Live data from Hacker News

Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

nature.com

391–397 of 397 posts

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

#391
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that they couldn't say "100% fruit juice and no sugar added" on the label when the drink is a mixture of fruit juice and fruit juice from concentrate? What part of the regulation would prohibit this?

You can say "no added sugar" but you are forced to write it’s from a concentrate and it must be in the front of the product, not hidden somewhere. Not perfect but at least you can’t just say it’s fruit juice.

You can call it a fruit drink though, have photos of berries on the package, and text like "juice from berries" and so forth. Very easy to mislead consumers - most orange juice in the EU is like this.

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

#392
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We only really recently have evidence for sugar, on its own, causing diabetes." OK. But first let me say most of what follows about health I learned in the 1960s, back then it was common knowledge and discussed in schools, newspaper reports and on radio talk shows, etc. As I was reasonably healthy I wasn't given any special advice or instructions so the info I received was essentially the same as everybody else. The…

The big issue with public health is that everything is dangerous and people will only comply with so many rules and society will only work towards so many goals. Public health decided dietary fat was the big problem to focus on, despite imperfect evidence. Three things screwed this all up: * Dietary fat wasn't nearly as bad as everyone thought, because eating lots of fats was correlated with lots of other negative li…

"And the last we only have evidence of in the past couple of years, and it's relatively weak evidence."

Perhaps so, but it turned out to be good advice—I heeded the advice and have always limited my sugar and salt intake. As I said, at what point or how much evidence is need to heed such advice. Leaving it until factually certain could mean it's too late.

"Well, sugar intake isn't a risk factor or cause of type 1 diabetes."

That was known at the time (and to me also—in fact to all of us). The instance further highlighted the sugar/diabetes issue as we kids actually knew someone who had diabetes and who had to inject insulin (even if we didn't have diabetes, we knew we could still develop it and that excessive sugar would likely be the cause).

The thought of having to inject insulin daily focused our minds. That seems obvious doesn't it?

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

#393
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue with public health is that everything is dangerous and people will only comply with so many rules and society will only work towards so many goals. Public health decided dietary fat was the big problem to focus on, despite imperfect evidence. Three things screwed this all up: * Dietary fat wasn't nearly as bad as everyone thought, because eating lots of fats was correlated with lots of other negative li…

"And the last we only have evidence of in the past couple of years, and it's relatively weak evidence." Perhaps so, but it turned out to be good advice—I heeded the advice and have always limited my sugar and salt intake. As I said, at what point or how much evidence is need to heed such advice. Leaving it until factually certain could mean it's too late. "Well, sugar intake isn't a risk factor or cause of type 1 dia…

> As I said, at what point or how much evidence is need to heed such advice.

This is like a Pascal's wager. There's a bazillion things we could be doing that there's a little evidence for or a plausible explanation. And we can't do them all, or believe in every God, or whatever.

And even things that we had a lot of evidence for (like dietary fat) turned out to be harmful when given as public health advice.

In the end, things are tricky. Best to do whatever seems like it's reasonably careful to you, and for science to try and figure more of this out and decide the best things to give advice on.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fat is good for you, as long as it isn’t trans-fat. The common wisdom around cholesterol is false (the ”lipid hypothesis” is just that, a hypothesis).

Excess calories are bad for you, no matter what form they come in.

Very true. However, consuming oils and fats make one more quickly satiated compared to sugars and other carbohydrates, leading to less overall consumption of calories.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, by this logic, you should be insulted by someone saying paid professional accountants managing all of your money is the only way for society to avoid widespread debt because "most people" haven't managed to bring themselves to do the basic at-home budgeting that you're used to.

> by this logic, you should be insulted by someone saying paid professional accountants managing all of your money is the only way for society But toomuchtodo didn't write that GLP-1s were the only way to address the issue. So maybe there's no reason to be insulted. Perhaps you could exercise your willpower and not feel insulted by things that didn't happen.

That user did, actually, specifically tell me that "You will never win against your brain chemistry," which is a direct statement that there is no other solution for me than GLP-1s. Do you want to continue defending that position, which is absolutist?
Post reply on HN