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The Sugar Conspiracy

theguardian.com

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Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#211

Post by whitie »

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…

Naturalistic fallacy does not apply to food (it only has only ever been formally applied in moral philosophy)

The idea that more natural foods are generally healthier than less natural foods is based mainly on inductive reasoning, eg. breast milk vs baby formula, grass fed cattle vs grain and animal protien fed cattle, vitamins in plants vs vitamins in tablets, animal welfare limits vs antibiotics and growth stimulants etc

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#212

Post by sliverstorm »

asadkn wrote: post #190

It's typical how most people really want to immediately buy into the simple fixes and religiously believe them without knowing why it worked. Overweight? Must be the fructose (recently) / carbs (a while back) / fats (further back). Same old story. Somebody makes rounds in media and makes a lot of money after publishing a book with something "new" - a simple fix. Fortunately we have people like Lyle McDonald, Alan Ara…

Trans fats were indeed terrible for you, I think we are still pretty sure of that.

And I personally object to the typical strategy with fructose- "You say it's twice as sweet as sugar so we can use half as much? Nonsense, we're going to use FOUR times as much, and it'll be EIGHT times as sweet!" - so I'm happy to see ordinary sugar being used once again.

So even if the trend is misguided, some good things can happen.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#213

Post by geoka9 »

tblt wrote: post #124
geoka9 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you go into more detail about what a regular western diet is and how your new diet differs?

By western diet I meant the gratuitous consumption of highly potent energy sources in the form of white bread/soda/cake/sugar/etc., which is common in North America (can't speak about the rest of the Western world, I hear that Europeans are lean compared to North Americans).

Anyway, my approach is simple and unscientific, but it seems to work for me. I just treat any carb-rich food as fuel (there is a difference as to "slow" vs "fast" carbs, but it's not important for the purposes of this discussion :)).

So, since it's fuel, I use it as such. For example, if I'm in my sedentary/low stress mode, I eat just a token amount of them. If I'm preparing for a gruelling match or bulking up at the gym, I'll load up on carbs (ideally the day before the match). If I'm cutting, I reduce the amount considerably.

As for fat/protein/fiber, that's pretty much an invariant. I just eat a normal healthy amount. I do increase protein intake on the days I work out a lot, though.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#214

Post by wnevets »

funkyy wrote: post #194
asadkn wrote: post #190

It's typical how most people really want to immediately buy into the simple fixes and religiously believe them without knowing why it worked. Overweight? Must be the fructose (recently) / carbs (a while back) / fats (further back). Same old story. Somebody makes rounds in media and makes a lot of money after publishing a book with something "new" - a simple fix. Fortunately we have people like Lyle McDonald, Alan Ara…

Very few public, true fitness instructors and dietitians are following the simplest rule ever - decrease calories to lose weight. This method is not that popular, its to tricky since it requires for person to calculate foods, which makes it unpopular for lazy. But it is absolutely the best method to lose weight fast, decrease calorie intake and create shortage.

This is the qualitative to saying drug addiction can be cured by just stop doing drugs. While technically true, it's much easier said than done.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#215

Post by tomaskazemekas »

scott_s wrote: post #116
tomaskazemekas wrote: post #67

One diet that reflects these findings and is tested personally is "5:2 fast diet, proposed by M. Mosley. This method really is effective in reducing the ill effects of modern food and lifestyle and is easy to turn into normal weekly behavior pattern. https://thefastdiet.co.uk/

That sounds like a typical fad diet. What differentiates it, and what evidence do they have for their claims?

I can link to this good artice in The Americal Journal of Medicine, Achieving Hunter-gatherer Fitness in the 21st Century: Back to the Future. http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(10)00463-8/pdf

And the subsequent discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863626

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#216

Post by Someone1234 »

talles wrote: post #207

I'm still waiting for a prominent figure in the nutrition world to start the debate about intermittent fasting just as Lustig is doing with sugar. Many nutritionists are prescribing the exact opposite of it: avoid fasting for more than very few hours. Heck, my coworker have a timer that fires every 2 hours to remind him to eat something.

In fairness to nutritionists, intermittent fasting is really bleeding edge stuff. There have been some clinical research that shows it may be effective (in particular against pre-diabetes) but more research could be done on this, and plus it would need to filter down out of the scientific sphere.

