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

151–160 of 307 posts

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

#151

Post by scns »

paavoova wrote: post #87
crazygringo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which is completely fine. Glucose is what your body needs, cells can use it. The other part of Sucrose is Fructose. The boby has no use for it, can only can only convert it in the liver to fat same with ethanol. There are hypotheses that cancer cells use fructose for energy.

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

#152

Post by jMyles »

Fomite wrote: post #130
jMyles wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dispute both your use of the word "science" and your characterization, "a biased sample of confirmation bias." The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results. And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmat…

"The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results." You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant funding. "And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation bias, but instead an int…

> You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant funding.

Thank you for disclosing that you have a vested financial interest in this topic.

FWIW, you are talking to someone who didn't need an exposé to realize that sugar was bad for me and made me feel bad. :-)

> I don't know why you're taking a jaded, skeptical approach to science, but an idealistic one to your social graph. Your social graph is biased. It just is. Homophily and communities are things for a reason.

I don't think that my approach is jaded, but skeptical yes. What's wrong with that?

Yes, my social graph is biased. What's wrong with that?

> While I think critical engagement with science is essential, "checking it against lived experience" is comparing your biased anecdotes to study results, and trying to draw a conclusion from that

Yes, I expect that study results, if they want to be taken seriously, not be easily disproven by available anecdotes in my life.

I remember the day - literally the day - in 2002 when a study - conducted at Johns Hopkins and published in Science - concluded that MDMA was a potential cause of Parkinson's disease.

In the study, a drug purported to be MDMA, in a dose purported to be typical, was administered to 10 animals - baboons and squirrel monkeys - and two of them died as a result of the drug.

I didn't need anything but personal anecdotes to tell me that something had gone horribly wrong in this study, since I had dozens of friends (and myself) who had taken MDMA and none of us knew anybody who had died. It was obvious to everyone from the very first day either that these animals had a very different sensitivity to MDMA or that a different drug or different dose had been administered.

I recall that Myself, Rick Doblin, Tom Angell, and many others took to the SSDP mailing list immediately to point this out.

However, it took another year for Johns Hopkins to sheepishly claim that a "labeling error" had caused the animals to be injected with methamphetamine and not MDMA.

Of course the study was retracted on this basis, but not before it went through all the rigor and peer review that is required to pass the filters and both Johns Hopkins and Science. [0]

That's the kind of bullshit that I'm talking about that masquerades as science and that personal anecdotes can easily and convincingly defeat, and the kind of thing I'm saying is required to verify with lived experience.

> That, itself, is not science, and is absolutely the fuel behind things like the use of "As a mother..." in antivaccine discussions.

This seems like an unmitigated cum hoc fallacy to me. The fact that I assert that lived experience is a meaningful mechanism to discover truth does not mean that I agree with every silly conclusion drawn by people who perhaps agree with me on this point.

[0]: https://maps.org/research-archive/mdma/retraction/maps_respo...

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

#153

Post by tomhoward »

zorga wrote: post #43
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

That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen, you are still responsible for yourself no matter the biology of how the effects work. With very very few exceptions, people are fat because they eat too much food, it's as simple as that. If you overeat (as an adult), you are to blame, it's not anyone else's fault. I agree with the OP.

> it's not anyone else's fault

Nobody's saying it's all somebody else's fault.

The only valid position to hold about this topic is that it's complex and multi-faceted.

Sure, self-discipline and personal choices are a factor - but the issue of what influences people's ability to exert self-discipline and make healthy choices is a vast and little-understood topic in its own right.

Whatever the case, if a child is raised on a high-carb/low-fat diet from a young age because their parents and schools accept the official advice, the carb-dependent metabolism they end up with by the time they reach adulthood will most certainly complicate their ability to make healthy choices.

> you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen

Societies everywhere restrict access to alcohol and tobacco to minors because it's accepted that minors are not capable of making fully-informed choices.

Why do you hold a different position regarding sugar?

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

#154

Post by masonic »

paavoova wrote: post #87
crazygringo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

  protein gets converted into glucose via gluconeogenesis
But how much gluconeogenesis even happens on a vegan diet? On a keto diet, it's necessary for organs that run on glucose, such as the heart. Non-keto diets should have plenty of sucrose/fructose/glucose already available.

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

#155

Post by masonic »

scns wrote: post #151
paavoova wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Which is completely fine. Glucose is what your body needs, cells can use it. The other part of Sucrose is Fructose. The boby has no use for it, can only can only convert it in the liver to fat same with ethanol. There are hypotheses that cancer cells use fructose for energy.

  There are hypotheses that cancer cells use fructose for energy
Does fructose even reach the bloodstream?

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

#156

Post by masonic »

timbit42 wrote: post #64
koboll wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

Beans and lentils aren't low carb.

They're low carb by plant standards.

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

#157

Post by 0x262d »

hoardack wrote: post #33

This 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…

you seem like an amazingly toxic person

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

#158

Post by masonic »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #50
hoardack wrote: post #33

This 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…

Yeah lately HN is high on sugar and obsessed with China. Maybe the next article will be some conspiracy theory combination of the two.

"Buzzfeed report: Chinese scientists limit impacts of sugar consumption using blockchain"

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

#159

Post by DoreenMichele »

alrs wrote: post #35
hoardack wrote: post #33

This 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…

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

Related: Urban planning used to take human health into consideration as well and mostly has stopped doing do (at least in the US). People (in America) who can't find walkable neighborhoods with residential near their jobs end up spending unhealthy amounts of time behind the wheel and often hate it. There are lots of studies about how sitting too much, whether at a desk job or in your vehicle, does the things to you which are not adequately reversed by hitting the gym.

Desk jobs used to be uncommon back when most people worked on a farm. It is within my lifetime that this changed. When I was born, more than half of all people had physically hard jobs on farms, iirc.

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

#160

Post by james_s_tayler »

masonic wrote: post #158
james_s_tayler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah lately HN is high on sugar and obsessed with China. Maybe the next article will be some conspiracy theory combination of the two.

"Buzzfeed report: Chinese scientists limit impacts of sugar consumption using blockchain"

I actually laughed at out loud at that one. The blockchain got me. Because of course. Brilliant.
Post reply on HN