As a kid I had a hand-me-down World Book Encyclopedia that was published in the late 1950s and I clearly remember the entry for "Sugar" starting with something very similar to, "Not only does sugar taste good, but it's good for you!" (I tried showing it to my parents in the hopes of them allowing more sugary desserts, but fortunately they weren't buying it.) I came to find out decades later that many of the entries in the World Book Encyclopedia were written by industry.
I come from a generation greatly impacted by this.
Fat was bad. We got reduced fat milk, everything was fat removed stuff. We at margarine.
But the breakfast cereals were laden with sugar.
To this day this trend continues. I saw a box of cookies at Fry's the other day. Reduced fat! But same calories as the non-reduced fat box, just less fat and more sugar.
Nutrition researcher here. The combination of free acids and free sugars seems to have a synergistically terrible effect on metabolism. The man who discovered diabetes tried to warn about this. The bottom line is you don't want processed carbs or processed fats. They aren't in a form that is much available in the environment, even supposed similar items like pure honey or cream don't show the same effects. Eat starches, fruit, and natural fats (animal, fish, nuts).
If you eat a load of sugar in one sitting you will feel sick, lethargic, have a sugar high or some combination. It also literally _feels_ bad for your teeth. Having a coke or a cookie every now and then is fine but constantly eating it just feels off.
Eating lean chicken with a small amount of butter or oil feels obviously healthy.
Most of the other gaps are just things like OK, you're working 50 hours a week to optimise your bank account, just wind that back a tiny bit and spend 5 hours on your personal health, stop being a mug and take it seriously.
It's like when people ask "how do you have time to...". You turn off the TV and Instagram for a bit (no problem with using them, just maybe not for 2-3 hours a day) and pick up that book you wanted to read or whatever. Job done. It's both trivially easy and very hard if you make it a core aspect of your personality that you are some sort of helpless plebian.
This is absolutely a smoking gun, but I still don't understand exactly how it works.
So TLDR the sugar industry paid for (1?) literature review paper that said that existing papers reporting risks of sugar were flawed.
But what I hear is that _until recently_ sugar research has been put on the backburner, and only recently are people starting to re-examine the links between sugar and heart health.
How are these two related? Did the one paper really put people off researching it for 50 years?
Sugar is often blamed for the obesity epidemic in America. But the data--anecdotal and clinical--shows that high-fat diets do not perform better compared to low-fat diets for weight loss.
Yeah, sugar isn’t good for you. It’s a lot of concentrated calories. And possibly has some other issues as well. Probably stay well below the guidelines. An occasional sweet treat isn’t gonna kill you but don’t go guzzling down coke instead of water.
Lots of fats aren’t good for you either. Especially the saturated kind.
PS: Is there a concerted pro fat effort going on HN right now? We’ve had 1 opinion piece by a non scientist journalist paid by industry to pretend saturated fat is good for you against all evidence so far, and now we have a 2016 article being pushed up to the top defending fats without being marked as such, within hours.
In general, it is wise not to dismiss everything as a conspiracy theory. Flat earth and moon landing conspiracies are not the same as those that involve corrupting a small number of individuals for massive gain.
I feel like we are in a point of time where science is enshittified so much, it will be almost impossible to come back to a reasonable and sustainable interaction with the world and ecosystem around us.
Interestingly the push to reduce fat, which led to increased sugar coincide with the onset of the obesity epidemic. But of-cause correlation isn’t causation.
The distorting power of money. And then think: if it can distort our collective understanding of the world, could it distort our government, our elections, etc.?
The problem with capitalism is that it destroys democracy. Money distributes to a small group of people who then have overwhelming influence over the government, available information, and so on.
We also see that as money flows away from the poor, and the affordability of essential goods like housing, food, and healthcare worsen, those who should gain from democracy rightfully grow to hate it, and vote to destroy it (e.g voting for Trump).
I had the good fortune that the people the government sent to my school to teach such nonsense were the unhealthiest people I had ever seen in my life up to that point. A good priming for a 7 year old into distrusting the government and the start of a resolve to a general rule of thumb that the people telling me how to be healthy should at least appear healthy themselves.
As a kid I had a hand-me-down World Book Encyclopedia that was published in the late 1950s and I clearly remember the entry for "Sugar" starting with something very similar to, "Not only does sugar taste good, but it's good for you!" (I tried showing it to my parents in the hopes of them allowing more sugary desserts, but fortunately they weren't buying it.) I came to find out decades later that many of the entries in the World Book Encyclopedia were written by industry.
