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

50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 86 posts

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

#51

Post by pengaru »

Fezzik wrote: post #45
pengaru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've heard some concerning things, but part of what made Good Calorie, Bad Calorie so annoying to read is it's practically all reference-backed citations.

You can read the studies here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673150 and here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.22468 They are both thorough, easy to read, and contradict Taubes’ primary claims. A third was supposed to occur (I think) but the funding, surprisingly, was withdrawn. Edit: there were three studies done, all of which contradict Taubes’ claims. You can read his wonky…

I've never really considered Taubes as anything more than a writer/journalist and I appreciated the obviously herculean effort writing something like Good Calories, Bad Calories must have required.

If he poorly ran poorly designed trials of his own with NuSI, it wouldn't remotely surprise me. It's not, to my understanding, his wheelhouse.

From what I recall of Good Calories, Bad Calories (it's been quite a few years now), the thing wasn't even making new claims by the author. It dryly stated the purported science and history surrounding claims that weren't even his own. And it was all thoroughly backed with citations.

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

#52

Post by safety1st »

tobiasSoftware wrote: post #15
300bps wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I’m just a person who has remained the same approximate weight for the past 3 decades so I don’t know anything about substantial weight loss or gain. But is it at all possible it’s just calories in calories out? I know it isn’t a sexy theory but it works like hell for me.

Calories in calories out (CICO) is the what, not the why. If you saw someone who spent $1000 on jewelry every month and didn't pay their electricity bills, would you tell them to learn to budget? Heck no, you'd tell them they need therapy to fix much deeper root causes. So why are we telling obese people they need to "budget" by saying that CICO is the one and only solution? CICO is great if you want to lose a few po…

Just because someone believes CICO is accurate doesn't mean they also have this "all about willpower" perspective. I think CICO is most of the problem and I also think attributing overeating to a lack of willpower is naive.

More importantly, the willpower debate is irrelevant on a population level. Dieters and personal trainers can argue about it until they're blue in the face but it has nothing to do with policy.

We could achieve better public health outcomes if we accepted that CICO is the big and clear cut problem and ignored all that other stuff.

For example: if you accept that overeating calories is THE public health crisis to solve, our policies around subsidizing cheap calories would no longer make sense. It would follow naturally to discontinue those policies and subsidize nutrient-dense, low calorie foods instead (i.e. fruits and vegetables intended for unprocessed consumption).

Then you would give people an economic incentive to go to the grocery store and buy fruits and vegetables instead of Hot Pockets. Public policy can't fix the whole problem, but it can adjust economic incentives.

Unfortunately people are off tilting at various windmills like mystery pathogens, estrogens in the water, plastic packaging, whatever - instead of accepting that CICO is this clear and central problem and crafting policy which reflects it.

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

#53

Post by sundvor »

BurningFrog wrote: post #14
300bps wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I’m just a person who has remained the same approximate weight for the past 3 decades so I don’t know anything about substantial weight loss or gain. But is it at all possible it’s just calories in calories out? I know it isn’t a sexy theory but it works like hell for me.

It is that. The interesting part of nutrition here is how it affects hunger, which in turn determines how many calories most people will eat.

I am down 14kg this year through IF (typically around 20:4, some 18:6 and even some 22:2) - was 16-17kg down until I got my bread machine, now slowly working my way down again. Started at nearly 100kg; I consider my ideal weight to be just under 80kg, being a reasonably tall male who lifts weights to combat the office chair, getting closer to 50 years old.

Speaking from personal experience, I will likely eat fewer calories if I get those from high protein, high fat sources (say: egg & bacon omelette, cooked in butter) than high carbohydrate (say: home made high protein bread, buttery spread, blackberry jam sandwiches).

Why? The former just has that slower, more impactful energy release - and it's easier to stop eating after that one meal, whereas the bread might very well make me go "oooh that was yum, I didn't realise how hungry I am, let's make another one".

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

#54

Post by safety1st »

pmarreck wrote: post #47
safety1st wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people always make this debate so complicated? The average American consumes 24% more calories than they did in 1961. [1] The average American is also 24 pounds heavier than they were in 1960. [2] Sure there may be other contributing factors, but this is the simplest explanation based on our most fundamental nutrition science. People have eaten more calories every decade, and have gotten fatter every decade as…

And yet willpower has not decreased in that time. So something about the food must have become more addictive or hunger-inducing.

It could just have gotten more calorically dense. Nearly half of our increased caloric intake since 1961 is in the form of vegetable oils which are very calorically dense, and you might not even notice when you're eating them.

