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How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#391

Post by JustSomeNobody »

PieterH wrote: post #361
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and no. If you drink straight apple juice, yes, that's bad for you. If, however, you eat an apple, that's good for you. The Apple has plenty of fiber that keeps the body from absorbing the fructose too quickly. Straight apple juice kicks your pancreas into high gear.

Apple flesh is 2.6% fibre. Where does this myth come from that fruit is high in fibre? It simply is not true. Some fruits are. Wild fruits certainly are. Domesticated table fruit is not. Google "fibre content of apple" if you don't believe me.

I didn't say "high in fibre", I said plenty of fibre. Difference.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#392

Post by Broken_Hippo »

jimmaswell wrote: post #308
dredmorbius wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but: * Avoid processed anything. Most especially soft/fizzy drinks, baked goods, candy, fruit drinks, jams, jellies, syrups, most processed cereals. * Eat fresh vegetables, some fruit, legumes. Whole grains for breakfast (rolled or steel-cut oats). Meat, eggs, and dairy if they're in your diet. * Check breads and other products for added sugar, in all forms: sugar, molasses (often added to "rye" breads as col…

What does it precisely mean for a food to be "processed"? "Processed" in general just means "went through some kind of process", which covers pretty much anything (if a local farmer collects their apples in a bin and moves them across the field that's a process) but in relation to food it has a negative connotation, so it must be specific processes the food was involved in that are unwanted? What about these processe…

I think commonly, processed doesn't mean so much "flour you didnt grind at home", but more "these meats have been ground and mixed with spices and cured" or "they made the speghetti sauce at the factory" or "artificial flavorings and lots of added sugar!".

Not all processing is bad, per se: Factories can make red sauce pretty darn healthy if they want. But what usually happens is that the sauces are filled with a good deal of fat, salt, and sugar along with other things you'd never actually put in food at home (not all of which are bad, but some are misleading - food coloring, for example). They do this because... well, they researched this and found there are 'bonus taste points' if they have the right combination of flavors and feels.

And there is a lot of politics and lobbying to keep the labels more confusing and to use special ingredient names so people don't really know what is in it. Sometimes even when you are trying to avoid something, it is really difficult to figure it all out.

And really, what would probably be needed is some sort of push for healthier processed foods without the weird ingredients. Some things will probably always be bad in excess - cured meats, for example, but we can do better with the others.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#393

Post by at-fates-hands »

cm2012 wrote: post #309
at-fates-hands wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> lifelong damage to their health. It's only lifelong damage if you don't change your diet and lifestyle. The world is filled with people who were morbidly obese and have made the changes necessary to reverse the damage and live far more healthy lives now. The way you put it, it sounds like an irreversible course akin to a death sentence, which it most certainly is not.

That is a myth. Every legitimate long term study of non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people. 1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "]( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p…

The funny thing about all your links is this:

That most people who lost weight most often times gained it back - yet you somehow think gastric surgery is the cure all when you have to make lifelong changes to your diet and lifestyles and be even more diligent in doing so?

The weight loss for gastric patients levels off after 18-24 months, far shorter than the 5 year mark you use to measure success. I'm not sure how you rate one a success in half the time, and total failure for others since they don't meet your magical 5 year mark.

The problem is, you can't legislate freewill - you have to make a choice to be healthy. Is it easy? Nope, but it can be done.

My grandmother was overweight, had high blood pressure and other ailments. She was able to reverse her Type 2 diabetes through diet and staying active by walking 5 miles a day, hiking and other low impact activities. I had a hockey buddy who was on several different medications for high blood pressure, pre-diabetes and other ailments. Within two and half years, he was off the meds and back on the ice through a combination of intense cardio workouts (P90x, Insanity, etc), weight training, and Brazillian Ju Jitsu - which he had always been into. My best friend was depressed and put on a ton of weight, and became borderline suicidal. He was put on meds and continued to put on weight. Over the course of three years he made various (permanent) changes to his diet and to his life. He started with power lifting, then went to mountain biking, then cycling, then adventure racing, then to mountain climbing. Last year I saw him and he was pushing 40; he was still ripped and finally loving life.

You can't make a switch in 6 months and hope for a five year guaranteed return. Shit doesn't happen like that - it just doesn't. You can't go on a diet for two months and hope that 15 pounds you lost will stay off for five years unless you make permanent changes which is really hard for a lot of people. Finding time and energy to start something new is not how humans function. We constantly look for the shortcut. The shortcut to happiness, the shortcut to getting rich, the shortcut to learning some new programming language. Nobody wants to put in the time to get their shit straight, they just want it to be fixed in some nonsensical time frame.

