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Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

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Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#361
post #114

Aren't both sugar and saturated fat problemtic, and complementary in contributing to CVD?

Yes. Sugar (and all of its downstream phenomena - diabetes, insulin resistance, the ease in which sugar adds calories without satiation signals) is well established to contribute to CVD. Long-chain (animal based) sat fat and trans fat is also well established to contribute to CVD. The high calorie density of fatty foods plays a big role, as does the overall palatability and "eatability" of low fiber, high fat, high s…

Sugar doesn't cause insulin resistance or (type 2) diabetes. Both are a result of being overweight.

Of course, you can get overweight by eating too much sugar, but it's really about not eating too many calories long-term, regardless of the source.

And of course, refined sugar isn't healthy at all and consumption should be kept to a minimum, outside of exercise.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#362
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The food pyramid went away over twenty years ago. It was discontinued in 2005, and the current guidelines are at https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/myplate which launched in 2011.

I just see one lobby, "Big Macronutrient". We all need to eat. I'll be worried when some company tries to make me eat actual plastic. We know far less about any of this than we pretend to.

I mean I've seen "low calorie bread" that was basically industrial bread cut with cellulose which is analogous to very fine sawdust.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#363

As a child of the 1980s, I feel so cheated that we were told to eat "5 servings of grains a day" pointing to bread and pasta -- when so many breads have added sugar and so much pasta has added sugar in the sauce. How did no one speak up? Would people ever have spoken up if we didnt have social media?

> many breads have added sugar and so much pasta has added sugar

Presumably "5 servings of grains a day" assumes no added sugar, otherwise it would say "5 servings of grains and some sugar a day".

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#364

Has any one successfully code with same focus after cutting sugar? Seems sugar is really important for focus. Whats your experience?

I did keto for a few months a long time ago (2010/2011). This was early in my career and long coding and debug sessions were a normal part of my day-to-day. There was zero impact to my work focus, positive or negative, from cutting nearly all carbohydrates out for several months. I am curious were you heard or learned that "sugar is really important for focus". Just a vibe, perhaps?

Personal experience. Then I found many well known programmers shared the same experience online. It feels deliberate work without sugar. ie. if coding = work + fun. without sugar its just coding = work. It does not get any better after 3 days or so too.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#365
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever spread lard on toast? Do you prefer croissants made with lard? Is everyone's favourite dish these days lard chicken (I mean the Indian dish, not the Soul Food dish, which is of course popular in some locales). Nope. Butter is favoured because it tastes unctuous. Nothing to do with Big Cow or any special interest lobby local to certain valleys in the USA. Except maybe Big Bacon Drippings, because if there's one t…

I didn't say lard is always better. Different cooking styles demand different things. Though my grandpa used lard on his bread in the great depression because they couldn't afford butter.

As a kid I had both lard and butter on bread. Bras with lard and onions is amazing. But also that’s roughly the only combination of that works. Butter is way more versatile.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#366
post #12

When this news first came out it was mind blowing, but at the same time I don't entirely get it. So the money quote seems to be: > The literature review heavily criticized studies linking sucrose to heart disease, while ignoring limitations of studies investigating dietary fats. They paid a total of 2 people $50,000 (edit: in 2016 dollars). That doesn't seem like enough to entirely shape worldwide discourse around nu…

You’re exactly right: This one incident did not shape the entire body of scientific research. There is a common trick used in contrarian argumentation where a single flaw is used to “debunk” an entire side of the debate. The next step, often implied rather than explicit, is to push the reader into assuming that the opposite position must therefore be the correct one. They don’t want you to apply the same level of rig…

You're right that extrapolating from one flaw to claim wholesale debunking is a common logical fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Logic-C....

Where I'd suggest you go too far is implying that saturated fat and sugar are similarly bad. Technically you do hedge the claim with "excess", which is effectively a tautology, so the claim isn't outright false. You also don't qualify whether you mean excess in absolute terms (i.e. caloric intake) or as a proportion of macronutrients.

In practical terms, I don't consider it useful guidance based on the available evidence. As far as I can tell, there's little to no evidence that saturated fat is unhealthy (but lots of bad studies that don't prove what they claim to prove). Meanwhile, the population-wide trial of reducing saturated fat consumption over the past half-century has empirically been an abject failure. Far from improving health outcomes, the McGovern committee may well have triggered the obesity epidemic.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#368
post #3

Maybe I read too much history - but hasn't Big Sugar been known for "nothing that a slave trader wouldn't do" ethics for the past 300+ years?

Well, it's true that in the 17th century, sugar and rum production involved one of the most heinous forms of slavery ever to exist. What's not clear is that this necessarily has anything to do with the present; after all, slaves were emancipated a long time ago.

I think this is an instance of "large corporations in the 20th and 21st century have been intrinsically amoral" rather than "the sugar industry is intrinsically particularly evil (and has been since the 1600s)".

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#369
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you find disagreeable about the My Plate that was linked?

I find Diary to be completely unnecessary and was paid for by the diary industry.

Absolutely. The human body was not meant to process the milk of other animals.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#370

The new dietary guidelines are much more sensible IMO, compared to the food pyramid or MyPlate. https://cdn.realfood.gov/DGA.pdf

It recommends eating more saturated fats from dairy and meat, both of which are very bad for CVD.

I guess avocados and coconuts aren't manly enough.
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