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Big Sugar’s Secret Ally? Nutritionists
- sebleon 10y agoNo surprises here. Sad truth is that science isn't driven by the search for objective truth. Rather, research funding determines which way the scientific literature will sway.
- KZeillmann 10y agoI wish they'd quit misusing the word "nutritionist". The word has no value whatsoever. If you want to call yourself a nutritionist, go ahead. Nobody will stop you. The protected professional designation is "dietitian". When the NYT calls out "nutritionists", I have no idea who they're talking about.
- wlesieutre 10y agoThe analogy I've heard is that "nutritionist" is to dietician as "toothologist" is to dentist. One of them is a medical profession with required education and certifications, the other is not.
- frenchy 10y agoThis is a bad analogy. Nobody calls themselves a "toothologist". The reason is pertinent as well: dentists are basically toned down surgeons, and (in North America) you're not allowed to practice as a dentist without the training because of the harm you can cause. You're not going to get HIV/Hepatitis from a nutritionist, you can from a shitty dentist. Edit: a good analogy would probably be a licensed counselor/therapist vs and unlicensed one.
- DanBC 10y agoYour comment is a bit confusing. Matthias Rath is a real doctor who promotes nutritional quack "cures" for cancer and HIV. Here's one example: http://www.irinnews.org/fr/node/238092 http://www.irinnews.org/fr/node/238092 Where they say >>the report noted confusion about the role of nutrition in HIV, which was being exacerbated by a dual system of medicine regulation that subjected "Western" medicine to much more rigorous controls than complementary medicines, such as immune boosters and nutritional supplements. They're alluding to Matthias Rath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rath
- enraged_camel 10y agoDentists are not "toned down" surgeons. They are specialized surgeons. Other types of surgeons can't perform non-routine dental surgery because they lack the know-how.
- phren0logy 10y agoI think that's an important part of this problem.
- cptskippy 10y agoI personally don't hold dietician in any higher regard than nutritionists. My mom had a dietician as a next door neighbor. This lady was never seen without a 1 liter big gulp filled with diet soda. We had her family over for Thanksgiving one year; Mom puts on a big show with white table cloths, fine china, crystal, etc. They all showed up with big gulps and even went home to get some diet soda when they ran low because we only had regular. The kicker was this lady didn't eat vegetables. Only bread, meat and diet soda.
- criddell 10y agoEven though she doesn't eat well, it doesn't mean she doesn't know a lot about nutrition.
- logfromblammo 10y agoWho wants to take advice from a hypocrite? It would be like a dental hygienist that didn't floss, or a personal trainer that never did squats, or an arms control advocate with armed bodyguards, or an envronmentalist that never separates recyclables from the garbage.
- criddell 10y agoIs a fat dietitian more of a hypocrite than, say, an out of shape football coach?
- logfromblammo 10y agoNeither is necessarily a hypocrite. You can't really tell until they open their mouths and speak. It is likely that the coach was not out of shape at a time when they participated in competitive team sports. But a football coach that had never suffered a severe sports injury commanding players to "hit harder"? That's some hypocrisy right there. The fat dietitian might be self-experimenting to support they hypothesis that their fat-loss diet plan works (at n=1), or becoming familiar with the effects of various unhealthy eating habits. But we weren't talking about a fat dietitian. It was a dietitian that apparently does not eat vegetables.
- cesarb 10y agoThat sounded strange for me, since every time I've visited a hospital, it was a nutritionist that prescribed the diet for every patient. So I looked at the Wikipedia link from another comment; it seems that the terminology varies depending on the country. Here in Brazil, "nutricionista" (which translates as nutritionist) is the protected professional designation, and only they can prescribe diets for hospital patients.
- jessaustin 10y agoNutrition is like, the worst field of medical research, and that's saying something. All of the hallmarks of typical medical research (studies sponsored by interested parties, non-repeatable results, tiny sample sizes, contradictory health recommendations, lack of properly controlled experimentation, etc.) are present in nutrition, but turned up to eleven. Future generations will lump the nutrition advice with which we struggle to survive, in with bloodletting and snake oil. No, I don't see a way around any of this. Lots of money is spent on food, and will be for the foreseeable future.
- Xeoncross 10y agoRidiculous. The future will not show that proper nutrition is a waste of time. It is absurd to think our body responds to every input the same. You are lumping every Doctor, Biochemist, Farmer, and John Doe who call themselves a "Nutritionalist" together. They are really, really different people and some of them are totally right and some are dead wrong.
- Inception 10y agoThe OP did not say that proper nutrition is a waste of time, but rather nutritional medical research is flawed, so advice coming from said research is not useful.
