point of wondering what GLP-1
| agonists _aren 't_ good for"-- yikes).
|
| Your most recent KFF link (which it looks like you
| removed) claims 12% of adults have taken GLP-1 drugs
| (going off of a single poll taken by a health-tracking
| organization-- probably biased towards people actively
| working on their health). If that number was true, it
| would be alarming that over 10% of humans needed an
| artificial fix for a problem created by the food industry
| and socially sanctioned sedentary lifestyles, not
| something to parade around like you've actually fixed the
| underlying problem.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Pharmaceutical companies would love for you to believe
| that. They salivate over the idea that they can convince
| you that you need their products for the rest of your
| life. They aren't any different from the common street
| dealer in many ways. They don't really care about your
| health, only that you keep coming back.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| By this logic I, a person who has never been at risk of
| financial insolvency partially due to my lack of consumer
| addiction/upbringing with financial literacy, should be
| insulted by someone who says that budgeting isn't a
| solution to systemic poverty.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| No, by this logic, you _should_ be insulted by someone
| saying paid professional accountants managing all of your
| money is the _only_ way for society to avoid widespread
| debt because "most people" haven't managed to bring
| themselves to do the basic at-home budgeting that you're
| used to.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Really? I thought it was salad's fault.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| I'd bet a dollar per gram additive sugar tax in excess of 5g
| would immediately flatten the chronic disease curve. Maybe double
| that if it's marketed towards kids. There are a lot of problems
| besides sugar/HFCS but it's easily towards the top of the list.
| jopsen wrote:
| Shops will just sell the sugar and the soda separately, mix it
| yourself :)
|
| Or people will pay more.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I bet adding the sugar yourself would reduce consumption
| considerably. Which would be the goal of the tax.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Unfortunately Internet people like to point out the
| hypothetical 99th percentile person who would evade/be
| immune to such incentives and suggest that therefore, it
| would not be worth doing.
|
| It's such a common and lazy pattern on HN :(
| Someone1234 wrote:
| When I read those, I don't actually think those people
| believe their own arguments. They started with a
| conclusion, like "sugar taxes are bad," and then worked
| backwards to find an argument to fit it. That's why when
| you challenge them they just shift the goalposts.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Not what has happened in the UK, where sugar tax has been a
| thing since 2018. It's now actually quite hard to find a
| sweetened drink - almost all soda-style beverages now are
| "zero sugar", sweetened with artificial sweeteners. Nobody is
| buying sugar and pouring it in. Nobody.
|
| It's a little too early to determine if this has slowed the
| prevalence of diabetes in the population. One problem is that
| other studies have shown that drinking artificially sweetened
| beverages with foods means many people end up eating more
| calories of food - the brain is looking for calories
| indicated by the sweet taste its not getting from the
| beverage, so compensates.
|
| It's a complex picture, but sugar taxes seem to be a
| reasonable way to get sugary drinks off the shelves.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > It's a complex picture, but sugar taxes seem to be a
| reasonable way to get sugary drinks off the shelves.
|
| As a person who is indifferent to the prospect, I fail to
| see why?
|
| When I lived in the UK a lot of people who couldn't afford
| real juice would buy 'squash' and drink it as a replacement
| for juice. I personally found it entirely revolting and way
| too sugary but on occasion used it in my teas to flavor
| them: I just can't see why the consumer should be punished
| with less options, or worse those made with things like
| aspertame, then simply rely on the consumer to use said
| product responsibly. I guess one can say with things like
| the NHS the consequences are socialized, but even that is a
| stretch as the British diet is a near mirror image of it's
| American counterpart in it's wide use of highly processed
| and refined foodstuff.
|
| Besides, if you go to the smaller shops run by non-Anglo
| merchants you will find every conceivable item you can
| imagine: I personally think Turkish food has way too much
| sugar in it's diet, but as I found out from our baker they
| make the most amazing fruit syrups to make deserts with,
| which incidentally make for good tea enhancers as well!
|
| Again, maybe I'm just too biased given my lived experience
| in this space, but nothing has yet to convince me that
| price alone serves as a real deterrent to really solve this
| issue, only an improved lifestyle choice where those
| calories get effectively used end up really solving the
| core issue.
| frameset wrote:
| > When I lived in the UK a lot of people who couldn't
| afford real juice would buy 'squash' and drink it as a
| replacement for juice. I personally found it entirely
| revolting and way too sugary
|
| Are you aware that you're supposed to dilute squash to
| taste? It's just concentrated juice. If it's too sweet,
| you haven't added enough water.
