[HN Gopher] Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributa...
___________________________________________________________________
Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar
beverages
Author : tchalla
Score : 384 points
Date : 2025-01-07 17:51 UTC (1 days 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.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It's cheap but not nutritious. It's less than 300 cal and
| 12g of protein + 4g of fiber. You would be hungry. Need
| fiber and protein to keep you full
| 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.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Any source of that claim? That processed food manufacturers
| lobbied against universal healthcare for fear of regulation
| against their products?
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Perhaps. But I don't think that's the public consensus. So
| it's hard to accept such arguments without any evidence.
|
| AFAIK in Europe most food safety regulation is coming from
| the EU directly and not the national governments. Also it's
| not like all countries in Europe have public tax funded
| healthcare systems.
|
| Fundamentally some are inherently not that different from
| the one in the US (i.e. semi-private or even entirely
| privatized) it's just that they much better regulated and
| much more efficient.
|
| Even if we exclude private spending the US government
| already spends more per capita on healthcare than most
| other countries so why would anything change if e.g.
| Medicare was extended to a higher proportion of the
| population?
| 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.
| tanaros wrote:
| > Are you saying that corporate processed food
| manufacturers are not making that statement?
|
| No. I have no knowledge of what statements such
| manufacturers are or are not making.
|
| However, your original post said "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." This phrasing implies that the statement is
| true, or at least you believe it to be true. So it seemed
| relevant to offer a counter-example.
|
| Even if you had originally said "corporate processed food
| manufacturers claim their products will be curtailed and
| lobby heavily on this point," I think it would still be
| useful to point out that such claims are highly likely to
| be false given past experience in other countries.
| sitkack wrote:
| Those other countries already have Universal Healthcare,
| so no lobbying against UH will be effective or
| successful. The fact that other countries have a supply
| of unhealthy processed food doesn't have any bearing
| about how much effort US food companies will put in
| preventing UH.
|
| You can see their concerted response when sugar taxes are
| instituted.
| 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.
| loeg wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Gen Z and Alpha nicotine use rates are still lower than
| Millennials in absolute terms; it's happily not a huge
| problem (nevermind that stuff like Zyn is unambiguously much
| healthier than smoking cigs).
| 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.
| neom wrote:
| alright fine, you win universe. SoftTalker, I'll drink
| more water ok?
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think "don't like the taste of water" accurately
| describes me. That being said I do have a rule of "never
| drink anything with calories" specifically to avoid the
| sugar. But I don't know what you plain water drinkers are
| on about, the added flavor tricks me into drinking way more
| than I would naturally.
|
| Humans have been constantly flavoring our water for
| thousands of years, I think the verdict is in that water
| tastes kinda meh. I would take tea or flavor extracts every
| time.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I like my water flavored. I tend to keep some lime/lemon
| juice around and that works well for me, maybe something
| can work for you
| ozim wrote:
| Well exactly plain water doesn't really have a taste so
| it is meh and requires getting used to.
|
| Especially when all you drink are sweet sodas it is
| really hard to get used to plain water.
| 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yes, but we call them pop, not soda :-)
|
| Or at least used to. 51st-ifying is underway.
| 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.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If I recall correctly part of the origin of soda was
| doing the reverse, from efforts to actively substitute
| for alcohol. Hence why they emphasized as "soft drinks"
| as a marketing category.
|
| As for other substitutes, we've seen highly sweetened
| coffee drinks as the common one, to the point where soda
| taxes started to face accusations that they are actually
| thinly veiled classism due to exclusion of more white
| collar "Starbucks" type drinks. Rightfully or wrongly
| they have a point about it at least looking bad.
| bluGill wrote:
| I wasn't intending to imply that is what would happen.
| That is the worst substitute I can think of. If high
| sugar coffee would also be counted as soda for the laws -
| something that isn't a given - this seems even more
| likely.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I don't know anyone who would switch from soda to beer??
| probably tea, or coffee, or lemonade or flavored sparkling
| water
| itishappy wrote:
| I don't think that's a relevant comparison. They're both
| beverages, sure, but that's about where the similarities end.
| As drugs they're entirely different. May as well add
| Ayahuasca to consideration as well.
|
| I could see tea or coffee (particularly the sweetened
| varieties) and sparkling water, but honestly I think the most
| likely alternative will just be plain ol' water.
| curiousgal 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.
|
| Yeah that not it boss. Never did I come across something
| getting banned in France because of healthcare costs.
| gklitz 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.
|
| Counter argument: Pretty much every other nation has socialized
| healthcare and still allows sugary beverages and tobacco
| products.
| 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.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| What's new to me is that it's becoming newsworthy, more people
| are talking about it.
|
| To my current understanding, metabolic syndrome caused by sugar
| / glucose spikes is by far the biggest root cause of physical
| health issue in the US. Most people I know personally who are
| suffering from physical ailments, it's most likely metabolic
| syndrome at the root of it.
|
| How to shift culture on this? When I'm in civilization in the
| US I'm constantly confronted with foods I have to turn down. It
| doesn't have to be that way.
|
| Furthermore, because of what is in my opinion bad science and
| propaganda, a lot of people still think they need to stay away
| from saturated fat, which pushes them toward processed high
| glycemic index foods. Sure, you can eat a low saturated fat and
| low glycemic diet but it's not so easy. I'm serious it's
| shocking the number of people suffering from metabolic syndrome
| / diabetes who have told me they are trying to stay away from
| saturated fat but are eating crazy amounts of sugar.
|
| I hope this continues to be talked about more and more so the
| people I love can turn down sugar without feeling like they're
| radical and countercultural.
|
| Partly I think there's a taboo on talking about health and
| diet, that would be good to shift. I'm not about fat shaming
| but diabetes is really just bad, and preventable and
| reversible, and I'd like for that to be widely agreed on and
| talked about.
|
| Will also be interesting to see how lawsuits like this play
| out:
| https://chat.google.com/dm/wQTk3gAAAAE/WPNwzCxw9sI/WPNwzCxw9...
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It's not propaganda. Saturated fat is bad. That's a common
| internet belief that runs rampant because saturated fat
| tastes good and it sounds awesome to believe some conspiracy
| against it.
|
| https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/10/21/advisory-
| replacing-...
|
| Most of it always tracks back to Nina Teicholz. I wonder how
| many people she is sending to the grave?
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I know it's hotly debated and I don't imagine I could
| convince you :). This is my opinion.
|
| If I read right, you're saying that an entire food group
| that people have been eating for eons is simply "bad",
| specifically, meat, dairy, and eggs, in their unprocessed
| form. The argument I've seen is that it's better to eat a
| new kind of food that people have only begun eating in
| quantity within the last hundred ish years requiring
| industrial technology. (Specifically, oils extracted from
| plant material using solvents like hexane.)
|
| I'm open minded but this is a really serious claim and I'd
| need really solid evidence which I haven't seen, and I've
| looked. There are a lot of studies; those that I've looked
| into have too many confounding variables for me to take
| their conclusions at face value.
|
| I could also see the possibility that saturated fat in
| someone who already has metabolic syndrome might increase
| their risk of heart disease, and maybe be considered the
| proximate cause, in cases where the root cause is the
| metabolic syndrome caused by sugar in the first place.
|
| There's also the question of there being different kinds of
| LDL cholesterol and it perhaps actually serving a function
| in the body that isn't categorically bad, even if in some
| circumstances the metric correlates with atherosclerosis.
| 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.
| dantodor wrote:
| Those are the most obvious and easy to spot signs. Metabolic
| syndrome is dysfunction at the mitochondrial level.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Metabolic syndrome is dysfunction at the mitochondrial
| level.
|
| It might or might not be involved. At this point, it's not
| clear. Obesity and insulin resistance are the most likely
| proximate causes.
| 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.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > by this logic, you _should_ be insulted by someone
| saying paid professional accountants managing all of your
| money is the _only_ way for society
|
| But toomuchtodo _didn 't_ write that GLP-1s were the
| _only_ way to address the issue. So maybe there 's no
| reason to be insulted. Perhaps you could exercise your
| willpower and not feel insulted by things that didn't
| happen.
| ericmcer wrote:
| That is true but I think emphasizing liquid sugar is
| particularly important. When I was young I tried to bulk (for
| sports) several times and ate an obscene amount of
| carbohydrates and protein, think like 8 hot dogs and half a
| gallon of milk for lunch... roughly 4k calories a day of
| carbs/protein/fat.
|
| I never got past 220. I would get terrible heartburn and
| bloating and be too full to eat enough, 220 seemed to be about
| the max my body could obtain without severe discomfort. It
| always made me wonder how people get up into the 300+ range.
| Liquified sugar seems like the only food that your body can
| process efficiently enough to get you into those massive weight
| categories.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The study quantifies the effect. The paper doesn't just say
| "Drinking too much sugar is bad for you."
|
| Say one group drinks six cans of coke a day per person vs
| another group drink only water. Overall they have similar
| caloric intake and expenditures. What is the increase in type 2
| diabetes for the first group vs the second? Yes, it is not
| surprising it would be higher, but is it 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%?
| more?
| 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.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| Yes, even then the horrid taste left a terrible feel in
| my mouth, which is why it was only palatable with fruit
| tea and with additional citrus juice for my tastes: and
| even then I still don't want it removed from the market
| if it serves a specific demographic.
| 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%.
|
| Caffeine drinks can't be sold to non-adults now so that
| probably dropped too.
|
| 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.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I'm curious if you have data showing this?
|
| Regarding the sugar tax? Only empirical/anecdotal, I'm
| afraid: the fact is, as mentioned in my statement and in a
| response below, is that it's a geographical based tax,
| which while annoying can be trivially circumvented. (And
| even then black-markets emerge to meet that demand, or
| better known as System-D.)
|
| A better analysis would be the effects of better health and
| the decrease in tobacco smokers in younger generations over
| the last decades, which is mainly a product of discretion.
| I can assure you having lived with a pack a day people no
| amount of advertising, gross tumor pictures on the side of
| the box, high costs/taxes came close to people just
| realizing it's a horrible thing to do to your health.
|
| Arguably this led to the mass vaping trend, and a myriad of
| other ailments associated to that, but still what remains
| is that tax while a deterrent is no match for proper
| market-product-fit--how ever dangerous, or stupid one may
| think said behavour is.
|
| > There is lots of counter-evidence to your propositions,
| notably involving the effect of raising prices on
| cigarettes, which does discourage smoking.
|
| Here is the thing, I spent a lot of time in Europe where
| smoking is still incredibly prevalent and culturally
| relevant and the taxes are still incredibly high, the
| result: people just buy loose tobacco and roll it
| themselves to bypass the higher tax on pre-roll stuff
| offered every where.
|
| The ancillary products sold in 'head-shops' become a niche
| market unto themselves for these people and divert that tax
| money into another sector, proving that while markets have
| many flaws they tend to be effective at navigating any and
| all legislative hurdles even in an incredibly highly
| regulated market-place.
