Live data from Hacker News

The Sugar Conspiracy

theguardian.com

11–20 of 362 posts

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#11

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

I think this is one of the worst thing about humans as a generation. If everyone accepted scientific evidence and research as the truth as soon as it was available I believe we would evolve much faster.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#13

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

The problem is that the food industry has been pumping money into research while governments have withdrawn most of it. The whole "butter is good" article in the times was funded by the US dairy industry. Gov funded research still does not agree with it.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#15

I still dont agree that sugar is the problem. Lustig himself seems to have not figured out what the secret is to health and weightloss as he is obese to morbidly obese. Saturated fats still do cause heart disease, strokes, alzheimers.. anything where blood is blocked or doesnt reach the organ it needs to. If anything, processed sugars like HFCS which is extracted from corn by a chemical enzyme process, could be the c…

The irony of you starting your rebuttal with an ad hominem attack is pretty amusing.

Expecially in reponse to an article that talks at length about others in nutritional science using ad hominem attacks as a primary form of defence against dissident arguments.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#16

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

You're quoting a physicist. Nutrition isn't a science as hard as physics. As a given science subject moves away to more complex system (human organisms, social organisms), the notion of light (or the truth) gets rather diffuse. It's harder to define something as the light (or the truth), because phenomena and its causality simply get harder to prove.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#17

I still dont agree that sugar is the problem. Lustig himself seems to have not figured out what the secret is to health and weightloss as he is obese to morbidly obese. Saturated fats still do cause heart disease, strokes, alzheimers.. anything where blood is blocked or doesnt reach the organ it needs to. If anything, processed sugars like HFCS which is extracted from corn by a chemical enzyme process, could be the c…

> Saturated fats still do cause heart disease, strokes, alzheimers..

All the studies claiming to make these links have been comprehensively debunked. And it's worth remembering that the vast, vast bulk of fats and cholesterol in your body are not dietary, they were produced inside your body from other macro-nutrients. And they are essential. Without them you would die.

On a very basic level, blood flow gets blocked because inflammation in your arteries causes cholesterol manufactured by your liver to stick to the walls and build up. Consuming saturated fat does not cause this inflammation. Whereas there is evidence that consuming sugar does.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#18

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

You're quoting a physicist. Nutrition isn't a science as hard as physics. As a given science subject moves away to more complex system (human organisms, social organisms), the notion of light (or the truth ) gets rather diffuse. It's harder to define something as the light (or the truth ), because phenomena and its causality simply get harder to prove.

I agree. Biology and Physics are very different fields. Physics - where every action has an equal or opposite reaction. Biology - many many variables where its difficult to measure the effect of one change.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#19
post #5

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Likely because it seems so intuitively logical that fat in your body comes from fat in your diet. Want to stop getting fat? Stop eating fat. It seems so obvious, despite being wrong at the fundamental level.

And yet, as the article doesn't quite point out, eating all the protein you like won't make you more muscular (unless you also do regular strenuous exercise).

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#20
"Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane."

Not that I disagree with the premise of this article, but the graphs I can find show that there is a steep increase in the late 70's, not after the Dietary Guidelines were written in the early 80's.

Post reply on HN