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

Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago

pbs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 329 posts

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

#51

Post by leadingthenet »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #44
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

Because price per pound: Erythritol: $20 Sugar: $0.44 Source: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mhVolO... [Google cache, the original PDF is 404 Not Found] Edit: looks like one can find erythritol for as little as $15, which is still 34 times more than sugar.

Well sure, now. But once the forces of scale take over it could potentially become cheaper than sugar.

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

#52

Post by nlperguiy »

jacek wrote: post #47
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

There's an interesting book on this topic that discusses both how it happened and what that does to our brains and bodies - "The Hacking of the American Mind" by Robert Lustig [1]. The book also is about other ways our brain is affected by a substance or behavior, but mostly about sugar. I highly recommend it. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531013/the-hacking-...

Robert Lustig is a quack although. Many of the things he said in his famous online talk are outright lie.

He gave an example of Japanese and their healthiness, yet they eat way more fructose than the USA citizen he cites. There's a whole other bunch of misinformation in his speech and his studies are filled with flawed design (no control group, p hacking etc.).

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

#54

Post by xena »

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…

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

- Upton Sinclair

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

#56

Post by ams6110 »

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

The reason is that in the 1970s and 80s people started freaking out about fat. Everyone from the FDA to USDA to family doctor was telling people fat was bad.

So food producers started making fat-free versions of everything. Only problem is it tasted like shit. So what did they do? They added sugar. So now you have sugar added to everything from salad dressing to pasta sauce to bread and muffins. The latter probably had some all along but the fat free varieties had a lot more.

Edit: I'll add that saturated fat was considered especially evil, which begat trans-fats substituted everywhere. Turned out they were even worse.

Bottom line, eat minimally processed meats and plants and you can stop worrying about it.

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

#57

Post by jacek »

nlperguiy wrote: post #52
jacek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting book on this topic that discusses both how it happened and what that does to our brains and bodies - "The Hacking of the American Mind" by Robert Lustig [1]. The book also is about other ways our brain is affected by a substance or behavior, but mostly about sugar. I highly recommend it. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531013/the-hacking-...

Robert Lustig is a quack although. Many of the things he said in his famous online talk are outright lie. He gave an example of Japanese and their healthiness, yet they eat way more fructose than the USA citizen he cites. There's a whole other bunch of misinformation in his speech and his studies are filled with flawed design (no control group, p hacking etc.).

I have not heard about it. Could you give me a link and information on those lies please?

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

#58

Post by test6554 »

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.

Where I come from, if a person buys and eats junk and gets obese, that's their own fault, not the fault of the person who sells junk, and certainly not the fault of taxpayers. Their additional costs should come out of their own pockets.

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

#59

Post by NegativeLatency »

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.

The fiber is really important because it slows the rate of blood sugar change, and makes you feel full.

I could easily drink 2 cans of pop, but could not eat 4 apples.

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

#60

Post by raverbashing »

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

Well, this is the US, and on top of that, it's most often not sugar but hfcs.
Post reply on HN