|
| I think this specific matter seems to be a bigger issue
| with people who feel the need to judge or deem people's
| actions 'right or wrong' based on their own subjective
| values when it comes to personal body autonomy, and think
| they know better and want to deter them in any way possible
| which I think this is ultimately what this is about: not
| Society's health.
|
| If that were the case, I think resources are better
| utilized in helping people address the MASSIVE mental
| health crisis in the US.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm confused on where the quote on cigarettes comes from?
| Isn't in my post, is it?
|
| And you didn't address that they did find modest gains to
| the goals in the Seattle study. I fully agree that, on
| the merits, this is easy to circumvent. I further agree
| that this sort of tax is almost certainly regressive.
| Largely for the reason you give of how easy it can be to
| get around. The study shows that, despite that, it still
| saw gains to the goals.
|
| My gut would be some of the gains will have come from
| advertising around the ideas. Having a tax is one thing.
| But prices typically go up with people being none the
| wiser. So, the messaging that went with the taxes could
| have also given a pause.
|
| That is beside the point, though, being that I don't know
| why it could have had modest results. Study shows that it
| did.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > And you didn't address that they did find modest gains
| to the goals in the Seattle study.
|
| I don't have much to say, other than personally I feel
| it's a tacit nod to the fact they found the results they
| wanted from this study, because it resoundingly relies on
| justifying a higher sales tax and this further encourages
| other parts of WA to adopt it and further establish it as
| a form of tax revenue while trying to provide a 'social
| good' which can be monetized.
|
| Again, it's not entirely hard to bypass and because it
| 'may' show some minor benefit to justify itself seems
| like how most poorly formed versions of bureaucratic
| gate-keeping works.
|
| But, to take the contrarian position [0] to even my own
| argument it seems that in the 5 states they launched this
| with income taxes have also 'benefited' from these taxes.
| But its hard/impossible to properly measure that these
| consumers didn't just purchase things in a nearby city
| with no additional tax or just online so I think it's
| parameters can derive the favourable results it claims.
| And the following claim regarding 'significant evidence'
| doesn't really compel me to say it was vastly evaluated:
|
| > But the study also looked at adjacent zip codes to the
| SSB-taxed cities: finding no statistically significant
| evidence that purchases had increased in these
| neighboring areas.
|
| Which is why I defer to my anac-data, which admittedly
| biased illustrates that its just not effective but is
| entirely moot without addressing the core of the issue
| and principal of the matter as a whole: body autonomy.
|
| 0: https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2024/01/11/US-
| sugar-ta...
|
| PS: That 2nd quote was not yours, but the other users who
| wanted to address tobacco use: I keep doing this having
| grown up on IRC/forums but since HN doesn't do
| attribution. I should find a solution to this, but making
| 2 posts seems tedious, I guess I can pre-fix with @ or
| something.
| drivebycomment wrote:
| > Which is why I defer to my anac-data, which admittedly
| biased illustrates that its just not effective but is
| entirely moot without addressing the core of the issue
| and principal of the matter as a whole: body autonomy.
|
| Can you explain how sugar tax is an issue about body
| autonomy ? As far as I can see, you are free to continue
| putting sugary water into your body. Is the argument that
| even a small increase in tax is an encroach upon bodily
| autonomy ? Do you consider farm subsidies (e.g.
| maintaining US corn production) as a bodily autonomy
| issue then, since it lowers the cost of corn / fructose
| and making them available in more food ?
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Can you explain how sugar tax is an issue about body
| autonomy?
|
| Simply put, you are arbitrarily punishing those who
| consume these products (which I will repeat I do not
| purchase myself) in often high cost areas (eg Seattle,
| San Francisco, Boulder) to align with a specific ideology
| that these areas ascribe to, at least on the surface.
|
| I feel like a boomer saying this and it seems like I'm
| making a mountain out of a mole hill, because it's
| something that on the surface makes sense to a degree--
| relying on the old adage of tax it and you get less of it
| --and even appears to be well intentioned way to make
| people make 'healthier' choices, but from what I've seen
| in practice is a bureaucratic way to modify behaviour in
| people's everyday lives that ultimately only causes a
| minor inconvenience/friction for those resolved to
| circumvent and the initiative's results seem dubious at
| best and over-reaching at worst.
|
| I genuinely don't think in practice it's about health
| either as you can easily go around the other aisle and
| buy all the high sodium, poly-saturated chips with as
| much or more HFCS and MSG and countless amounts of dyes
| and food preservatives to your hearts content with no tax
| implication and are often encouraged to be purchased in
| bulk, so it seems perplexing that this is really the
| success they make it out to be.
|
| It seems to me like a bike-shedding initiative if I have
| ever seen one as it avoids the much bigger issue of how
| un-healthy the American diet really is.
|
| > Do you consider farm subsidies (e.g. maintaining US
| corn production)...
|
| Because as you have mentioned, the obscenely lucrative
| farm subsides of corn for mega farms is the crux of the
| issue here and by extension all of the lobbying by big
| business that takes place for these chemicals that are
| actually shaping what the American diet itself is; I
| believe we would be better served addressing that obvious
| and glaring problem, and forcing producers of these
| products to have to do without these highly subsidized
| and addictive chemicals in their products and letting
| consumers decide whether to consume them of their own
| volition at actual market rates rather than this window
| dressing approach.
| taeric wrote:
| Ah, 2nd quote being a sibling post makes sense. I
| typically look at things in threads after I post, so
| didn't see it.
|
| I want to stress that logically, I fully agree with your
| position. I am always hesitant to go with logical
| arguments that aren't supported empirically, though.
| Would love to see some critical studies that go into why
| this stuff isn't the case.
|
| I can say that, at a personal level, we thought we would
| shift buying of juices and sodas to outside of Seattle
| when the law passed. We largely didn't, though. Just
| started getting smaller servings from places in the city.
| I hesitate to say we are representative, though; as we
| don't do that much on the sweetened side, all told. Were
| buying small juices for the kids, but not many of that,
| even.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You want a can of Coke to cost $35?
|
| In Berkeley we have a 1C/ per fl. oz. soda tax and it cut soda
| sales by over 20%.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5024386/
| loeg wrote:
| It cut soda sales 20% in Berkeley but increased them 4% in
| comparison cities (SF and Oakland), among low-income
| households only.
| jeffbee wrote:
| No, that is an incorrect reading of the result. San
| Francisco is not a neighbor of Berkeley, and nobody started
| traveling 15 miles to SF to save a dime on Coke. The 4%
| increase in the comparison cities was exogenous.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't think we can attribute causality to the decline
| in Berkeley any more or less than we can attribute
| causality to the increase in comparison cities. If it was
| causal in Berkeley, it was causal in SF and Oakland.
| (Whose rates actually went up by like 20%? But at some
| point that gets cut down to 4%, I'm not sure why.)
|
| And still: Among low income households only. We don't
| know what the effect was on the whole population.
|
| Anyway, I'm sympathetic to the idea that sugar taxes
| work, just being critical of this particular study and
| your claim which is stronger than the actual study
| outcome.
| dilap wrote:
| I'd take the other side of that bet.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/4b0O4AW
|
| Prior to early 2000s when sugar consumption started going down,
| it was probably a reasonble guess as one of the drivers of
| increasing disease. But since then sugar consumption has tailed
| off while disease rates have continued to rise, so I don't
| think it's plausible anymore.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7666899/
|
| My bet to flatten the chronic disease curve would be reducing
| n6 fat consumption, especially from foods fried in vegetable
| oil.
|
| Provactively, the steep upturn in diabetes rates around 1990
| conincides with a broad movement in the fast-food industry to
| replace animal fats like tallow with vegetable oils.
|
| https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19900724/1083993/ch...
| siliconc0w wrote:
| While I don't disagree that omega-6 oils are suspect -
| especially when heated/reheated - the evidence for sugar
| being bad for you is still far greater than the evidence that
| seed oils are bad for you.
|
| The US State system lends itself to natural experiments so
| I'm all for iterating on what taxes incentives actually lead
| to the desired outcomes (higher healthspan and lower
| healthcare costs).
|
| There very well could be multiple contributing factors to the
| epidemic- generically if the behavior increases chronic
| disease burden on the population it needs to be
| disincentivized via taxes so that you can incentivize moving
| to alternatives without the negative externalities.
| dilap wrote:
| Yeah, I agree it would be great to do some regional
| experiments.
| gdjskslsuhkso wrote:
| Are there any chains that still use tallow to fry food?
|
| I love fried food and would pay a premium for high quality
| oil options. Most of the time you don't know what it is, at
| best it's peanut (five guys). I'd much prefer avocado oil or
| tallow.
| dilap wrote:
| The only one I know of is Popeyes -- they famously never
| stoped frying their chicken in beef tallow. Probably
| unhealthy for about a million other reasons, but hey, at
| least it's not fried in vegetable oil!
| loeg wrote:
| You're proposing something like a 500% markup on sugar? For
| context, that's like 400% higher than even the highest
| cigarette taxes.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| about 40% of adults in the US are obese. Doesn't seem that
| crazy to me (as an experiment one could run for a couple
| years, to see if it has a positive impact on society)
| lm28469 wrote:
| Yeah but then again, selling addictive sugar shit is lucrative
| AND treating diabetes is lucrative. Very few people in charge
| care about your health, the world would be a very different
| place if it was the case.
|
| The solutions are extremely simple, and it's the same for many
| of our modern issues, the will simply isn't there.
| caseyy wrote:
| If A causes diabetes, then it causes C outcome of diabetes. It's
| a tautology.
|
| ((A - B) [?] (B - C)) - (A - C)
| dekhn wrote:
| That's not how biology works.
|
| In biology, instead of "necessary but not sufficient", we have
| "sufficient but not necessary".
| 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.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| They could not. That would not pass the 'clearly
| indicated' in the quoted rule. There is also another more
| general rule which enforces a label of 'sweetened' or
| 'with added sugars' for _any_ kind of sweetening agent
| including fruit concentrate:
|
| > 4. For fruit juices which have been sweetened by the
| addition of sugars, the sales name shall include the word
| "sweetened" or "with added sugar", followed by an
| indication of the maximum quantity of sugar added,
| calculated as dry matter and expressed in grams per
| litre. [1]
|
| > A claim stating that sugars have not been added to a
| food, and any claim likely to have the same meaning for
| the consumer, may only be made where the product does not
| contain any added mono- or disaccharides or any other
| food used for its sweetening properties. [2]
|
| Coming from a country of impenetrable legalese
| everywhere, I find these regulations very refreshing,
| they are incredibly easy to read and always straight to
| the point.
|
| [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en
| /memo_0...
| 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.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The total lack of fiber isn't helping us either. Fiber
| fills you up and takes much longer to digest sating a
| person for longer.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Your comment kind of illustrates his point though,
| there's a complete lack of mechanistic empiricism[0] in
| the discussion of nutrition. What is the metric for
| 'eas[iness] to overeat and whether it pays its rent in
| nutritional content.'? I agree with the premise, but it
| is ill-defined.
|
| e.g. consider: A baked potato, with salt and butter vs.
| an equivalent weight of potato chips. They are
| essentially identical post-mastication, except one is
| 'junk food' and 'ultra-processed' and the other is
| quintessential home cooking. What system do I use to rank
| them if they are in fact not identical?
|
| [0] What (or combination of whats) at a
| structural/chemical level in a food causes the harm, and
| by what biochemical/psychological/psychosomatic
| pathway(s) does said harm occur?
