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Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

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Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#11

Post by losteric »

microcolonel wrote: post #3

Fruits and vegetables are full of sucrose, it is the most commonly occurring sugar in plants. If splitting more sucrose (or is fructose really the problem?) increases your chance of cancer, it means very little on its own. Would you get the same results if they matched the starches to the glucose equivalent, rather than the same mass? Which is why I don't see why they would bother to suppress a result like this, but…

A 12 oz can of Coca Cola has twice the sugar content of an apple, without the beneficial fiber or vitamins.

How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers millions of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality.

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#12

Post by DanBC »

microcolonel wrote: post #9
Tharkun wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fruit & vegetables full of sucrose? That seems a little exaggerated. An onion, for instance, is 90% water, 4% sugars, 3% other carbs and 2% fibre. A coke, on the other hand, is 90% water, 10% sugar (either HFCS or sucrose, depending on your locale) and not an iota of fibre.

Would a coke onion (84% water, 10% sugar, 5% fibre, [1% other stuff {caramel colouring, deactivated coca leaf extract, etc.}]) be a bad source of sucrose? Pineapple is about 6% sucrose, red delicious Apples are about 2% sucrose (the rest being mostly fructose, and some glucose), bananas have more than 5% sucrose (As do mangoes, nectarines, and varieties of apple like pink lady).

Current thinking is that the binding of the sugar to fibre in fruit and veg makes it better than raw sugar.

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#13

Post by sddfd »

This doesn't surprise me at all.

It took almost 40 years to prove that smoking causes lung cancer.

Similarly, despite unambiguous scientific evidence, it still seems acceptable to deny that man-made CO2 release into the atmosphere causes global warming.

There's actually a good book covering these two instances and others: "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming"

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#14

Post by orthoganol »

DoodleBuggy wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder what we'll find out is being withheld right now, 50 years from now.

The effects of vehicular pollution? If sitting in your garage with a running car kills you, obviously being surrounded by traffic all day in the cities we live in must be absolutely terrible for you.

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#15

Post by sddfd »

losteric wrote: post #11
microcolonel wrote: post #3

Fruits and vegetables are full of sucrose, it is the most commonly occurring sugar in plants. If splitting more sucrose (or is fructose really the problem?) increases your chance of cancer, it means very little on its own. Would you get the same results if they matched the starches to the glucose equivalent, rather than the same mass? Which is why I don't see why they would bother to suppress a result like this, but…

A 12 oz can of Coca Cola has twice the sugar content of an apple, without the beneficial fiber or vitamins. How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers millions of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality.

I absolutely share your viewpoint.

As a consumer, I try to think about the ingredients of a product: if it is mostly chemicals (in contrast do agricultural products), then the product probably isn't healthy.

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#16

Post by microcolonel »

losteric wrote: post #11
microcolonel wrote: post #3

Fruits and vegetables are full of sucrose, it is the most commonly occurring sugar in plants. If splitting more sucrose (or is fructose really the problem?) increases your chance of cancer, it means very little on its own. Would you get the same results if they matched the starches to the glucose equivalent, rather than the same mass? Which is why I don't see why they would bother to suppress a result like this, but…

A 12 oz can of Coca Cola has twice the sugar content of an apple, without the beneficial fiber or vitamins. How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers millions of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality.

> costing taxpayers millions of dollars

How do you mean? My understanding is that it would affect insurance rates for the overweight, unless of course insurers are not allowed to set rates based on bodyfat guidelines? I'd accept that it's costly here in Canada though, definitely an increase in emergency medical service load.

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#17

Post by trendia »

orthoganol wrote: post #14
DoodleBuggy wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder what we'll find out is being withheld right now, 50 years from now.

The effects of vehicular pollution? If sitting in your garage with a running car kills you, obviously being surrounded by traffic all day in the cities we live in must be absolutely terrible for you.

"For older women, breathing air that is heavily polluted by vehicle exhaust and other sources of fine particulates nearly doubles the likelihood of developing dementia, finds a study published Tuesday."

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-air-poll...

Re: Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

#19

Post by johnchristopher »

ashark wrote: post #8
DoodleBuggy wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder what we'll find out is being withheld right now, 50 years from now.

I sometimes wonder which materials I directly interact with on a regular basis that people in a few decades wouldn't touch for anything short of large amounts of money. History tells us there are probably a few. Guessing at least a couple are plastics or plastic additives/coatings of some kind. Maybe whatever they replaced BPA with. Possibly gasoline will qualify. Probably one or two things currently on/in our food.

Some years ago (and I mean decades) my teenage self read somewhere or heard someone talking of the unknown dangers of some gas being released by motherboards (think: silent killers).
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