| protimewaster wrote:
| Last time I was in the UK, nearly everywhere that sold soda
| offered the full calorie, full sugar version of Coke. Pepsi
| and other drinks were often only available in lower or zero
| sugar, but Coke was almost always available in the full
| sugar version, for some reason.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It is a choice manufacturers made.
|
| Pepsi and Dr. Pepper decided to go lower sugar with
| supplemental artificial sweeteners to keep their price
| down, whereas Coca-Cola kept the original formula, but it
| costs more.
|
| To put figures to this:
|
| - Pepsi (11g sugar per 250 ml): 8.8p/100ml
|
| - Dr. Pepper (11g sugar per 250 ml): 10.0p/100ml
|
| - Coca-Cola (27g sugar per 250 ml): 14.2p/100ml
|
| "full sugar" Dr. Pepper also contains: Aspartame,
| Acesulfame K
|
| "full sugar" Pepsi contains: Sucralose, Acesulfame K
|
| So after the sugar tax some people moved to these hybrid
| drinks whereas others just moved whole-hog to Pepsi Max
| and Diet Dr. Pepper which are commonly cheaper and have
| the same aftertaste as their "full sugar" variants.
| amluto wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the effect of a _sweetness_
| tax. See if the manufacturers can make desirable beverages
| that don't taste so sweet (and don't have whatever effect
| triggering sweetness receptors so intensely has).
| scotty79 wrote:
| In Poland there's a tax for both sugary and artificially
| sweetened drinks since 2021. Also caffeine and taurine.
|
| In one year the effect for beverages over all was 36%
| raise in proce and 20% drop in sales. Surprisingly sales
| of energy drinks rose by 4%.
|
| In two years 60% of beverages altered their ingredients.
| Tax income was less than you expected.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| they'll optimize the packaging to help you out. My mom tells
| me about how margarine used to come with a yellow color
| packet to mix into your white spread. The dairy board lobbied
| to make it illegal to sell yellow margarine because "it looks
| like butter". Didn't seem to hurt Oleo much...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/archives/when-consumers-had-to-diy-for-
| th...
| sushid wrote:
| Both would reduce demand so a sharp drop off would still be
| fairly realistic. Of course, getting anything done at the
| federal would be impossible in the US today.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I'd bet a dollar per gram additive sugar tax in excess of 5g
| would immediately flatten the chronic disease curve. Maybe
| double that if it's marketed towards kids. There are a lot of
| problems besides sugar/HFCS but it's easily towards the top of
| the list.
|
| It doesn't, it doesn't even discourage the purchases unless
| (perhaps?) universally adopted: Boulder, CO has had a sugar tax
| for a while now, and all it does is punish not curtail the
| consumer: often the poorer ones most as it accounts for a
| larger part of their income/wages. If they are so motivated
| they continue to buy said sugary drink at an inflated price
| with no benefit, or simply go 6 miles out of town and purchase
| in bulk if they are committed to said behaviour. I've seen it
| all too often,and have even managed to 'hack' the system by
| buying things that contain sugar but somehow flew under the
| radar (San Peligrino fruit flavored sodas).
|
| It's all just window dressing and shows just how poorly
| educated the average consumer is in measuring the necessary
| caloric intake relative to their lifestyle(s), but perhaps more
| importantly how food has been weaponized, mainly in the US,
| which has a direct correlation to type 2 diabetes being so
| prevalent in the first place.
|
| It's hard to blame either or entirely, but I'd saw its a 30:70
| with the former and latter respectively.
|
| The truth is I stopped drinking soda after peaking in my early
| 20s to late teens, I still have a relatively fast metabolism
| and an active lifestyle to supplement it, but the feeling you
| get from the sugar high of continued use has gone from
| energizing back then to feeling ill for hours now.
|
| I occasionally drink soda with specific meals, often for
| nostalgia to this day, but its hardly a daily or even weekly
| thing for me anymore.
|
| Ultimately, if your reasoning/logic were true we would see a
| dramatic drop in fast food consumption due to the higher prices
| but that simply isn't the case and corps in the fast food
| industry are reporting record profits YoY in this market
| despite the increase in price.
