Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 623 posts

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#591

Post by thedaemon »

mary_fortran wrote: post #275

The biggest problem with our health, however, is still Obesity. Just as the fat were mislead by being made to believe that "low fat == healthy" these people will be similarly think "low carb == healthy" and proceed to get obese on low-carb foods. Face it, if you're a healthy weight, by body-fat percentage, you don't have to worry about fructose vs glucose or fat vs carbs. Americans need to put their forks down. We ne…

It's cheaper to eat unhealthy than healthy foods in America. Only the rich or upper middle class can afford healthy food.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#592

Post by crpatino »

LordHumungous wrote: post #441
crpatino wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why's that any different from eating say table sugar + celery? In principle it's not, except perhaps for a glass of water. Most sweet fruits tend to have much more moisture than celery. An unstated assumption that may come with your question is that just like eating fruit is equivalent to eating sugar + celery, it would also be the same to eat sugar, then celery. This is not the case. The fiber and water in the fru…

>Then there is the issue that most people, left to their own devices, will eat too much of sugar and too little of the other two. Yep. I'm pretty sure the reason low carb diets work is because they eliminate most of the processed junk that people like to binge on. It doesn't really have anything to do with carbs.

It is more nuanced than that, but you've got the right idea.

Some years ago I tried the Zone Diet(TM), and was able to loose in the ballpark of 20 lbs. For the first month, all carb-rich food was strictly banned, and that did have physiological effects. Later, once the process had been kickstarted, non-junky carbs were gradually reintroduced with little effect on my pace of weight loss.

So... I tend to agree with you. People evolved to eat carbs, but not necessarily highly concentrated, processed carbs.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#593

Post by thedaemon »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #473

Let's not forget how WW2 propaganda shifted blame to sugar. Where the fictional notion of a "sugar high" was invented to connote an illicit character that will get your children that much closer to the reefer madness. All to manipulate the public into conserving sugar needed for the war effort.

A sugar high is not fictional. I do in fact get a sugar high. Just ask my co-workers. I sometimes use a threat of eating a candy bar, which will make me hyper before I crash.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#594

Post by undersuit »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #495
jimmaswell wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Moving apples around is not really processing them because they are still the same. A better example of processing is when you homogenize or pasteurize milk, or mill and separate wheat into flour and bran. Of course you don't see anyone demonizing these processes because we've been doing them for a pretty long time. It's good to bet on traditional foods because the cultures that came up with them must have survived o…

>mill and separate wheat into flour and bran. Of course you don't see anyone demonizing these processes because

There is actually a movement to avoid modern milling techniques. Something about how the high pressure steel mills today affect the endosperm and then the readdition of the separately ground germ and bran produces a different whole wheat flour than grinding the wheat berries as one ingredient.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#595

Post by jeffdavis »

jimmaswell wrote: post #585
jeffdavis wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed my diet a lot after I got married, and I think it worked mainly because I was embarrassed to buy pie and ice cream all the time. If it's not in the house, I won't eat it casually every day ("if I don't finish this pie soon, it will get all dried out and go to waste!"). Maybe the key is to make diet changes along with other life changes. But I think people do the opposite: "I just started a new job... I'll s…

A kfc chicken breast and thigh together comes to 580 calories, which doesn't seem bad.

Probably not the best example, but the point is that we don't change our habits because we are never forced to, even when we make fairly big changes like moving 1000 miles away.

And when we can continue with the rest of our habits, it's hard to change individual ones like diet.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#596

Post by collinmanderson »

mary_fortran wrote: post #275

The biggest problem with our health, however, is still Obesity. Just as the fat were mislead by being made to believe that "low fat == healthy" these people will be similarly think "low carb == healthy" and proceed to get obese on low-carb foods. Face it, if you're a healthy weight, by body-fat percentage, you don't have to worry about fructose vs glucose or fat vs carbs. Americans need to put their forks down. We ne…

I recently am finding it really hard to find non low-fat yogurt. Not fun.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#597

Post by wutbrodo »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #379
wutbrodo wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is actually very little sugar in fruit Whoever told you this did you a disservice, because it's completely untrue. I think coke is a pretty good posterchild for "a shocking amount of sugar", and an 8 oz bottle of coke has about the same sugar content as an apple or a navel orange (and the orange has half the calories, making the comparison even less favorable). The difference between the two is that the coke…

