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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

#111
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…

did we just go through a "modern" bubble ? I feel like most of post ww2 era was most the dream of a new perception of the world that could sustain its distortion field for a few decades: - oil based energy now wrecking havoc - "science" based nutrition - free market - communication technology I'm listing the dark parts but there's something odd in the way we probably all swallowed the pill with such a big grin for so…

To level-set,

- oil-based energy powered our global economy that was able to research alternative forms of energy

- both nutrition and science have always been an unfinished work, "we don't know everything" != "we know nothing"

- free markets, for their faults, are still better than any other base system we've come up with

- communications technology, I'd hazard we're still grasping with the repurcussions of this re: democracy and many other pre-existing systems. But the fact that I read about the Rohingya genocide by Myanmar again on the front page of the BBC this morning would indicate it has its advantages to the world too

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

#112
post #10

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

Aspartame.

I only upvoted you because Aspartame is such an interesting case - no other food that I can think of has had such vitrol thrown at it, yet every single scientific study has shown no effect on blood sugar, the chemical is simple, the two compounds it breaks down to in the liver are already present in the body and its properties are well known.

Yet people still hate it.

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

#113

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

Not really withheld, but I think underestimated is air pollution.

"Worldwide, ambient air pollution contributes to 5.4% of all deaths" source - http://www.who.int/

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

#114

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

Also, asbestos is all over the place in a lot of homes. Plus many locations also have Radon gas seeping in. These things are known about, but mostly ignored because of the cost to fix them.

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

#115
post #78

Sugar is not far from being a drug in my opinion. It certainly feels addictive and has a definite impact on physical and mental state (especially true with respect to children). In that sense, it should undergo the same level of regulation...

I'm all for eating way less sugar, but you might as well say people are addicted to food. The body needs energy, of course providing it with energy alters its physical and mental state.

Totally agree that in current times food is an addiction. Since when do we need to eat 3 meals a day? At least 90 percent of modern humans history, we used hunting and gathering to survive. Only in the last 10 percent we have agriculture, and much much later, refrigerators, supermarkets and convenience stores. If we needed this much food our species wouldn't last a week before agriculture. Spoiler alert: we lasted 300,000 years.

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

#116
I wish someone could explain in detail what EXACTLY is meant by "sugar". It's become an overloaded term.

When we say sugar, do we JUST mean refined, processed, isolated sugars of the likes of candy bars, sodas, etc?

Or do we mean carbohydrates in general, which are broken down by enzymes in our saliva (amylase) into sugars?

If the latter then can we conclude carbohydrates in general are cancer causing? I'm no biologist, or medical professional, so this all gets really confusing when you start thinking beyond the simple "sugar is bad" assertion.

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

#117
post #37
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 fea…

Corn is a core of a lot of farming areas in the U.S.; any attack on sugar is an attack on all the HFCS in everything

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

#119
When reading a book about Alan Turing, I came across a reference to "Natural Wonders, 1928" by Edwin Tenney Brewster (free in iBooks and on the web) - where he refers to Chapter 38: Of Sugar and other Poisons :=)

It's not surprising that after we made fat the demon, the supply change replaced fat with with sugar (at least in yogurts) and type 2 diabetes is now rampant.

:-)

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

#120

I wish someone could explain in detail what EXACTLY is meant by "sugar". It's become an overloaded term. When we say sugar, do we JUST mean refined, processed, isolated sugars of the likes of candy bars, sodas, etc? Or do we mean carbohydrates in general, which are broken down by enzymes in our saliva (amylase) into sugars? If the latter then can we conclude carbohydrates in general are cancer causing? I'm no biologi…

Of the people I know who have been on a sugar-free diet, all of them continued to eat carrots, even though carrots have an interesting amount of sugar.

http://www.sugarstacks.com/carrots.htm

So when people say they're on a sugar-free diet, I interpret that to mean they are avoiding refined sugars.

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