- opportune 10y agoIt's common for Doctors and Biochemists themselves to do shitty science in spite of their fancy titles, as evidenced by the vast amount of contradictory and non-reproducible results in both fields [1]. Obviously the field itself isn't a waste of time but it's unfortunate that there's so much noise that it may as well be. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970 http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...
- bcassedy 10y agojessaustin isn't saying proper nutrition is a waste of time, but rather that nutritional research is of exceptionally poor quality due to the amount of money on the line for the vested interests that fund the studies. To your second point, the problem is that we don't know who is right and who is wrong. The studies are conducted so poorly or with such bias that it's near impossible to have concrete recommendations.
- fennecfoxen 10y agoBig Sugar's biggest allies in the US were, historically, the United States senators from Hawaii. To buy them off, Congress long ago applied nasty import duties on the substance, tripling the price of sugar in the US and giving rise to the substitute we all know and love to hate, high fructose corn syrup. (Not that sugar is actually healthier for you at all, mind you.) It looks like they might actually be getting out of the business, though. Good luck on replacing the corn syrup now that the Midwestern corn states are their own lobby...
- xkcd-sucks 10y agoThat's a little ironic in light of the fact that the US took over Hawaii on the behalf of sugar growers
- Spooky23 10y agoFlorida too. Rich GOP Cubans have a right grip on sugar.
- vonmoltke 10y agoHawaii's cane production has never been higher than Florida or Louisiana. Why would anything to do with sugar be aimed at Hawaii?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- teolemon 10y agoGive this game a try :-) http://howmuchsugar.in http://howmuchsugar.in Also if you want to increase transparency for nutrition, consider contributing to Open Food Facts (we need Perl, Android, iOS volunteers and barcode scanners to help) https://world.openfoodfacts.org https://world.openfoodfacts.org https://github.com/openfoodfacts https://github.com/openfoodfacts
- Pxtl 10y agoima go ahead and assume that has nothing to do with India.
- teolemon 10y agowe have an Indian version and we need more contributions :-) https://in.openfoodfacts.org https://in.openfoodfacts.org And we're translating it to Hindi :)
- freehunter 10y agoI think he means "even though it uses the .in TLD, it's not directly related to India".
- teolemon 10y agoI was being obtuse ;-) It is actually a play on words so that you can have nice urls like http://howmuchsugar.in/broccoli-cauliflower-florets-asda http://howmuchsugar.in/broccoli-cauliflower-florets-asda More seriously, Open Food Facts is a mobile crowdsourcing effort, and we have volunteers from all the planet :-)
- snarf21 10y agoAlso, don't forget that the food pyramid is defined by the Department of Agriculture (whose job it is to sell food and maintain food surplus) and not the Department of Health and Human Services (whose job it is to pay for all the trillions in health issues resulting from the billions in subsidies). The calorie is a calorie argument is old and dumb. It ignores insulin which is a BIG deal. It also ignores that high blood sugar can cause a temporary endorphin rush. Ever hear anyone talk about a "protein high" or "fat high"?
- temp246810 10y agoDon't let r/fitness see this or you will get absolutely destroyed. I agree with you - but saying a calorie is a calorie makes people feel like they are gifted physicists preaching to people that live in the dark ages. Nutrition's become a bit of a religious/political issue.
- qeternity 10y agoThe reason r/fitness says this is because for active people it largely holds true, with the exception of certain bulking/cutting phases for lifters. It's people who are sedentary, or in chronic caloric surplus where the macros become more of a concern. You're not going to wreak havoc on your insulin sensitivity by having a Coke every day if you get up and run a 10k every morning, because things like glycogen levels will be replenished. But if you're sedentary, your body deals with it very differently.
- xherberta 10y agoThe composition of one's microbiome is also a major factor in metabolism (and is interrelated with activity level, too.) https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Firmicutes_and_Obesity https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Firmicutes_and_Obes... The article didn't tread much into the satiety effect: while sugar- and carb-laden foods generally leave you wanting more, it's difficult to overeat naturally fatty things like bacon, cream, or eggs. Until just now, these foods have been frowned upon so hard that few people think of combining them with veggies to create tasty, affordable, satisfying, and nutritious meals.
- llimllib 10y agoCan somebody explain to me why Taubes gets so much credit on this forum? He says himself that he's arguing without evidence.
- overgard 10y agoIm reading his book right now (The Case Against Sugar). He has a lot of citations. He's not saying he has no evidence, he's calling out the science being produced as corrupt/bad.
- hondo77 10y agoExactly. He puts forth an interesting hypothesis. Now he needs to prove it. You don't just get to say something should be a certain way, you need data to back it up.