You are mostly right. The mostly part is this: gram for gram Apples and coke are about the same, however an 8oz coke has over twice the sugar content of an apple. Secondly, on the disservice, you are particularly correct. I have done myself a disservice by not correctly interpreting my own research. Two years back, when switching to become a vegetarian, I calculated macros for loads of foods. For sugar I used a calcu…

That's was what I was getting at in general: glycemic index is far more relevant than gross sugar content[1]. But my criticism still stands: It's good that that's what you yourself use GI (as do I), but it's misleading and inaccurate to phrase a low GI as "very little sugar". It's particularly confusing for those readers of your comment who might not be familiar with GI. Instead of falsely claiming that fruit has little sugar as a roundabout way of describing it's GI, instead one can say: "Fruit has plenty of sugar, but the attendant fiber content makes the absorption of said sugar better for you than mainlining it as liquid Coke".

As an aside, where are you getting your nutritional info? It's way off what I've found. I was using the nutritional info for a regular "medium apple", and in the sources I found it has 20g vs coke's 25g, and almost the exact same amount of calories. 80% of a coke's sugar, calorie-forcalorie and serving-for-serving, hardly qualifies ad "very little sugar".

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#598

Post by ghshephard »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #571
ghshephard wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" But the truth is folks get much more sugar from supposedly "healthy" items in the form of fruit juice and concentrates. " Or, if you are here in Asia/Singapore, where T2 diabetes is starting to become a big issue- the 3-5 servings of white rice people eat each day is a front page issue on the newspapers.

I tend to be somewhat suspicious of any 'traditional' basic food getting too much bad press. Rice, bread, pasta. White rice tends to get some bad press here as well, along with white bread. Rice itself probably isn't a big deal. It is probably on par with the bread/pasta eaten in the states and Europe as far as health is concerned. There is healthier rice (brown and unpolished) and healthier bread, but we tend to eat…

A lot of people say that the real issue is blood sugar spike, how fast it happens, and what the glycemic index of the food you are eating is.

I always wonder about the whole glycemic index theory. Lot of counterintuitive data here: http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...

For example, where Glucose=100, Banana cake, made with sugar=47, but Banana cake, made without sugar=55, and Brown rice, average=68.

Or, Chickpeas=10, but Chickpeas canned in Brine=42.

White rice, of course, is the worst of all of these at 73. Worse than Apple Juice (41), Orange Juice (50), and even Coca Cola (63)

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#599

Post by e40 »

skyyler wrote: post #313
e40 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't believe this. The spaces between my teeth are very small, and without flossing, brushing can't clean out the food that gets wedged in there. I've actually flossed after brushing (with a Sonicare) and I still remove food with the floss.

And going right back to the original topic here, those bits of food wouldn't be as big a deal without all of the added sugars that we have now, right? Isn't tooth decay caused by sugar-eating bacteria?

It's damn near impossible to remove all carbs from your diet, even if you try. So, in the very theoretical case of having absolutely no carbs, then you're right. For the vast majority of people on earth, it's simply not true.

Re: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

#600

Post by ghshephard »

newscracker wrote: post #567
Joof wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an alternative? I eat a fair bit of rice as well.

Whole rice is not as much a problem as polished white rice. You could eat unpolished rice, like brown rice, red rice, etc., depending on what's available locally, that have all the fiber and other nutrients intact. This will also help fill your stomach with lesser quantity than polished white rice because of the fiber that's in them. If you have access to other grains, like quinoa, millets, amaranth, you could use th…

Rice, in general, has a pretty high glycemic index. From: http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...

Glycemic index of Brown Rice is 68, White Rice is 73, Coca Cola, in comparison, is only 63.

But, what makes white rice so really horrible, is not just the glycemic index, but the glycemic load - the net-impact on blood sugar. It's off the charts huge for a typical 150 gram serving of white rice at 43, (compared to just 16 for a coca cola).

Kind of mind blowing, that if you are worried about blood sugar, you are better off drinking 2 cans of 250 ml coke, instead of one 150 gram bowl of white rice.

Post reply on HN