7 ms·

I ate 40 teaspoons of sugar a day. This is what happened (2015)

55 points by thomyorkie 10y ago

Svezik 10y ago
Morgan Spurlock really let himself go.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dabadoo 10y ago
The math does not add up. 40 grams of sugar does not have enough calories for you to gain 3 kilograms in 12 days, or 8.5 kilograms in 21 days. Moreover, if he ate as much as the average American eats, how is it that the average American has not experienced what he has? The guy almost gained 1 pound a day.
- thomyorkie 10y ago
  He ate 40 teaspoons which is 160 grams of sugar. Also, perhaps the fact that he went from very little sugar to 160 grams a day caused rapid weight gain. I know for instance that your body changes over time to burn fat more efficiently if you are on a lower carb diet, perhaps the reverse is true as well.
  - dabadoo 10y ago
    Weight gain is impossible without the necessary amount of calories. It is the simple law of conservation of mass/energy. 160 calories * 21 days = 3360 calories. This is enough to gain about 1 pound of weight, not 19.
    - oculusthrift 10y ago
      probably spiked his blood sugar causing him to eat more food in general. pretty poor article missing a million confounding variables
    - in_cahoots 10y ago
      1 teaspoon is 16 calories, so you're off by a factor of 4 here though you're still in the same ballpark.
    - thomyorkie 10y ago
      Its 160 grams of sugar which equals 619 calories which leads to 12999 calories in 21 days. Still less than 4 pounds though. However, you're really oversimplifying weight gain. Hormones play an important role in how much fat is stored and how much your metabolism burns. And the type of food you eat can affect your hormones.
      - darpa_escapee 10y ago
        Hormones, food, stress, mood, sleep, exercise, medications etc all affect your metabolism and how fat is stored.
      - dabadoo 10y ago
        Yes my mistake. 13k calories is roughly 4 pounds. >Hormones play an important role in how much fat is stored and how much your metabolism burns. And the type of food you eat can affect your hormones. It doesn't matter if 100% of the calories he ate was turned into fat. >how much your metabolism burns. Eating sugar causes your metabolism to slow down by 4x? You'd die.
        thomyorkie 10y ago
        You're talking about that 13k calories of sugar as if it exists in a vacuum. That extra sugar could have caused more of the other non-sugar food he was consuming to turn to fat.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  What else did he eat? Sugar will raise your insulin level, which directs more blood sugar to fat cells. So it's not just a case of calories in calories out.
  - dabadoo 10y ago
    It is a matter of calories in calories out. He didn't just increase his concentration of fat, he straight up gained 8.5 kilograms of mass.
    - jonsen 10y ago
      The main part of the kind of body mass you can gain is water.
    - dualogy 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin > promoting the absorption of, especially, glucose from the blood into fat, liver and skeletal muscle cells > in the tissues that can carry out these reactions, glycogen and fat synthesis from glucose are stimulated > The breakdown of triglycerides by adipose tissue into free fatty acids and glycerol is also inhibited > Increased lipid synthesis – insulin forces fat cells to take in blood glucose, which is converted into triglycerides (aka fat) > Increased esterification of fatty acids – forces adipose tissue to make neutral fats (i.e., triglycerides) from fatty acids > Decreased lipolysis – forces reduction in conversion of fat cell lipid stores into blood fatty acids and glycerol Kcals in kcals out fails practically every overweight person over 30 I know. But they won't hear about biochemistry. Poor folks aren't even eating that much, but what they do eat sufficiently inhibits liberation of the many-months-worths of energy stores they carry around all day. Don't envy them, full of energy yet out of energy!
      - dabadoo 10y ago
        Kcals in/out is literally the conservation of mass. Increasing fat synthesis doesn't mean your body can magically make up mass.
- mping 10y ago
  Was under the impression he ate food with sugar, hidden sugar as he call it. Plus, he went from no sugar to 40g so it's not not comparable to the avg person
- DanBC 10y ago
  He completely changed his diet from cooked from scratch to "foods perceived as healthy but which contain hidden sugar". He claims he controlled for fat intake. It's likely that taking on that much sugar all of a sudden would require him to increase his fluid intake, and so some of the weight may be water.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  The more sugar I eat at one meal, the hungrier I am at the next meal. It's entirely possible that his caloric intake went up by a lot more than the 619kCal per day he got of sugar.
- shamaku 10y ago
  40 grams of sugar? 40 teaspoons is closer to 160+ grams.
swagv1 10y ago
I thought bored journalists who did binge or denial experiments on themselves went out of style in 2015. Please don't come back.
