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

ucsf.edu

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think common sense here can be a guide though. You don't need sugar at all, excluding high levels of anaerobic exercise. Your liver can produce the glucose your body actually needs from other sources (gluconeogenesis) and a lot of your tissues that use glucose also can use fatty acids or ketones. Fructose isn't needed at all. ("low blood sugar" isn't a symptom of not consuming enough sugar, it's a symptom of a disr…

I would caution that just because your body can make something doesn't mean it will have optimal performance when doing so. People in ketosis do have worse peak performance in sports than those that eat more carbs/sugar.

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

#392
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct, but for some reason heavily downed at the moment (Edit: no longer the case!). Relevant excerpt backing this up: > the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars I.e. it was something more like 6k-7k in terms of dollars at the time of payment.

Average home price in the late 60s was 25k so even if it is equivalent to $50k in 2016 dollars, 25k could still get you further than today in some specific areas.

Some clarification as the actual numbers and the random 25k number keep getting compared to the wrong contexts in this chain (it originally arose as a misunderstanding that the 50k was already in terms of 2016 dollars instead of the original 1960s payment https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CodeWriter23):

~$6,000-$7,000 is the amount the researchers were paid off with in the mid 60s. This is roughly equivalent to ~$50,000 in 2016 when using CPI-U figures.

$25,000 in the mid 60s would be equivalent to ~$193,000 by the same measure, and does not relate to $50,000 in 2016 in any way.

But your core point that the items in the CPI-U basket do not adjust equally, which is why it's a basket in the first place. Median housing price in 2016 was ~$300,000, so ~$193,000 is a bit of variance... but not nearly as much as mixing the numbers from the different comparisons made it sound.

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

#393
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is what I came to believe as well. If sugar alone was the problem, vegans would be fat. If fat alone was the problem, ketogenic and carnivore diets wouldn't help people lose weight. This logic is faulty because both vegans and keto/carnivore people are selected for adherence to diets. If you can stick to either dietary restrictions, you can probably also not pig out on pop tarts or whatever.

That is incorrect, actually. I find it relatively easy to adhere to keto diet. But the moment I try to introduce more "diverse" foods, I gain weight. Because processed food diet is IMPOSSIBLE to adhere to without gaining weight. Caloric restriction simply doesn't work - your body wants nutrients, not just calories. Which is to say, your willpower will fail sooner or later, unless you find a way of satisfying nutritio…

GP didn’t say processed foods, but I can see why you went there because it’s a good point. That said, there are also those of us who can’t function without carbs (e.g. if I don’t eat them I will be too weak to work out or run, get light-headed, etc.).

That doesn’t mean they have to be processed, though, or that it requires gaining weight along with them. I personally survive primarily off of clean meats and homemade sourdough bread (which has literally 4 ingredients). If I cut out the bread I get hypoglycemic after runs and pass out. And with it, my weight stays around the same (though I’ve lost maybe 30lb in the last year or so due to just running more and lifting less).

Edit: and when I say “clean meats” I do not mean “lean” meats. Plenty of saturated fats. My bloodwork and other vitals are probably the best my doctor sees all year.

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

#394
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US FDA requires that schools not serve whole milk or any products containing normal and natural saturated fats, and instead serve “low fat” versions which literally remove the fats and replace them with sugar. You say nobody is doing this, but all the subsidized meals for my kids do this.

Skim/lowfat milk just... takes the cream out. The same rule changes tightened the rules on added sugar.

For the milk you don't add sugar directly, but you end up adding more carbs to the rest of the meal when you take out nothing but fat from the milk.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am only surprised this came out of UCSF and Robert Lustig's name is not on it, since it's often a topic in his books. Maybe nutrition-health connection is more complex than can be shown by these early studies, and the big lobbying money only needs one study to get congressional support some putative scientific backing, the entire anti science funding arm of Congress uses one factoid about a shrimp treadmill for dec…

>the entire antivax movement is built on that widely discredited Wakefield paper. You're clearly misinformed. The antivax movement is largely a grassroots movement built on the experiences of the parents of vaccine-injured children, and people who've read the literature comparing vaccinated vs unvaccinated outcomes. E.g. the large scale unpublished study conducted by the CDC, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u…

> Ask yourself, if you believe vaccines aren't more dangerous than any other pharmaceutical product, then why not support removing the blanket liability immunity given to vaccine makers, that no other medical product needs?

