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

50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 307 posts

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#131

Post by DoreenMichele »

Fomite wrote: post #128
DoreenMichele wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that phlegm is akin to pus in that it is drainage due to infection. It is not "normal" mucus. Women routinely have vaginal discharge of various sorts that is not normal, healthy mucus. The fact that women with CF have both substantial vaginal discharge and vaginal dryness severe enough in some cases to "ruin" their sex life strongly suggests that there is a difference between what is produced in quantity…

You're saying then that women with CF have a persistent, chronic, but undiagnosable infection. Note that if, as a medical researcher, one managed to identify an underlying causal agent for CF, that would be career changing. Also, your vaginal dryness theory is only true if CF-related discharge works as a responsive lubricant. That could be, as you suggest, due to a difference in kind, but it could also be a change in…

Medicine agrees that all people with CF are chronically infected. That part is not some novel theory on my part.

I don't have a vaginal dryness theory. My point is that CF is genetic and impacts all cells of the body. The way it works vaginally and in the lungs ought to be consistent. Women with CF consistently report vaginal dryness. They also report vaginal discharge. This discharge appears to not be mucus, given the rest of their testimony.

The reports of women with CF concerning their reproductive tract should cast some light on lung function and is not consistent with prevailing theories that people with CF are "drowning in their own mucus."

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#132

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

paavoova wrote: post #113
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't change the fact that the underlying mechanism of weight gain is a net caloric surplus over a given period of time That's a necessary condition, but it doesn't really represent a useful model of the system of interest. It's a bit like saying that a car moves forward because the engine is hotter than the surrounding environment.

I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions. > That's a necessary condition And addiction isn't, it's merely a contributing factor. Like I wrote, how do you factor in non-obese sugar/food addicts, and, vice versa, obese people who don't suffer from food addiction? Obesity doesn't necessitate…

> I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions.

The point of my analogy isn't that I was crying out for a slightly better car analogy. My point is this: if there's a problem with someone operating a system, it's usually unhelpful to model the system as a black box that happens to follow some universal physical law. It's not necessarily useless to do that, but it's unlikely to capture the aspects of the system that people directly experience and care about.

> Obesity doesn't necessitate food addiction, it could be as simple as neglecting to be physically active or other poor lifestyle choices.

Nobody in this thread claimed (or even suggested, by my reading) that food addiction was necessary for obesity. The description of "poor lifestyle choices" elides any serious analysis of specifically which behavior patterns are involved and what factors drive them. This is especially true when obesity is increasing across large populations. I don't think it's remotely sufficient to suppose that the behavior of hundreds of millions of people changed in similar ways in the span of ~50 years simply because they all spontaneously made unrelated individual decisions to have different preferences. I doubt that you believe this either, so I don't understand why you've arrived at this description as though it's an alternative to addiction and not just a larger category or higher level of abstraction that includes it.

> Any individual can take measures to improve their lifestyle habits and lose weight - how is this not of "interest"?

Of course such measures would be of interest; my objection to your previous post is, in some sense, that it failed to describe any.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#133

Post by joe_the_user »

mgamache wrote: post #80

This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. This type of corrupting influence (direct or indirect) provides enough uncertainty to allow people to ignore all research that doesn't confirm their personal bias. It also fuels the anti-science groups that claim conspiracies to hide the 'truth'.

This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research.

In one sense maybe but it's hard for any one other factor to be larger than sugar in contributing to the decline of American (and world-wide) health.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#134

Post by Fomite »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #131
Fomite wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying then that women with CF have a persistent, chronic, but undiagnosable infection. Note that if, as a medical researcher, one managed to identify an underlying causal agent for CF, that would be career changing. Also, your vaginal dryness theory is only true if CF-related discharge works as a responsive lubricant. That could be, as you suggest, due to a difference in kind, but it could also be a change in…

Medicine agrees that all people with CF are chronically infected. That part is not some novel theory on my part. I don't have a vaginal dryness theory. My point is that CF is genetic and impacts all cells of the body. The way it works vaginally and in the lungs ought to be consistent. Women with CF consistently report vaginal dryness. They also report vaginal discharge. This discharge appears to not be mucus, given t…

There's a difference between chronically infected (which is true) and that the source of CF is an infection, which is the part of your theory that's unsupported.

"the way it works vaginally and in the lungs ought to be consistent." - not necessarily, and especially not when you're describing symptoms (vaginal dryness resulting in uncomfortable sex), because the mucous of your lungs and sexual lubrication serve very different purposes.

And other symptoms of CF in women, such as more difficulties conceiving, are consistent with mucus overproduction.

The discharge might not be mucus, but that doesn't mean that's not the root of what CF is doing.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#135

Post by joe_the_user »

oil25 wrote: post #2

This undue exaggeration about sugar lobby influence has been thoroughly debunked - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747 Aside, it is really a shame how reductionist the popular view of nutrition is that we come to scapegoating "fat" or "sugar". T. Colin Campbell says it well: This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or on…

This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure.

I don't think you can compare fat and sugar. Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years and one that's been common for at best a couple hundred years. The association of high sugar diets with diabetes is pretty strong, as an example of potential harm. The complete elimination of refined sugar from one's diet is fairly practical.

