Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sugar Love

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 66 posts

Re: Sugar Love

#51

Post by greenyoda »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #34
wmil wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still disputed, but there's a lot of evidence the problem is fructose, not glucose. Meaning that bread and potatoes aren't particularly bad on their own. Here's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" that lays out the theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Lustig is a crackpot. http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2013/02/quick-commentary-on-dr-...

Unfortunately, I don't have enough time or knowledge to track down and understand all the references in this article. So I need another way of establishing the author's credibility.

What are Andrew Kim's qualifications (his web site doesn't list any)? Why should I believe him more than Lustig, who is an endocrinologist who has treated and studied a lot of obese patients?

Re: Sugar Love

#52

Post by sizzle »

_delirium wrote: post #48
raverbashing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're almost there Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit "The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it." Correct, glucose can replenish muscle glycogen, fructose can't (the liver produces both types of glycogen) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3592616 "This is because the fiber pr…

Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit That I can buy. What I'm more skeptical of is that there's a distinction between "manufactured" and "natural" fructose once both have been concentrated and are used as additives to sweeten other products. Eating a pear is one thing, but I'm less sure that a "naturally sweetened" product which has been swe…

I've come to learn that "natural" is a marketing weasel word that adds nothing of value to describing a product.

Re: Sugar Love

#53

Post by pdonis »

eropple wrote: post #43
sparkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see quite a striking parallel in the way AGW "denialists" are treated similarly to how the likes of Yudkin were treated for speaking out against the dogmatic ideas of health "science". Very few scientists today speak out against the "climate change" dogma out of fear of losing their jobs, status among their peers, or funding - and those who dare are ridiculed, despite having published peer reviewed science (althoug…

Peer reviewed denialist science? Links please. (And this isn't a joke--I very much want to read this, but it looks like downvotes are easier than substantiating.)

http://nipccreport.org/

Note that "denialist" is a very broad (not to say loaded) term. A better term would be: skeptical of the claimed "consensus" that we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, even if the economic costs are huge, or else the planet is doomed.

Re: Sugar Love

#54

Post by stefantalpalaru »

raverbashing wrote: post #44
hristov wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an explanation. I urge you to watch the entire video. The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it. This if you get too much the liver processes a lot of it through the wrong pathways, and that causes all types of chaos. There are a couple of differences with natural fructose. First natural fructose almost always comes with fiber. The fiber if processed at the…

I think you're almost there Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit "The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it." Correct, glucose can replenish muscle glycogen, fructose can't (the liver produces both types of glycogen) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3592616 "This is because the fiber pr…

There's only one type of glycogen that's stored in different places. The article you linked only refers to "rapid glycogen restoration". Don't assume from that that the liver can't produce glycogen from fructose.

Re: Sugar Love

#55

Post by eropple »

pdonis wrote: post #53
eropple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer reviewed denialist science? Links please. (And this isn't a joke--I very much want to read this, but it looks like downvotes are easier than substantiating.)

http://nipccreport.org/ Note that "denialist" is a very broad (not to say loaded) term. A better term would be: skeptical of the claimed "consensus" that we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, even if the economic costs are huge, or else the planet is doomed.

I'm sorry, maybe I was unclear. I'm talking about peer-reviewed work (which the NIPCC stuff is not) that is being trumpeted by people who are, like, not being funded by a libertarian think tank. I mean, NIPCC is bankrolled by the Heartland Institute (a Cato-alike wishcasting group) and two advocacy groups that won't reveal their funding, one of which was headed by Fred Singer (who to this day is trying desperately to make people think that the University of East Anglia emails are actually a thing).

I wanted to give you a chance to show me something I hadn't seen before, on the off chance that maybe somebody, somewhere, was actually doing intellectually defensible work that wasn't being publicized...and you bilged it by bringing up the same utterly discredited junk that's in the denialist toolbox. I mean, you do realize why it's named the NIPCC, right? It's named that to confuse people with the IPCC, an actual scientific organization that does not lead off their papers with statements about how politically independent they are.

The mindset that compels one to the false equivalency you are choosing to employ between a policy group's own paid-for studies and the peer review process of, like, actual science is exactly why I use the term "denialist".

(For folks interested in a pretty good rundown of exactly why I and folks who pay attention to this may react in this manner towards the NIPCC, I recommend this as a great summary: http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/09/09/heartland-inst... )

Re: Sugar Love

#56

Post by beloch »

001sky wrote: post #7

Americans are fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. But they eat too much and exercise too little because they’re addicted to sugar, which not only makes them fatter but, after the initial sugar rush, also saps their energy, beaching them on the couch. “The reason you’re watching TV is not because TV is so good,” he said, “but because you have no energy to exercise, because you’re eating too much sug…

Not all "balanced" diets are created equal. You can read the labels on all food you buy and balance the amount of protein, fat, and carbs you get according to the latest science, but you'll likely do far better by eating food that doesn't come with labels.

This article highlights one of the many possible reasons why this is so. Refined fructose is absorbed by the body almost instantly and hits your liver like a freight train. The same amount of fructose eaten in the form of raw fruit takes longer to absorb and trickles into your liver, giving it time to cope. The same nutrients ingested in different forms have different health impacts. Never mind that it's also easier to eat far more sugar when it's refined! e.g. A 590 mL bottle of coke contains about the same amount of sugar as a half dozen apples.

What's the lesson learned? Try to let your body do some of the processing itself. That's what it has evolved to do. We will most probably continue finding ways in which highly processed foods are bad for us. Perhaps it's not a good idea to let industrial processes pre-digest your food for you. We are finding out that how we get our nutrients is as important as what those nutrients are.