- defen 10y agoI don't think he has to prove anything. Personally, I'm long past the point of feeling the need to argue about nutrition on the internet. No one is going to change his/her mind due to "rational debate" because all of the evidence is shit. So...I will not eat sugar, but feel free to eat as much sugar as you like. I genuinely don't care; if you develop obesity or diabetes or heart disease, you can rest easy in your epistemic conviction that sugar consumption didn't cause it. Likewise, if I develop any of those conditions, I can be absolutely sure it wasn't due to excessive sugar consumption.
- chx 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionist#Regulation_of_the_title_.22nutritionist.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionist#Regulation_of_the... A demonstration of the ease in which it is possible to become an accredited nutritionist can be seen in Dr Ben Goldacre's successful application to have his dead cat Hettie accredited as a certified professional member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants.
- majkinetor 10y agoMeh... This is not specific to nutritionism. See "Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" is an actual science paper accepted by a journal http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam
- Hermel 10y agoOne often overlooked factor of obesity is how fast you eat. The feeling of having eaten enough comes with a delay. So the faster you eat (in calories per second), the more likely you are overeating. And calories per second are typically much higher with sugary food than with say vegetables.
- majkinetor 10y agoActually, there is evidence to contrary. - Faster eating will stretch your stomach muscles more which is trigger for satiety - Faster eating will produce lower blood sugar as salivary amilaze doesn't break complex carbs into simple sugars. There are papers on that, but CBB to find them now.
- grecy 10y agoCompletely anecdotal - I've decided to give up refined sugar for 2017, especially coke (I was drinking a can every two days or so in late 2016). So I lasted until today, Jan 18th, when I had a small bottle of Sprite. (In my defense, I was at a restaurant using the wi-fi and had to order something). Within five minutes my heart rate was through the roof, I had the shakes and felt really, really lightheaded. It lasted at least three hours. Wow. Three weeks without sugar and then ONE drink did that to me. Now I'm ten times more motivated to never have one again.
- opportune 10y agoNot to be a dick, but it sounds like you actually just drank a can of placebo. Sugar intake isn't correlated with increased heart rate or inattentiveness in healthy people. The myth of the sugar rush can likely be attributed to confirmation bias [1], and you probably just extrapolated this onto your current experience. Of course, you could just have undiagnosed diabetes too. [1] http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar-really-make-children-hyper/ http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar...
- rebel 10y agoHave you considered those symptoms are more commonly associated with caffeine which is also found in Sprite? Sounds like your tolerance may have lowered. Edit: I stand corrected, Sprite does not have caffeine
- detaro 10y agoSprite doesn't contain caffeine
- user837387 10y agoHave one every month. That way it is not a temptation and you do not make a big deal out of it. I'm a diet coke addict and the way I deal with it is that I drink half a bottle and keep the rest for latter. The fact that I know that I still have a half-full soda makes me not want to buy another. And if I feel like drinking some soda I just take a sip. The soda is at room temperature so it tastes like shit. This crappy taste makes not want to drink anymore and I can go without buying a new bottle of diet coke for more than a week. Sometimes I can last a month. By using this method I don't feel guilty if every once in a while I have a soda and I've been able to reduce my daily intake of a bottle of soda to just one small bottle (20FL oz) every one or two weeks.
- mtw 10y agoLook at the mirror. Big Sugar' best ally is not the nutritionist but the average American consumer. Between a fruit or a chocolate bar at identical prices, the vast majority of Americans will choose the chocolate bar. Most people will scoff at eating only veggies, whole grains, legumes, fruits (aka Mediterranean style diet). They will cheat and get their sweets, sugar and refined bakery products, even knowing the evidence. Sugar (or bad food) is an addiction. It's not about nutritionists or scientific evidence, it's about having enough mental strength to stay away from bad foods.
- joecool1029 10y ago> Sugar (or bad food) is an addiction. It's not about nutritionists or scientific evidence, it's about having enough mental strength to stay away from bad foods. You're close. Attempting to do so while not having any understanding of why things happen is a recipe for disaster. It must be reasoned that obesity is a disorder caused by something more then just 'poor eating habits'. There are physiotypes that will simply resist obesity on the worst of diets. I don't need to link a paper for this, this should be common sense from anyone's experience around enough people. So, if you reason that obesity is a disorder or sickness... you would then try to treat the cause, not the symptom. In the same sense that a person with a peanut allergy would simply avoid peanuts, a person with obesity may have this state caused by disturbed leptin/insulin signaling. A diet must then be designed to compensate for that disorder. (we know that once surplus white adipose tissue is grown, there's no going back, a modified diet must be adapted for life or those buckets just start filling again)
- everial 10y ago> we know that once surplus white adipose tissue is grown, there's no going back, a modified diet must be adapted for life or those buckets just start filling again Mind providing more references/reliable pointers on this?