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Re: mechanistic empiricism, I don't know if you're doing
| this, but it seems that some people have this mindset
| that if you can't tell me specifically how X is bad for
| you, then I have to assume it is not harmful by default,
| even if it's a thing that is relatively novel.
|
| I find myself leaning heavily in the other direction
| these days. If it's not something that has a long history
| and (I'm not already dying anyway), I'll pass. If I lose
| out on some benefits because of that, so be it.
| parineum wrote:
| As far as diet is concerned, I'm very much in the camp of
| you do what works best for you. However, if you choose to
| give advice to a wide audience (rather than saying what
| works for you), I think one should have some idea of why
| their advice is good.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >if you can't tell me specifically how X is bad for
| youthen I have to assume it is not harmful by default
|
| Speaking for myself, its a matter of how my brain works.
| Setting aside rational considerations like cost-benefit
| analysis or Bayesian likelihoods: if there isn't a
| generalizable logic to 'what (is harmful)' and 'how (it
| is)' I just get a 404.
|
| It's not that I don't (or do) believe potatoes chips are
| harmful it's that the e.g. statement 'ultra-processed
| foods are bad for you' is literally devoid of meaning.
| Might as well be baby-speak.
|
| As such, any attempt to incorporate that information[0]
| into my decision making process goes nowhere: I can't
| categorize a food as to it's degree of ultra processed-
| ness nor can I assess whether another foods/foods/etc
| might cause harm like UPF's are purported to do. Ergo: no
| basis for a behavioral modification, no new pros or cons
| to weigh.
|
| [0]not even getting into the reliability of e.g. a
| paper's conclusions
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > As such, any attempt to incorporate that information[0]
| into my decision making process goes nowhere: I can't
| categorize a food as to it's degree of ultra processed-
| ness nor can I assess whether another foods/foods/etc
| might cause harm like UPF's are purported to do. Ergo: no
| basis for a behavioral modification, no new pros or cons
| to weigh.
|
| So I guess my question is what are your defaults? What is
| your unmodified behavior?
|
| There is a package on the shelf, you only know what it
| says on the box, what you've seen on commercials, and
| maybe you've seen/heard of other people eating its
| contents. What's the decision tree for this scenario?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > low nutritional value compared to their calorie
| density. Combine fat and salt and certain textures, and
| we can't stop ourselves.
|
| In the end the body realizes it didn't get the nutrition
| it needed so I sends out a notice "eat more".
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Anecdotally I think there's something to this, when all I
| have to eat is lacking in micro nutrients I tend to be
| hungrier. When I'm eating lots of very nutrient dense
| things, even when less calories, I feel satisfied.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It isn't extremely high. I have no idea what you imagine
| that people used to eat. The typical pre 20th century
| diet was near 100% carbohydrate based, most people ate
| meat once a weak, if at all, and fat was scarce. The now
| typical meat-with-every-dish diet is a post WW2
| development.
|
| _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._
|
| You don't get it, because 1. there is something VERY
| CLEARLY wrong with it, and 2. what is wrong with it is at
| odds with what is hammered into them over and over.
| trod1234 wrote:
| > You don't think the scientific literature has anything to
| say about sugar surplus or junk food surplus?
|
| No, I know it does, but it doesn't properly communicate the
| relationship with correct words, where other related
| subjects do. Instead it dances about with a disconnection,
| I would guess because of the sugar and health industry
| lobby.
|
| The medical definition of poisoning is generally defined as
| injury or death due to swallowing, inhaling, touching or
| injecting of various substances.
|
| Disease can be considered as an injury when it refers to a
| condition that develops gradually over time due to repeated
| exposure or stressors.
|
| > Carbohydrate poisoning sounds nonsensical though
|
| Carbohydrates are in the potatoes, but are not the
| potatoes.
|
| There are contextual limits when you associate specific
| things into a unique word definition, potatoes (unless
| green, or unsafely handled), would not be poisonous because
| they have a finite amount of components that our bodies can
| handle, and it would be quite hard if not impossible to eat
| sufficient amounts given biological limits and rates
| inherent in structure.
|
| A concentrated chemical solution of simple carbohydrates in
| reduced liquid form that absorbs more quickly than your
| pancreas can handle on the other hand would be different.
|
| When you exceed safe operating limits, this can cause
| injury, and that may show up, or present as symptoms of
| disease.
|
| I would have responded sooner but apparently when posts get
| downvoted, it automatically applies a strict QoS filter
| that won't let the poster respond at all.
|
| Not a very reasonable thing to do for a rational-minded
| community, for something as tame as what I said.
|
| That system structure almost always trends eventually
| towards collectivist sock-puppetry opinion with the mob
| silencing others based solely on individual mass
| hallucination. Not very scientific, and at the same time
| eliminates requirements needed for intelligent thoughts.
|
| In order to learn you must be able to risk being offended.
| In order to think, you must be able to risk being
| offensive. In order to share the benefits of either
| broadly, you must be able to communicate.
|
| Without these inherent strengths skewing towards survival,
| its just a matter of time and circumstance before losing
| the fight against extinction.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I'm very much in the "reduce carbs" camp. Long-term high
| carb intake leads to many health issues, and reductions
| lead to improvements. I'm not sure that science is behind
| on this (there's plenty of literature on the topic) but
| man-in-the-street understanding seems to be behind.
|
| The concept that sugar leads to diabetes is not exactly
| news at 11. But articles like this are helpful in moving
| the popular mindset.
|
| Personally though I'd avoid the term "poison". Mostly
| because it's a very long-term effect, whereas people use
| "poison" in general usage more as a short term thing (rat
| poison versus feeding rats carbs till they get diabetes).
|
| Secondly calling it "poison" is far outside normal
| understanding and so you become the "nutter" in the
| conversation. Which then devalues the valid points you
| have to make.
|
| I say this as someone in your camp. While your body
| certainly needs _some_ carbohydrates its safe to assume
| everyone is getting enough. Nobody needs sugar though,
| and removing as much of that as possible from daily diet
| will have big impacts in the long term.
|
| For me that doesn't mean 'never sugar'. It means cake at
| celebrations, ice-cream once a month, eating "normally"
| when at restaurants (which is probably less than once a
| month) and so on.
|
| The goal is not to be "perfect" the goal is to improve
| one step at a time. Coffee without sugar? Check. No
| daily, or weekly, sugar sodas or fruit juice? Check. And
| so on.
|
| Small changes introduced slowly over time become the new
| normal, and that leads to sustained improvements.
| 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.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Good for you.
|
| I think for meat especially, there's a difference between the
| stuff people talk about (like premium steaks they almost
| never eat) and the reality of what ends up on their plates
| which is a lot less glamorous.
|
| A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms of
| texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always
| disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable
| afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because
| there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave
| one. For me the cheap and nasty stuff is easy to skip on a
| daily basis and it's not like I eat the expensive premium
| stuff that often anyway. I love a good steak, but I don't
| splurge on paying 3x the other items on the menu when I'm at
| a restaurant typically. Which is what it takes typically to
| get a nice premium cut of meat.
|
| I do enjoy cooking with meat but I'll make an effort to make
| the most of it. E.g. I made a nice beef stew over the
| weekend. That's a bit of of work and a humble/affordable cut
| of meat. And very tasty.
|
| If you like Indian food, try having or making a dal. As it
| turns out, Indians know a thing or two about making very
| tasty vegan food from cheap/simple ingredients. And this can
| as nice as some chicken curry with a few chunks of cheap
| chicken that is maybe a bit overcooked and dry (I've been
| served that in many Indian restaurants). Those curries
| actually still taste fine if you don't eat those chunks of
| meat. And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with
| warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor
| of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime.
| Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular in
| India. Fridges are a fairly recent novelty too.
|
| And the meat doesn't even add a lot of flavor; they just add
| it last minute typically. Lots of Indian restaurants usually
| have vegan or vegetarian versions of most of their curries
| where they toss in some tofu or paneer instead of meat. The
| only difference between eating meat or vegan in such places
| is literally what protein is added to the dish at the last
| minute. The rest is basically vegan or vegetarian by default.
|
| Anyway, I skip sugary drinks mostly. And I've cut down on my
| alcohol intake as well. Most of what I drink has basically
| very little or no calories.
|
| Most of my remaining food challenges are unhealthy snacks,
| unnecessary carbs and the temptations of unhealthy restaurant
| food, or late night shopping in super markets and the
| associated bad decision making.
|
| Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they make
| things taste good by adding salt and fats. It's hard to eat
| healthy in restaurants. So, I try to limit my restaurant food
| intake. And like with meat, most of the restaurants people
| visit aren't actually that great anyway. At least where I
| work, Michelin stars are not a thing for the typical lunch
| options. Quite the opposite actually. I'm only an OK cook but
| I can cook tastier/better versions of a lot of the shit I get
| served in places like that. It's not that hard.
|
| I recently actually started just skipping lunch entirely at
| work mainly for this reason and I'm training myself out of
| having a Pavlovian craving for food just because the clock
| says so. I don't actually need the calories. Or the post
| lunch dip in productivity. I especially don't need the lousy
| food choices imposed by that one person that wants to go to
| the burger place. There's a lot of group thinking inspiring
| unhealthy choices around lunch time. I took part in that for
| years. It's stupid when you think about it and I've suffered
| the health consequences as well. There's a cumulative effect
| if you do that for a few decades.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they
| make things taste good by adding salt and fats._
|
| Anthony Bourdain wrote in _Kitchen Confidential_ : "If you
| eat at any good restaurant, assume you've eaten a stick of
| butter."
| aziaziazi wrote:
| My brother worked for multiple (very) good restaurants
| here in France. I'm always super chocked when I see him
| throwing a good portion of the butter brick in almost any
| meal. His dishes are super delicious. His current
| restaurant is a a very good vegan one and he does the
| same with plant butter.
| bitwize wrote:
| > A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms
| of texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always
| disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable
| afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because
| there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave
| one.
|
| The "Big Mac Attack" is real. I used to get one about every
| six months or so. Then I would eat a Big Mac, and the
| attack would be sated, but the GI discomfort reminded me of
| why I don't get Big Mac Attacks more often.
