Too much fructose can damage your liver, just like too much alcohol

Great article, just book marked it. Definitely appeals to people “like me” who align philosophically with HN types.

My biggest issue with it, and all diet advice that wants to “give it to you straight, it’s all about calories” is this — YES in order to lose weight you HAVE to burn more calories than you consume, there is no question about it, it’s tautological. But it’s kind of like saying, “in order to stay sober every night, you have to drink alcohol slower than your liver can process.” It’s true...but it doesn’t really answer the question you should be asking, which is “why are you an alcoholic?” The answer to that question is more complicated, but it’s the only question that matters.

Back to diet, when it comes to being lean — why were the vast majority of Americans lean in the 1950s back when almost no one did any formal exercise, especially women, and hardly anyone was counting macros, calorie counting, etc? They just naturally ate about as many calories as their body burned off. Their bodies had a mechanism to tell them to stop eating when they were full. So what’s the difference between people and food 60 years ago and people and food today? No other mammal on earth has gotten so obese as a percentage of the population as humans have. The answer to that question, I’d argue, is the only one that matters!

I think this is why the Paleo diet has taken off so well, because frankly we shouldn’t have to count calories, macros, etc to stay lean — yes, those methods work, but we should be able to simply rely on the signals our bodies are sending us, every other lesser mammal does this, and humans did it just fine 60 years ago.

TL;DR Yes, it’s all about eating fewer calories, BUT how you eat fewer calories has a big effect on whether you can sustain it long term and feel satiated.

On the other hand, it might just be that this particular topic is unusually divisive. The science of gluten sensitivity is young, its study fraught with placebos and confounding variables, and adherents of the anti-gluten movement are often nearly religious in fervor. Asking for citations might just be asking for trouble.

> Excess sugars are generally used up by kids who are growing. However, once people reach adulthood, the growth rate slows so significantly that the excess caloric intake forces all the lipids ingested to be stored.

Huh? You mention that the SUGARS the kids are eating are used for growth. But then say it's the LIPIDS (dietary fats) that are stored in adults? What about the sugar...?

I've always been skinny, and even eating loads of sugar, and loads of fat, never seem to budge in weight. Best I could do was put on 15lbs of muscle in college when I started working out... That's the only time I've ever been able to gain weight. What gives?

The quibble could also be with the "low-fat" portion of the advice. Grouping all fats into a single category is about as useful as grouping fruits and vegetables together. There's nuance to which fats to eat, but they're mostly an important part of a healthy diet, despite being demonized for decades now. Low-fat and non-fat dairy products are little better than another source of sugar (lactose) since much of the healthy portion of dairy doesn't get absorbed without the fat.

Avoiding omega-6-rich oils is probably a good thing for most people, since most don't get enough omega-3 to balance out, but beyond that and crap like trans-fats, fats are something to embrace not shy away from. And, what's more, getting off the beaten track of traditional oils can add a lot of interesting flavor to foods. Beyond olive oil, which is pretty common, coconut, avocado, walnut and macadamia nut oil have all become favorites of mine and I find the tastes of the food I cook/prepare so much more interesting than when I used to use corn/soybean/canola oils or tried to avoid fats all together.

This is know scientifically for ~10 years now (in a sense that there are some studies, and the biochemistry of mechanisms is know, but the statistical power of the studies might be low... can''t remember, left the biomedical field years ago), and anecdotally since like for ever (google "making fois gras").

Also, for cats and dogs, other sugar (xylitol if I member well) can destroy their livers pretty fast. Fortunately, we come from sugar-happy monkeys (that used to eat lots of rottenfruit), so we can safely enjoy our booze in moderation :)

And for extra self-destructive power, mix fructose and fats: your liver will be too overloaded processing the fructose (that btw, also gets transformed to extra fat and collesterol if its other metabolizing pathways get saturated) to be able to handle the fats correctly, so "bad collesterol" will accumulate in you blood, and then clog your arteries (yeah, it needs some extra help from inflamation).

But, oh, wait, there's a name for that: donuts! ...or virtually every other fatty sweet stuff. Oh, and for extra-extra-damage the fats should be fried (for reason I don't have time to detail). And there's a name for that too: KFC + dessert!

Now go enjoy your deserts! Or the fois gras you had before it ;)

EDIT+: video explaining some (older) science behind it, form UCTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM