The Sugar Conspiracy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#131

Post by specialist » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

torgoguys wrote: post #110

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

>If man made it, don't eat it That's way too simple. It's a kind of naturalistic fallacy as applied to food. If you think your produce area is where you should be getting your calories (not disagreeing), it fails the "if man made it, don't eat it" test spectacularly. Basically everything you see there has been shaped by man. A (stunning) example: one species of plant, brassica oleracea, has been selectively (i.e., ar…

Would "unprocessed food" stuffs mollify you? He's speaking, giving useful actionable advice, to a broad audience. But, please, continue to pedant.

Sucrose = glucose + fructose. Glucose good, fructose bad. Fiber in fruit prevents uptake of fructose. Which is why orange is okay, orange juice bad. A pretty good example of Lalanne's messaging.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#132

Post by notthegov » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #103

notthegov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except your kidneys excrete more electrolytes and water, and it can take weaks to adapt, and theoritically some people will never fully adapt. I would have to drink 1 gram of warm saltwater and my headache would instantly go away. So how you feel is deceptive. If I would drink a Vanilla Latte at Starbucks now, I would get a serious headache...

Lite salt is better, it has sodium and potassium.

Nusalt (potassium chloride) tastes like something that will kill you. But I drank it everyday and about 3 grams of salt.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#133

Post by slacka » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

torgoguys wrote: post #110

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

>If man made it, don't eat it That's way too simple. It's a kind of naturalistic fallacy as applied to food. If you think your produce area is where you should be getting your calories (not disagreeing), it fails the "if man made it, don't eat it" test spectacularly. Basically everything you see there has been shaped by man. A (stunning) example: one species of plant, brassica oleracea, has been selectively (i.e., ar…

>If man made it, don't eat it

I think a better heuristic, is "Just eat what your great-grandma ate". Or avoid the middle of the supermarket as much as possible.

Simply eating more fat and less sugar/carbs, I have lost 10+ pounds and feel much better. These nutrition fads have done more harm than good. My mother switched from butter to Crisco when I was a kid, then she banned salt from the house, and bought (high sugare, low fat) snack wells for us. All based on poor/pseudo science.

The diabetes and obesity are modern problems caused by a diet that our bodies haven't evolved to handle.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#134

Post by noir_lord » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

geoka9 wrote: post #107

glaberficken wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very very powerful thing that most of us forget when we start reading all the conflicting evidence about carbs / sugar / fat: You can experiment on yourself for free! Obviously this won't prove how everyone's body works. But it will teach you something very powerful about how your own body works. Go off sugar for 3 months, make your mind and do it, and note the changes in your organism. Or go off carbs totally for…

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this, just describing my own experience (which may be subjective/biased/completely misinterpreted by me). If you're mostly sedentary in a first-world country, going off sugar/carbs-dominated diet brings your insulin sensitivity to its natural levels (which, very probably, it hasn't been since the moment you started eating adult food). For me this had the amazing effect of becoming mor…

I noticed this effect when I lost weight in the last 7 months, I dropped 60 odd lbs by switching to a diet of eggs, meat (mostly chicken), fish, low fat/carb dairy (cottage cheese, 0 fat greek yoghurt etc) and a large amount of vegetables (mostly steamed).

After a few months on that diet anything rich in sugar gave me a massive short lived energy rush, I actually didn't much like the feeling so now I only eat complex carbs and hardly anything with a lot of sugar (lots of cruciferous vegetables, not a lot of high sugar fruits).

I've found that throughout the day my mood and general feeling is pretty constant rather than up and down like a yo-yo.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#135

Post by wutbrodo » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #101

Smaug123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not a six pack, since the primary ingredient for a six pack is an absence of fat. I'm just talking muscle volume here. "And yet" was probably the wrong choice of words; I really meant "Indeed", I think.

The way I read it, it's poking a hole in the "you are what you eat" adage that people take at face value for "if you eat fat you get fat". By extension of this adage, then, if you eat fat you get fat. If you eat carbs you get starchy, and if you eat protein you get muscley. We know the second two aren't true, but the first one sticks for some reason.

It's for precisely that reason that I can't fathom how even this sticks with people. "you are what you eat" (in this literal a sense) sounds like something you grow out of around the time you figure out object permanence.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#136

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #94

Jack Lalanne (American fitness guru) stated "If man made it, don't eat it". I recall reading that and scratching my head at the sheer number of food products that encompassed. I thought it a rather presumptuous statement. Five years later and after many books and articles on nutrition I now fully agree with him. When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter or t…

I prefer the idea of, if it comes in a box or bag or bottle it should be avoided. If you do choose to partake then read the ingredients and if you cannot find them separately in the store you most likely don't want the item you are considering.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#137