Portion sizes are probably a factor. Anecdotally they're a lot bigger than they used to be. Calories are cheaper to produce and restaurants put bigger plates in front of their patrons because it's a competitive advantage to serve bigger meals.

If I had to guess the big culprits are the increases in portion size and availability of cheap calories (corn syrup, oils, flours, etc.). You don't have to infer any major changes in individual behavior - people still finish what's on their plates, and still gravitate toward brightly colored boxes of junk in the supermarket (which are a higher % of shelf space than they used to be).

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

#55

Post by sofixa »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #34
mikewarot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just eat a balanced diet based upon non processed food and do so in moderation. But our notion of a balanced diet is wrong, which is the whole point of this. Who knows what a balanced diet really is now?

Is it? Lots of fruits and vegetables every day. Some nuts a few days a week. Red meat once or twice a week, poultry meat and eggs for the rest of the week. Add in things like olive/avocado oil, spices, vinegar, yogurt. Drink water, tea/coffee, milk. Rarely rice, pasta, potatoes. How could you go wrong with that ? That's basically my diet.

Disclaimer: not a nutritional scientist, just passing interest.

I don't see fish, which is, from what I've heard, important for nutritional diversity.

Also, fruit has lots of sugars so it might not be the best for "lots of".

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

#56

Post by hiq »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #34
mikewarot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just eat a balanced diet based upon non processed food and do so in moderation. But our notion of a balanced diet is wrong, which is the whole point of this. Who knows what a balanced diet really is now?

Is it? Lots of fruits and vegetables every day. Some nuts a few days a week. Red meat once or twice a week, poultry meat and eggs for the rest of the week. Add in things like olive/avocado oil, spices, vinegar, yogurt. Drink water, tea/coffee, milk. Rarely rice, pasta, potatoes. How could you go wrong with that ? That's basically my diet.

> That's basically my diet.

How many people agree with you that it's a good diet? I'm especially surprised by "rarely rice", which is a staple in many Asian countries.

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

#57

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

worik wrote: post #33
mikewarot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just eat a balanced diet based upon non processed food and do so in moderation. But our notion of a balanced diet is wrong, which is the whole point of this. Who knows what a balanced diet really is now?

> Who knows what a balanced diet really is now? Simple. Food. Mostly plants. As close to raw as convenient. The hippies were right

Lots of tannins then? Not really healthy. A balanced diet, switching between periods of meat and vegetables, punctuated by vigorous exercise. That will serve you better.

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

#58

Post by stjohnswarts »

pengaru wrote: post #26
noasaservice wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking similar, but I think its plastic contaminants and byproducts.

They're not mutually exclusive. How fructose is metabolized is so well understood at this point it's clearly a major factor in obesity and diabetes. It's the primary cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease AIUI. And it hasn't been removed from the US diet. That's very unlikely to occur until corn subsidies go away. Even once that occurs it'll take awhile for such a huge industry to evolve away from such a mature s…

sugar isn't that much more expensive than corn syrup, so I don't think cancelling subsidies on it would make much difference at all as sugar could replace it 1:1 with very little overall increase in prices of food products.

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

#59

Post by stjohnswarts »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #4
Lucent wrote: post #2

And now, 13 years after Lustig's "Sugar: the Bitter Truth" totally convinced me it was sugar and not fat, and sugar consumption has decreased while obesity has increased, I'm unconvinced it's sugar either. It's some environmental contaminant. https://twitter.com/mold_time/status/1414242490404720648

Starch. Sugar consumption may have decreased, but starch converts to sugar in our stomach acid, and with the Amylase in our saliva. Yup. The largest part of the food pyramid: Grains. Noodles, potatoes, porridge, bread... It's all sugar.

White bread literally has basically the same affect on blood sugar as an equal amount of sugar (by weight) as does processed (not whole wheat) pasta. It may be a bit delayed vs sugar's almost immediate absorption but the end result is quite on the same order.

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

#60

Post by stjohnswarts »

notshift wrote: post #3
Lucent wrote: post #2

And now, 13 years after Lustig's "Sugar: the Bitter Truth" totally convinced me it was sugar and not fat, and sugar consumption has decreased while obesity has increased, I'm unconvinced it's sugar either. It's some environmental contaminant. https://twitter.com/mold_time/status/1414242490404720648

Probably sugar consumption has gone down because people have replaced it with artificial sweeteners, which have similar metabolic effects in the body to what Lustig has attributed to sugar. It'd be nice to see a combined graph of sugar + artificial sweeteners.

they do not have similar metabolic effects. Go look up studies on blood sugar levels of diet vs regular soda.
Post reply on HN