|
| These days I just avoid fast food. I live in a part of the
| country that's actually rather persnickety about good food,
| and there are much fresher options available nearby that
| are rather cheap. Plus I'm stocked up on low-carb soups,
| lunch meats, and other yummies most of the time now.
|
| > And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with
| warm climates like India was historically to mask the
| flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past
| their prime.
|
| My dad used to tell me stories about roadside chili houses
| in Texas. They kept a big pot of chili constantly going,
| and added whatever meat they could find, together with
| beans, spices, etc. to keep the pot full as the chili was
| served to customers. Roadkill was, supposedly, one of the
| most convenient sources of meat for the pot.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The weirdest thing for me is that when I was young I used
| to live off fast food. A few Jack in the Box burgers and
| I was good to go (my girlfriend at the time looked at me
| somewhat strange the first time I asked her how many
| burgers she wanted). But now when I eat a fast food
| burger I just don't feel very good afterwards. Curious
| how many others also seem to get the same thing. I always
| thought I was just being a bit more snobby than when I
| was younger and it was some sort of psychosomatic thing.
| bitwize wrote:
| Part of it is age. Part of it is, I think, the fast food
| companies are lowballing what they can get away with
| serving in order to keep costs down. It's said that some
| Dine (Navajo) refer to Burger King with a word that means
| "just enough food to get strength from". I think that's
| the fast food joints' specialty: compromise the food till
| it's barely enough to tolerate and derive nourishment
| (calories) from to sell the stuff cheap and quick to a
| ravenous but indiscriminate clientele. With the passage
| of time comes more efficient ways to produce less
| delicious or satisfying food, so BK today is not as good
| as BK 30-40 years ago (which in turn is less good than BK
| shortly after its founding). Some burger joints e.g.
| Whataburger can differentiate themselves with higher
| quality, but they don't achieve the volume of McD's,
| Burger King, Wendy's, etc.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Back then, fast food compete with home made food, now it
| competes with another fast food.
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Man, as an Indian, this is hard to read. You're spreading a
| lot of misinformation about Indian food.
|
| > Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular
| in India.
|
| First, while there are a lot of tasty Indian vegetarian
| dishes, vegan food is decidedly not a cultural thing. We
| use butter and ghee pretty commonly in food: definitely not
| vegan. India is the world's largest milk producer; also not
| vegan. That dal you refer to will often have a "tadka" of
| ghee and spices on top. The "dal makhani" - another popular
| restaurant dish - literally means "buttered dal".
|
| And the reason pre-cooked meat pieces are added to curries
| in restaurants is that we need to get the food to you in
| 5-7 minutes. We can't cook it leisurely for 25-30 minutes
| in the gravy like we would do at home. It's called "mise en
| place" in the restaurant business.
|
| > Lots of Indian restaurants usually have vegan or
| vegetarian versions of most of their curries where they
| toss in some tofu or paneer instead of meat.
|
| If it's India, you're talking about, you're unlikely to
| find tofu being used in a restaurant. Paneer is made from
| milk, so...not vegan. Maybe restaurants abroad do it
| differently.
|
| > And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with
| warm climates like India was historically to mask the
| flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past
| their prime. Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food
| is popular in India.
|
| OK, this annoying canard is the worst. [1] Spices and meat
| used to be both historically expensive. A bit of research
| will tell you that. You know, that whole "spice trade"
| thing. Malaysian, Singaporean, Sri Lankan, food also use
| spices and they're not vegetarian cultures at all. (For
| that matter, only some 30% of Indians are vegetarians,
| despite the stereotype, but that's a discussion for another
| day.)
|
| TL;DR India has lots of good vegetarian food, but hardly
| any of us are vegans.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#Preservative_claim
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Hi, thanks for this cultural sharing. I don't understand
| something about Indian culture -probably because of
| prejudices- and would be glad to know more. Hindus in
| India venerate (or respect?) cows such a way they let
| them live in free roaming. Also they eat a lot of ghee
| and milk derivatives. Where does those milk comes from ?
|
| A. Is it ok to eat a cow if someone else raise the cow?
|
| B. Is it ok to eat milk raised by someone else
|
| C. Is it ok to 'milk' a stray cows while they looks
| skinny?
|
| D. How do they regards the calves needed once in a while
| for milk production?
|
| E. Does Hindus only eat chicken (and so) but no milk
| while muslims eat everything?
|
| F. Where goes the dead free roaming cows cadavers? Is
| there enough vultures?
|
| Note I'm not trying to find logical incoherencies or
| logical fallacies, I'm very aware there's many think that
| can been seen as inconsistant or very consistent
| depending on your knowledge on a subject - which is never
| 100% reachable.
| ttepasse wrote:
| > And the reason pre-cooked meat pieces are added to
| curries in restaurants is that we need to get the food to
| you in 5-7 minutes. We can't cook it leisurely for 25-30
| minutes in the gravy like we would do at home. It's
| called "mise en place" in the restaurant business.
|
| Some years ago I fell into a Youtube rabbit hole of
| British Indian Restaurants. (Actually most seemed
| Bangladeshi) In Britian Indian cuisine has a far more
| "takeout" status. Hence BI restaurants started to
| deconstruct popular dishes into components which can be
| prepared in advance and combined into different dishes.
| It may not be original but I found the process of
| adaptation rather fascinating.
|
| (Here in Germany it seems rather worse. Also takeout
| status, but I suspect a lot of takeout orders are simply
| microwaved stuff.)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I'm actually well aware of this and didn't mean to offend
| people. And 30% is actually quite a large percentage.
|
| I actually make ghee myself sometimes from butter (easy
| and a lot cheaper than buying it from the super market).
|
| A lot of (british) indian restaurants use cooking oil
| instead and I'm well aware that that's not the same as
| what people in India would consider Indian food and that
| something like a Tikka Massala is not actually a thing
| you'd find in a proper restaurant in India; which is a
| country I've never been to and would love to go to to
| experience the food.
|
| But anyway, a lot of these restaurants use cooking oil
| because it's cheaper and because it makes everything they
| cook with that vegan by default. Which at least in places
| with a lot of vegans is a nice feature.
|
| Here in Berlin, finding decent Indian food is a bit of a
| challenge in any case. Germans are hopeless with spicy
| food. And I know only a few Indian places that add more
| than homeopathic amounts of chili. Most of the Indian
| restaurants in the more touristy spots are owned by one
| family and those aren't great. I've gotten some tips from
| Indian colleagues over the years for better options.
|
| Anyway a lot of dals indeed don't use a lot of spices or
| flavoring. And that's just sidestepping all the different
| regions and food styles. Which are a thing as well of
| course.
|
| As for Malaysian/Indonesian style cuisine; I'm Dutch and
| got exposed to a lot of the Dutch Indonesian food which,
| similar to British Indian food is not really that
| authentic. Lots of meat in there indeed. And quite spicy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a
| desire to be healthy or loose weight[...]
|
| Same thing happened to me at probably around the same time. I
| realized I could just have a lollypop, and it would be a
| tenth of the sugar. Most of the sweetness in soda doesn't
| even get a chance to touch your tongue before it's going down
| your throat. If I want candy, I should just have a piece of
| candy. If I'm thirsty, I should have a glass of water.
|
| Also, the carbonation in soda enables them to get twice the
| sugar into it. Drinking a flat soda is like drinking maple
| syrup.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I drink 250 ml soda cans/bottles. 25-28g of sugar.
|
| Be aware that a lot of candy has similar amounts of sugar.
| M&M packets have even more.
| malfist wrote:
| The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz
| (bottle).
|
| A 12oz coke has 39g of sugar. A 20oz bottle of coke is
| 65g.
|
| Coke isn't close to the worst offender and this ignores
| soda at restaurants when 28oz is often the smallest you
| can buy
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz
| (bottle).
|
| True but you can get 250ml cans in most grocery stores.
|
| Also, there are plenty of places I shop at where the
| smallest Hershey's bar or M&M packet is the King/share
| size one. The M&M one has 57g of sugar.
|
| Difficulty in buying smaller portions is not unique to
| soda.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's probably a risky line of thinking, if you're addicted
| to sugar, to substitute in some other source of sugar. Best
| to avoid pastries, lollipops and sugary sodas.
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's a risky way of thinking to reduce every act to a
| moral choice. ie I could have used the energy that I
| burned making this post, to hand out a dollar to a
| homeless person.
|
| Beyond how ridiculously reductive this becomes, it's
| impractical. You have to have carbs for your brain to
| run.
| eru wrote:
| I agree with almost everything you say. However:
|
| > Beyond how ridiculously reductive this becomes, it's
| impractical. You have to have carbs for your brain to
| run.
|
| No. People live on no-carb diets just fine and enter
| ketosis. (And in any case, the comment you replied to
| only talked about sugar, not carbs in general.)
| vixen99 wrote:
| Not just any no/low carb diet:
|
| 'A low-carbohydrate diet based on animal sources was
| associated with higher all-cause mortality in both men
| and women, whereas a vegetable-based low-carbohydrate
| diet was associated with lower all-cause and
| cardiovascular disease mortality rates.'
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2989112/
|
| It is of course rather difficult if not impossible, to
| have a vegetable diet completely devoid of carbohydrates.
| eru wrote:
| The number of people in this study is surprisingly large!
|
| Alas, it doesn't have much bearing on the part of the
| comment I wanted to focus on 'You have to have carbs for
| your brain to run.' Because the diets in question here
| still have some carbs. (And the changes in mortality
| rates are fairly modest, too.)
|
| What I wanted to say is that even if you eat no carbs at
| all, you brain will still get its energy. You won't just
| keel over after a while, like if you didn't eat anything
| at all henceforth.
|
| Of course, there might be second order health effects,
| like the study you linked suggest.
| knowitnone wrote:
| no you don't. You have to have glucose for your brain to
| run. Understand the difference.
| majkinetor wrote:
| u dont have to input it as body makes enough
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I agree with peers. Doesn't Keto (for part of the year)
| worked for millennia for our ancestors?
| addicted wrote:
| Most of our ancestors lived a fraction of the lifespans
| we do.
|
| So any argument based on "it worked for our ancestors" is
| flawed.
|
| "It worked for our ancestors" could be the beginning of
| an idea for research, but certainly does not take you
| much further than that.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I agree with all you said but I also guess our ancestors
| mostly die from infection, hypothermia, viruses...
| certainly not from brain stop working because carbs
| deficiency.
|
| "You have to have carbs for your brain to run" doesn't
| make sense. You have to have sugar in your brain to run,
| but that sugar surely can comes from fat as well.
| eru wrote:
| Some of our ancestors might have done keto some times,
| but I'm not sure most of them did most of the time?
| Humans are decidedly omnivorous, and most of them would
| eat whatever they could get their hands on, including
| plants and mushrooms (and sometimes honey!) etc.
| stefs wrote:
| iirc the inuit had a diet mostly consisting of meat and
| fish, but - according to wikipedia - not even they were
| usually in ketosis.
