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Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

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Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#31
post #22
post #5

It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything. Just looked at my girlfriend's Starbucks Chai tea container. 100g sugar! She would be better off drinking a bottle of Coke. And Starbucks are supposed to be good guys . On a related note: how do they get that much sugar into these drinks? If I made a liter of Chai tea and poured 100g sugar into it I don't think it would be drinkable.

Lots of people don't realize that 1 cup milk has 13g sugar from the lactose. For comparison, a typical sugar packet is 2-4g. (This is why cereal + milk is probably just about the unhealthiest thing possible to start your day). It's a good idea to switch from the sugary/milky Starbucks drinks to anything else - like cold brew, or black coffee where you add trace amounts of sugar/cream yourself, if any.

Not sure I would recommend adult humans drink milk, but 13g is not really that much (depending on your choice of cereal) the USDA suggests males 19-30 could eat up to 82g/day (the WHO is a little more reasonable at 50g for all adults)[1]

1: http://www.foodpyramid.com/daily-sugar-intake/

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#32
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market can only work if everybody had perfect information and no secrets. Otherwise whoever has more information can manipulate reality.

Perfect information and unlimited computing power.

Don't forget infinite time.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#33
post #25

The crazy part is that a lot of people would go absolutely insane if their sugar was to be cut off all of a sudden. That's the one thing we don't want to hear. And in doing so, pretend that everything is great. The same goes for canned and long shelf-life food. If you eat a healthy diet then getting naturally occuring sugars is not a problem. And I understand the argument that eating 'healthy' might not be possible f…

what's the problem with people eating canned food or sugar? why do you think organic food is healthier than non-organic food?

this post is typical of most of the posts in this and other threads concerning nutrition - lots of assertion and personal opinion, and judgements about others diets, none of it supported by research.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#34
Why has everything got to be an "Evil Corporations" plot? I remember explicitly learning that sugar is bad for you from the food pyramid in elementary school and implicitly from being told I can't have candy well before. If some companies tried to convince people that sugar is healthy they wasted their money. Every few years we get a new food bogeyman, so seems like whatever science is out there is far from conclusive. I have a hard time believing that the link between sugar and all these diseases is so obvious that it was found and buried by what is essentially a marketing department of some food company, while completely eluding every independent researcher out there.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t be Germany, natural yoghurt is commonly available here. And yes, US makes it very difficult to buy healthy food.

its Amazing how much less sugar common foods in Germany have than the USA. It took us a bit to adjust but when we got back all the bakery sweets here tasted disgusting. Wish we could change the culture here to be closer to European in that aspect.

When I was about 10 years old my parents took my siblings and me on a 5 week vacation to the US (I'm from Europe). It was a lot of fun, but I distinctly remember that it was impossible for me to eat the bread that we would buy at the supermarket because it was just too sweet. And this was not because my parents just bought some bread but they actually tried to find some "normal" tasting bread and it was not possible.

But for pudding the problem was kind of the reverse: It was hard to find normal tasting pudding because instead of sugar and fat there were artificial sweeteners in everything.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#36
post #27

Sugar, all by itself is bad (awful bad), but when you add "Red 40" to the mix children go into instant hyperactive-overdrive. They start bouncing off the walls and you might as well be feeding them crack cocaine. I spent a total of 24 days watching our grandkids this year and everyone of them was a battle over what they'd eat. I could not get the oldest (11 years old now) to take a single bite of real food during the…

That sounds like poor parenting more than anything else. Also, the "sugar -> hyperactive ADHD kids!" thing is a myth.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#37
post #27

Sugar, all by itself is bad (awful bad), but when you add "Red 40" to the mix children go into instant hyperactive-overdrive. They start bouncing off the walls and you might as well be feeding them crack cocaine. I spent a total of 24 days watching our grandkids this year and everyone of them was a battle over what they'd eat. I could not get the oldest (11 years old now) to take a single bite of real food during the…

There is no good/conclusive evidence that Red 40 and other food dyes affect hyperactivity.

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#38
post #4

I started to notice that sugar content has increased in sodas. I used to work in a grocery store 12/13 years ago, and I remember stacking sodas on the shelves. The sugar content was 35g. I stacked them everyday so as far as I remember this was the norm at the time for a one serving in California. Only a couple months ago, I started looking at the labels of sodas again. The content varies from 39g to 55g in California…

Are you sure that's adjusted for serving size?

Re: Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

#39
post #13
post #5

It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything. Just looked at my girlfriend's Starbucks Chai tea container. 100g sugar! She would be better off drinking a bottle of Coke. And Starbucks are supposed to be good guys . On a related note: how do they get that much sugar into these drinks? If I made a liter of Chai tea and poured 100g sugar into it I don't think it would be drinkable.

> It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything I remember traveling to Western Europe a couple of years ago (I live further East) and trying to buy plain yogurt from a supermarket, I mean yogurt which should have tasted as close as possible to the one my peasant grandma used to make. It was close to impossible to find such a product, as even the yogurt labeled as "plain" had a sweetish taste, you could definite…

I just purchased an Instant Pot recently and it advertised yogurt making.

I didn't try it because I'm indifferent on yogurt here. Now that you've told me that homemade yogurt is significantly different, I might have to give it a try...

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