Nutritionists get attacked both for jumping on "trendy" new ideas and for being too conservative. Really is no winning. Someone is going to criticise.

Plus much of the advice people read doesn't come from anyone qualified, even the term "nutritionist" has different meanings in different places and requires literally no qualifications at all in some jurisdictions (they're essentially "alternative medicine" practitioners).

Dietitians often require at least SOME professional training and certification. That's who a doctor will refer you to, rather than a nutritionist.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#217

Post by fasteo »

kdamken wrote: post #95
notthegov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is real food? I disagree strongly. Eating shouldn't make you tired. I could eat 2 1/3 pound greasy cheeseburgers with toppings but if I skip the buns, I feel like I ate nothing. There is something legitimate to intermittent fasting, ketogenic diets, avoiding refined carbs, avoiding bread etc. I have a serious disease that is thought to prevented by ketogenic diets. And I think there's an equal chance I got the d…

If you don't mind me asking, what disease did you get?

Mitochondrial myopathy. Simply put, I do not produce enough energy to keep my body up and running.

There are many possible causes; in my case, it is a single large scale deletion in my mitochondrial DNA.

Symptoms are varied. In my case: extremely weak eye muscles (I have both ptosis and diplopia), intermittent fatigue, mild aerobic exercise intolerance and hot intolerance.

From a scale of 1 to 10, being 10 the worst, I rate myself at 3. So, I am doing fine. Watching what I eat, doing some exercise and controlling stress made a big difference in my quality of life (going from 7 to 3)

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#218

Post by Floegipoky »

npsimons wrote: post #201
funkyy wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few public, true fitness instructors and dietitians are following the simplest rule ever - decrease calories to lose weight. This method is not that popular, its to tricky since it requires for person to calculate foods, which makes it unpopular for lazy. But it is absolutely the best method to lose weight fast, decrease calorie intake and create shortage.

A million times this. People think that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to them because "biology is complex!", which sounds an awful lot like the creationists. You can't outrun your fork. Even if you want to create a caloric deficit through increased activity level, you'll need to hold intake constant, therefore you most likely have to track it to begin with. These days with things like MyFitnessPal th…

People tend to overlook the pervasiveness of food addiction

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#219

Post by brbsix »

funkyy wrote: post #194
asadkn wrote: post #190

It's typical how most people really want to immediately buy into the simple fixes and religiously believe them without knowing why it worked. Overweight? Must be the fructose (recently) / carbs (a while back) / fats (further back). Same old story. Somebody makes rounds in media and makes a lot of money after publishing a book with something "new" - a simple fix. Fortunately we have people like Lyle McDonald, Alan Ara…

Very few public, true fitness instructors and dietitians are following the simplest rule ever - decrease calories to lose weight. This method is not that popular, its to tricky since it requires for person to calculate foods, which makes it unpopular for lazy. But it is absolutely the best method to lose weight fast, decrease calorie intake and create shortage.

Certain diets (the food and drink regularly consumed) make it much easier to decrease calorie intake. This is partially why it bothers me so much to hear "a calorie is just a calorie". "A calorie is just a calorie" if you happen to be a calorimeter. The person consuming only unprocessed meats and vegetables is going to have a much easier time consuming 2000 cal/day in perpetuity than someone who's in an addictive cycle consuming sugary, processed foods like might be found at your average American buffet. I've tried both and the former is a breeze.

Re: The Sugar Conspiracy

#220

Post by hyperchase »

leonroy wrote: post #142
hyperchase wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When I hit the grocery store I skip the middle aisles and head straight for the fish and meat counter" Those pretty packages of meat are just as much "man made" as the foods you demonize. If you want to eat meat, I suggest hunting and only using your teeth and hands (claws?) to kill your prey and to eat the meat raw; gotta eat all of it too, no picking and choosing what parts you want either. "If you want to eat tha…

There's a world of difference between a 'package' of meat and a corn dog. I love eating meat, I see no need to 'hunt' for the thing. In the same way I love apples, I'm not going to grow an Apple tree in my yard and only eat apples from that. To be honest there's a big problem with seeing exercise as a 'punishment'. I enjoy exercising just as much as I enjoy a cold glass of beer (before or after) and to be frank my ad…

That wasn't my point. My point is your distinction between "man-made" and "not-man-made" food is completely arbitrary and based on your personal preferences.
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