50 Years Ago, Meat Industry Quietly Paid Pseudo-Scientists to Blame Carbs (2066)
100 Years Ago, Psuedo-Science Industry Quietly Paid Meat To Blame People (2105).
200 Years ago, Psuedo-People industry quietly paid Science to blame meat. (2205)
50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
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Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#82This is, like, the third time this month we’re seeing blah-blah-blah-sugar on the front page of HN. I have a lot of fat friends, and I hate to say it, but I watched them over the years, and it wasn’t sugar that made them huge and unhealthy. It was indulgence, carelessness and zero motivation to exert will power. And they were mostly really smart people. But they didn’t give a fuck. And I’m using past tense “were” bec…
I like to think of sugar, fructose in particular, as a meta food. It directly affects how the body eats other foods. In particular quantities of other foods. Quite simply, it makes people eat more than they otherwise would. Coupled with its high reward factor, its addictiveness and a food industry that has pumped it, in large quantities, in practically every food you eat, it’s no wonder that it is a plague.
Its mean-spirited and somewhat ignorant to blame your fat friends who, along with you, have been deliberately lied to about the ill effects of the massive amounts of sugar you consume on a daily basis for the last half century.
First, they can’t fight what they don’t know is killing them because they’ve been lied to that it’s lack of exercise, it’s the steak and fat. That it’s a problem with them. How can they win when the ‘health food’ shoved in their faces is packed with more sugar?
Second, once they realize how to get out of the mess, they find out how nearly impossible it is to eat anything of what they are used to eating. Sugar is so prevalent in everything in the supermarket, from the obvious ice cream, ketchup, sriracha sauce to mayo, crackers, smoked fish, practically all frozen or canned items, pizza, bread and on and on.
The system is rigged against them.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get her point, and this isn’t about pure biology, it’s nutrition which is biology without a lab plus all of the variables of a human population. That’s not to say that sugar isn’t something to be taken in extreme moderation, just that comparing half-assed, p-hacked, poorly controlled and non-replicable studies in social sciences to nutrition studies seems fair.
>Epidemiological studies of sugar consumption — which look at patterns of health and disease in the real world — were dismissed for having too many possible factors getting in the way. Experimental studies were dismissed for being too dissimilar to real life. >One study that found a health benefit when people ate less sugar and more vegetables was dismissed because that dietary change was not feasible. >Another study…
My comment actually allows for scenario B: conflict of interest.
We all routinely do things because of financial pressure that we wouldn't do without it. When I had a corporate job, co-workers routinely said "I need my job" as an explanation for doing or not doing a particular thing at work when other people were suggesting "You should do X!" whether in jest or in earnest.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get her point, and this isn’t about pure biology, it’s nutrition which is biology without a lab plus all of the variables of a human population. That’s not to say that sugar isn’t something to be taken in extreme moderation, just that comparing half-assed, p-hacked, poorly controlled and non-replicable studies in social sciences to nutrition studies seems fair.
>Epidemiological studies of sugar consumption — which look at patterns of health and disease in the real world — were dismissed for having too many possible factors getting in the way. Experimental studies were dismissed for being too dissimilar to real life. >One study that found a health benefit when people ate less sugar and more vegetables was dismissed because that dietary change was not feasible. >Another study…
C.) B occurred, but in the context of the entire body of research being somewhere between reading tea leaves, and phlogiston theory.
I’m arguing for C, which is sort of like arguing that Monsanto influences research around GMO crops and online discussion of same, but also that GMO crops are not the devil. The fact that the sugar industry twisted the “science” doesn’t mean the science was good, it just means they disliked the conclusions. I’m not suggesting that excess consumption of sugar is wise, or that the current average consumption in the West isn’t excessive. That doesn’t imply that sugar is poison, and that eliminating it completely is healthier than keeping consumption at a reasonable level.
Personally it seems clear that few people can spare so many calories in a day that the average sugar intake is healthy. That is an argument against excess that’s been known since antiquity.
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Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what a social science study has to do with a biology study. If you feed rats sugar and 50% of them die of heart attacks and you have a control group where it's 10% you have found something about sugar and rats. I'm not sure what the number in this case were but the sugar lobby scientists did a meta study where they used the logic in your post to throw out the studies that made sugar look bad, while keepi…
I've seen terrible logic errors in biology models as well. It just tends to be drama when I talk about those examples. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. According to the CF Foundation website (last I looked), my body overproduces mucus and I am drowning in my own mucus and this is why lung clearance methods are prescribed. I have seen exactly one study that concluded that people with CF actually underproduce mucus. T…
Sad that this is getting down voted. Science is wonderful, and it's behind many incredible breakthroughs in modern technology, obviously.
