Live data from Hacker News

Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

nature.com

241–250 of 397 posts

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment kind of illustrates his point though, there's a complete lack of mechanistic empiricism[0] in the discussion of nutrition. What is the metric for 'eas[iness] to overeat and whether it pays its rent in nutritional content.'? I agree with the premise, but it is ill-defined. e.g. consider: A baked potato, with salt and butter vs. an equivalent weight of potato chips. They are essentially identical post-mast…

Re: mechanistic empiricism, I don't know if you're doing this, but it seems that some people have this mindset that if you can't tell me specifically how X is bad for you, then I have to assume it is not harmful by default, even if it's a thing that is relatively novel. I find myself leaning heavily in the other direction these days. If it's not something that has a long history and (I'm not already dying anyway), I'…

As far as diet is concerned, I'm very much in the camp of you do what works best for you. However, if you choose to give advice to a wide audience (rather than saying what works for you), I think one should have some idea of why their advice is good.

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#242
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be the guy that I assume most people are sick of by this point, and recommend experimenting with dropping the additives in exchange for higher quality coffee if you can afford it (it's usually not much more per cup). At effectively zero calories, after some period of time you'll get used to it and recalibrate your sense of sweetness to the point where sugary drinks and coffee are much less palatable

Just to add a bit, we bought a Breville espresso and grinder. I only use some whole milk to make my coffee and no sugar. My wife uses a little agave syrup and skips most of the milk.

Agave syrup is virtually pure fructose. As a sugar alternative it's ... not that great. The insulin response is fairly low, true, but the high fructose content carries its own risks.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/agave-nectar-is-even-wo...>

Stevia would be a non-sugar-based sweetener, though it does have a distinctly different taste.

I'd learned to drink coffee with milk/cream, no sugar. With decent beans (Trader Joe's Bay Blend, e.g., nothing fancy) and a Moka pot that's more than sufficient.

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#243
post #158
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Lustig is a crank with opinions well outside scientific consensus.

This isn't true. He has books and lectures explaining the metabolic processes when eating refined sugar, and why it's bad for you. Nowadays it's pretty mainstream stuff. Nevertheless, can you give an example of one of his opinions which is "well outside scientific consensus".

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's new to me is that it's becoming newsworthy, more people are talking about it. To my current understanding, metabolic syndrome caused by sugar / glucose spikes is by far the biggest root cause of physical health issue in the US. Most people I know personally who are suffering from physical ailments, it's most likely metabolic syndrome at the root of it. How to shift culture on this? When I'm in civilization in…

It's not propaganda. Saturated fat is bad. That's a common internet belief that runs rampant because saturated fat tastes good and it sounds awesome to believe some conspiracy against it. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/10/21/advisory-replacing-... Most of it always tracks back to Nina Teicholz. I wonder how many people she is sending to the grave? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I know it's hotly debated and I don't imagine I could convince you :). This is my opinion.

If I read right, you're saying that an entire food group that people have been eating for eons is simply "bad", specifically, meat, dairy, and eggs, in their unprocessed form. The argument I've seen is that it's better to eat a new kind of food that people have only begun eating in quantity within the last hundred ish years requiring industrial technology. (Specifically, oils extracted from plant material using solvents like hexane.)

I'm open minded but this is a really serious claim and I'd need really solid evidence which I haven't seen, and I've looked. There are a lot of studies; those that I've looked into have too many confounding variables for me to take their conclusions at face value.

I could also see the possibility that saturated fat in someone who already has metabolic syndrome might increase their risk of heart disease, and maybe be considered the proximate cause, in cases where the root cause is the metabolic syndrome caused by sugar in the first place.

There's also the question of there being different kinds of LDL cholesterol and it perhaps actually serving a function in the body that isn't categorically bad, even if in some circumstances the metric correlates with atherosclerosis.

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#245
post #158
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Lustig is a crank with opinions well outside scientific consensus.

[deleted]

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can answer that. It's not always about a certain boogeyman inside it, but whether it makes it easy to overeat and whether it pays its rent in nutritional content. Consider potato chips. Even if they have zero saturated fat, the issue most people have with them is that they are hyperpalatable and low nutritional value compared to their calorie density. Combine fat and salt and certain textures, and we can't st…

> low nutritional value compared to their calorie density. Combine fat and salt and certain textures, and we can't stop ourselves. In the end the body realizes it didn't get the nutrition it needed so I sends out a notice "eat more".

Anecdotally I think there's something to this, when all I have to eat is lacking in micro nutrients I tend to be hungrier. When I'm eating lots of very nutrient dense things, even when less calories, I feel satisfied.

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably a risky line of thinking, if you're addicted to sugar, to substitute in some other source of sugar. Best to avoid pastries, lollipops and sugary sodas.

Why are people downvoting this?

Because they strongly disagree.

If I have soda cravings, I can take a single Tic Tac. It doesn't satisfy my soda cravings, but crucially, it prevents the soda itself from satisfying those same cravings if I do subsequently drink it.

Usually I crave soda after a high salt/fried food. Giving myself a tiny amount of sugar (Tic Tac has 0.5g) removes the salt/fried taste, and I just can't get the good soda effect I know I would have gotten without the Tic Tac. There just isn't a point for me to take soda after a Tic Tac.

So yes, substituting a small amount of sugar for a large one can be very effective.

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#248

Yet another article implying causation from association. The theory that sugar CAUSES diabetes type 2 fails when you look at people that eat a ton of carbs but keep the fats low: low fat vegans, fruitarians. Find one that's diabetic. They should be dropping like flies. But look at people that eat high fat >40% of calories, and the rest in carbs, and there you'll find the population of the metabolically compromised.

I’m not an expert but pretty sure fibers helps a lot regarding diabetes 2, microbiote and many other thing related. Vegans and fruitarians usually gets a lot more fibers than others regimes. But a diverse omnivorous diet including many vegetable is better than tofu+potatoes only. I recommend tempeh (0) instead tofu.

I agree with you sugars can’t be seen as the only one cause.

0 http://tempeh.info/

Re: Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

#250

Not a native English speaker but, isn’t the word “attributable” in the title at least misleading? Shouldn’t it be “linked” instead? The paper indicates correlation, not causality.

Based on the abstract it's not a study showing that "Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease [are] attributable to sugar beverages", it's a paper quantifying the "[Amount of] Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease [that are] attributable to sugar beverages [in various countries]". The link and causation is already well established. This is trying to determine how much harm it's doing in different parts of the world.
Post reply on HN