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Big Sugar Versus Your Body

nytimes.com

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Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#21

Post by taeric »

itpragmatik wrote: post #6

Also would like to know if the author had any younger kids at home. Being a parent I find it difficult and almost impossible to deny my kids of sweet treats few times a week. We end up buying things that kids like but then temptation is very strong and I end up eating some of those treats as well! Also I am addicted to fake sugar (Truvia/Stevia etc). I use them almost everyday. Are they bad than natural sugar or wors…

The answer for us is to not buy snacks. Pretty much period. Sometimes we do apples and whatnot for a time, but finding half eaten apples around the house is frustrating.

And this is not to say we don't have snacks ever; but as you noted, if we have the snacks, it is a temptation for us, as well. This is the reason we never buy sodas.

We are lucky because our kids will gripe some, but we can explain that the snacks are bad for "us" not just them. And they so far seem to be respecting that.

Only "secret" I know to help this is we don't let our kids get food after dinner. If they don't eat dinner, they just don't get food that evening. This is actually helped by not having snacks and extra food around the house.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#22

Post by exelius »

beggi wrote: post #5

The author conflates sugar/honey etc (pure carbs - glucose, fructose) and artificial sweeteners like stevia and erythritol which don't have any effect on your blood glucose and really are completely different. I fully agree with the premise of minimizing sugar consumption but I don't think encouraging people to avoid certain artificial sweeteners like stevia etc is helpful - and in fact it's hurting because certain p…

I think the author is also concerned with the psychology of “all food must be sweet”. I personally found that if I simply replaced sugared food with non-sugar sweeteners, I still ended up eating too much. It wasn’t until I made a conscious effort to cut down on sweetened foods that I started having success.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#23

Post by lev99 »

I encourage everyone to measure everything they eat for one week. Use an app, a scale and count the calories, macronutrients and micronutrients. The results are well worth the trouble of doing it for one week.

I found my sodium and sugar intake were way to high, and foods I thought were high in protein were often not. Now I read the white label on every food item I buy at the grocery store. After several years my tastes have changed so that I no longer enjoy foods that were once my favorite. I'm very glad I did this experiment at age 20, it probably saved me from obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#24

Post by epanchin »

itpragmatik wrote: post #6

Also would like to know if the author had any younger kids at home. Being a parent I find it difficult and almost impossible to deny my kids of sweet treats few times a week. We end up buying things that kids like but then temptation is very strong and I end up eating some of those treats as well! Also I am addicted to fake sugar (Truvia/Stevia etc). I use them almost everyday. Are they bad than natural sugar or wors…

I used to snack on carrots and mini cheeses as a child!

Is Home shopping available in your area? It’s a lot easier to avoid sweets if you aren’t walking around a supermarket.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#26

Post by exelius »

jakewins wrote: post #16
beggi wrote: post #5

The author conflates sugar/honey etc (pure carbs - glucose, fructose) and artificial sweeteners like stevia and erythritol which don't have any effect on your blood glucose and really are completely different. I fully agree with the premise of minimizing sugar consumption but I don't think encouraging people to avoid certain artificial sweeteners like stevia etc is helpful - and in fact it's hurting because certain p…

> on't have any effect on your blood glucose and really are completely different Source for this? My understanding is that the link between non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) and diabetes is growing increasingly clear. For instance: NAS linked to glucose intolerance (pre-diabetic hyperglacemia): https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793 NAS unlikely to be healthy alternative to sugar for prevention of type 2 d…

They’re not all one category; some artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response and some do not. This would make sense as to why it can lead to diabetes; your body is constantly getting signals to release insulin to break down sugar, but then there’s no sugar. Eventually your body “learns” to not produce as much insulin in the presence of all sweeteners, and that’s diabetes in a nutshell.