| Supermancho wrote:
| They also had carbohydrates in their diet. Meat naturally
| contains carbs. Pretending that the human body is
| misunderstood and that it worked very differently is a
| common pitfall of these discussions. Largely it was the
| same, with the amounts differing.
| hollerith wrote:
| Meat contains only insignificant amounts of carbs. The
| human body can convert protein to carbs (glucose
| specifically) but the rate at which it can do it is
| limited, and my guess is that if it can't burn glucose, a
| metabolically-healthy body will burn fat (rather than
| glucose made from protein) until the diet has been quite
| deficient in calories for at least 3 days.
| peaceanwar wrote:
| No. You dont.
|
| There are other metabolic pathways to produce glucose (or
| produce ketones). The other pathways 'push' the body more
| since they have to do some conversion. This 'extra
| effort' is considered to be more healthy.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Yes there are. You still need carbs and you get them (ie
| celery has carbs), regardless. Repetition wont convince
| someone arguing in bad faith, so I will bow to your
| religious beliefs.
| scrollop wrote:
| Yes you need to have carbs, however the quality of the
| carbohydrate is the most important factor.
|
| If you have any sense for your health you will not have
| regular intake of sugar, white bread, potatoes crisps,
| rice cakes, any thing with a high GI.
|
| Some carbohydrates reduce your risk of diabetes, and if
| you're smart you follow the evidence and you eat these-
|
| https://youtu.be/DNQrNWsoPEE?si=GORRP5IblhNkKCdF
| hollerith wrote:
| >You have to have carbs for your brain to run.
|
| The brain can run well on ketone bodies (which the liver
| makes from fatty acids). In fact, causing the brain to
| run on ketone bodies is used by doctors to treat illness
| (and not just epilepsy).
| tunapizza wrote:
| Why are people downvoting this?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Because they strongly disagree.
|
| If I have soda cravings, I can take a single Tic Tac. It
| doesn't satisfy my soda cravings, but crucially, it
| prevents the soda itself from satisfying those same
| cravings if I do subsequently drink it.
|
| Usually I crave soda after a high salt/fried food. Giving
| myself a tiny amount of sugar (Tic Tac has 0.5g) removes
| the salt/fried taste, and I just can't get the good soda
| effect I know I would have gotten without the Tic Tac.
| There just isn't a point for me to take soda after a Tic
| Tac.
|
| So yes, substituting a small amount of sugar for a large
| one can be very effective.
| hgomersall wrote:
| If I go to a restaurant with fill your own drinks (rare in
| the UK), I generally get soda water with about 10% coke.
| It's remarkable how much it tastes (to me) just like coke,
| albeit palatably sweet. I always thought the sugar tax
| should be a sweetness tax to change people's perceptions.
| lhoff wrote:
| I also do this, usually with sprite or fanta and I think
| its more refreshing this way
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When I stopped drinking soda (about ten years ago), my
| stomach immediately started feeling better.
|
| I will sometimes have a ginger ale, from time to time, when
| I'm eating out, and usually won't finish it, but I otherwise,
| don't drink soda, anymore.
| hattmall wrote:
| In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have
| significantly less sugar than a soda.
| parineum wrote:
| pastries also have fat though and parent was talking about
| enjoyment per kcal.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Fat is good for you, as long as it isn't trans-fat. The
| common wisdom around cholesterol is false (the "lipid
| hypothesis" is just that, a hypothesis).
| parineum wrote:
| Excess calories are bad for you, no matter what form they
| come in.
| eitally wrote:
| This depends if you consider all carbohydrates to be sugar
| or not. At the end of the day, the refined flours in the
| pastry are also sugar-equivalent.
| trhway wrote:
| >In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still
| have significantly less sugar than a soda.
|
| yep. The can of soda has something like 10 spoons of sugar.
| In that volume i stop feeling the difference after 2nd-3rd
| spoon of sugar. I do drink soda - by diluting it about 1:5.
| For the pastries and other bakery products - it does
| depends where it comes from. The standard American bakery
| sill puts a lot of sugar into pastries, cakes, bread
| (especially the fast-rise), etc. while some of the ones
| trying to do European style do use sugar more moderately
| (they also usually use more fat like butter thus making the
| taste better, more balanced, and probably also thus more
| healthy - my personal impression/opinion - as the more
| balanced content (fat/carbs vs. low-fat-high-sugar approach
| somehow more popular in the American bakery) seems to me to
| be better).
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not that no sugar variants of soda are exactly a shining
| health food staple or better than going to healthy drinks lik
| water but...
|
| For me I was absolutely shocked at how a soda being sugar
| free didn't have to imply it was like drinking horse piss. I
| had tried Diet Coke a few times and assumed that was what you
| had to deal with if you went sugar free. One day someone gave
| me a Coke Zero and it was actually not bad, even if not quite
| being as good as Coke. This led me to try some others like Dr
| Pepper Zero Sugar for which I thought "what the hell, this
| tastes better than Dr Pepper???".
|
| Obviously which are better will vary by person and most
| people will, overall, like sodas with actual sugar more often
| but if everyone tried a few different options they might be
| surprised how little they'd have to trade down on the soda
| for, if anything, to drastically drop their sugar intake.
| nprateem wrote:
| Aspartame is bad for your gut microbiome
| parineum wrote:
| Source
| mohaine wrote:
| Citation?
|
| Is this a normal soda consumption levels in humans or
| when feeding it to rats at some obscene rate?
|
| I'm not saying it is good for you, but we need facts not
| blind statements with no context.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I'm not an expert but a quick search leads me to:
|
| > We identify NAS-altered microbial metabolic pathways
| that are linked to host susceptibility to metabolic
| disease, and demonstrate similar NAS-induced dysbiosis
| and glucose intolerance in healthy human subjects.
| Collectively, our results link NAS consumption, dysbiosis
| and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a
| reassessment of massive NAS usage
|
| I'd be glad to see the full paper
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/
|
| > normal soda consumption levels in humans
|
| I note that "normal" here should be read as "common
| during the last 50years (or less)", where the last 50ears
| is quite reductive in human dietary habits.
| Laforet wrote:
| This paper you linked does not even involve aspartame.
| The only sweetener they experimented with is saccharin.
| You can check out the main figures from the link below:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265791239_Artifi
| cia...
|
| I would be very reluctant to read too deep into this
| given saccharin is known to behave very differently in
| animal models - for a long time it was thought to cause
| bladder cancer, but follow up studies proved that it's an
| idiosyncratic reaction only found in female lab rats and
| no other gender/species combination. Not to mention the
| dose used was unrealistic to begin with.
|
| It's entirely plausible that sugar analogs like sucralose
| and non-calorific sugar alcohols such as erythritol and
| maltitol can cause long term changes in the gut biome but
| high quality evidence is still lacking.
| nprateem wrote:
| Christ I'm not your mother. Search pubmed.
|
| Research suggests a link to cancer. It'd be bad for your
| microbiome if you die.
| johnyzee wrote:
| >I do the same for fats. The way I look at it, I want to
| maximize the "enjoyment per kcalorie". :)
|
| We are increasingly moving away from looking at fat as an
| indulgence, towards understanding it as an essential
| nutrient, with a large variance in fat types and their
| benefits. E.g. some people would avoid eating nuts, because
| they are high in fat, and not as tasty as something similarly
| fatty, like a pastry. This seems wrong both intuitively, but
| also from empirical findings about the impact of certain
| omega-3 fatty acids (such as in nuts) versus that of, say,
| omega-6 fats, which are way overrepresented in our diets due
| to being so cheap.
| rroblak wrote:
| This. People are getting the message that "sugar is bad"
| but the public health messaging of "fat is bad" still
| lingers in many people's heads. It's sad, because as you
| mentioned some days are indeed essential nutrients.
| Especially for kids and pregnant women.
| mlyle wrote:
| I mean, the "fat is bad" thing isn't completely wrong: it
| is definitely possible to overdo it. It's extremely
| calorically dense, and most fats are bad for us in other
| ways.
|
| But society didn't replace some of the fat with increased
| intake of vegetables and lean meats.
|
| Food manufacturers compensated for less fat with more
| sugars and salt, which we've been finding are even worse.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" People are getting the message that "sugar is bad" but
| the public health messaging of "fat is bad" still lingers
| in many people's heads."_
|
| If this is true then what the hell is going on? We knew
| this about sugar with certainly at absolute minimum a
| half century ago when I was a kid (I know as I remember
| the message).
|
| The message--even as told at school--was that _'
| excessive and repeated amounts of sugar (especially the
| refined type as in drinks and sweets) causes diabetes'._
| QED!
|
| So what the fuck has happened, how was this once well-
| established message erased from the collective
| consciousness of more recent generations?
|
| The message back then was so all pervasive that everybody
| knew it.
|
| So many important facts have been lost to recent
| generations that I'm beginning to think education is
| going backwards fast. What happened to health lectures in
| primary school where we were told these facts?
| mlyle wrote:
| We only really recently have evidence for sugar, on its
| own, causing diabetes.
|
| We had a lot of evidence for sugar causing weight gain.
| And higher weight is strongly correlated with type II
| diabetes. But from a public health standpoint, we were
| worried about fats. We realized that many fats caused
| health problems even without weight gain and also viewed
| fats as having a more primary role in weight gain.
|
| It's only recently (in the last couple of decades) that
| we've gotten evidence that sugar on its own can increase
| the risk of type 2 diabetes--even if you are of normal
| weight.
| 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.
| mcny wrote:
| The best coffee I have ever had was from a coworker's
| French press. (:
| brailsafe wrote:
| The best coffee you'll ever have is one that was made for
| you with care :) Pay it forward if ya can.
| 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 :)
| eru wrote:
| Here in Singapore cheese is a lot more expensive than in
| Europe, alas.
|
| I can definitely tell the differences between different
| coffees or teas or bread etc. The range for wine isn't
| that large. And that's not just in 'quality', but also
| just in less variety than eg (craft) beers or breads.
| codazoda wrote:
| I've tried lots of different coffee's and I keep going
| back to (don't laugh) Folgers Instant. Maybe it's because
| it's what my parents had when I was a kid. Nothing else
| is quite like it.
|
| Unfortunately, I add 100 calories of crap to it. But I
| drink it slower than Coke and it's at least half the
| calories of a 32oz (my other vise). I use it as a way to
| lower my calorie count, just a little.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Surprisingly less calories in 32oz of Coke than I was
| expecting, less than a standard Starbucks sugary drink
| probably. Regarding coffee, people like what they like,
| and there's a lot of memories I also have associated with
| it, as well as drinking copious amounts of Coke for that
| matter.
|
| If you ever want to try and ease off both those vices,
| I'd simply recommend buying a McDonalds coffee, buying a
| Starbucks _Blonde_ Americano, and then taking them home
| and brewing a cup of the folgers instant with no
| additions. Get someone to pour them into identical cups,
| and have them play a shell game (move the cups around to
| hide which ones they are), then try them back and forth.