|
| I see food the same way I see drugs at this point, both in
| excess or when misused can be incredibly dangerous, the best a
| Society can do is to safely regulate and educate it's populace
| in the pros/cons usage of both: nothing will stop a person from
| seeking or abusing either if they so desire. And its is a
| larger loss in agency for said Society to pretend it can as it
| often leads to draconian measures with no meaningful or
| effective outcome (eg sugar tax).
|
| In fact having worked in all aspects of the food industry from
| farm to table for a significant portion of my life, restaurant
| culture and the art of cuisine/gastronomy wouldn't even be a
| thing if it weren't for the debauchery and the unruly excess of
| the clientele who were ready and willing to drop up to a day's
| wage on a meal(s) and accompanying alcohol were it not for the
| 'uninhibited decadence'a of the consumer.
| adamc wrote:
| I would expect it to work badly whenever a person could
| easily cross a boundary. In larger cities -- say, New York --
| it would suffer similar, but fewer, problems simply because
| the average effort of getting outside the city would be
| higher.
|
| You see this between states when tax regimes differ. Sure,
| those who live near the border "cheat". But most people live
| far enough away that they are affected by the tax.
|
| There is lots of counter-evidence to your propositions,
| notably involving the effect of raising prices on cigarettes,
| which _does_ discourage smoking.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm curious if you have data showing this? Last I heard,
| which a quick google seems to back up, is that Seattle's
| similar tax had modest benefits.
| (https://sph.washington.edu/news-events/sph-blog/sugar-
| sweete...) Took a brief look to see if there were strong
| challenges to this, but I didn't find anything.
| caseyy wrote:
| If A causes diabetes, then it causes C outcome of diabetes. It's
| a tautology.
|
| ((A - B) [?] (B - C)) - (A - C)
| neom wrote:
| Interesting. I think folks in the comments here maybe missed this
| paper is way more about the beverages part making it important.
| The research is around sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). If I'm
| reading it right, the SSBs have a differentmetabolic effect.
|
| "Due to their liquid form, SSBs are rapidly consumed and
| digested, resulting in lower satiety, higher caloric intake and
| weight gain. High doses of rapidly digested glucose also activate
| insulin and other regulatory pathways, which can result in
| visceral fat production, hepatic and skeletal muscle insulin
| resistance and weight gain. High doses of rapidly digested
| fructose directly activate hepatic fat synthesis, leading to
| ectopic fat deposition and metabolic dysfunction in liver and
| muscle"
|
| Unfortunately I can't find where they define high dose, but if
| you look at what they say is high elsewhere, it seems to be
| around 9 servings a week of "any beverage with added sugars and
| >50 kcal per 8 oz serving, including commercial or homemade
| beverages, soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks, punch,
| lemonade and aguas frescas." - A can of coke is 12oz I believe?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I'm curious what is the number of added sugars and above 50kcal
| peer 8 oz serving. You can get away with saying fruit drinks
| have no added sugar and still be insanely sugary.
| athenot wrote:
| Fruit drinks have a neat trick to increase sugar content.
| Take apple juice for example: you can evaporate water out of
| it till it's a sugary syrup, then add it to regular apple
| juice, and it's still called "100% pure apple juice no sugar
| added".
|
| (This is also done with various flavor essences from the
| juice, so they can recombine them in such a way as to produce
| a uniform flavor all throughout the year regardless of where
| the fruits are coming from.)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Not in the EU:
|
| > It should be clearly indicated when a product is a
| mixture of fruit juice and fruit juice from concentrate
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
| criddell wrote:
| Are you saying that they couldn't say "100% fruit juice
| and no sugar added" on the label when the drink is a
| mixture of fruit juice and fruit juice from concentrate?
| What part of the regulation would prohibit this?
| pjerem wrote:
| You can say "no added sugar" but you are forced to write
| it's from a concentrate and it must be in the front of
| the product, not hidden somewhere.
|
| Not perfect but at least you can't just say it's fruit
| juice.
| trod1234 wrote:
| All carbohydrates eventually break down into sugars. Some quite
| a bit faster than others.
|
| What people and scientists haven't been saying in any
| meaningful way is the truth that carbohydrate poisoning is a
| real thing. If you eat too much, its harmful.
|
| Its common knowledge that medicines may become poisons when
| taken in too high amounts. This applies to most things in this
| area.
|
| Protein poisoning is fairly easily discovered in the scientific
| literature, why isn't carbohydrate poisoning? Its a conundrum.
