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How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

nytimes.com

171–180 of 623 posts

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#171

It took almost 50 years to starting to debunk health issues created by Sugar. It took decades to accept the health issues created by Lead and Asbestos. Sometime I wonder if chemicals from bottled water, radiation from Cellular/Wifi/Bluetooth pose health risks and we will find it out decades later.

Cellular, wifi, and bluetooth radiation poses zero risk. You can stand inside the path of a microwave communication dish and receive many orders of magnitude more radiation, and what it'll do is make you warm. That's it. Soviet soldiers used to do that in Siberia to keep themselves warm, and the only risk is the dish outputting too much power and cooking you instead.

Didn't those Soviet soldiers have a greater incidence of cancer later in life?

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#172

It took almost 50 years to starting to debunk health issues created by Sugar. It took decades to accept the health issues created by Lead and Asbestos. Sometime I wonder if chemicals from bottled water, radiation from Cellular/Wifi/Bluetooth pose health risks and we will find it out decades later.

Cellular, wifi, and bluetooth radiation poses zero risk. You can stand inside the path of a microwave communication dish and receive many orders of magnitude more radiation, and what it'll do is make you warm. That's it. Soviet soldiers used to do that in Siberia to keep themselves warm, and the only risk is the dish outputting too much power and cooking you instead.

I mostly agree with you. There are edge cases with microwave towers that can lead to vision loss as your eyes heat up, but don't dump heat very well. Further, modern cellphones don't operate in the same bands as old radio-waves.

However, this stuff is very likely to be safe at cellphone usage levels.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask people to this day, they'll say Atkins died of his own diet. That was actually a total lie run by Harpers magazine. They corrected the mistake in the following edition, but the damage had been done. Although there is little evidence to support it, the running conspiracy theory is that PR people in various arms of the food industry paid for that article. Edit: Adkins died because he slipped on a piece of ic…

To be completely fair, he slipped on the ice likely as a complication from heart disease. His doctors swear that his arteries and heart were the healthiest they'd seen for someone that age except for the infected portion.

I don't get it: heart disease causes people to slip on ice?

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#174

My wife and I rewatch the obligatory Lustig lecture about once a month to re-anger ourselves at sugar. Nothing motivates like a bit of biochemistry mixed in with political intrigue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

My wife is having kidney issues which she believes is associated with her nearly daily intake of Advil, but I had no idea that fructose was also a major potential factor in kidney disease. She consumes about 24 oz of soda per day, which is about 60% fructose. So it looks like it was a double-whammy, Advil + fructose has destroyed her kidney function.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother (1973, Edinburgh) bought "Pure, White, and Deadly," and we all read it. I was ten or so. Yudkin attacked white flour, white (processed) fat, and above all white sugar. It made perfect sense to us all, and cutting back on sugar became a slow, yet consistent part of our lifestyle. We never ate that much anyhow. I stopped eating sugar entirely at 15. I still recall the book's cover. Edit: it took me a lot long…

Sugar does have some nutritional value, and is a hallmark of primate diet. Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high.

It is true that many monkeys are tree dwellers and are heavy fruit eaters. Humans and other primates are neither. They will eat fruit as part of a mixed diet that is more omnivorous than anything. And wild fruit is not as rich in sugar as you imagine. It's mostly fibre. The stuff you buy in the supermarket is not a hallmark of a primate diet. Soft drinks are not a hallmark of a primate diet. Cakes and biscuits, they are not a hallmark of a primate diet. They are fake food.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coca Cola has a stevia version that seems to be very niche. I rarely see it, nor have I tried it. But I wonder why it hasn't been pushed more, especially in a market where your product is increasingly demonized because of the 30 - 40g of sugar each serving contains.

Don't move from sugar to fake sugar. Move from sugar to other flavors. Using fake sugar is like a diet, and diets don't last. Lifestyle changes do. Like making every thing you eat not need to be sweet.

I think it helps to visualize a soda container as filled with M&Ms or some other candy. You'd feel like a disgusting lard-ass if you had a big cup full of M&Ms with your meal and kept getting refills on it, right? In fact it'd probably seem like such an obviously-bad idea that, even if you really liked cups full of M&Ms, you'd only have them occasionally, as a treat, and you'd still feel kinda guilty about it.

Look at soda that way, and it gets way easier to turn it down. It's basically candy. When you have three glasses of it with a meal (remember when US restaurants didn't do free refills? That was probably a good thing) that's gross and obviously terrible. When you even have a little with most meals it's still gross. A rare treat? Fine, go ahead.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar does have some nutritional value, and is a hallmark of primate diet. Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high.

> Sugar does have some nutritional value, and is a hallmark of primate diet. Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high. This statement reflects a glaring ignorance of both scale and science. First of all, sugar is a hallmark of a primate diet only in complex not in simple forms, which is not the kind being referred to here. By nutritional value do you mean has calories? So does Vodka. And what…

Does this not include sugar found in foods? Are those considered complex?

Is eating natural sugar found in fruits as bad as eating refined/processed sugar?

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you didn't fully understand what lustig is saying. Its not the fact that fructose is metabolized in the liver that is problematic - its the effects of the process that are horrible and poisonouos.

Regardless, people coming away with the conclusion that fructose is bad for you is bananas ;) Also it is not clear that he is for/against eating lots of fruits and starchy veges of which humans thrive on. Lots of evidence for this too!

Fructose is bad for you. A couple pieces of fruit every day is generally fine, because fruits are packed with fiber, but if you e.g. drink 3 glasses of fruit juice per day, that’s terrible for you.

Even eating fruits isn’t the best though. Modern fruits are bred to be as large and sweet as possible.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#179

It took almost 50 years to starting to debunk health issues created by Sugar. It took decades to accept the health issues created by Lead and Asbestos. Sometime I wonder if chemicals from bottled water, radiation from Cellular/Wifi/Bluetooth pose health risks and we will find it out decades later.

It's going to be smartphone usage itself, especially among children. We are going to look back and cringe at kids screen-holing (this is the term me and my girlfriend use to describe it, similar to k-holing, and in social settings, assholing) at will. A whole generation's minds unprotected from the screen! It's gross.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#180
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but some toothpaste additive About 9 months ago I stopped using toothpaste (my Dentist said it was fine) because I read the canker sores I had been getting for years and years were caused by an additive in tooth paste: Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS). Sure enough, I have not had a single canker sore since I stopped using tooth paste!

So, what is the alternative you are using? Water and brushing? Or some organic toothpaste alternative?

I use Green beaver toothpaste http://greenbeaver.com

Calcium Carbonate, Aqua/Water/Eau, Sorbitol, Glycerin, Hydrated Silica, Mentha Piperita (Peppermint) leaf Oil, Menthol, Xylitol, Citrus Medica Limonum (Lemon) Extract, Xanthan Gum, Coco-Glucoside, Calcium Ascorbate, Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Oil.

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