| Try to avoid anything with sugar in it for a few hours
| before. I bet you 'll pick out some differences and maybe
| even like them, then if you want to try and delete the
| sugar from your coffee, avoid it in exchange for black
| coffee for at least a few months. It's not as hard as it
| seems, but it does take some time.
|
| Then if you like, play around with easy home brewing
| methods like french press or pour over, grinding beans
| etc.. those were probably the most impactful things I
| tried when I went on the same journey. Grinding recently
| roasted beans before brewing was eye opening. I honestly
| didn't believe black coffee could be palatable, and was
| drinking Folgers with half and half from the big red can
| for ages.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Do you add cream or milk?
| 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.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I think this is something that people don't appreciate
| about being acclimated to sugar coffee. It takes a while
| to adapt, you can't just try it periodically and try to
| convince yourself it's better than the milky alternative,
| contrast is too significant, like comparing a pear and a
| slice of dry whole grain bread, or walking vs driving, or
| going to the gym vs not. A couple of months though and
| you'll probably be well on the way. In a pinch I'll grab
| a black coffee from McDonalds, since it's more on the
| medium side anyway, and it's perfectly serviceable.
| 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.
| eru wrote:
| Milk has a bit of milk sugar in it. So you get some
| sweetness that way.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Agave syrup is virtually pure fructose. As a sugar
| alternative it's ... not that great. The insulin response
| is fairly low, true, but the high fructose content
| carries its own risks.
|
| <https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/agave-nectar-is-
| even-wo...>
|
| Stevia would be a non-sugar-based sweetener, though it
| does have a distinctly different taste.
|
| I'd learned to drink coffee with milk/cream, no sugar.
| With decent beans (Trader Joe's Bay Blend, e.g., nothing
| fancy) and a Moka pot that's more than sufficient.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Have you tried playing around with using the same
| grinder, but switching up the beans and brewing method?
|
| I think a lot of people go espresso at home, but I do
| think that's an extremely difficult thing to transition
| to consuming black unless you're really into the hobby of
| it all and have adjusted. It's just really intense, which
| naturally blends well with the fats and sugars in dairy,
| especially with most espresso roasts being darker. If I
| personally go espresso, it's either a latte or black
| Americano.
| 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.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I was able to switch to coffee and a little half and half
| with nothing else. That seems to be good enough for me and
| pretty low calorie and sugar content.
|
| Drinking black coffee only has been difficult though, even
| with more expensive coffee (I'm not sure what's considered
| higher quality necessarily, but I have an espresso machine
| and I'm grinding whole beans for brands of coffee that
| websites claim are good)
| brailsafe wrote:
| From my cursory sense of espresso, it's a bit of a
| finicky, expensive, and niche thing to enjoy in the raw.
| It's my impression that the overwhelming majority of
| people in Canada and the U.S for example enjoy their
| espresso in an espresso-based drink, like a latte or
| cortado, because the intensity and texture of it mixes
| quite well with the fats and sugars in cream or milk, and
| is often made from darker roasts which balance out well.
| It would be very hard to transition from that to just raw
| espresso made from any bean.
|
| I personally do not enjoy espresso on its own enough to
| invest in that sort of equipment, and am fine just
| getting that periodically at a cafe.
|
| Anyone recommending any particular coffee on the internet
| should qualify it with their brewing method and personal
| preferences, because some people like a french press,
| some people like espresso, or aeropress, or pourover, for
| various reasons, and none are better than any other, but
| some people like the intensity of straight espresso, and
| some people like what you'd call drip/filter coffee,
| which would be a classic cone that you drip water
| through.
|
| Likewise, among "high quality" coffee, there's a world of
| variety. Many great South American beans lean into
| chocolatey, but some end up quite sweet and fruity, while
| east african or indonesian beans can pretty much taste
| like candy. Quality usually refers to "grade", which is
| more technical and I'm not too well versed on, but to me
| it means how well the roasted product reveals the
| potential of a well-selected batch. Sounds a bit
| pretentious, but basically if you like bitters or cocoa
| or milk or dark chocolate, high quality beans will make
| that very enjoyable, both because it was a good crop from
| the right region, and because the roaster did their job
| by leaving enough of the sugars and moisture in the bean
| throughout the roasting process. It's worth experimenting
| with all of this.
|
| If it doesn't taste that good, it can be because any of
| those other variables are off, or the blend that the
| roaster chose to make wasn't a good selection; they might
| have chosen to mix a brazillian with an east african and
| got the balance wrong for your taste, or it's too bitter
| because they roasted it too long, or it might just be
| stale, or you just don't like it because it's not your
| vibe.
|
| Right now, I'm doing pour overs with a Hario Switch or
| V60 dripper and use a modest grinder. It's a pretty
| standard and inexpensive setup, the dripper usually comes
| in plastic or glass, and I get beans that are roasted in
| the neighbourhood within the month for about ~$10USD or
| sometimes more, and often they'll be an african or
| columbian blend. It costs me very little and is a simple
| pleasure. This is probably what I'd recommend if you were
| looking to play around, it's cheap and would require only
| the most marginal of equipment changes. It admittedly did
| take me a long time to taper off the cream and milk, I'd
| get it from McDonalds or whatever, but now I can even
| drink that stuff black pretty easily, but it's nearly
| impossible to tolerate if you're just side-by-side
| comparing with a coffee+milk mix, the contrast is too
| harsh.
|
| I do still drink an occasional soda fwiw, and enjoy a
| latte, but now that I've figured out how to find and make
| good black coffee, there's no turning back. I'd rather
| the sugar come from a dessert.
| 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
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I learned to drink it black, but not for health reasons. I
| did it to avoid having to depend on sugar a/o milk in order
| to have a coffee. Plus, nothing says "No nonsense" like
| "Coffee? Yes, black please."
| 0xEF wrote:
| It"s funny but also true? I have taken my coffee black
| for years now, having started because I wanted to just
| simplify my experience with it (among other things in my
| life). Not that my old coffee order was complex, but
| being lactose intolerant meant I needed to choose which
| milk substitute I was going to get, since not all coffee
| shops carried the same ones back in the day (less of a
| problem now, from what I understand). I grew to enjoy it
| black and still drink it that way to this day.
|
| Going back to it, I think the need to simplify things was
| key for me. We are bombarded with so many choices,
| especially in our food products which I've described as
| the Breakfast Cereal Problem in the past. There are
| simply too many to consider them all with each shopping
| trip, so you are almost forced to just make one arbitrary
| choice and live with it unless you want to be paralyzed
| in the grocer aisle. None of the choices really offer a
| significant value or weight over the others, each cereal
| promising the same thing; to be part of a balanced
| breakfast, that Gestalt puzzle created by marketers to
| kick off our day.
|
| Once you step back from that world, it does seem
| miserably pointless and the same can be said for the
| SSB's in the article. But on a deeper level, it says
| something about the stresses we introduce into our lives
| by chasing too many choices. I can't remember which of
| his books he mentions this in, but Richard Feynman seemed
| to have the same realization when struggling to decide
| what to get for dessert in restaurants. Eventually, be
| just settled on chocolate cake so he didn't have to make
| that decision anymore. That stuck with me for some
| reason, more than any concerns about how soda or whatever
| might be affecting my blood sugar, pushing me in the
| direction of just going with the more ubiquitous
| alternative; water.
|
| Plus with soda at $4USD a pop in most restaurants these
| days, it's just cheaper to go with water. So we have
| health, simplicity and financial reasons to not go for
| the SSBs. Seems enough for me.
|
| /ramble
| m3kw9 wrote:
| "Please hold on, white"
| DanielHB wrote:
| I recommend replacing the sugar for a little bit of milk.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I just add a few drops of Stevia (have a liquid bottle that
| ends up being incredibly cheap on the whole)... personally, I
| can't really tell the difference.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Monkfruit sweetener tastes better and more like sugar to
| me.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I've used and liked that as well, but honestly I'm not
| too discerning. Where I am in Mexico atm it's hard to
| find in a similar liquid form.
| EasyMark wrote:
| that's what I do, just a few drops is more than enough with
| a splash of whole milk or cream
| leptons wrote:
| I sweeten my coffee now with pure monkfruit. It's great in
| coffee, and chocolate too. It's really sweet, which is how I
| like my coffee, only a little is needed. And there's zero
| sugar or anything even close to a sugar.
|
| The best time to stop eating sugar is yesterday. I wish I
| hadn't fucked up my body so much with sugar.
| 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.
| jjav wrote:
| Seconded. Lustig's talks are extremely good and highly
| recommended for anyone who eats.
| loeg wrote:
| Lustig is a crank with opinions well outside scientific
| consensus.
| bitwize wrote:
| This is one of those areas where scientific consensus needs
| to catch up with the alarming facts that have been
| discovered. Scientific consensus was against handwashing
| for doctors and plate tectonics, and it still is in favor
| of "clearing amyloid plaques will totally fix Alzheimer's",
| but the facts just keep on being what they be.
| loeg wrote:
| No, this is an area where Lustig is probably wrong, and
| definitely making unsubstantiated statements.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit?
| vixen99 wrote:
| As in? No examples so that we can look at the facts
| ourselves?
| parineum wrote:
| You can use that exact post to reply to anything. It's
| devoid of information relevant to this topic.
| raegis wrote:
| This isn't true. He has books and lectures explaining the
| metabolic processes when eating refined sugar, and why it's
| bad for you. Nowadays it's pretty mainstream stuff.
| Nevertheless, can you give an example of one of his
| opinions which is "well outside scientific consensus".
| loeg wrote:
| > Nevertheless, can you give an example of one of his
| opinions which is "well outside scientific consensus".
|
| Lustig specifically claims that sugar is addictive; that
| fiber somehow mitigates the absorption of fructose; that
| calorie restriction does not cause weight loss; that in
| fact, weight loss is somehow a function of insulin, not
| calories; that fructose is uniquely bad relative to other
| sugars; that fructose causes inflammation; that recent
| decades' increase in obesity is caused by increased sugar
| consumption; that statins are essentially useless; that
| some kinds of LDL cholesterol are good for longevity;
| that non-nutritive sweeteners have the same impact on
| fat/weight gain as sugar; etc, etc, etc, etc.
|
| A few of these claims are wholly unsubstantiated by
| research; the rest have some research _and the research
| does not support Lustig 's claims_.