| fwip wrote:
| Scientists aren't saying it because it's not true.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You don't think the scientific literature has anything to say
| about sugar surplus or junk food surplus?
|
| Carbohydrate poisoning sounds nonsensical though. Too many
| potatoes and whole grains, for example, aren't poisoning you.
| More people should be replacing junk food with those things.
|
| It's just a fad to use "carbs" as a euphemism for "junk food"
| and it only further confuses the discourse about nutrition.
| bityard wrote:
| I've noticed that people who want to deny that the
| extremely high carbohydrate content of the typical western
| diet is the major factor for runaway rates of diabetes and
| cardiovascular disease like to label the "bad" food as
| "junk food" or "ultra-processed food." But we never get an
| explanation from them as to what exactly is IN the junk
| food or ultra-processed food that causes the disease.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, I can answer that.
|
| It's not always about a certain boogeyman inside it, but
| whether it makes it easy to overeat and whether it pays
| its rent in nutritional content.
|
| Consider potato chips. Even if they have zero saturated
| fat, the issue most people have with them is that they
| are hyperpalatable and low nutritional value compared to
| their calorie density. Combine fat and salt and certain
| textures, and we can't stop ourselves. Trying to blame a
| macronutrient like carbs doesn't make much sense to me.
|
| Add in bad ingredients like saturated fat and the problem
| becomes multifaceted, but it's not necessary for
| individual ingredients to be bad for us for a food to
| have its downsides.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Protein poisoning happens because your body has a limited
| capacity to process protein. It's very high and you're
| unlikely to hit it, but it's happened to people living off
| the land and eating nothing but lean meat. Carbohydate
| processing is not inherently rate-limited like that. How much
| you need is dictated by how much you use. Even the stated
| numbers here about 9 weekly 8 oz drinks with 50 kcals or more
| per serving is comically miniscule compared to what is
| ingested with no ill effects by any serious endurance athlete
| who actually needs and uses that much energy. Carbohydrate
| only has a deleterious effect when you ingest more than you
| use, which is not characteristic of a poison.
| athenot wrote:
| About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a
| desire to be healthy or loose weight but simply because it
| dawned on me that for the same amount of sugar in one soft
| drink that I drink without any afterthought, I could enjoy a
| really good pastry that I can slowly savor.
|
| I do the same for fats. The way I look at it, I want to
| maximize the "enjoyment per kcalorie". :)
|
| More recently, I'm starting to apply this to meat as well. I
| really enjoy meat, but I'm not one for quantity since I'm on
| the skinnier side. So I'm trying to enjoy meat more, and in
| doing so, get better quality, prepare it better, etc. while at
| the same time eating less of it. This is still a work in
| progress, and eating in restaurants can be challenging as they
| usually favor quantity over quality--except for the very high-
| end & costly places.
| exhilaration wrote:
| So taking myself as an example: I drink 12 oz of coffee daily
| (7 days per week), and I add exactly 12 grams of table sugar to
| my coffee each day (equivalent to 3 sugar packets), which is 45
| calories. Seems like I don't have much wiggle room and should
| continue avoiding soda and juice.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I'll be the guy that I assume most people are sick of by this
| point, and recommend experimenting with dropping the
| additives in exchange for higher quality coffee if you can
| afford it (it's usually not much more per cup). At
| effectively zero calories, after some period of time you'll
| get used to it and recalibrate your sense of sweetness to the
| point where sugary drinks and coffee are much less palatable
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I honestly can't tell much difference between expensive
| coffee and Maxwell House. But in general I've never nerded
| out over coffee, wine, bread, cheese, whiskey, or any other
| food or beverage.
|
| I don't add sugar to my coffee either.
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| I can easily tell the difference between the two, but I
| really don't care so long as the coffee is brewed well. I
| still like Maxwell House Black Silk, but at home I grind
| my own beans and brew in a French Press.
|
| What I don't like is "Church Coffee", where it has brewed
| within an inch of its life and is the darkest, most
| bitter/burned flavor that ever existed.
| znpy wrote:
| Cheese is worth it, a bit. First because it's way leas of
| a bullshit industry when compared to wine for example,
| and also because (particularly if you're in europe) there
| is so much variety of cheese at overall an affordable
| price. And you largely don't need tools or fancy
| accessories. If anything, you could get something nice to
| paid it with :)
| vasco wrote:
| You can either get better coffee or you can also just get
| used to the flavor. I didn't like it and after about a year
| it became fine, now I have a lifetime of no sugar coffee
| unlocked.