I’d be interested to see if these studies hold with sweeteners like Stevia that don’t produce an insulin response.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#27

Post by derefr »

matte_black wrote: post #8
beggi wrote: post #5

The author conflates sugar/honey etc (pure carbs - glucose, fructose) and artificial sweeteners like stevia and erythritol which don't have any effect on your blood glucose and really are completely different. I fully agree with the premise of minimizing sugar consumption but I don't think encouraging people to avoid certain artificial sweeteners like stevia etc is helpful - and in fact it's hurting because certain p…

I couldn’t read the article, so I will only go off what I imagine the article might say (like pretty much every other nytimes article). The problem with making food taste more sugary, with or without artificial sweeteners, is that as a society we are growing too accustomed to hyper-stimulating foods. Why can’t people just live with the fact that every food doesn’t need to be loaded with sugar and instead open their p…

> instead open their palates to the notes that come from natural flavors

Presumably because people are eating things that, underneath the sugar, are pretty much tasteless.

Consider the American Chinese staple of "sweet and sour pork." What does it taste like, without the sweet and sour sauce? Well... it's deep-fried boiled pork. Would you eat plain deep-fried boiled pork? Even as a side-dish?

If we take away the artificial flavors, a large number of (usually cheaper!) dishes simply cease to exist. Palatable food—especially palatable fast food—would get a lot more expensive. What of the people who work all day, end up too tired to cook, and yet don't end up with enough money for healthy food?

(If the answer is "we don't want those people to be in that situation in the first place", then try solving that problem—if you manage it, I have a feeling it would largely solve America's obesity epidemic as a byproduct.)

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#28

Post by epanchin »

igravious wrote: post #15
itpragmatik wrote: post #6

Also would like to know if the author had any younger kids at home. Being a parent I find it difficult and almost impossible to deny my kids of sweet treats few times a week. We end up buying things that kids like but then temptation is very strong and I end up eating some of those treats as well! Also I am addicted to fake sugar (Truvia/Stevia etc). I use them almost everyday. Are they bad than natural sugar or wors…

My daughter has chocolate in the cupboard from Easter this time last year. She has a can of soda maybe once a week and does eat not much candy, when she does it's recognised as a treat and not a part of her normal diet. She does drink smoothies that I'm sure have a good bit of sugar. I never buy products with artificial sweeteners if I can help it and I never use fake sugar (Truvia/Stevia/…) supplements–I'm actually…

Smoothies are horrifically sugary, I was shocked when I found out. A blender probably isn’t a bad investment... I’m not sure if they come in child safe flavours, maybe a nutribullet?!

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#29

Post by 1137 »

gjem97 wrote: post #13
notheguyouthink wrote: post #3

The article mentions Stevia, but are fake sugars proven to be bad? What about as bad as Sugar? I'm curious because that's my wife's lifeblood for a life without sugar. Without fake sugars.. I don't know what she'd do.

I believe there have been some studies that show that artificial sweeteners affect your insulin response to real sugar, but I think it's far from settled science.

I'm not sure how scientific it is but when my wife and I got into keto we bought several sweeteners and did glucose testing at home.

The tricky thing is some artificial sweeteners spiked mine, while others triggered hers.

So it isn't enough to say "artificial sweeteners do | do not", you'd need to test your own reactions via blood glucose testing. So many pin pricks. Neat data though.

Re: Big Sugar Versus Your Body

#30

Post by pascalxus »

deyan wrote: post #18

I can confirm at least one part of this story with a personal anecdote: As a child, I absolutely loved, craved, was addicted to Coca Cola. A liter a day, perhaps more. Coming to the US, I noticed that it tasted different because of substituting sugar with high fructose corn syrup. No problem - I switched to Mexican Coca Cola (the one in a glass bottle) - and carried on. Fast forward to after grad school, I wanted to…

It's awesome that some people can break away from the addiction entirely. But, for me, even if I don't have sugar for months at a time, I still crave it deeply. And when I consume it, it has an extremely profound enjoyable feeling to it. For me, it's not coke or soft drinks, but rather sweet drinks like horchata and milk tea (not the real one), syrupy stuff, donuts, etc. I apply moderation.
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