How I overcame my addiction to sugar

Do you have the links to the studies?

The heart disease part is basically what I said about the saturated fat.

The diabetes and cancer risks are generally tougher to track. There are other factors at play that are had to control for. For example, you could grill your red meat and increase cancer risk from that (just like other grilled meats). Processed red meat is also usually included in these studies and that has known cancer and diabetes risks (just like other processed foods).

Many of these are high level observational studies which are unable to fully account for all the factors (because we still don't know all the factors). We can show correlation, but there are things like consumption varying by age group, people earing red meat are more likely to be eating other saturated fats as well. People choosing healthy diets are also making other changes than just not eating red meat.

There have been some smaller studies about stuff related to this. Things like plant based diets reducing high risk interorgan fat. So it may not be the red meat itself, but rather the impact of the red meat on things like that interorgan fat. Or how more red meat in a diet can impact gut bacteria, which we are just learning about how important these gut bacteria are. So it's one factor that can influence that.

At this point, I'm not convinced that we know enough of the factors and mechanisms to say the risk is fully linear at the low end of consumption. I do believe it increases as consumption increases, but only beyond a certain point and likely in some logarithmic way.

Check my answer to the sibling comment [0].

I'm not sure about the acidity but it certainly doesn't taste very acidic despite the very low sugar content.

In fact, I find even the sweetest orange juice to be a lot more acidic than most kombuchas I've tried.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40837102

Never found that to be much of a problem even when starting out.

You feel a little hungry. Big deal.

Lots of studies there. I had access to a few of them, others I did not. Some I read the abstract, others I read the whole thing. They seem to be the type of stuff I was already talking about. For example, many of the articles looked at various categories that crossed over (unprocessed with processed, red meat with all meat, etc). Many of the studies are pointing more heavily towards the processed meat being the bigger problem. The other thing is how the food is prepared. For example, there are mitigation strategies such as reducing the formation of AGEs in some studies that focus on that part, but no mention of that in some of the other studies.

Based on the evidence available, my opinion for my own life is that moderate intake appears to have little to no risk if other mitigations are in place (cooking practices for lower AGEs, other healthy diet like saturated fat and sugar intake regulation, etc). I also believe that there are a number of non-diet related factors that influence if a diet is "healthy" for a specific individual, including activity level, genetics, family/cultural histories, etc. To me, the data doesn't support either of the extreme statements - that red meat is bad, or that red meat is good. There are so many factors at play that the best we can do is say that here are some potential positives, and here are some potential negatives.

While I appreciate the advice and I've always felt my diet qualifies as an "eating disorder".

Here's the problem I have, though. I'm in my 40s and this is a circumstance of my life that I've experienced since I was about 12. When this topic comes up with family and friends, I hear "You can't eat like that, forever?" (I'm 40), "That'll catch up with you" (you've been saying that since I was 25), or "I used to be able to do that, too, when I was young." (you stopped being able to do that at 25). People of certain generations are so wired into the whole Cholesterol thing that even after I've mentioned my numbers they'll still reflex into "but, your heart!" (sometimes cutting themselves off with an "oh, I guess you're OK there, but ..." (and my HDLs and Triglycerides are fine, too)).

I have been seeing a therapist for about a decade now, and strongly recommend it to anyone. I started seeing one after a divorce over a decade ago and when that was worked out I started going about monthly despite not having a "thing going on right now that's prompting me to go", I find taking an hour a month and talking to a "disinterested third-party" about life is one of the reliable ways to get unfiltered truth. Obviously, it depends on the therapist and I've had a few that I feel like I'm paying someone to hear myself speak, but having someone who helps you see blind spots and give you honest feedback is worth the money when you find the right person. I never realized how valuable and rare that is. I had a realization a little ways into my career after I was living on my own: people will almost never tell you, directly, when something you're doing annoys, upsets or otherwise rubs them the wrong way[1]. If they do, you've been doing something so obnoxious to that person for so long that "now it's a big problem" and you may end up discovering you have damaged a relationship beyond repair without realizing it[2]. Most people won't even help a stranger out by informing them that they have a poppy-seed in their teeth out of fear the stranger will "be angry with them for noticing it." Over time, my therapist and I have gotten to the point where he has become a good source for identifying these blind spots (and is quite a bit better at delivering the news).