Fat, broadly has been part of the human diet since before the evolution of modern humans. It's something that can't really eliminated and certainly shouldn't be.

So, this "no reductionism" argument is fairly crude itself, reductionist-even, actually.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#136

Post by bushin »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #24
ggm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible you didn't like them and project this into the use of politics in writing class, or that you disliked their politics? Or is it just that you disliked politics at all? I imagine I'd have felt the same about religion. (Although there is a lot of good writing in religious texts, proselytizing needs style)

No, like, this was overt politics and a shameful reminder of some campuses today. Examples: 1. I was one of three male students in the class of 25. She then goes on to bash white male privilege. (Oddly, she is married to a white male.) I can feel the eyeballs on me. 2. A TED talk about abusive behavior against women online. Critical topic, sure, but it began with 5 minutes of the woman reciting out-loud the worst exa…

It's probably in top 100 American short stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Are_You_Going,_Where_Hav...

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#137

Post by Dylan16807 »

zorga wrote: post #53
Dylan16807 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oddly, she is married to a white male. This implies you don't understand what privilege is. It's very literal. There is no blame in having it. It's not an "us vs. them" thing. > reciting out-loud the worst examples against herself with extremely colorful language So? > then going on to partially blame... white men Partially sounds fair if they did a lot of it. What's the problem? > This was REALLY offensive in my b…

> This implies you don't understand what privilege is. It's very literal. There is no blame in having it. It's not an "us vs. them" thing. And that implies you don't allow for those who reject the very political and racist concept of white privilege to reject this presupposition. It's not a matter of "understanding"; he's not failing to understand privilege, he's rejecting it and thus doesn't like her pushing those p…

> he's not failing to understand privilege, he's rejecting it and thus doesn't like her pushing those politics on him.

If he understands it then why does he think it's "odd" for her to have a white male husband?

> So he doesn't want to hear her whining about how white men are to blame for bad things that happened to her because he probably doesn't like listening to racist drivel.

When you're talking about abusive behavior online, and you describe the individuals that leveled the most abusive behavior at you, that's not "whining" or "racist".

> What people call white privilege, generally isn't; usually it's just majority privilege which has nothing to do with whiteness and more importantly is not a bad thing at all.

I'm happy to call it "majority privilege" if you want. I'm not sure how you think it's not a bad thing for certain races to get treated better than others, though. (Different ones depending on what area you're in.)

> Yes, it was; you don't think it was because you don't accept your own beliefs as political beliefs but rather as reality.

What beliefs? "The story had to have some kind of genders for the characters"? "It's not a horrible choice to pick the most common genders involved in adult sexual abuse[0]"? "It's possible to design a character with non-political motives"?

[0] Honestly, I think any gender combo would have been fine here. Which ones would you find "non-political"? (Unless you think rape itself is political which would be weird.) And I know there are under-reporting issues for rape against males, that's why I used the term "sexual assault" to avoid miscategorization problems. It's an unfortunate fact that men commit more sexual assaults, and when they are not against children assaulters usually go for the gender they are attracted to. Here's some statistics: https://richardfelson.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/sex-assaul...

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#138

Post by DoreenMichele »

Fomite wrote: post #134
DoreenMichele wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine agrees that all people with CF are chronically infected. That part is not some novel theory on my part. I don't have a vaginal dryness theory. My point is that CF is genetic and impacts all cells of the body. The way it works vaginally and in the lungs ought to be consistent. Women with CF consistently report vaginal dryness. They also report vaginal discharge. This discharge appears to not be mucus, given t…

There's a difference between chronically infected (which is true) and that the source of CF is an infection, which is the part of your theory that's unsupported. "the way it works vaginally and in the lungs ought to be consistent." - not necessarily, and especially not when you're describing symptoms (vaginal dryness resulting in uncomfortable sex), because the mucous of your lungs and sexual lubrication serve very d…

and that the source of CF is an infection, which is the part of your theory that's unsupported.

I don't think I've said that anywhere and that's not what I'm trying to say.

CF is a genetic disorder. It's root cause is a malfunctioning cell channel, the CFTR, that is defective due to a genetic defect.

But I do think a lot of what we think of as CF is really a consequence of being sick and malnourished your entire life. If those issues can be addressed, outcomes can change.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#139

Post by alrs »

hypogonadism wrote: post #54
alrs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666

How does your sugary endocrinology align with OTC NSAID use? Comorbid or nah? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29311296/

I think that there is no shortage of endocrine disruptors in our environment. Sugar is a good problem to have, as you can opt-out. It's a lot tougher to isolate yourself from pesticides, plastics, fire retardants, and the whole host of other modern pollutants.

Re: 50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

#140

Post by csmeder »

5partan wrote: post #106

>rats were given a diet low in fat and high in sugar, was rejected because "such diets are rarely consumed by man." Hm, Maybe that’s why it is estimated that by 2020 3/4 of all Americans will be obese? The United States are truly a GREAT Country :)

The grisly (1) part is that (far as I know) no other decision (2) in human history has caused more early death.

(1) I say grisly because the effects of diabetes, heart disease, and many other obesity related conditions can be devastating to the patient and their family.

(2) When I say decision I mean both the owners of the sugar company and the Harvard professor. I wonder to what degree he privately was aware of the amount of death and pain he caused with his choice.

Post reply on HN