| wil421 wrote:
| Just to add a bit, we bought a Breville espresso and
| grinder. I only use some whole milk to make my coffee and
| no sugar. My wife uses a little agave syrup and skips most
| of the milk.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I'll chime in to agree that it does take some time to get
| used to it, but after the transition period you don't miss
| it.
|
| Giving up sweetened drinks and learning to cook healthy
| foods from scratch have been my most effective lifestyle
| changes.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Learn to drink it black, it's good. But I do get beans and
| grind them so the brew is much higher quality. I'm assuming
| you drink that can of grinds for 3 bucks or instant. Those
| suck
| dfltr wrote:
| "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (https://robertlustig.com/sugar-the-
| bitter-truth/) is a pretty long watch, but it's incredibly eye-
| opening in terms of explaining in detail exactly why our
| current dietary sugar intake is so damaging to our bodies.
|
| Note: Robert Lustig is a professor of pediatric endocrinology
| at UCSF, I promise I wouldn't ask you (the reader) to watch a
| long-ass youtube video unless it contained extremely relevant
| science about how you (the biological machine) work.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I'm always glad for more hard evidence, but this exact
| reasoning has been "common sense", or something to that tune,
| my entire life. Maybe not every individual resulting issue, but
| that liquid sugar absorbs more rapidly and as such is worse
| that an equivalent amount of sugar in a more solid meal.
| Hilift wrote:
| Orange juice is high in sugars. Drinking any alternative
| beverage with a lot of sugar is bad for your health. I believe
| a 12 ounce glass of orange juice is 100% of maximum sugar
| intake for one day. If you drank orange juice the same way you
| drank soda with added sugar, the health effect would be equally
| detrimental.
| busyant wrote:
| I know several people who've undergone bariatric surgery.
|
| One of the post-surgery 'rules' is ... "Don't drink your
| calories."
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I only ever drink coke when I'm mixing with whisky... not sure
| which one is worse...
| hilux wrote:
| The Coke is definitely worse, unless you're flying an airliner,
| of course.
| schroeding wrote:
| Same, but with rum. Just doesn't work as well with the diet
| stuff for some reason, too.
|
| Classic coke + Cuban rum + lime == very good time. :D
| hilux wrote:
| It's "good" that this is in Nature, but does any health-aware
| person not already know this?
|
| Our real problem is that most people aren't health-aware, and
| advertising (including the pharma-funded healthcare system)
| absolutely overwhelms common-sense truths about health.
|
| Over the past few years I have improved my own health by greatly
| limiting my intake of sugars, including by cutting out "healthy"
| smoothies, but I learned all this from Dr Internet, and NOT from
| any physician who was being paid to treat me. US physicians'
| knowledge of nutrition is stuck at whatever they were taught in
| med school, which was probably 20+ years behind the research _at
| that time_.
| pama wrote:
| The HN title shortening is a bit misleading. The paper
| systematically analyzes the burden of this known effect on 184
| countries.
| xnx wrote:
| There is almost nothing* like sugar drinks in the natural world
| our bodies evolved in. Sugar drinks are about as different as tea
| leaves and pure cocaine. It's is no coincidence that both are
| refined white powders.
|
| *honey
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I take it you haven't tried a nice ripe mango from subtropical
| regions, or a pineapple, white grapes (or grape juice),
| watermelon, navel oranges? They can be sweeter than Dr. Pepper.
|
| Sugarcane also exists and you can chew it.
|
| They just tended to 1) come with fiber, 2) not be as easy to
| acquire or eat in large quantities 3) not available all year,
| or all at once
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is nonsense:
|
| 100g of mango has 14g of sugar
|
| 100g of watermelon has 6.2g of sugar
|
| 100g of navel orange has 12g of sugar
|
| 100g of sugar has 100g of sugar, 1 can of Dr Pepper has 40g
| of sugar
|
| It's both pure sugar AND more sugar. You have to eat more
| than half a pound of mango to get to the same sugar as a Dr
| Pepper.
| tpoacher wrote:
| "Tendency to manifest consumption of sugar beverages attributable
| to predisposition to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease."
|
| Hm. I thought the "switcheroo test" would create an obviously
| false "what if" statement in this case, but not so sure.
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