151–160 of 397 posts
My father was Type 2 and for decades drank sweet tea; sweet tea that progressively became sweeter and sweeter. If you were to let it settle, you would see a thick layer of sugar sitting at the bottom of the glass. Eventually, he lost both of his legs beneath the knee due to infections that festered. He spent his last few years in a wheelchair and then eventually died of a heart attack. Bad habits, bit by bit, over th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious if you have data showing this? Last I heard, which a quick google seems to back up, is that Seattle's similar tax had modest benefits. ( https://sph.washington.edu/news-events/sph-blog/sugar-sweete... ) Took a brief look to see if there were strong challenges to this, but I didn't find anything.
> I'm curious if you have data showing this? Regarding the sugar tax? Only empirical/anecdotal, I'm afraid: the fact is, as mentioned in my statement and in a response below, is that it's a geographical based tax, which while annoying can be trivially circumvented. (And even then black-markets emerge to meet that demand, or better known as System-D.) A better analysis would be the effects of better health and the dec…
And you didn't address that they did find modest gains to the goals in the Seattle study. I fully agree that, on the merits, this is easy to circumvent. I further agree that this sort of tax is almost certainly regressive. Largely for the reason you give of how easy it can be to get around. The study shows that, despite that, it still saw gains to the goals.
My gut would be some of the gains will have come from advertising around the ideas. Having a tax is one thing. But prices typically go up with people being none the wiser. So, the messaging that went with the taxes could have also given a pause.
That is beside the point, though, being that I don't know why it could have had modest results. Study shows that it did.
> Burdens of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages in 184 countries https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4.pdf The data and the code used for the analysis appears to be available. ---- One of the reasons that we don't have Universal Healthcare in the US is that things that are categorically unhealthy would be prohibited from being sold. Afterall, it would ben…
Canada has universal healthcare and they drink plenty of sugary drinks there too.
Or at least used to. 51st-ifying is underway.
If A causes diabetes, then it causes C outcome of diabetes. It’s a tautology. ((A → B) ∧ (B → C)) → (A → C)
In biology, instead of "necessary but not sufficient", we have "sufficient but not necessary".
There is almost nothing* like sugar drinks in the natural world our bodies evolved in. Sugar drinks are about as different as tea leaves and pure cocaine. It's is no coincidence that both are refined white powders. *honey
I take it you haven’t tried a nice ripe mango from subtropical regions, or a pineapple, white grapes (or grape juice), watermelon, navel oranges? They can be sweeter than Dr. Pepper. Sugarcane also exists and you can chew it. They just tended to 1) come with fiber, 2) not be as easy to acquire or eat in large quantities 3) not available all year, or all at once
It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now that there's an entire constellation of diseases (diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, fatty liver disease, heart disease, etc, etc) known as metabolic syndrome that are all caused by diet and lifestyle.
Just to clarify metabolic syndrome isn't the umbrella term for all of these things. Metabolic syndrome is when you have 3 or more of: central adiposity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low HDL. You can have any of these independently, it becomes metabolic syndrome when you hit the bingo.
Interesting. I think folks in the comments here maybe missed this paper is way more about the beverages part making it important. The research is around sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). If I'm reading it right, the SSBs have a differentmetabolic effect. "Due to their liquid form, SSBs are rapidly consumed and digested, resulting in lower satiety, higher caloric intake and weight gain. High doses of rapidly digested…
"Sugar: The Bitter Truth" ( https://robertlustig.com/sugar-the-bitter-truth/ ) is a pretty long watch, but it's incredibly eye-opening in terms of explaining in detail exactly why our current dietary sugar intake is so damaging to our bodies. Note: Robert Lustig is a professor of pediatric endocrinology at UCSF, I promise I wouldn't ask you (the reader) to watch a long-ass youtube video unless it contained extremely…
It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now that there's an entire constellation of diseases (diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, fatty liver disease, heart disease, etc, etc) known as metabolic syndrome that are all caused by diet and lifestyle.
Say one group drinks six cans of coke a day per person vs another group drink only water. Overall they have similar caloric intake and expenditures. What is the increase in type 2 diabetes for the first group vs the second? Yes, it is not surprising it would be higher, but is it 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%? more?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a desire to be healthy or loose weight[...] Same thing happened to me at probably around the same time. I realized I could just have a lollypop, and it would be a tenth of the sugar. Most of the sweetness in soda doesn't even get a chance to touch your tongue before it's going down your throat. If I want candy, I should just have a piece of candy. If I'm thirs…
I drink 250 ml soda cans/bottles. 25-28g of sugar. Be aware that a lot of candy has similar amounts of sugar. M&M packets have even more.
A 12oz coke has 39g of sugar. A 20oz bottle of coke is 65g.
Coke isn't close to the worst offender and this ignores soda at restaurants when 28oz is often the smallest you can buy