Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 198 posts

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#151

Post by pbreit »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #11

As someone who has shifted to a sugar-free, high-fat lifestyle (keto diet), I can attest to the fact that sugar really is the ultimate evil in terms of health and nutrition. I've lost about 100lbs in 2.5 years... The only thing that I really changed was doing a Keto diet. I've learned a lot about nutrition along the way, and it's amazing how bad nutrition info was when I was growing up.. Common Misconceptions I hear/…

It is absolutely maddening how sugary fruit juice is (soda, too). And it's completely unnecessary. We dilute our juices by at least 50% and it's still not enough.

There's no way Coke & Pepsi will ever lighten up on the sugar short of regulation. As with smoke-free restaurants, the free markets will never deliver less sugary beverages no matter how much demand there is.

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#152

Post by notLustig »

I'm seeing two major factual problems with many of the comments here.

1. In terms of determining how much weight you are going to lose/gain. A calorie is a calorie. Calories in/calories out is the secret sauce to every successful weight loss diet, even keto. That is a simple fact, backed by all of the truly solid nutritional research in modern science.

2. If we are talking about lean body mass, body fat percentage goals, healthy eating habits or disease prevention, then we should have a talk about sugar. It is certainly a variable that deserves attention. However, it is not the devil...

Fat is not the devil... Meat is not the devil... Carbs are not the devil... etc.

If you don't believe me, if some pop science book has convinced you that sugar is the worst thing in the world, I ask that you look into the work of Alan Aragon. A good place to start would be the following article:

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#153

Post by quaz3l »

dmritard96 wrote: post #133

I am most likely wrong or oversimplifying, but my understanding was that ultimately whatever macromolecules you are consuming, lipids, proteins, or carbohydrates all only get absorbed into the blood stream as glucose (putting on hold random nutrients like iron, vitamin XYZ etc etc). If that's the case, doesn't it not matter what the originating molecules are as long as you avoid fast highs and lows in blood glucose l…

The main dangers with sugar (table sugar, high fructose corn syrup) is how your body absorbs it, and the amount of fructose in it. Fats and proteins are broken down to glucose, yes, however this process is done over time, and it is almost ALL glucose, which is what your body uses as fuel. However when you drink sugary beverages like soda or orange juice (yes even orange juice is bad for you), you get an extreamely high dose of fruit sugar, very quickly (fruit sugar is different than sugar because it has a higher concentration of fructose in it which is bad).

Also, the reason fruits are healthy while fruit juice is not is that fruits have sugar in them, but between all the sugars, there is fiber, cell walls, and other parts of the fruit that slow down the absorption of the sugar. Another reason is that there is simply less sugar in 1 apple than there is in 1 glass of apple juice (there is around 8 apple squeezed into 8 ounces of juice).

Here is an amazing lecture which goes into amazing detail of the chemistry of sugars, and how they affect your body (also this is where I got most of my information): "Sugar the Bitter Truth" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Here is a short clip from a show called "Adam Ruins Everything" where he talks about how unnatural "natural orange juice" is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuYPdTvqitg

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#154

Post by stonemetal »

bosdev wrote: post #13
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

The major thing I took away from both the article and the comments originally submitted a few days ago is that nutrition science is too hard to create a one-size fits all guideline to what people should eat. If we have to have a one-size fits all solution to nutrition however, my anecdotal guess is that the answer shouldn't be what we should eat but how much. Namely as long as people aren't over or under eating they…

Is that really true? Or is the evidence pretty much in that all people shouldn't really be eating refined sugar?

If there is evidence I haven't seen any. Pretty much everything I have seen suggests that A) You should meet your macro needs which are slightly different for everyone, B) after that don't over eat, but what you eat doesn't really matter.

From a weight loss perspective low sugar diets are good for psychological reasons, not thermodynamic ones. Sugar tends to cause quick, but short lived fullness, where fat and protein take longer to kick in but once they do they are much longer lived.