But in my book, logic beats science every time. You can point to all the studies in the world, but if they conflict with my own literal experience, I am going to be at the very least skeptical of the science.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#86And 50 years later I still struggle to find yogurt that hasn’t been stripped of its fat at office snack fridges.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I'm trying it now and finding it tremendously challenging to eat adequate calories without either grains or lots and lots of meat. Vegetables are so calorie-poor and expensive that they're untenable, so you better love beans and lentils, because that's the vast majority of what you'll be consuming.
The answer is fat -- the majority of your calories necessarily come from either carbs or fats (protein is pretty constant for most people). So if you cut way down on carbs, gotta go up on the fats, that's just how it works: I eat lots of cheese, full-fat strained ("greek") yogurt, tons of eggs, nuts and peanut butter, tons of olive oil on my salad and vegetables, lots of butter in my scrambled eggs, obviously avocado…
> vegan then you don't get as much variety
I simply fail to see how it's possible to eat vegan low-carb. Everything vegan, be it legumes, vegetables, or fruits, have carbs. Legumes are 2/3 carbs, so they're out of the question. Even nuts, despite their high fat/moderate protein content, have an appreciable amount of carbs. Even peanuts, a low-carb legume, have 21 grams of carbs/100g. Which just leaves processed plant proteins and fats.
On top of that, protein gets converted into glucose via gluconeogenesis, so despite eating low-carb your body will be breaking down excess protein into sugar. So to try vegan low-carb is really an impossible fad diet.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#88I took Intro to Psychology in my mid to late twenties. We were required to participate in a study as part of the class. IIRC, the study was being performed by a grad student in pursuit of their degree. So, really, both the "scientist" and subjects of the study were kind of compelled to participate. No one was there of their free will. We were all trying to tick off an educational checkbox on our way to a sheepskin in…
I'm not sure what a social science study has to do with a biology study. If you feed rats sugar and 50% of them die of heart attacks and you have a control group where it's 10% you have found something about sugar and rats. I'm not sure what the number in this case were but the sugar lobby scientists did a meta study where they used the logic in your post to throw out the studies that made sugar look bad, while keepi…
Find a study that actually disambiguates between the effects of sugar and of caloric surplus. Hint: you wont. It doesn't exist. What we get is study after study that shows that if you put people (or rats) in front of a buffet of chicken breast and a buffet of cake the people (or rats) in front of the buffet of cake eat more.
It turns out the meaningful question in nutrition is how you get people to comply to a calorically balanced diet when they are depressed and in front of a buffet of both chicken breast and cake, not which is the best one. This has as much to do with social science (and psychology and everything else) as it does biology. In fact, the metabolic part is the easy part: we basically know how that works as well as we need to fix the problem: eat fewer calories.
Now how do you convince 150 million Americans using food as an emotional outlet to stop doing that? Especially when close to 100% of the population that is not experiencing food scarcity does this to some extent, some just worse than others.
It's a lot more complicated than explaining to them that eating too much is bad and that a diet high in sugar is more likely to cause them to do that. It's like telling heroin addicts that opioids lower their life expectancy and expecting them to then stop using heroin. This problem is existential.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen terrible logic errors in biology models as well. It just tends to be drama when I talk about those examples. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. According to the CF Foundation website (last I looked), my body overproduces mucus and I am drowning in my own mucus and this is why lung clearance methods are prescribed. I have seen exactly one study that concluded that people with CF actually underproduce mucus. T…
Sad that this is getting down voted. Science is wonderful, and it's behind many incredible breakthroughs in modern technology, obviously. But in my book, logic beats science every time. You can point to all the studies in the world, but if they conflict with my own literal experience, I am going to be at the very least skeptical of the science.
Thank you.
I wish people would actually engage me on the logic rather than acting like I must be crazy and making things up while they pretend such assumptions aren't some form of prejudice.
I'm starved for actual meaty engagement on such subjects. Like explain to me why you think I'm wrong instead of telling me I hallucinated my entire life and if I really do have CF and I really am getting well, it's 18 years of placebo effect and I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about.
Fear me. I can apparently hallucinate my body into better health. Up next: Darth Vader Force chokehold, clearly.
Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen terrible logic errors in biology models as well. It just tends to be drama when I talk about those examples. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. According to the CF Foundation website (last I looked), my body overproduces mucus and I am drowning in my own mucus and this is why lung clearance methods are prescribed. I have seen exactly one study that concluded that people with CF actually underproduce mucus. T…
Sad that this is getting down voted. Science is wonderful, and it's behind many incredible breakthroughs in modern technology, obviously. But in my book, logic beats science every time. You can point to all the studies in the world, but if they conflict with my own literal experience, I am going to be at the very least skeptical of the science.
Because this smacks of the same logic that people use to deduce things like "homeopathy works." Develop a hypothesis. Find a few people on the internet who support it. Badah bing badah boom you are now a quack.
The big problem with the GP's "logic" here is that, at least according to cursory googling (the best kind!), plenty of women with CF do report having thick vaginal mucous. Any doctor will tell you that a given disease can present many different ways. It's a terrible idea to reason from your own personal experience with a disease to how the disease works in general.