I come from a generation greatly impacted by this.
Fat was bad. We got reduced fat milk, everything was fat removed stuff. We at margarine.
But the breakfast cereals were laden with sugar.
To this day this trend continues. I saw a box of cookies at Fry's the other day. Reduced fat! But same calories as the non-reduced fat box, just less fat and more sugar.
Sugar industry, tobacco industry, oil industry.
Which other industries have distorted reality, and which future ones will be revealed in the coming decades?
Nutrition researcher here. The combination of free acids and free sugars seems to have a synergistically terrible effect on metabolism. The man who discovered diabetes tried to warn about this. The bottom line is you don't want processed carbs or processed fats. They aren't in a form that is much available in the environment, even supposed similar items like pure honey or cream don't show the same effects. Eat starches, fruit, and natural fats (animal, fish, nuts).
Remember kids, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and any sugary cereal is good for you as long as it's low fat!
Most dietary advice IMO is bloody obvious.
If you eat a load of sugar in one sitting you will feel sick, lethargic, have a sugar high or some combination. It also literally _feels_ bad for your teeth. Having a coke or a cookie every now and then is fine but constantly eating it just feels off.
Eating lean chicken with a small amount of butter or oil feels obviously healthy.
Most of the other gaps are just things like OK, you're working 50 hours a week to optimise your bank account, just wind that back a tiny bit and spend 5 hours on your personal health, stop being a mug and take it seriously.
It's like when people ask "how do you have time to...". You turn off the TV and Instagram for a bit (no problem with using them, just maybe not for 2-3 hours a day) and pick up that book you wanted to read or whatever. Job done. It's both trivially easy and very hard if you make it a core aspect of your personality that you are some sort of helpless plebian.
This is absolutely a smoking gun, but I still don't understand exactly how it works.
So TLDR the sugar industry paid for (1?) literature review paper that said that existing papers reporting risks of sugar were flawed.
But what I hear is that _until recently_ sugar research has been put on the backburner, and only recently are people starting to re-examine the links between sugar and heart health.
How are these two related? Did the one paper really put people off researching it for 50 years?
(2016)
Sugar is often blamed for the obesity epidemic in America. But the data--anecdotal and clinical--shows that high-fat diets do not perform better compared to low-fat diets for weight loss.
[2016]
Yeah, sugar isn’t good for you. It’s a lot of concentrated calories. And possibly has some other issues as well. Probably stay well below the guidelines. An occasional sweet treat isn’t gonna kill you but don’t go guzzling down coke instead of water.
Lots of fats aren’t good for you either. Especially the saturated kind.
PS: Is there a concerted pro fat effort going on HN right now? We’ve had 1 opinion piece by a non scientist journalist paid by industry to pretend saturated fat is good for you against all evidence so far, and now we have a 2016 article being pushed up to the top defending fats without being marked as such, within hours.
They are probably both bad in excess, since that’s how calories work.
Hold your horses, saturated fat is still no good …
And people still can't hold two things in their head: Saturated fat and added sugar are both bad. Two things can be bad!
In general, it is wise not to dismiss everything as a conspiracy theory. Flat earth and moon landing conspiracies are not the same as those that involve corrupting a small number of individuals for massive gain.
[2016]
I feel like we are in a point of time where science is enshittified so much, it will be almost impossible to come back to a reasonable and sustainable interaction with the world and ecosystem around us.
Interestingly the push to reduce fat, which led to increased sugar coincide with the onset of the obesity epidemic. But of-cause correlation isn’t causation.
The distorting power of money. And then think: if it can distort our collective understanding of the world, could it distort our government, our elections, etc.?
The problem with capitalism is that it destroys democracy. Money distributes to a small group of people who then have overwhelming influence over the government, available information, and so on.
We also see that as money flows away from the poor, and the affordability of essential goods like housing, food, and healthcare worsen, those who should gain from democracy rightfully grow to hate it, and vote to destroy it (e.g voting for Trump).
We need a new economics.
I had the good fortune that the people the government sent to my school to teach such nonsense were the unhealthiest people I had ever seen in my life up to that point. A good priming for a 7 year old into distrusting the government and the start of a resolve to a general rule of thumb that the people telling me how to be healthy should at least appear healthy themselves.