Post by torgoguys » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

jawilson2 wrote: post #121

torgoguys wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If man made it, don't eat it That's way too simple. It's a kind of naturalistic fallacy as applied to food. If you think your produce area is where you should be getting your calories (not disagreeing), it fails the "if man made it, don't eat it" test spectacularly. Basically everything you see there has been shaped by man. A (stunning) example: one species of plant, brassica oleracea, has been selectively (i.e., ar…

> it fails the "if man made it, don't eat it" test spectacularly. Basically everything you see there has been shaped by man. A (stunning) example: one species of plant, brassica oleracea, has been selectively (i.e., artificially) bred to produce a wide range of different cultivars including, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, and more. NONE of these produce items are "natural." You're ov…

I'm not overthinking it. I gave that as an example of people not thinking about food. The heuristic, even applied as you would prefer, is a poor one. I don't buy into the philosophy at all.

Quick example, my mother-in-law (who is into all kinds of weird "food woo" (she's a drink-raw-milk-only, avoid-adrenal-stressing-foods, etc. kind of person) once handed me a some sort of baked good--a bread perhaps--and mentioned, "It has no preservatives." My quick, honest, reply was "bummer." She had meant to "no preservatives" as being a good thing, as lots of folks do. The thing is, preservatives are a GOOD thing (well, unless you're preserving your food with something known to be harmful). It means less food waste, and that you're less likely to be unknowingly eating (mildly) spoiled food.

We have made missteps in our advancement in the production of food, and we as a whole don't eat as healthy of food as we should, but on the whole, modern agricultural practices are a good thing, as are some modern processing of food that people don't like because it's not "natural." I'm swayed by the preponderance of quality evidence on this, not anecdotes, intuition, and studies that represent noise in the data due to known problems with the generation of data.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#138

Post by js2 » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

Stephan Guyenet, obesity researcher and neurobiologist, critiques the carbohydrate-insulin-obesity hypothesis put forward by Lustig, Taubes, et al. He and Lustig exchange arguments here:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/01/always-hungry-...

https://medium.com/@davidludwigmd/ludwig-responds-to-whole-h...

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/01/testing-insuli...

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#139

Post by PepeGomez » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #3

Very interesting how people can all subscribe to an orthodoxy for so long, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

There is no evidence for what Lustig says. He produced one mediocre paper after multiple attempts. That's it. It's not science. It's just an attempt to distract from the real issue.

It started with pet food. Attempts at making plant based foods for dogs and cats initially failed, becuase the animals didn't want to eat these unnatural diets. But a solution was found: the so called "palatants". When they were added to the food, animals ate it.

Naturally, somebody thought of using these in human food as well. It didn't work as expected - it turned out they don't work by making the food tastier, they work by disabling the satiety response. Once the palatants get into your bloodstream, you won't feel satisfied no matter how much you eat until your body can get rid of these these chemicals. You may feel that your stomach is completely filled and stop eating, but you won't ever feel that you ate enough.

Since adults would get suspicious if they got more hungry, it started with child menus. The idea was the same as with pet food - if children eat a lot of the food, their parents will buy it again.

Now we have at least two generations of people who believe it's perfectly normal not to feel satisfied until their stomach can't hold any more food and that staying not obese requires arduous discipline. Our perception of normal weight has changed as well, for pets and human alike. Cats, when fed unaldutered meat eat to stay very skinny, with body shape that many modern guidelines show as "very thin" or "underweight". But many people today think of them as naturally fatty animals.

Many of these chemicals are approved food aditives and are listed usually as emuglators, flour conditioners or something similarly inconspicious.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#140

Post by PepeGomez » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

There is no evidence for what Lustig says. He produced one mediocre paper after multiple attempts. That's it. It's not science. It's just an attempt to distract from the real issue.

It started with pet food. Attempts at making plant based foods for dogs and cats initially failed, becuase the animals didn't want to eat these unnatural diets. But a solution was found: the so called "palatants". When they were added to the food, animals ate it.

Naturally, somebody thought of using these in human food as well. It didn't work as expected - it turned out they don't work by making the food tastier, they work by disabling the satiety response. Once the palatants get into your bloodstream, you won't feel satisfied no matter how much you eat until your body can get rid of these these chemicals. You may feel that your stomach is completely filled and stop eating, but you won't ever feel that you ate enough.

Since adults would get suspicious if they got more hungry, it started with child menus. The idea was the same as with pet food - if children eat a lot of the food, their parents will buy it again.

Now we have at least two generations of people who believe it's perfectly normal not to feel satisfied until their stomach can't hold any more food and that staying not obese requires arduous discipline. Our perception of normal weight has changed as well, for pets and human alike. Cats, when fed unaldutered meat eat to stay very skinny, with body shape that many modern guidelines show as "very thin" or "underweight". But many people today think of them as naturally fatty animals.

Many of these chemicals are approved food aditives and are listed usually as emuglators, flour conditioners or something similarly inconspicious.