Everybody I know that went through some serious health problems and got straighten out did not do so in any short amount of time - it took years of dedication, getting up at the crack of dawn, struggling and putting the hard work to get there. No diet can do that for you. The payoff is you get 8-10 years back of your life. You can breathe after you walk up a flight of stairs, you can reduce your cholesterol levels and have a healthy heart and lungs. You can get off your medications, or reduce them from what you're taking now. The upside to being healthy so vastly outweighs the downside and here you are saying - there is no hope, you should give up. How does that even sound to someone who's facing an uphill battle?

Unreal.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#394

Post by smnplk »

fierycatnet wrote: post #345
Shivetya wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well the lie has recently morphed into the laws slowing and prohibiting soda sales in schools and such all the while promoting juice which can be worse in many cases because people assume its healthy and you cannot over drink because of that

One time I was craving some juice or smoothie, so at the gas station I took one of those 'Naked' brands and glanced on the label, it had some ridiculous amount of carbs and sugar in it, more than 50g. Put it right back.

I was doing that for years on gas stations, just picked the blue ones. Now that I am more sugar aware, I look at the labels a lot. I was also shocked to see some ridiculous amount of sugar in that what used to be my favourite drink.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#395

Post by __jal »

nikmobi wrote: post #288
adrianggg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A really smart guy said to me once something like, “if you are smart and have money and you don't eat well then you are not smart”. I can't remember the exact quote but the sentiment really stuck with me. Look I'm no expert but I'm telling you the results are outrageous. Please do your own research as I only really have a school boy understanding of how this affects the body. My skin cleared up, my ailments all disap…

I really like this response and I do truly believe that cutting out or minimizing sugar is a truly beneficial thing. But when I got to this: > I can't even drink a soda, I spit it out as the most disgusting thing imaginable I had a hard time taking the rest of your comment seriously. I can understand it being too sweet to your now adjusted taste buds, but calling it the most disgusting thing imaginable is just plain…

Sounds like you might have an unusual sensitivity to exaggeration. It is a symptom which affects a small percentage of the population, and is treatable. Talk to your comedian or an entertainment specialist about treatment options.

(In fairness, I strongly dislike soda. I can imagine worse things, of course, but in the universe of commonly consumed beverages, bubbly sugar water is pretty close to the bottom of the list for me. Another water, coffee and almost nothing else person.)

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#396

Post by muddyrivers »

PieterH wrote: post #133
muzster wrote: post #8

RIP: British Scientist John Yudkin - The man who tried to warn us about the perils of sugar.. Source(s) : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/10634081... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yudkin Edit: Lest we not forget his arch-enemy Ancel Keys

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…

I wonder if the tolerance, and then the love, of highly sweet things is acquired. And mostly probably, it is acquired when one is a child.

I have met and worked with many East Asians and Europeans who came to American in their 20's or older. Almost everyone of them thought American pastry and deserts are unbearably sweet. Most of them shun from soda drinks and other "food" containing high amounts of sugar. If they drink soda, they choose low- or zero-sugar kinds.

Related or not, a big percentage of American look overweight when compared to Europeans and East Asians.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#397

Post by DougWebb »

bansheehash wrote: post #351
DougWebb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the actual food sales, most of the money winds up in the same small set of hands regardless of which fad is currently popular. They'll resist trends that switch from high-margin to low-margin foods, but only until they've figured out how to alter the low-margin food to make it high-margin. The secondary money-grab is from the food-fad industry. All of the books, all of the websites, all of the memberships,…

> (At least the fashion industry isn't killing us, though.) The Bangladeshi children working 16 hours a day sewing dresses for H&M might have a thing or two to say about that.

That's them, not us, but you're right that's a problem with the fashion industry. I don't think it's caused by the fads though; the clothing industry would still exploit the cheapest available labor, even if they were making the same garments all of the time.

The problem here is that Bangladeshi children are cheaper than machines.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#398

Post by ilaksh »

digi_owl wrote: post #16
jamroom wrote: post #9

This quote from the article is a great one: "It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did because review papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion" Has the acceptance policy for prominent journals improved that we're sure this is not happening now? I have suspicions that this is likely still happening more frequently then we might exp…

The basic issue is that reviews are just looking for glaring problems in the presentation. To really test an article one has to replicate the experiment from the ground up. And these days thats damn hard and expensive to do.

The real issue is the reliance on authority rather than actual evaluation of the merits of the papers by everyone.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#399

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Cozumel wrote: post #326

Can anyone recommend a 'healthy' alternative to sugar? Primarily for sweetening Coffee.

Nope :D

But truth be told, I only drink black coffee. Now. I used to put lots of sugar and cream in coffee. I simply started cutting back slowly. I got rid of the cream first, and when it got to the point I was wanting less than 1 package of sugar in a McDonald's large coffee, I just stopped using it, though I could have cut down a little more.

For the first week or two, the coffee seemed a bit bitter, but in the years following, it has been just fine. And much easier to order.

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