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#155

Post by jedberg »

undersuit wrote: post #108
jedberg wrote: post #58

To everyone saying a Keto diet is great, a word of caution. Going Keto gave me kidney stones. I asked my mom, who's had both children and kidney stones, which pain was worse, and she said the pain was about the same, but at least with childbirth you get a few months warning -- stones just show up and give you excruciating pain. So it's great y'all are loosing weight (I did too!) but just be careful and drink a lot of…

Did going Keto give you kidney stones or were you always going to get kidney stones? Other people get kidney stones, are they on keto? When your mom got kidney stones was she also on keto? I do agree though drink lots of water, it's good for you regardless of your diet.

> Did going Keto give you kidney stones or were you always going to get kidney stones?

I can't say for certain, I definitely don't have enough data to prove it. It was correlative at best.

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#156

Post by pitchka »

Again, bunch of anecdotal unscientific evidence in this thread, just like the last one.

It's unbelievable that this community believes in fad diets (keto, paleo, lchf, atkins, etc.), that it is afraid of food, afraid of sugar.

Sugar, carbs and fat makes you fat, not sugar alone.

This scaremongering of certain types of foods is negatively influencing people to have an unhealthy relationship with food.

Robert Lustig is an idiot who in his speech told a bunch of lies and presented a lot of misinformation. Is it really hard to check the facts?

Checkout books below if you have any fears of any foods.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

http://www.amazon.com/Defence-Food-Nutrition-Pleasures-Eatin...

The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat

http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Lie-Other-Myths-About/dp/194139...

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#157

Post by riot504 »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #11

As someone who has shifted to a sugar-free, high-fat lifestyle (keto diet), I can attest to the fact that sugar really is the ultimate evil in terms of health and nutrition. I've lost about 100lbs in 2.5 years... The only thing that I really changed was doing a Keto diet. I've learned a lot about nutrition along the way, and it's amazing how bad nutrition info was when I was growing up.. Common Misconceptions I hear/…

Your premise is based off of losing 100lbs. If I lost 100lbs I would be a 71" male weighing 80lbs. I eat natural food e.g., whole milk, real butter, fatty meats, lemonade, tea, roasted veggies, along with snacks like everybody else but I exercise (moderately these days) and eat normal size portions. Being healthy is not rocket science.

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#158

Post by ktRolster »

J-dawg wrote: post #74
bosdev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does not have the same flavor, no artificial sweetener does. But if you decide to not have sugar, you can grow to enjoy it in a different way. For me, for example, regular Coca-Cola is just non-existant in my world at this point. I drink Coke Zero, and I like it. I'm sure the sugar full version tastes better, but I've decided that's just not an option for me.

I drink a lot of sugar-free cola, and to my dismay there seems to be mounting evidence that diet soft drinks actually contribute to weight gain, possibly by altering gut fauna. [0] As with all nutrition advice, I find myself wondering what to do with this information (other than kicking my diet coke habit just to be on the safe side). Good science takes time, but I want to make decisions that benefit my health right…

It might be true....but sugar soda is definitely worse than diet soda. For example, you can drink through 5 cans of diet pepsi in a day, with very few health problems (if you do it consistently, over a long period of time, it might cause problems, but that is still 'might' so it's not obvious).

Now imagine drinking 5 cans of sugar pepsi in a day. That's 800 calories of pure sugar! If you keep that up, you'll be gaining a pound every week.....or feeling the effects of malnutrition by the end of the year. Nothing subtle about that.

Re: The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health

#159

Post by jedberg »

FreeFull wrote: post #89
jedberg wrote: post #58

To everyone saying a Keto diet is great, a word of caution. Going Keto gave me kidney stones. I asked my mom, who's had both children and kidney stones, which pain was worse, and she said the pain was about the same, but at least with childbirth you get a few months warning -- stones just show up and give you excruciating pain. So it's great y'all are loosing weight (I did too!) but just be careful and drink a lot of…

I wonder if it's because you've been consuming too much protein, and not enough fat.

Possibly, I went pretty far over to the protein side. I only consumed a tiny bit of fat at lunch and the rest at dinner. Breakfast was pure protein until the end when I added a yogurt to breakfast.
Post reply on HN