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Is Sugar Killing Us?

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Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#71
post #31
post #9

Increase fats? No biggie, you'll get satiated too fast to overconsume. Increase proteins? You satiate even faster. Increase sugar? You will eat a lot more and your leptin signal gets all sorts of messed up.

That's not true, some people can eat a lot of cheese. http://www.irkitated.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eat-bloc... Things are not as simple as "don't eat sugar"

I think it's very true that in most scenarios it's entirely too easy to eat too much sugar in the foods we consume.

I think most people with a nutritional chemistry background would agree, as well, most general medicine practitioners that eating less sugar is a proper direction for much of the population.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#72
post #45

I firmly believe that sugar not only makes us fat, but also has an effect on the psychological state of certain people (e.g. people with anxiety problems). In my own experience, cutting out sugar (from anything else but fruit) and wheat from my diet has made a big difference.

I'll double down on this anec-data of cutting out sugar helping with anxiety and depression.

Toss in the emerging idea that inflammation has a relationship with depression and the knowledge that sugar causes inflammation and it sort of makes sense. Obviously, the previous sentence should probably be backed up with a few legitimate studies.

That said it worked for me, and undoing it doesn't work for me for the above reasons. Add in regular exercise and things changed pretty seriously.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#73

First they thought it was fat killing us, now that they know that's not really true they think it's sugar killing us. I wonder if I'll live to see the day the headlines read "protein is killing us!"

To be fair, the only reason it was ever "fat killing us" was because of intense lobbying by the sugar industry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind...

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#74
Paywall

Is it a matter of dosage?

Because if it is, how do you make people consume less? Of course you can set a limit for grams of sugar per gram of food sold, I guess it could make people eat less sugar.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#75
post #60
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human body have an amazing ability to adapt to the environment and we will survive as long as energy intake match energy expenditure. The only category that need some attention is protein where having too little or too much can lead to issues. An Inuit from Greenland is no more or less healthy than an American or farmer from Brazil because of what they eat.

I'm not sure I see where you were going. Which, check my history, is not too say you are wrong. Even odds I'm just missing it. However, it seems you are assuming that we have adapted to our current diet. Possible? Surely. As an argument, though, this is appealing to the incredible nature of our bodies. I'd prefer evidence.

Your history suggest you are pretty well informed on this front so I will go straight to the point. First, adaptation != evolution. The ability to digest and use sugar has been with us for many millenia. There are ways where our body is not well equipped to deal with sugar (Such as dental hygiene, I touched on it briefly in another comment in this thread) but the other problems mentioned in the linked article have more to do with excessive energy intake, rather than the biochemical properties of sugar itself.

For years, medical biologists such as Robert Lustig predicted all sorts of havoc that happens when we eat sugar and promised all of our problem woulds go away if we cut sugar from our diet. A lot of it makes good theoretical sense but experimental support is sorely lacking. Seeing his name quoted in this thread again and again makes me sad in a way because we are far from sure whether he is right or wrong.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have undergone a similar shift in reputation: Before the 2000s it was thought to be beneficial, now you have people like Ray Peat who reckons it is literally worse than sugar and saturated fat. I have a PhD in biochemistry myself and still find it difficult to choose who to listen to and what to believe, but if Vilhjalmur Steffansson can live an entire year in apparent good health eating only meat then the human body has to be more forgiving than we assume.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I eat plenty of sugar, and I'm in decent shape: You can't tell the damage of a poor diet (or other maladies), simply by looking at videos. You're also fairly young. A poor diet wrecks your health in a cumulative way. I'm not saying your diet is poor (I have little data about your diet), I'm just saying it's up in the air with knowing that you eat, "plenty of sugar", and you IG yourself doing calisthenics. Would you…

I'm not actually that young, I'm 33. (I also haven't been training very long, about 2 years now) I agree though, I am a sample size of one. There are forums of people who follow Ray Peat's ideas, and some do consume large amounts of sugar, and do really well.

  I'm not actually that young, I'm 33.
That is young. Health effects (for many things) show up much later, past 50 or even 60. Until then most bodies can compensate for quite a lot of stuff that has gone wrong earlier.

If you take cancer rates by age as an indicator you can see age 33 barely registers: https://canceraustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/statistic...

Or diabetes: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/age/fig1.gif

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#77
post #68

I quit sugar for two weeks and the runny nose and sinus headache I'd had my whole life went away. It wasn't hard. Everybody should try it.

Oh man, can you please shed more lights on this as I've exactly same problem, sinusitis and running nose (mostly because I'm allergic to cold and histamine is wreaking havoc). I'm trying all the possible way to control it, exercising regularly, taking lemon+honey everyday morning etc. But only an anti-histamine (xyzal or zyrtec) is working for me. It's interesting that to know if it has anything to do with Sugar, as…

If mast cell stabilizers and antihistamines both help you, try the Autoimmune Paleo diet for 2 weeks. Your symptoms could be due to immune dysfunction and if so will lessen significantly. Also steroid nasal sprays exist.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually that young, I'm 33. (I also haven't been training very long, about 2 years now) I agree though, I am a sample size of one. There are forums of people who follow Ray Peat's ideas, and some do consume large amounts of sugar, and do really well.

> There are forums of people who follow Ray Peat's ideas Sorry, but this sounds like a personality cult. How about following the state of the art dietary advice? Sure, consensus scientific advice can change over time, and be conflicting at times. But it will always be better than following some individual's opinions.

How about considering different viewpoints? Main stream advice should always be questioned. Also, different diets work for different types of people, and there are 10000 other factors. You can't simply isolate one variable, complex systems don't care about your linear ideas.

A an upcoming documentary an alternative theories related to this: http://perceivethinkact.com/

Also checkout the forums yourself, and then decide if these people are unreasonable:

https://raypeatforum.com

That is assuming you are not suffering from a bias towards authoritarian sources. ;)

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#79
post #70

I've really cut down on sugar from august to november. I didn't really notice anything except loosing a lot of weight (mind that I already was under weight, but I should probably build some muscle anyway) So in comes December. And there is candy and chocolate everywhere. In just a single week our house filled up with it and here I am, stuffing my face full of sugar. I think the struggle just goes on, right?

Just keep on going without sugar after December. See the December candy as a treat for being off sugar for a while. :)

I didn't eat - stuff with added - sugar for about a year a few years back. Was pretty nazi on it, didn't just cut down a little bit. I read all the labels and didn't even buy bread with added sugar or syrup etc. Lost 30 kgs. Never felt so good.

Sugar is poison, really should eat it. The best thing is that everything start tasting much better after cutting off sugar. It's amazing. Salt taste more, vegetables taste more. And if you're having a bad urge to eat something sweet, just drink water.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually that young, I'm 33. (I also haven't been training very long, about 2 years now) I agree though, I am a sample size of one. There are forums of people who follow Ray Peat's ideas, and some do consume large amounts of sugar, and do really well.

I'm not actually that young, I'm 33. That is young. Health effects (for many things) show up much later, past 50 or even 60. Until then most bodies can compensate for quite a lot of stuff that has gone wrong earlier. If you take cancer rates by age as an indicator you can see age 33 barely registers: https://canceraustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/statistic... Or diabetes: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/ag…

That's true, though surely there are already signs in your 30's of later health problems (Obesity, etc)
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