Because vaccines aren't all that profitable compared to other pharmaceuticals but produce disproportionate public good.

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

#396

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

If anything focus gets better without sugar and excessive carbs for me - but those work well for outdoors or workouty days I find.

Definitely, carbs means alternating drowsy, hunger cycles with blood sugar level. While an even level enables the zone.

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

#397
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50k in 2016 dollars.

$25,000 in 1969 has the same buying power as approximately $220,000 to $226,000 today In terms of 2016, from gemini: > In 2016, $25,000 from 1969 was worth approximately $163,490. > Based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), $1 in 1969 had the same purchasing power as $6.54 in 2016. This represents a total inflation increase of roughly 554% over that 47-year period

People are just downvoting you rather than discussing for some reason. It drives me bonkers when I see that happen here... :).

rendaw was pointing out the $50k in the article & parent comment was in terms of 2016 dollars, not that the mid 60s $25k in CodeWrite23's comment converts to $50k in 2016.

I.e. that the researchers would not be getting anything close to a house + charger + spare change for just half the $50k amount. They got more like $6k-$7k at time of payment in the mid 60s. Which is still a good chunk of change for the time... just not the amounts it was made to sound.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red meat (a known carcinogen) at the top is gold. All that saturated fat the energy will come from (not from protein or veggies) will probably cause heart problems and plaque formation in arteries, not to mention insulin resistance just from increased FFAs in blood. Vegetarians and vegans have lower T2D incidence on average FWIW.

> Vegetarians and vegans have lower T2D incidence on average FWIW. Anecdotally, my dad tried vegetarianism for quite a while to address his T2D, but it had no effect. My mom cut out sugar and processed carbohydrates and her T2D was gone in ~3 months or so. Following any diet is probably better than nothing at all, which could explain the lower incidence of T2D in that group vs the general public. I’d be more curious…

> Anecdotally

Then it is of no interest

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

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a currency issue; inflation is by definition a reduction in the purchasing power of a fixed wage, and the issue we're facing is that the purchasing power of people's wages is less. If their wages were denominated in a unit of account that wasn't continuously losing value, they wouldn't be continuously losing purchasing power. The reason you may not know it's an issue is because inflation in our current…

I can't remember a bigger HN blackpill than this getting downvoted.

The first paragraph is doing a tricky little sleight of hand. Yeah inflation reduces the power of a fixed wage. Nobody has that kind of fixed wage. The issues with wages and prices we face are not caused by inflation, which is really easy to compensate for.

The second part is just confusing. Inflation benefits the first to "receive/spend" new money? Receiving and spending are opposites, and inflation benefits anyone that's spending whether they got that money first or fiftieth.

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

#400

A casual look at where people live the oldest, what they eat, and what's recommended tell you all you need to know about food recommendations then and now. It's a field where actual long term controlled experiments are impossible, confounding variables are everywhere, and multiple lobbies have vested interests in the outcomes. I take everything with a grain of salt apart from studies of harm when sources are credible…

This is a complete myth. Human populations are not homogenous, gene pools that relied on agriculture for the last 10k years are completely different than hunter gatherer populations. You have been lied to

Which myth? I have genuine trouble understanding what you disagree with.

Industrially processed food is a very recent invention. I'm not talking about modern fad like the Nova classification here. I don't care about bread as long as it's made with water, yeast and flour. I just don't want my food to contain any recent additives.

My take is basically that if it was fine a thousand years ago, it's probably ok-ish minus everything we know now to be poisonous. The blind spot is obviously plant selection and modern varieties being different but well, that's ok, nothing is perfect.

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