relics443 10y ago
Ignoring confounding variables, and a sample size of one caused me to discount this "study". While I'm sure sugar consumption is an issue, this escapade seems like more of a capitalist venture than anything else.
- GoToRO 10y ago
  Nobody said it was a study... But if you want to see what effect 40 teaspoons of sugar a day have on yourself then you don't care about anybody else. It's like beeing in a plane that crashes: you don't care that a proper study says that you only have a chance of 1 in 10 milion to die when you are already in a plane that crashes.
DanBC 10y ago
"That Sugar Film" is interesting, and worth a watch. The stuff about dental health in poor parts of America is gruesome. He's pushing his agenda pretty hard. It's good that it's an obvious bias, but it makes the film a bit exhausting to watch. The "sugar is pure evil" line is relentlessly pushed through the film. That's a shame, because he has some really good points, especially around foods perceived as healthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Sugar_Film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Sugar_Film
- mynameislegion1 10y ago
  With all this recent vilification of sugar, I start to wonder if 10 years from now we will suddenly realize that it's more complicated than that, as we've found with fat and cholesterol? ... and in the mean time supermarkets will get filled with "healthy" they're-not-unripe-they're-low-sugar fruit, and organic sugar-reduced 100% apple juice...
tomohawk 10y ago
I made one change. I avoided any foods with high fructose corn syrup. I wasn't over weight, but doing that one thing had many positive results. I dropped unnecessary belly fat. I had better, more consistent energy throughout the day. Sharper focus. I am no longer interested in cheap desert type stuff - it tastes like crap. When I eat a desert now, I go for something that's really nice, and I really enjoy it. It's not calories in / calories out. The bodies response to HFC is to open up the gate to converting whatever nutrients you've eaten recently into fat. Eating that little candy from the jar on your co-workers desk after lunch? That's a big deal.
hrodriguez 10y ago
I didn't watch the film or do other research except for reading the article. I just wonder what the effects of a lifetime of bad eating, smoking and who knows what else... did to his body previously. He may have already built-up some medical issues. Any problems he had previously weren't reported and analysed in the article. A "healthy" diet for 3 years doesn't miraculously erase his past. To suddenly go into a divergent new shock diet without a slow adjustment period could have the body reacting in ways that were unforeseen as a way of protecting itself. I'm not suggesting, in the least, that 40 teaspoon of a sugar every single day is good for anyone(LOL). It just seems that lots of people in that range would have off days where they hit that high for a day or two... followed by lower sugar intakes for several days (giving the body time to heal or adjust). It just reminds me of the "Deadly Facts about Water" meme: https://imgur.com/gallery/hv8sL2J https://imgur.com/gallery/hv8sL2J
- devoply 10y ago
  The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. As for adjusting you don't need a period of adjustment to go from a sugar riddled diet to a non-sugar riddled diet. Or to ease into it. I have never read anything to suggest something like that. You need to do that with exercise because the fat built up in your arteries might break off and clog your heart. Or the arteries are too narrow as it is and exertion might cause problems in you won't get enough blood running properly in your system which could cause other cadiovascular problems.
  - endentru 10y ago
    I think hrodriguez meant that it was the shock of going from a ~3 year low-sugar diet to a 40-tablespoon-per-day diet that was responsible for the sudden influx of negative effects, one that might not have been seen if he gradually eased into the high sugar diet.
    - hrodriguez 10y ago
      Exactly. For example, I don't consume alcohol. When I do so on the rare occasion, just a little hits me very hard. Regular drinkers don't have this issue. I would never think of going from zero alcohol to consuming a bottle of vodka every day. I also enjoy a pretty healthy diet/lifestyle - low-salt, low-fat, fruits, veggies, plenty of fiber, regular exercise... I find that my body reacts very badly if I "treat" myself and indulge throughout the day in whatever everyone else consumes so freely. No such issue if it's just a single meal. I need to taper in (ie, the Holidays are a good example). High salt, high-fat meals are especially hard hitting. I can counter this with lots more water, fiber for example. I also know that if I remained on these richer diets, eventually my body wouldn't react so strongly but I would also need to make other dietary changes. Damon Gameau admits he did not make other changes to his diet. The experiment was a non-stop, high-dose, sugar binge (40 tsp is incredibly high) that went from 0-100 mph in a microsecond.

