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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

#31

Post by BeetleB »

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.

While I don't necessarily agree with GP, and don't disagree with you, I feel compelled to point out that your comment is almost orthogonal to his. Your points have little to do with what the GP wrote about.

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

#32

Post by simcop2387 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #25

The whole phenomenon of sugar and fructose being added to virtually everything is beyond comprehension. There are so many people, fat and slim, saying they don't want to be fat, yet eating foods with added sugar every day. Why not just replace all the added sugar with erythritol, for example? The whole situation with sugar reminds me of the situation with opium in early 19th century China

At least with erythritol some people have bad reactions to it. Nothing life threatening as far as I know, but it can give me very bad gas, and for one other person I know it's like eating Olestra Chips[1]. That said there are other sweeteners that don't seem to have that effect but they don't seem to behave quite as closely to sugar in cooking as erythritol does.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects

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

#33

Post by test6554 »

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.

I thought it was common knowledge that you don't want your skin to come in contact with gasoline, and if it does to wash it off relatively quickly.

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

#34

Post by didgeoridoo »

simcop2387 wrote: post #32
qwerty456127 wrote: post #25

The whole phenomenon of sugar and fructose being added to virtually everything is beyond comprehension. There are so many people, fat and slim, saying they don't want to be fat, yet eating foods with added sugar every day. Why not just replace all the added sugar with erythritol, for example? The whole situation with sugar reminds me of the situation with opium in early 19th century China

At least with erythritol some people have bad reactions to it. Nothing life threatening as far as I know, but it can give me very bad gas, and for one other person I know it's like eating Olestra Chips[1]. That said there are other sweeteners that don't seem to have that effect but they don't seem to behave quite as closely to sugar in cooking as erythritol does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects

Most sugar substitutes are indigestible by humans, but readily metabolized by gut bacteria. This can result in a "Satan's Diarrhea Hatebears" scenario [0], especially when suddenly consumed in large amounts.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/B00DE4GWWY

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

#36

Post by hristov »

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…

There is a difference in the way the body processes sucrose and fructose from plants and that from refined sugar. Plants have all kinds of other nutrients that necessarily go into the stomach at the same time as the fructose and sucrose.

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

#37

Post by QAPereo »

sddfd wrote: post #13

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…

Common factor: Money to be made.

Tobacco was the core of many states' economies, and still remains a massive industry which makes many people wealthy.

Dealing with CO2 emissions would have required dealing with fossil fuel use... and that's tons of money and power in play there.

Sugar is, at the very least, another substance people crave, and has been making people rich for hundreds of years.

Delaying tactics are feasible when you have billions or trillions of dollars, control regulatory bodies, own politicians, scientists, and armies of lawyers. Delaying tactics on the orders of just a few decades means generations of VP's and C-levels getting unfathomably rich, as well as key shareholders. So... fuck the harm, delay, delay, delay.

The key is that you have to not give a shit about anyone other than yourself, or be genuinely deluded.

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

#38

Post by test6554 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #24
ashark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I expect the practice of of "sous vide in plastic bags" to be shown as long-term unhealthy sooner or later. It's one of those things where I wonder if the plastics really are as safe as claimed, or just "safer than the standard we set (and we didn't set it high, and our way of measuring is flawed)".

It's a good point. I can't remember the last time I saw a plastic bag that gave a safe temperature range right there on the bag or package containing the bags.

You'd think they would say Safe for food up to 200 degrees F or something.

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

#39

Post by pm90 »

DoodleBuggy wrote: post #2

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

There are a lot of environmental and societal factors that would get you rather than anything that we probably don't know about yet.

Sugar and Tobacco are probably outliers simply because of the sheer quantity in which humans consume them (or used to, for smokers). That itself increases greatly the chances that they will directly cause some kind of cancers.

Now if in the future, we change our society and progress medical science far enough that we live well past 100 years, that is when we should be worried about dangers from materials that we only occasionally come into contact with. Even then, cancer treatments would probably be a routine thing by then...

I guess my point is that you would more likely die in a car accident than from something we're not aware of just yet.

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

#40

Post by merb »

DanBC wrote: post #12
microcolonel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

no that's not true. current thinking is just that if you eat fruites and vegs that you probably don't eat so much that you can get sick.

however when it comes to drinks (i.e. smoothies, apple juice, orange juice) we already know that they could be as worse as cola. (from a sugar perspective). fructose is as worse as sacarose for a human beign if you eat/drink too much of it. it is just worse in another way i.e. it can give you different diseases. Well the problem is just that people consume way more sucrose than fructose. That's why there is probably never a bad word about it.

Basically everything should be consumed with care and moderation, but with the current generation it gets harder and harder (less time -> less time to cook -> excessive use of fast food, etc..)

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