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Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

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Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#131

Post by pfortuny »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #82
elorant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.

A small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied. Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.

Every edible thing comes from the excrement of others.

Do you eat yoghourt?

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#132

Post by rootusrootus »

kazinator wrote: post #107

I'm not harmed if I'm sitting next to a someone who is consuming sugar. What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.

That could get exciting. Think of all the factors we could base health insurance on. Risky outdoor activities? Higher premiums. Biking to work? Higher premiums.

Alternatively, we could work to help everyone become healthier, and then use as large a risk pool as possible to leverage the benefits of insurance.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#134

Post by StavrosK »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #119
gregmac wrote: post #60

I started eating keto over a year ago, and found that I totally lost my appetite for sugary and other carb-based foods, so have just kept it up. One thing that was eye opening to me was from paying close attention to food labels. I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. What surprised me was how basically they just substitute fat for sugar. Ceasar dressing normal has 1g car…

I think the demonisation of fat might be partly a linguistic problem. “fat” is a derogatory term for someone who is overweight, but it also happens to describe an important component of food, so the (incorrect) connection forms itself: eating fat = getting fat. This isn't the case in all languages, though I don't know if that actually has meant Germany or wherever cares less about fat content.

Maybe we should call it "lipids"? Not sure if that's the same.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#135

Post by humanrebar »

kazinator wrote: post #107

I'm not harmed if I'm sitting next to a someone who is consuming sugar. What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.

This is closest to where I am on this issue, but I do worry that government-set premiums will be affected by lobbying more than anything else.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#136

Post by Mirioron »

ardit33 wrote: post #100
llamathrowaway wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reliable source to back up the claim that sugar is more addictive than alcohol? I am suspicious about this claim because there are plenty of people and families ruined directly as a result of alcoholism. I don’t think sugar addiction is causing nearly as much trouble as alcoholism, despite being a more widely consumed and easily available substance.

The number of "Obese People" far outweighs the number of chronic alcoholics... we are talking about almost 1/3rd of the population being obese (i.e. not just a bit fat, or chubby, just straight out obese).

Sugar isn't the cause of obesity though. I think people that try to blame it all on sugar are simply looking for a scapegoat. It's easier to actually over eat on fat than on sugar because of a higher caloric density. Carbs are just cheaper so they get added to everything as bulk.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#137

Post by jacobr1 »

zanny wrote: post #105
_bxg1 wrote: post #58

It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water". I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a…

If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar. It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar. If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats…

This is probably the right way to think about it at an individual level. Eating berries and fruits in season is probably quite healthy and corn-syrup added processed food unhealthy. But we've already seen how companies obfuscate. For example "Nitrates" have been demonized. So know you'll see "natural" or "healthy" food making using of "celery extract," which is really just "natural nitrates."

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#138

Post by jniedrauer »

nv-vn wrote: post #93

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? As a kid my parents didn't care too much about what I ate. I regularly had sweets of any kind as a kid. I certainly have no addiction to sugar because of that. I probably drink soda less than once a month and have cake/ice cream/chocolate/candy at about the same frequency. Meanwhile, people I grew up with who were never allowed sugar seem much more addic…

> How about we just let people choose what to do with their body?

Would the conversation be different if this were about ads for opioids targeted at children?

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#139

Post by intrasight »

Alex3917 wrote: post #29
umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.

I'm fine with alcohol sales. I'm not fine with alcohol in advertising nor in television shows.

Re: Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

#140

Post by Spooky23 »

moroleth wrote: post #62
umvi wrote: post #2

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop…

Alcohol dependency has a genetic component. The promotion and ingraining into the culture is the big problem.
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