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Is Sugar Toxic?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#11

Post by kenjackson »

pessimist wrote: post #3

"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…

I actually found it to be content dense. It was a bit unactionable, but a good amount of content. Of course he also gives you the names, so you can look up the studies, although he also pretty much tells you that its not applicable to your current diet.

Again, maybe not actionable, but definitely content. Especially for a mainstream newspaper article.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#12

Post by burgerbrain »

pg wrote: post #4
pessimist wrote: post #3

"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…

Being tentative about drawing conclusions is not the same as being content free. Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong, it seems like this topic could use a little more tentativeness.

"Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong"... ...I would argue that writing news articles about things with no conclusive evidence is worse than irresponsible journalism. It's downright harmful, in the most literal sense of the term.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#14

Post by chc »

pg wrote: post #4
pessimist wrote: post #3

"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…

Being tentative about drawing conclusions is not the same as being content free. Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong, it seems like this topic could use a little more tentativeness.

I think he's saying that they weren't tentative enough — that is, either they have enough substance to write an article about how sugar is bad for you, or they shouldn't be writing an article about how sugar is bad for you.

This goes back to the rule about news articles with question headlines: The answer to the headline is "no." If it were "yes," they wouldn't couch it in a question.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#16

Post by 3am »

pessimist wrote: post #3

"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…

That article wasn't content free. Read the part talking about how glucose and fructose are metabolized differently, how excessive sucrose intact overwhelms the liver (processing fructose) and leads it to produce fat, and how that ties into diabetes and heart disease.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#17

Post by Splines »

JonnieCache wrote: post #10

Toxicity as a concept is entirely defined by dose. Bleach is not toxic if you take a small enough dose. Conversely, water is toxic if you drink too much of it. Unfortunately toxic, like so many other of our perfectly good scientific words, has been hijacked by quacks trying to deprive the credulous of their money.

True enough, but people should know how much bleach and water is needed to hurt themselves; death and/or pain provides immediate feedback. The problem with sugar is that the benefits are so immediate and the drawbacks so distant that it requires a strong will to avoid.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#18

Post by rmobin »

pg wrote: post #4
pessimist wrote: post #3

"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…

Being tentative about drawing conclusions is not the same as being content free. Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong, it seems like this topic could use a little more tentativeness.

Paul, do you see any role software could play in trying to resolve the dietary advice problem? There are lots of communities out there of diabetics and obese people improving their health through diet - in particular a low carb, medium protein, high fat diet. That's not proof on its own, but it's more compelling than looking at what people who have always been healthy eat (because it could just be good genes). Science and experiments still need to be a part of the solution, but it disturbs me how much bad science is out there.

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#19

Post by 3am »

burgerbrain wrote: post #12
pg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being tentative about drawing conclusions is not the same as being content free. Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong, it seems like this topic could use a little more tentativeness.

"Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong" ... ...I would argue that writing news articles about things with no conclusive evidence is worse than irresponsible journalism. It's downright harmful, in the most literal sense of the term.

There is conclusive evidence of a problem. The rise in diabetes, heart disease, and obesity are all out there and free to anyone with a web browser.

One might say that given a health crisis, sitting back not saying anything would be irresponsible. Ben Goldacre chronicles bad science journalism, and this is not an example of it.

(edited)

Re: Is Sugar Toxic?

#20

Post by larrik »

sp332 wrote: post #5

I can't find a link now, but I remember some research being done that had runners in a lab swish a sucrose solution in their mouths and then spit it out. They ran longer than the control group who got artificial sweetener. So something happens to your metabolism before the sugar is digested, and no one has studied how tasting sucrose might be different from tasting HFCS. It's just weird and complicated :) Edit: here'…

Artificial sweetener doesn't strike me as solid enough for a control. How could you know the effect wasn't in fact the artificial sweetener negatively affecting the "control"? Or some combination of the two?

Your link doesn't actually mention what the placebo was, though.

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