- joecool1029 10y agoApologies, I can't find the precise paper covering what I mean. You will find that there's a suspicious lack of studies on formerly obese people. Paper to get you thinking on how WAT acts on signaling: http://www.cambridge.org.secure.sci-hub.bz/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/div-classtitlephysiological-role-of-adipose-tissue-white-adipose-tissue-as-an-endocrine-and-secretory-organdiv/6F914782A23DBDEC3E582833F6A16717 http://www.cambridge.org.secure.sci-hub.bz/core/journals/pro... Paper on WAT quantity and its effects on metabolic syndrome. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.12519/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.12519/pdf . Where this one gets me thinking is that for some people, growing WAT may actually be an adaptation to prevent metabolic disorder from a poor diet. What we know is WAT can hold about 4x its size in fat before it divides into more. What we don't really know for humans is whether long term weight loss allows us to lose some of these, or whether they just deflate.... some rat studies show there can be a reduction, but for humans it would require repeated biopsy......
- georgewsinger 10y agonutritionfacts.org for evidence-based nutrition advice.
- georgewsinger 10y agoNutritionfacts.org for evidence-based nutrition advice.
- majkinetor 10y agoIt is totally strange that anybody can think cal. is a cal. We proved otherwise so many times. People can eat the same amount of cals that are diffrently processed for various reasons: - Insulin resistence - Specific cancers - Thyroid disfunction - Level of amylaze expression (how good we absorb complex carbs) - Microbiota status - Even viruses (https://www.wired.com/2016/12/mysterious-virus-cause-obesity/ https://www.wired.com/2016/12/mysterious-virus-cause-obesity...) In all casses people/animals did eat the same amount of food and got different amounts of fat. Since anybody is in a differerent biochemical spot here the default should actually be that cal. is NOT a cal, depending on your (meta/epi)genetics. Any proffessional claiming otherwise should find another job IMO. I use this claim as a marker for incompetence.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago"A calorie is a calorie" is wrong, sure, but so is Newtonian physics. It leads to a lot of better-than-random-guessing predictions about what you should do in order to achieve certain goals. Want to gain weight? A gallon of milk is roughly 2k calories, so if you add that to your daily diet you ought to put on weight. Want to lose weight? You should probably "eat less", and calories are a good approximation of how much "less" eating less is.
- majkinetor 10y agoExcept it doesn't work that way. Nobody eats when not hungry. Obesity is a disease or disfunction. Imagine saying to someone that has bad vision to focus on the object.
- alphabettsy 10y agoIt's a food industry problem, not just a sugar problem. I'm supposed to believe a company like ConAgra is being manipulated by the sugar lobby?
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago>Another way to say this is that what we eat doesn’t matter; it’s only how much The big, glaring, obvious problem with this is "how much you eat is the only thing that determines weight gain/loss" doesn't imply that what you eat doesn't matter. What you eat can easily change how much you eat; it's much easier to consume a giant pile of calories if it's a cake than if it's spinach.
- CodeWriter23 10y agoYep. Most all of the "low fat" and "reduced fat" foods pushed by nutritionists contain more added sugar than their fat-laden counterparts.
- logfromblammo 10y agoEvery time I see candy marketed as "a fat-free food", I die a little inside. Better put that crap on your packaging now, confectioners. I see mandatory warnings like "consumption of this product increases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes" in your future.
- CodeWriter23 10y agoCompare the labels for the "Sugars" row on any regular vs. low fat food. Deleting fat removes flavor so they add sugar. At the moment, the clearest example that comes to mind is salad dressing.
- kmicklas 10y agoDoes it really matter that much if one calorie is not exactly equal to one calorie? What seems immediately obvious is that sugar is less filling per calorie than almost anything else, and thus if you eat sugary foods you'll end up eating more calories. The only way to prevent this is to count precisely with an app or something, which is obviously a big challenge for most people.
- projektfu 10y agoIt's bizarre to me that he goes out of his way to say it's just okay for the sugar magnates to promote sugar with junk science but it was really nefarious for some researchers to promote a nuanced view, especially when they were often relying on published studies promoted or financed by the sugar industry. This is a weird form of muckraking, exonerating the sartorial and lambasting the professional. Are we really to think that the American diet is so unhealthy because of the opinions of unknown dietitians and researchers? Was Fred Stare ever a household name? (Maybe Fred Astaire). Or is it more likely that the manipulation of the diet to use more salt, more sugar, more oils and thus more food, is really the problem. Authorities have been saying for plenty of time to avoid sugar, overeating, processed foods and sedentary lifestyles.[1] This isn't a new thing. Taubes and similar authors act like they discovered a conspiracy among scientists and thought leaders to make Americans sick, but it just doesn't add up. The obvious culprit has been food processors' desire for growth the whole time, and that was visible at least 40 years ago. 1. Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, 1979. https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/NNBBGK.pdf https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/NNBBGK.pdf