Re: Sugar Love

#57

Post by grannyg00se »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #36
grannyg00se wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a 100 calorie quantity of bread not be better than a 100 calorie quantity of sugar cereal? Assuming of course that you don't buy bread with sugar in it. "Although the Glycemic Index provides some insights into the relative diabetic risk within specific food groups, it contains many counter-intuitive ratings. These include suggestions that bread generally has a higher glycemic ranking than sugar and that some po…

The glycemic index is a totally broken concept. Your body and tissues are made to happily work with surges of insulin and there is absolutely nothing problematic about that. From a weight loss perspective sugars, such as in fruit juice, are superior to starches for two reasons. The fructose is thermogenic and raises base metabolic rate. Secondly, starches tend to reach lower lengths of the intestine undigested where…

You're reccomending a high sugar diet for weight loss. Yet its nutritional value is nil. How does it benefit? Low starch, high sugar, low fat, decent protein sounds like a diet that would be improved by omitting the sugar.

Re: Sugar Love

#58

Post by rdmcfee »

js2 wrote: post #15
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #9

> [...] an injection of sugar into the bloodstream stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to heroin and cocaine. All tasty foods do this to some extent—that’s why they’re tasty!—but sugar has a sharply pronounced effect. In this sense it is literally an addictive drug. Sugar doesn't get into the blood stream. Glucose does. Glucose is the only nutrient that neurons are using in normal condition…

Glucose is the only nutrient that neurons are using in normal conditions. And to elaborate, the other is ketone bodies produced by the liver from fatty acids. Their production occurs in healthy individuals as nutritional ketosis under a carbohydrate restricted diet (typically less than 100g/day) or in diabetics as the pathological condition ketoacidosis.

Many people experience some ketone body production and metabolism well eating SAD (standard American diet). Fasting overnight and skipping breakfast, or having a long workout more than 4-5 hours after your last meal will cause this.

Nutritional ketosis, unlike ketoacidosis is a loosely defined term. Everyone has experienced it on some level. Perhaps just not at extreme levels like people pursing NK with vigour.

Re: Sugar Love

#59

Post by pinealservo »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #11
001sky wrote: post #7

Americans are fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. But they eat too much and exercise too little because they’re addicted to sugar, which not only makes them fatter but, after the initial sugar rush, also saps their energy, beaching them on the couch. “The reason you’re watching TV is not because TV is so good,” he said, “but because you have no energy to exercise, because you’re eating too much sug…

Good points. Though it's actually not a zero sum game, it's worse than that. When you get down to it there's a very important link between the satiety/calorie ratio of food and weight gain. Sure you can talk about will power and so on, but those are higher order effects, it should be obvious that if there's a zero will power diet that frequently results in obesity and a zero will power diet which doesn't that's signi…

> The same sort of thing applies to wealth, for example, but nobody tells the poor to just acquire some will power and start spending less than they earn.

Maybe you've been reading particularly good advice about wealth, but I can assure you that far more than "nobody" tell the poor to just acquire the willpower to spend less and earn more.

I agree with your overall point, but I think the same issue plays out in the field of economic behavior of individuals as well as the eating behaviors. People who are advantaged in either scenario don't realize it and don't understand their own advantages, thus giving bad advice to the less-advantaged even when they mean well.

Re: Sugar Love

#60

Post by pdonis »

eropple wrote: post #55
pdonis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://nipccreport.org/ Note that "denialist" is a very broad (not to say loaded) term. A better term would be: skeptical of the claimed "consensus" that we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, even if the economic costs are huge, or else the planet is doomed.

I'm sorry, maybe I was unclear. I'm talking about peer-reviewed work (which the NIPCC stuff is not) that is being trumpeted by people who are, like, not being funded by a libertarian think tank. I mean, NIPCC is bankrolled by the Heartland Institute (a Cato-alike wishcasting group) and two advocacy groups that won't reveal their funding, one of which was headed by Fred Singer (who to this day is trying desperately to…

I'm talking about peer-reviewed work (which the NIPCC stuff is not)

Neither is the IPCC report, taken by itself. It references peer-reviewed work. So does the NIPCC report. Did you bother to actually read any of it?

NIPCC is bankrolled by...

In other words, you didn't bother to read any of it. You just assumed that they must be wrong because of their funding source. Well, guess what? If we're going to judge by funding sources, the IPCC itself is just as suspect. They are funded by governments which have a vested interest in increasing government control over all aspects of life. Government-funded research is not likely to come up with the answer, "No reason for government regulation here", even if it's the right answer.

If you want to play the funding source finger-pointing game, sorry, I'm not interested. I don't care who funds what; I want to see the actual content. See below.

the IPCC, an actual scientific organization

No, the IPCC is a political organization. It's an Intergovernmental panel. It uses information from scientists, but the final reports, and particularly the summaries for "policymakers", are driven by politics, not science.

the false equivalency you are choosing to employ

Not at all. Anyone can refer to peer-reviewed science, and both the IPCC and the NIPCC do so--see above.

Actually, if anyone is making a false equivalency here, it's you; you are equating "peer-reviewed science" with "valid science", which is simply laughable. Many peer-reviewed papers turn out to be wrong, for a variety of reasons: honest mistakes, insufficient knowledge in the field, reviewers too busy to really review, and corruption of the peer review process by political agendas.

If you want to actually distinguish valid science from invalid science, you have to look at the content. There is simply no shortcut; there is no way to tell what's valid science by looking at funding sources, or "consensus", or any other indirect measure. You have to look at the actual content. In the case of the IPCC, there's a very simple content question you can ask: have the IPCC's predictions about the climate matched the actual climate? The answer to that question is "no". No amount of harping on how wonderful the IPCC's process is will change that.

I recommend this as a great summary:

This article makes the same mistake you are making: it looks at process instead of content. There's not a single substantive point addressed; it's all about who is funding whom and what process they are using. Sorry, no sale.

Post reply on HN