The Sugar Conspiracy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#101

Post by msandford » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

Smaug123 wrote: post #32

sjwright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously you can't just eat your way to a six pack. If you're trying to make a point worthy of an "and yet" prefix, it's lost on me. You can get fat by eating too much protein. Or too much fat. Intense overeating of any macro-nutrient is a bad idea. The thing is, it's harder (though by no means difficult) to overeat fat or protein. The dangerous thing about carbohydrates is they are by far the easiest to overeat, an…

Of course not a six pack, since the primary ingredient for a six pack is an absence of fat. I'm just talking muscle volume here. "And yet" was probably the wrong choice of words; I really meant "Indeed", I think.

The way I read it, it's poking a hole in the "you are what you eat" adage that people take at face value for "if you eat fat you get fat".

By extension of this adage, then, if you eat fat you get fat. If you eat carbs you get starchy, and if you eat protein you get muscley. We know the second two aren't true, but the first one sticks for some reason.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#102

Post by anon4 » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #36

"We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine, eggs with muesli. But we still grew fatter" Check mueslis and the sugar most of them contains. It's _horrible_. I try buying a no sugar muesli once in a while - within regular european supermarkets, it's next to impossible!

Don't buy müsli. Buy plain oats, nuts and dried fruits. Make your own.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#103

Post by rhinoceraptor » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

notthegov wrote: post #74

glaberficken wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very very powerful thing that most of us forget when we start reading all the conflicting evidence about carbs / sugar / fat: You can experiment on yourself for free! Obviously this won't prove how everyone's body works. But it will teach you something very powerful about how your own body works. Go off sugar for 3 months, make your mind and do it, and note the changes in your organism. Or go off carbs totally for…

Except your kidneys excrete more electrolytes and water, and it can take weaks to adapt, and theoritically some people will never fully adapt. I would have to drink 1 gram of warm saltwater and my headache would instantly go away. So how you feel is deceptive. If I would drink a Vanilla Latte at Starbucks now, I would get a serious headache...

Lite salt is better, it has sodium and potassium.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#104

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

Most of those fresh fruit and veggies are man-made, too. Modern tomatoes, corn, squash, broccoli (check out what we did to wild mustard plants: https://nicolecooks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/f2104.jpg), etc. are nothing like what's found in nature. Your wine's probably closer to naturally occurring than they are - we get drunk squirrels from fermented fruits every year.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#105

Post by mistermann » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

tkyjonathan wrote: post #13

Synaesthesia wrote: post #3

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.

I'm of the belief that butter is good (or at least, not bad).

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#106

Post by wtbob » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

> My only (dietary) vices are coffee and the odd glass of wine (both very much man made).

I don't think I'd consider either of those man-made in the sense of being heavily processed: coffee is simply roasted coffee beans with hot water poured over, and wine is pressed grape juice allowed to ferment.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#107

Post by geoka9 » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

glaberficken wrote: post #73

Synaesthesia wrote: post #3

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.”

A very very powerful thing that most of us forget when we start reading all the conflicting evidence about carbs / sugar / fat: You can experiment on yourself for free! Obviously this won't prove how everyone's body works. But it will teach you something very powerful about how your own body works. Go off sugar for 3 months, make your mind and do it, and note the changes in your organism. Or go off carbs totally for…

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this, just describing my own experience (which may be subjective/biased/completely misinterpreted by me).

If you're mostly sedentary in a first-world country, going off sugar/carbs-dominated diet brings your insulin sensitivity to its natural levels (which, very probably, it hasn't been since the moment you started eating adult food). For me this had the amazing effect of becoming more alert and productive mentally and more aware of my body physically. As an athlete, I suddenly discovered that I can be underperforming because I'm lacking fuel, and not because I'm tired, and that if I "fuel up" by eating carbs, I can expect a surge of energy that will allow me to perform well. Needless to say, the discovery was amazing, I felt like a finely tuned sports car or something.

Back when I was eating a regular western diet, my insulin sensitivity was low, and "injecting" fast carbs made me drowsy, not full of energy.

Needless to say once I experienced that new state, I got hooked, so sticking to good eating habits haven't required tremendous will power for me. Getting there, though, did.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#108

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

"Nobody could have predicted, it is said, how the food manufacturers would respond to the injunction against fat – selling us low-fat yoghurts bulked up with sugar, and cakes infused with liver-corroding transfats."

It's interesting the author notes trans-fats as a by product of the injuction against fat, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Trans-fat has been around since the 1900's and was used widely as a substitute for butter when it was in short supply during WWII. Remember Crisco? Mom's in the 1970's used it for everything, including baking and cooking. It wasn't until the 1990's that the FDA finally put warnings out regarding partially hydrogenated oil.

The fact is, trans fats had been around a LONG time before before the government decided to start saying that it was bad for your health. Hell, it took them another decade before they made the recommendation to stop using trans fats after the 1980 guidelines came out.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#109

Post by hypertexthero » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #22

zongitsrinzler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no such thing as instantly available scientific evidence. Even in physics, hypotheses can take decades to decisively be confirmed or rejected (is string theory true? We don't know. Is holographic universe hypothesis true? Probably no, but we don't know. Is there an event horizon in black holes which light can't ever escape? Hawking recently famously changed his mind and now telling us it might not be). In bi…

[Planck's Principle][1]:

> 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.

— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#110

Post by torgoguys » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

>If man made it, don't eat it

That's way too simple. It's a kind of naturalistic fallacy as applied to food.

If you think your produce area is where you should be getting your calories (not disagreeing), it fails the "if man made it, don't eat it" test spectacularly. Basically everything you see there has been shaped by man. A (stunning) example: one species of plant, brassica oleracea, has been selectively (i.e., artificially) bred to produce a wide range of different cultivars including, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, and more. NONE of these produce items are "natural."

Getting back to the linked article a bit, if you think fructose is bad, you should know it is very natural. Obviously it occurs in fruits and honey has more fructose than refined sugar and about the same as high fructose corn syrup.

(As a side note, I'm of the opinion we should be engineering foods to make them better for us. We as a species have been doing similar things to our food for thousands of years.)