121–130 of 182 posts
Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
Sugar does not cause diabetes.
T2D is insulin resistance, what causes the body to release insulin and why does the body become resistant?
Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
It sounds all good and well, until you realize it's essentially just a tax on the least wealthy people. Cheap food is typically high in sugar, so all you're doing is removing cheap food.
I offer the alternative of subsidizing healthy food, use the carrot and not the stick. Subsidizing healthy food also has the added bonus of supporting local farmers and manufacturing of food.
> If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
I think the fundamental assumption here is a lack of agency of the individual. The answer isn't to 'tax the plebs until they do what we want' - we need to understand exactly why people are making the decisions they do.
I have some theories of my own about this, but it's an actively ongoing investigation. I spoke to a friend in Biology just the other day, and they had a completely different perspective from their field about why people are becoming more obese.
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I have never been more miserable than when I was doing fasting. It was truly one of the most horrible times of my life. I tried for months. My sleep as disrupted, I felt awful, and I had no energy. But more to the point, _nothing happened at all_ in terms of weight loss. Just thinking about it makes me angry! I have no idea what the hell is going on with my metabolism and why I am the pure opposite case. I'm genuinel…
fasting is only useful as a hunger management tool. it doesnt really do anything incredible to your metabolism that would result in huge weight loss irrespective of calorie intake. all diets are just hunger management tools.
This is a pretty dismissive comment, here are some excerpts from the abstract of my previous citation [1]:
> In lower eukaryotes, chronic fasting extends longevity, in part, by reprogramming metabolic and stress resistance pathways.
> In rodents intermittent or periodic fasting protects against diabetes, cancers, heart disease, and neurodegeneration, while in humans it helps reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis.
> Thus, fasting has the potential to delay aging and help prevent and treat diseases while minimizing the side effects caused by chronic dietary interventions.
The health care model in the US doesn't really help much on the matter, but this isn't a battle against diabetes, diabetes is just the result of an overweight population with bad dietary habits. There is the inherited kind, and then there is the "earned" kind. One is genetically unavoidable, the other is mostly preventable. It is not even the food, or fats, or carbs, or sugars, it's too many calories over extended ti…
> The body has ok ish prevention systems when it comes to food via ghrelin feedback loop and stomach size, but the body cannot cope with too much fast absorbed fluid calories. Perhaps you mean leptin ? Ghrelin is for hunger while leptin is for satiety, so the latter is really more the limiting factory.
Thanks for the addition, I have just always held the opinion that ghrelin has more effects. Another example would be on a binge, no matter if people eat slow or fast(important for leptin trigger), the appetite keeps being a bit higher than the satiety sensation for some reason.
Btw, I wanted to add that I did not intend to just point fingers at the US, was just because the title is us centric. Europe is mostly no better, nor are most LATAM countries.
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Type 2 diabetes is also very much a genetic problem. Sure, being overweight may give you a more likely chance of seeing the issues arise (sooner that is)but I know plenty of people who are not overweight and have type 2 diabetes. If someone has the genetic disposition for Type 2 diabetes in younger, more fit people they are still extremely likely to start seeing the effects as they age and lose activity (even if they…
I wonder what percentage of people with T2D are normal weight, because my impression is it's not very many people at all.
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Too much sugar causes high insulin. Prolonged high insulin causes insulin resistance. Insulin resistance causes diabetes.
This is a common misconception. Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes is mostly caused by obesity. Sugar has a relatively high caloric density and can be addictive, leading to obesity. However, you can eat large amounts of sugar if you do a lot of sport, for example, and then burn off the calories again. Then you don't get diabetes from it either.
Blood sugar triggers the release of insulin to clear it from the blood. Insulin is a hormone that puts the body into an anabolic state so all cells and in particular fat cells begin to store the sugar from the blood. There is a correlation between obesity and T2D, but not causation.
This is why not all T2D patients are obese, rather in every case of T2D you will find someone that regularly consumed sugar/carbs.
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There is some evidence that certain artificial sweeteners can alter glucose metabolism and increase obesity risk. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/1/29/htm
Might be, might not. I always wonder, who funded that or such studies? I know the mdpi is a credible source. As long the sweeteners do not have calories, they will not directly make anyone gain weight. The taste might cause a desire for more sweet things and eventually people will give in, but that's tangential/collateral. On the other side, it's proven beyond doubt that sugar directly, the fructose component in suga…
There might be more to weight gain than just a straight calorie count https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01956...
It could be the hormonal response, could be the gut bacteria, could be consumption time window, circadian rhythms, or a combo thereof.
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I'm not opposed to the idea, but there are some counterpoints that suggest it may not be as effective as you think. Look at gasoline tax. California has the highest tax in the country, yet it's also the largest consumer. I think other commenters have it right when they say there's a culture problem. In Niagara Falls, for example, it's a fairly common occurrence for Americans going into the Canadian side to get into a…
But the culture problem is a result of the corporate problem. Expectations are set by what people are used to being offered - heck, your stomach physically grows when you're regularly eating larger portions - it should be no surprise that those norms carry over when people leave their environment for short periods. I don't think it's fair to call it a moral failing of consumers. We've been set up to fail.
But also, that's kinda abdicating responsibility a bit, don't you think? My in-laws live in North America, but cook traditional homemade chinese food (and they were teachers by trade in China, so the "low income peeps don't have time" argument doesn't exactly fly either).
It costs them something to the tune of $150 a month in groceries to feed 6 lavishly when we go visit (probably even less otherwise because they're even thriftier when cooking for themselves). The fact that the vast majority of americans don't know how to cook rice in a regular pot, or pickle their own radishes is largely due to its culinary culture (or rather, a lack of it).
In Japan, there's the concept of Yamato Nadeshiko, a desirable set of traits in a romantic partner which involves among other things being excellent at home cooking. I'm not aware of this kind of intertwining between cooking and other aspects of life in the US. IME, cooking is mostly just seen as an annoying chore, or associated with snobbishness.
Another example: there's animes/mangas portraying cooking in home economics class in school (like cutting veggies and making rice). The closest I've seen in the US so far is third graders making homemade ice cream (which is basically just dumping cream in a bag of ice).
Point being, I think there's more than just corporate narratives when it comes to culture.
Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
> Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. > > Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. It sounds all good and well, until you realize it's essentially just a tax on the least wealthy people. Cheap food is typically high in sugar, so all you're doing is removing cheap food. I offer the alternative of subsidizing healthy food, use the carrot and not the stick. Subsidizing healthy food also has the added bonus o…
You could in theory offset that by changing the mix of products qualified for SNAP program. 20% of food stamp money is spent on sugary stuff https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPF...