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John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

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Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#241
post #18

I'm getting sick of this ignorant sugar alarmism. Sugar is not the culprit behind all the diseases listed in the article. Obesity is [5] [6]. Unless of course you're talking about cavities. Then not brushing your teeth is the culprit. The reason sugar gets such a bad rep is that high-sugar foods tend to be less-filling and lead to overeating [1]. Stay at a healthy weight by controlling caloric consumption [2]. The ar…

Obesity is an effect. Not a cause. Seriously. Do you blame fire?. The problem here is that sugar is addicting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#242
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you would think the response was sarcastic. Coke having sugar is NOT the issue. Drinking literally liters of it each day is certainly the issue. On top of a normal diet all those extra calories are bound to be a problem.

Now it seems silly but while I was going through the thread many responses had something worded similarly. After reading so many of those comments I was probably primed to see negativity everywhere. eg. It's not THIS it's THAT. (It's not sugar, it's sugar in excess.)

More generally, it is calories in excess.

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#243
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ketogenic diets are indeed not healthy over prolonged periods and should be limited in time. They're very effective though, so if you wanna do it just seek advice from a nutritionist and keep being supervised. It's like putting the body in emergency mode, something you don't want to do for several weeks at a time. Unfortunately, dieting will not change anything unless you really change your lifestyle and eating habit…

> Ketogenic diets are indeed not healthy over prolonged periods and should be limited in time. They aren't? Are there strong hints* that this is true? I didn't see any so far, but that may be due to my limited research.

For one thing: kidney stone are a very common issue when ketosis is sustained for a long period. That means that you always have ketonic bodies in your blood (checkable with a quick urine self-test), which may not be the case for many diets that are just low-carb and not strictly "keto".

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#244
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar is a simplex carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are a nutrient. Your body needs nutrients. Alcohol is not a nutrient.

That doesn't make sense, your body needs minerals as well but that doesn't mean you have to eat dirt, rust, or chalk. As far as nutritional value goes, sugar is one of the least healthy sources of energy, especially in its refined form (which is what this article is about). Mankind evolved through millions of years without even having access to refined sugar. Also, how is alcohol less of a nutrient than sugar? It get…

You need minerals. You get minerals from food. Those minerals are in a bioavailable form. Eati g dirt or rust or chalk isn't useful because the minerals contained by those items are not so bioavailable and they contain far more minerals than are needed.

You're totally right about sugar being a problematic source of energy. A thin spread of honey on toast? Tasty and not so bad. A fistful of sugar in a drink twice a day every day? Obviously really bad.

One of the problems with the "sugar is toxic" mantra is that we risk making the same mistake as that "fat is evil" crowd. Selling a sack of sugar (sweets / candy) as "FAT FREE!" Is obviously really bad.

Alcohol isn't a nutrient, but the carbohydrates it provides are. But alcohol is actually toxic.

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#245
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, it all comes back to calories in vs calories out. Which is both true and irrelevant, because the system that governs calories in and calories out is a complex control loop. When it's working correctly, weight is effortlessly maintained within a narrow range thanks to compensating adjustments in appetite and, to a lesser extent, metabolism. When it isn't working right, people try to drive the process with the…

> Which is both true and irrelevant, because the system that governs calories in and calories out is a complex control loop. When it's working correctly, weight is effortlessly maintained within a narrow range thanks to compensating adjustments in appetite and, to a lesser extent, metabolism. What evidence leads you to believe this? There's no prima facie reason to believe evolution has adapted mammals to a glut of f…

There is lots of evidence, of several different kinds.

At the biochemical level, we actually know a lot about some of the pathways that allow food and body fat composition to govern appetite. See, for example, leptin signaling.

At the anthropological level, we have good examples of several different pre-agricultural societies where food was abundant and obesity was rare.

