31–37 of 37 posts
"He had a proper dietary routine now, he said. [...], made oatmeal for breakfast, ate a banana as a snack, had a salad or PB&J for lunch, and some pasta for dinner." Ah yes, the proper diet of carbs and sugar, little protein and even less fat. PB&J for lunch for a diabetic, seriously? We're still a few decades away before the common populace and your GPs learns that sugar, especially fructose, is one of the biggest c…
"He had a proper dietary routine now, he said. [...], made oatmeal for breakfast, ate a banana as a snack, had a salad or PB&J for lunch, and some pasta for dinner." Ah yes, the proper diet of carbs and sugar, little protein and even less fat. PB&J for lunch for a diabetic, seriously? We're still a few decades away before the common populace and your GPs learns that sugar, especially fructose, is one of the biggest c…
Except... This diet worked for him and he lost weight.
Now that sounds like a gross simplification, and it is, but it's missing a key insight: sugars don't really keep you full for long, and limiting calorie intake with such a diet requires a lot more willpower than eating fats and proteins that actually curb your feeling of hunger for a long period of time.
I'm not an expert on the topic, but that's how it works in my limited experience.
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Agreed. For example our brain _depends_ on glucose for energy. Even if you go into ketosis, your body will still generate glucose to feed your brain (and possibly other organs?). Conversely, cigarettes offer nothing that your body depends on. There's no doubt that too much sugar is a really bad thing, and that the average diet in USA (and other parts of the world) is way too heavy on sugars, but it's not something to…
> For example our brain _depends_ on glucose for energy. Right, but you don't need to eat sugar. Your body is capable of manufacturing glucose as-is from fat or protein. If you have 0 grams of sugar in your diet it's not like your brain will starve. > it is a valuable nutrient. No it isn't. Your body does not require that you eat sugar and it does not benefit from it either.
I made no such claim, agreed. It is definitely possible to survive and thrive without eating sugar.
> No it isn't
But it _is_ valuable, nutritionally speaking. Sugars have great value to our bodies, which is why we seek them. Sugars are an abundant source of calories and our ancestors who are honey, fruits, vegetables, roots and so on had a survival advantage over those who didn't access these foods.
Nowadays the game has changed, but sugars are still highly valuable to our bodies. It's why athletes still carb load and take gels etc when they're performing. You don't see Olympians taking olive oil or meat mid race.
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Except... This diet worked for him and he lost weight.
It was probably due to just taking in less calories than he was consuming. Now that sounds like a gross simplification, and it is, but it's missing a key insight: sugars don't really keep you full for long, and limiting calorie intake with such a diet requires a lot more willpower than eating fats and proteins that actually curb your feeling of hunger for a long period of time. I'm not an expert on the topic, but tha…
Yes, absolutely. My point is that obese people shouldn't worry about what specific diet is the best diet. I see people make this mistake all the time. It doesn't matter as much as many people assume. The only way to lose weight is to eat less calories.
This article is about how a formerly fat guy managed to lose weight. This is a big accomplishment. Many obese people try to lose weight and fail. Criticizing the minor details of his new diet is foolish. There are so many armchair diet experts who don't understand this.
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> Sugar is the Cigarettes of our time, no doubt. People have been saying this for the past 15-20 years, yet it keeps not being true. The difference is pretty obvious with just a little thought. Sugars are part of a balanced diet, it's perfectly healthy to consume some amount of sugars during a normal day. Cigarettes have NO health benefits, they only serve to kill you. Cutting out all cigarettes is a pretty minimal s…
The saying can be improved dramatically by prepending one word: added. There's absolutely NO health benefit to having any added sugar in food products. Manufacturers know that it is harmful, they know that they are encouraging addiction, and they know that consumers are suffering as a result. And then there's the advertising, especially to children. Ninety percent of the breakfast aisles in most grocery stores should…
That's a better take, to be sure. I haven't done the research, but I feel confident in agreeing that there are no health benefits to added sugar. Much like there are no health benefits to smoking.
At that point it becomes too nuanced of a subject for the "our generations smoking" argument though. It makes no difference to my body if the fructose in my juice came from the apple that was juiced, or if it was added later on. It doesn't matter if the fructose I added to my chocolate cake came from orange juice or HFCS. So it becomes an argument of quantity, with the argument being that there's too must sugar in processed foodstuffs. And hey, I agree.
I think that's a fine argument to make, but it's miles away from the "any amount is bad, and if you do it, it says something bad about your character" that we've used against smoking.
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If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.