All of that said, about two years in the topic of my diet came up due to a large bag of candy being visible in frame during our video session. It worked out that I'd had a physical two months prior so I had my numbers handy[0] so after the initial alarm, I remember I got done explaining everything and he was staring at his camera almost like he had spaced out. I finished talking, he continued looking into the camera and after an awkward silence he said, "so .. that's it?" It's hard to get the effect writing it down because reading it, "it sounds sarcastic" ... and I got the impression the expression on my face might have been one of the "fart in church" variety. And after he quickly stumbled over an apology with a weird explanation that escapes me, he said something along the lines of: It's not any kind of eating disorder he'd ever heard of. People struggle with over-eating and varieties of conditions (anorexia, and friends) related to controlling their weight. And in a considerable number of cases the need to binge/purge or fast is something that's done in a subconscious attempt to fight an unrelated psychological trauma[3]. My "problem" is -- in a lot of ways -- the opposite. I manage my diet without any forethought or planning -- basically, subconsciously -- yet I have been within ten pounds of my weight as a teenager (which is ideal according to the flawed BMI scale but correlates properly with other medical tests). I do tend to not eat when I'm depressed or anxious, but it's not a conscious desire to control my diet -- it's, literally, "I don't feel hungry". And when that goes on too long, my body responds by making me too hungry to ignore eating. During the worst depression I've gone through I went from my heaviest to my lightest over a period of four months but it still amounted to being 10 pounds heavier than High School "before" to 10 pounds lighter and in both cases my weight was within the range of "ideal" for my height.

So, basically, trying to fix this with therapy has at least some probability of damaging my health. And fixating on what I eat needlessly adds stress to my life when "not fixating on what I eat" results in my health being fine. I would put exactly zero thought toward this problem -- for myself -- if my son weren't struggling to maintain his weight "following my lead."

[0] I always have to look them up separately to get a better explanation, the doctor usually says "your Cholesterol is fantastic, keep doing what you're doing" and moves on to the next thing. I have to ask for the numbers when they're good and there's no point in remembering them when there's nothing to fix.

[1] Except for the handful of individuals that only communicate in this manner. Most of the people I worked with in security were like this.

[2] The specific event that comes to mind was when I shared a large office with 5 other guys (two worked for a completely different division in the company). One guy, a few times a week, would get up from his desk, grab onto the shared office door and nearly knock it off of its hinges with how hard he slammed it shut. He'd then walk back to his cube a few feet away and resume work without saying a word. The first several times it happened, I thought it was an airflow situation or accident because I couldn't imagine an adult acting that way on purpose. This went on for two or three months before someone finally said "what the hell are you doing that for, dude?" It turned out that the AC chiller (we were in a datacenter) was right next to the door and was very loud in his cube. He was upset with how inconsiderate we were being leaving the door open as we came and went. What he didn't know was that we were leaving it open to be considerate because the far end of the room where three of us sat got a bit warm when the door was closed. We had cube walls setup in the shared office so the noise didn't affect us so we truly had no idea our attempt at being considerate was being received as some sort of passive-aggressive attack. Had he just said the words "could you guys close the door, at least when I'm here, because of the noise" we all would have complied (it wasn't that hot and despite the noise not being terrible in our seat, the heat wasn't as bad as the noise so we "mostly didn't care about the state of the door" we just wanted it to be in a "non-controversial state"). And once that was understood, the door remained closed. I don't read angry subtext and passive aggression well.

[3] I am not a psychologist but I had a roommate for a year who struggled with anorexia. She'd stop eating when she was stressed out and she learned that she does this out of a need "to exert control over something in her life" when she's experiencing high-anxiety. She'd experienced some trauma as a child that she felt was "the trigger" but everyone's circumstances are different.