At the whole-animal experimental level, researchers have demonstrated in both rats and humans that when you give an animal unlimited access to food, it doesn't gain unlimited weight. It reaches a plateau and then resists further changes up or down from there. Interestingly enough, rats fed a diet of unlimited human junk food reach a much higher plateau than rats fed a diet of unlimited standard rat chow.

And finally, we all know people (perhaps even our younger selves) who never consciously worry about what they're eating yet undergo very little fluctuation in weight. Judged from the perspective of a control system designer, getting that kind of stable outcome from wildly varying inputs doesn't just happen by luck. And indeed, experimenters have shown repeatedly that "naturally lean" people experience reduced appetite in the days following a period of overeating. You can even deliberately perturb the system by force-feeding them, and they bounce right back to their long-term weight thanks to reduced appetite and increased metabolism.

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birthday cakes, Halloween candy, Christmas candy....this is a tremendous amount of sugar, and is kind of shocking to one who grew up without it. The ubiquity of sugar today discourages moderation by normalizing consumption. It would be like having ash trays in every public space and cigarette ads on tv, with "enjoy responsibly" as the tag line.

> Birthday cakes, Halloween candy, Christmas candy....this is a tremendous amount of sugar, and is kind of shocking to one who grew up without it. Each of those events happens 1 time per year. Having the occasional slice of cake or some candy is not the problem in terms of a diet.

Each of those events happens 1 time per year.

kids attend their friends birthdays. candy occasions can work out to several times a month between halloween and new years.

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#247
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An acquaintance I once met, that used to work on the product design team for one of the major brands of snack/potato chips makers, had a witty response to what a friend asked, along the lines of: "so, tell us, how can you work at something that you know is bad for people's health?" and he answered: "I am certainly used to the opinion that garbage food is bad for your health, and what I think is that garbage food does…

The only thing this tells me is that your acquaintance has a good working "moral deflection" system. What? Cigarettes are bad? No, no, I wouldn't work on a bad product. All is good in moderation! What? I spam people with ads all day and that could be bad? No, no, I wouldn't work on a bad product. I only inform people! And so on. No one thinks he does bad* things. Your mind forbids it or you would probably go insane.…

I actually never thought of it that way. You could be right to some extent in that he is indeed a good "moral deflector", but the main point I was trying to make still stands, in that one bag of chips is not something that will significantly change your chances for cancer or whatever other disease could be associated with eating a lot of the stuff.

Same with cigarettes. Indeed they have been undoubtedly linked to cancer, but still, if I smoke only one it really won't make a difference. Same with spam, one email every few months, as has been my experience with gmail for the past several years for example, really does not annoy me more than a mosquito could. There's a difference between working on a bad product such as, let's say hand grenades or other stuff actually made to harm, and working on a product that is definitely bad but only if you actually let it be, i.e. abuse it.

My point is that the blame is not on who makes the product, as the product maker does not make said product with the intention to harm, even if they do know that if you cross a line it will be harmful. The blame is on the person that lets this product ruin its life. Just like any drug. If I hit a joint right now, I guarantee that it won't harm me. But if I let it run my life and I stop working because I want to smoke weed, then the blame's on me, not on whoever grows the weed or even the one who sells it to me. Precisely the reason as to why we usually put age restrictions on certain things, as we deem children to be not capable of drawing this line between use and abuse of things that could end up being very harmful. However as we grow up we believe that we are then capable of taking responsibility for your life choices. Including giving yourself cancer or diabetes by only drinking cola and eating chips.

Re: John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar

#248
post #135
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never argued that 12 cans of Coke a day is healthy. It was simply argued that body weight gain/loss is governed by calories in vs calories out. These are two entirely separate statements.

Body weight gain/loss is also governed by mass in versus mass out. So make an effort to inhale less than you exhale, drink less water than you expel via urination or sweat, and poop more than you eat. Any of those are guaranteed to work if you could sustain them, but you can't. Which is nicely analogous to telling someone to focus on calories in versus calories out.

Don't forget donating more organs than you receive transplants for.
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