| scoofy wrote:
| What are you talking about?!? He's not some random dude,
| he's a specialist and professor, at UCSF:
| https://pediatrics.ucsf.edu/people/robert-lustig
|
| >sugar is addictive
|
| >>The evidence supports the hypothesis that under certain
| circumstances rats can become sugar dependent. This may
| translate to some human conditions as suggested by the
| literature on eating disorders and obesity.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2235907/
|
| >that fiber somehow mitigates the absorption of fructose
|
| >>Dietary fiber (DF), especially viscous DF, can
| contribute to a reduction in the glycemic response
| resulting from the consumption of carbohydrate-rich
| foods.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9736284/
|
| >that calorie restriction does not cause weight loss
|
| >>Mechanisms smooth out the large day-to-day differences
| in energy consumption, decreasing the importance of the
| size of a meal. In the short term a reduction in energy
| intake is counteracted by mechanisms that reduce
| metabolic rate and increase calorie intake, ensuring the
| regaining of lost weight.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5639963/
|
| I'm not going to go on and on... UCSF, which is one of
| the most respected teaching hospitals in the country,
| isn't hiring cranks. He specialize in exactly this stuff.
| Yea, he's a bit more strident than would would expect
| from a scientist, yes, he deals with the extremes of
| childhood obesity, which isn't really relevant to most
| people's bodies, but christ, he's not a crank.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > In the short term a reduction in energy intake is
| counteracted by mechanisms that reduce metabolic rate and
| increase calorie intake, ensuring the regaining of lost
| weight.
|
| If calorie intake increases, then it's no longer "calorie
| restriction".
|
| If his actual claim was that calorie restriction does not
| cause weight loss, then that's wild despite your quote.
|
| > I'm not going to go on and on...
|
| Well you didn't address the other really egregious
| supposed claim, that "non-nutritive sweeteners have the
| same impact on fat/weight gain as sugar". If that's an
| accurate description of his stance, that's really bad.
| scoofy wrote:
| >While people often choose "diet" or "light" products to
| lose weight, research studies suggest that artificial
| sweeteners may contribute to weight gain.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2892765/
|
| Again... things that are counterintuitive are exactly the
| purview of good science. The human body is an absurdly
| complex multi-variate system that is confounding even in
| the areas we pretend to understand.
|
| The interaction of the neurologist of taste on biological
| processes may be affecting the hunger responses, thus
| weight gain.
|
| This shit is not simple, and the simplistic models we use
| to explain these processes are exactly the type on
| ultimately wrong knowledge that Karl Popper rails
| against.
|
| Again, I definitely think Lustig claims debatable things
| overconfidently, but he's no crank.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "may contribute" is _really far_ from "the same impact"
|
| Even more so if there's a calorie restriction going on,
| but still so if there isn't.
| loeg wrote:
| You're motte and baileying.
| vixen99 wrote:
| When you make accusations like this why not offer a
| specific illustrative example to avoid suggestions of mere
| name calling. Scientific consensus?. Actually nutrition &
| medical science is replete with the abandonment of
| 'received opinion'. How about applauding researchers who
| have novel ideas outside the consensus while at the same
| time insisting they demonstrate their evidence or in
| problematic areas, convincing reasons for pursuing their
| path?
| 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.
| eru wrote:
| It's also a lot easier and quicker to drink the juice from,
| say, 6 oranges than to eat 6 oranges.
| 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.
| musicale wrote:
| I think citric acid is better than phosphoric acid (e.g. for
| your bones and kidneys), though both can dissolve tooth
| enamel.
|
| OJ also has more vitamin C than typical sodas.
|
| Milk has more calories/ounce than soda, but it also has
| protein, fat, and calcium.
|
| Anecdotally, I find juice more filling than soda, milk even
| more so.
| malfist wrote:
| Citric acid and phosphoric acid likely have the same impact
| on your teeth and no impact on your bones and kidneys.
|
| Acids and bases on your diet have very little to do with
| what pH is exposed to the rest of your body. Your stomach
| is probably more acid than anything you eat or drink, and
| your lungs and kidneys tightly regulate the pH of the
| blood. If your diet is effecting your blood pH, your
| probably already on death's door
| davoneus wrote:
| Intuitively, I suspect any acid is bad for your teeth.
| But I see that statement primarily from Dentists, and
| their track record in a number of areas is less than
| stellar. Prime example: Flossing and 6 month checkups.
| Neither of which have good scientific evidence, despite
| their widespread promotion.
| eru wrote:
| From anecdotal evidence: when I stop flossing for a few
| days, my gums start bleeding.
|
| Not sure what suspicious extra super powers your dentist
| suggests flossing has?
| cableshaft wrote:
| I go every three months, and they have a good amount of
| tartar to clean off my teeth then. Also before I did that
| I was having pretty significant pockets for gum disease
| for all my teeth (it was close to the point where it's
| irreversible).
|
| It's mostly under control now, except for problem areas
| in two specific spots, but even those are still better
| than they were.
|
| I haven't really changed my dental hygeine habits other
| than going in for routine cleanings twice as often, so
| it's definitely helping.
| in-pursuit wrote:
| Milk actually has a ridiculous amount of sugar. 11g per
| cup! That makes it hard to drink if you're trying to cut
| back on sugar.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Lactose is poorly digestible though
| gdw2 wrote:
| > the health effect would be equally detrimental.
|
| From the article:
|
| > High doses of rapidly digested glucose also activate
| insulin and other regulatory pathways...
|
| Orange Soda (i.e. Fanta), an SSB, and Orange Juice have
| glycemic indexes of about 68 and 48 respectively. I assume
| that's a material difference in that OJ doesn't spike your
| insulin as abruptly and therefore is not as harmful. Thre's
| more to it than simply grams of sugar.
| Zobat wrote:
| The diabetics I know say OJ is worse than (sugared) sodas.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Maybe because they can drink it faster. Glycmic index's
| and the equivalent index's around insulin response are
| literally the gold standard for deciding what's okay to
| eat. "Vibes" or "My opinions" do not matter. OJ is
| marginally "healthier", significantly because the fiber
| in the drink (more pulp the better) slows down (slightly)
| the insulin and glycemic responses.
|
| Source: Family of diabetics who have actually lost limb
| to the poison that is refined sugar.
| EasyMark wrote:
| also a lot of people won't acknowledge that as far as damage
| that sugar is likely just as bad as HFCS. both should be
| heavily reduced
| jtc331 wrote:
| I believe sucrose and fructose are processed differently --
| specifically fructose is processed by the liver so can have
| the same issues as alcohol there.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Sucrose is 50% fructose. HFCS is typically 42-55%
| fructose. They are essentially indistinguishable to your
| liver.
| sideshowb wrote:
| > Sucrose is 50% fructose
|
| What? They're different molecules
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Sucrose is a disaccharide made up of 50% glucose and 50%
| fructose.
| majkinetor wrote:
| There is also a chemical bond that needs to be broken in
| sucrose
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Of course, and the human body is full of enzymes that
| exist to cleave saccharides into their constituent
| sugars.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Soft drinks tend to be much higher in sugar per ounce, roughly
| double. A 12 ounce can of coke has 39 grams, so you blow past
| that at around 4 ounces.
| busyant wrote:
| I know several people who've undergone bariatric surgery.
|
| One of the post-surgery 'rules' is ... "Don't drink your
| calories."
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's odd to me that zero-calorie sodas aren't the default by
| now.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I used to drink a lot of soda but stopped 15 years ago and
| have had a total of three or four cans since. I switched to
| unsweetened green tea instead of a zero-calorie soda because
| I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, and I am
| somewhat suspicious of the unknown long-term consequences of
| their use.
| busyant wrote:
| > I am somewhat suspicious of the unknown long-term
| consequences of their use.
|
| Can you elaborate on what you mean?
|
| You're suspicious that sweetened drinks are more harmful
| than advertised? Less harmful? Something else?
| gdjskslsuhkso wrote:
| Aspartame metabolises into methanol. Sugar alcohols give
| you the squirts. Lots of them have downsides.
|
| Allulose seems promising, I'd love to find some pop
| sweetened with it.
| loeg wrote:
| The older diet sodas definitely didn't taste like sugar but
| the new ones (Coke Zero) are pretty great? Idk, I almost
| never drink full sugar soda but I'm a fan of Coke Zero.
| bitwize wrote:
| Coke Zero still has aspartame and so still has a bit of
| that "aspar-tang" to its taste. But there's something in
| its formulation that masks that somewhat and makes it
| tastier than Diet Coke. The advertisements used to say
| "Diet Dr. Pepper DOES taste more like regular Dr. Pepper!"
| and it's true: something about the spices? they add to Dr.
| Pepper causes the aspartame flavor to blend right in and be
| less noticeable.
|
| I drink sugar-free (or occasionally, low-sugar variants
| like Olipop) soda from time to time but I find I'm drinking
| way _less_ soda -- and everything else except maybe water
| and coffee -- these days. Being on a dietary protocol for
| early T2D has brought my liquid cravings way, way down.
| carwyn wrote:
| They are in some countries. The sugar tax in the UK quickly
| led to many places only selling non sugar variants or
| charging a premium for the sugared versions.
| 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.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| People who have serious health issues from drinking soda are
| usually drinking 1+ liters per day. A liter of whiskey per
| day would be extremely bad for you.
| hilux wrote:
| My goodness - I've been doing it all wrong!
|
| Also, you are quite wrong on the amount of soda. Depending
| on your genetics, it takes a lot less than that to mess up
| your A1c.
| 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
| f1shy wrote:
| I drink coke in very small dose, mixed with Fernet branca. And
| I know positively, that if somebody upvotes this, is coming
| from a very specific country, where I've been, where it is very
| popular :)
|
| I do not think is so bad, as I drink it a couple of times a
| month (tops).
| 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.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Why you switched from grams to cans when compared to Dr
| Pepper? A can of Dr Pepper is 350 ml, so about 350 g.
| Therefore:
|
| 100 g of Dr. Pepper has 11g of sugar
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Because no one eats 1 pound of mango.
|
| People drink 10 cans of Dr. Pepper.
| nox101 wrote:
| I know lots of people that eat 1 pound of dried mango,
| usually sugared but often not.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| As mentioned in the sibling comment, your numbers are not
| comparable, and anything >10% is already an absolutely
| unhealthy amount of sugar.
|
| Point being that sugary drinks/foods didn't suddenly come
| to existence.
|
| There are sugary products everywhere because we want them -
| or you might say we were made to want them. We made it
| central to our culture in many ways, and accepted terrible
| dietary habits as the norm. The wide availability of
| something like Dr Pepper is as much a cause as a reflection
| of that.
| chillacy wrote:
| The fiber is afaik a big factor for slowing rate and amount
| of sugar absorbed (amount because apparently some of it makes
| it far enough to feed gut bacteria in the large intestine).
| f1shy wrote:
| Well still different, as I could never possibly drink 300ml of
| honey, without choking or something worse.
|
| On the other hand, grape juice, while not 100% natural, I'm not
| sure how it fares against cola (just considering sugar, not the
| rest of the junk)
|
| Once I drunk some not-still-done wine, basically grape juice
| where the fermentation started, and so some bubbles were
| present. That was the most natural and delicious soda I've ever
| tasted... I do bot even hope it can be healthy to the body...
| but my soul ;)
| lm28469 wrote:
| When in human history could you drink 1L+ of fruit juice for
| $2 every single day regardless of the season?
| f1shy wrote:
| No question. Until VERY recently (in terms of evolution
| anyway).
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If you allow fermentation first, then perhaps Greece? They
| diluted it, but it still may well have added up to 1L+.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Most of our animal relatives obtain the vast majority of their
| calories from fruit, that is, sugar. The tarsier is the closest
| one that doesn't.
| xnx wrote:
| Good point. Natural fruit is different from sugar drinks in a
| few ways: takes effort to collect and consume, contains fiber
| that increases satiety, and is much less sweet (even when
| compared to the extra sweet varieties humans have bred).
| 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.
| znpy wrote:
| Tangentially related: a while ago i used to drink aspartame-
| sweetened drinks (sugarfree coke) but I did quit that as well
| after reading thst the sweet taste is still going go stimulate
| insulin production.
|
| Speaking with a relative eho is a medical doctor they told me
| that yes, that's a thing.
|
| I'm not sure to what degree this might fit into the discussion,
| but just wanted to write this down.
|
| Nowadays i just drink water.
|
| I still have the occasional beer or the occasional glass of
| proper wine if i'm out with friends.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I've known multiple with glucose monitors and all of them told
| me they saw no increase after drink a diet soda. I think the
| "aspartame causes sugar spikes" is an urban legend. I never get
| the sugar rush from them like I do if I drink a sugary soda.
| snvzz wrote:
| Wouldn't the insulin w/o sugar cause a drop, instead?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Wouldn't the insulin w/o sugar cause a drop, instead?
|
| In the short term, but as I understand, the constant
| insulin response would also cause insulin resistance over
| time.
| snvzz wrote:
| Yeah, long term.
|
| But I understood parent as doing immediate measurements
| and expecting blood sugar increase despite insulin
| produced with no carb intake.
| afarviral wrote:
| Yeah absolutely taking artificial sweetener can't cause a
| glucose spike itself (no glucose or minimal amount to be
| derived), but maybe it could contribute to spikier glucose in
| general (due to sweetness contributing to hormonal dis-
| regulation/lack of satiety and overeating)
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> I've known multiple with glucose monitors and all of them
| told me they saw no increase after drink a diet soda. I think
| the "aspartame causes sugar spikes" is an urban legend. I
| never get the sugar rush from them like I do if I drink a
| sugary soda.
|
| IANAD, but my reading of Dr. Jason Fung's book "The Obesity
| Code" suggests that while artificial sweeteners do not spike
| glucose immediately, they elicit an insulin response, which
| over time causes insulin resistance, which over time
| increases glucose.
| afarviral wrote:
| When I researched it in the past I thought that multiple
| studies corroborated that while blood sugar doesn't increase
| from drinking artificially sweetened drinks that people who
| drink them still tend to gain weight. I'm not sure how those
| studies adjusted for things like people that already have
| metabolic syndrome who simply choose artificial sweetener for
| health reasons though?
|
| It seems the most I would be comfortable concluding from recent
| reviews of studies is that there are some worrying findings,
| enough to warrant caution. If you can simply reduce your
| consumption of sugary foods and beverages I suspect it will
| reduce your craving better than a replacement stimuli. You can
| review some studies here:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=obesity+artificial+swe...
|
| It's a fallacy to draw conclusions from the number of
| studies/reviews supporting a given hypothesis, but the majority
| conclude that artificial sweeteners are associated with
| negative health effects and not a helpful tool for adiposity-
| related diseases.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| My father was Type 2 and for decades drank sweet tea; sweet tea
| that progressively became sweeter and sweeter. If you were to let
| it settle, you would see a thick layer of sugar sitting at the
| bottom of the glass. Eventually, he lost both of his legs beneath
| the knee due to infections that festered. He spent his last few
| years in a wheelchair and then eventually died of a heart attack.
|
| Bad habits, bit by bit, over the course of years.
|
| As a photojournalist, he won a Pulitzer for earthquake footage in
| 1989, saw the shuttle take off and land countless times, and took
| an incredible photo at a NASCAR event of a car, engulfed in
| flames, flying directly at his lens. (He got the shot and then
| dove out of the way.)
|
| Which I guess is to say... life is ups and downs. Be wary of
| sugary stuff.
| mc3301 wrote:
| That sounds like an epic photo, indeed.
| underlipton wrote:
| Your father sounds similar to mine: high-achiever, running
| every which way. Question: how was his sleep? My father's
| career was in a field that required annual physical fitness
| certification; his diet probably could have stood to include
| less salt and sugar when I was very young, but he cleaned it
| up, especially by the time he was diagnosed with T2. Something
| his job also required, however: early mornings. Late nights.
| And, evidently, not enough time to stop for a moment and
| determine if he might have sleep apnea (he did).
|
| So, I think it's a three-part issue. Diet (sugar), obviously.
| Exercise, too, and whether or not you're getting it regularly
| throughout the day, every day. But I think it all goes to shit
| if you're getting bad sleep, especially if that "bad sleep" is
| "miniature bouts of asphyxiation." It completely screws with
| your body's ability to regulate itself, hormonally, and to
| recover from the day's damage.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Agree about sleep. He managed a newsroom and "put the paper
| to bed" so he worked from 7pm to 4am. I'm sure it didn't
| help. For myself, I'm physically built very differently
| (leaner) and I don't care much for sweet tea, so I'm lucky I
| guess. But as an achiever, sleep is always my battle. Comes
| and goes!
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| There is a classic book about the effects of sugar named "Sugar
| Blues" for the interested. I have a bad reaction to sugar so have
| to avoid certain foods -- e.g. bananas are a no-no for me.
| bentt wrote:
| Fruit smoothies are an interesting case of a "sugar beverage"
| which doesn't quite act how you'd think. Intuitively, you'd think
| that speedy ingestion of that much fructose with all its fiber
| obliterated in a blender could potentially cause spikes in blood
| glucose. However this study showed that when the fruits had
| seeds, like blackberries and raspberries, the glucose peak was
| _lower_ with blended fruit than whole.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9657402/
| kart23 wrote:
| fiber isn't 'obliterated' in a blender, it's only removed with
| juices. in juice you strain all the pulp and seeds out,
| smoothies retain the seeds and fiber.
| ketarnath wrote:
| Yet another article implying causation from association. The
| theory that sugar CAUSES diabetes type 2 fails when you look at
| people that eat a ton of carbs but keep the fats low: low fat
| vegans, fruitarians. Find one that's diabetic. They should be
| dropping like flies. But look at people that eat high fat >40% of
| calories, and the rest in carbs, and there you'll find the
| population of the metabolically compromised.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I'm not an expert but pretty sure fibers helps a lot regarding
| diabetes 2, microbiote and many other thing related. Vegans and
| fruitarians _usually_ gets a lot more fibers than others
| regimes. But a diverse omnivorous diet including many vegetable
| is better than tofu+potatoes only. I recommend tempeh (0)
| instead tofu.
|
| I agree with you sugars can't be seen as the only one cause.
|
| 0 http://tempeh.info/
| spot5010 wrote:
| Can you please cite sources for your claims?
| jodosha wrote:
| Not a native English speaker but, isn't the word "attributable"
| in the title at least misleading?
|
| Shouldn't it be "linked" instead?
|
| The paper indicates correlation, not causality.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Based on the abstract it's not a study showing that "Type 2
| Diabetes and cardiovascular disease [are] attributable to sugar
| beverages", it's a paper quantifying the "[Amount of] Type 2
| Diabetes and cardiovascular disease [that are] attributable to
| sugar beverages [in various countries]". The link and causation
| is already well established. This is trying to determine how
| much harm it's doing in different parts of the world.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Well this article scared me. Guess I will have to quit Mountain
| Dew. But what if I switched to the sugar free one? (Am I swapping
| diabetes and heart disease for cancer?)
| gleenn wrote:
| Weird software X diabetes story. CFO at my small startup had
| type 2. We only had sugar free sodas and water bottles and,
| oddly, Capri Suns at my 15 person startup. I distinctly
| remember wracking my brain working on some code for long day
| and my brain was like "give me sugar!". I didn't realize that
| attempting to feed it many (sugar-free) sodas, it wasn't
| getting what it wanted. It needed the glucose. I began
| surreptitiously drinking Capri Suns. My CFO sees me chugging
| aforementioned childrens' drink and informs me those are his
| emergency sugar drinks and please don't accidentally kill him
| if he ODs on insulin. Never learned so much biology while
| writing software in my life.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Artifical sweeterner are pretty safe, go for it.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Not true, artificial sweeteners lead to the same addiction
| effects as sugar. There was some paper about this recently.
|
| Also is is not entirely researched what these artificial
| sweeteners really do to your body if consumed over long
| periods of time.
| lm28469 wrote:
| First you should take a few long minutes and think hard about
| why you drink this shit in the first place.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Cuz it tastes good? Because I'm addicted? Because the
| caffeine is great. Because I hate the taste of coffee.
| Because I can? I dunno.
| aembleton wrote:
| If you're addicted to the sugar, then the sugar-free
| version won't satisfy your cravings.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The human experience is all about controlling your urges. I
| also like to eat until I feel stuffed and sleep 12 hours a
| day, but I don't because I value my long term health above
| short term pleasures. Sadly for us modern life is all about
| short term pleasures and convenience, if you're not careful
| you can lose yourself real quick
|
| Try sparkling water, home made water kefir, herbal teas,
| &c.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| why are you lecturing somebody on the internet about
| personal lifestyle choices? as if the whole world doesn't
| know what they consume can negatively affect their
| health...
| gigatexal wrote:
| Real condescending dad energy right?
| gigatexal wrote:
| What was hard to read from the article was if there's a weekly or
| daily intake of sugar from SSB's that's "safe"?
| rauljordan2020 wrote:
| I'm from latam. I never saw anyone drink water growing up.
| Anytime you try to drink water, people label you as boring, even
| your parents. Whenever we go to a restaurant, the first thing you
| ask the waiter is "what sodas do you have?". If you're not
| feeling like drinking soda and want something "healthier", you
| ask what kinds of fruit juices they have. If you don't like the
| options, you settle on a hyper-sweetened tea.
|
| I frequently ask my parents to drink more water, and they get
| defensive saying they drink a lot of water but I just don't see
| it. The truth is they only drink half a small cup in the middle
| of the night...
| batushka5 wrote:
| And how are latam's doing? From your writeup seems to be
| enjoying life
| mmustapic wrote:
| Latin America is very big, I don't think you can generalise
| your experience to a whole subcontinent.
| ashtami8 wrote:
| How did this article get past the sugar mafia? That too in
| nature!
|
| Yudkin [1] must be chortling ;)
|
| Warren Buffett, have your boys been slacking off? Somebody is
| gonna get really hurt...bad!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure,_White_and_Deadly
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