55 points by thomyorkie 10y ago

Svezik 10y ago

Morgan Spurlock really let himself go.

sctb 10y ago
Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dabadoo 10y ago

The math does not add up. 40 grams of sugar does not have enough calories for you to gain 3 kilograms in 12 days, or 8.5 kilograms in 21 days. Moreover, if he ate as much as the average American eats, how is it that the average American has not experienced what he has? The guy almost gained 1 pound a day.

thomyorkie 10y ago
He ate 40 teaspoons which is 160 grams of sugar. Also, perhaps the fact that he went from very little sugar to 160 grams a day caused rapid weight gain. I know for instance that your body changes over time to burn fat more efficiently if you are on a lower carb diet, perhaps the reverse is true as well.
- dabadoo 10y ago
  Weight gain is impossible without the necessary amount of calories. It is the simple law of conservation of mass/energy. 160 calories * 21 days = 3360 calories. This is enough to gain about 1 pound of weight, not 19.
  - oculusthrift 10y ago
    probably spiked his blood sugar causing him to eat more food in general. pretty poor article missing a million confounding variables
  - in_cahoots 10y ago
    1 teaspoon is 16 calories, so you're off by a factor of 4 here though you're still in the same ballpark.
  - thomyorkie 10y ago
    Its 160 grams of sugar which equals 619 calories which leads to 12999 calories in 21 days. Still less than 4 pounds though. However, you're really oversimplifying weight gain. Hormones play an important role in how much fat is stored and how much your metabolism burns. And the type of food you eat can affect your hormones.
    - darpa_escapee 10y ago
      Hormones, food, stress, mood, sleep, exercise, medications etc all affect your metabolism and how fat is stored.
    - dabadoo 10y ago
      Yes my mistake. 13k calories is roughly 4 pounds. >Hormones play an important role in how much fat is stored and how much your metabolism burns. And the type of food you eat can affect your hormones. It doesn't matter if 100% of the calories he ate was turned into fat. >how much your metabolism burns. Eating sugar causes your metabolism to slow down by 4x? You'd die.
      - thomyorkie 10y ago
        You're talking about that 13k calories of sugar as if it exists in a vacuum. That extra sugar could have caused more of the other non-sugar food he was consuming to turn to fat.
ryanobjc 10y ago
What else did he eat? Sugar will raise your insulin level, which directs more blood sugar to fat cells. So it's not just a case of calories in calories out.
- dabadoo 10y ago
  It is a matter of calories in calories out. He didn't just increase his concentration of fat, he straight up gained 8.5 kilograms of mass.
  - jonsen 10y ago
    The main part of the kind of body mass you can gain is water.
  - dualogy 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin > promoting the absorption of, especially, glucose from the blood into fat, liver and skeletal muscle cells > in the tissues that can carry out these reactions, glycogen and fat synthesis from glucose are stimulated > The breakdown of triglycerides by adipose tissue into free fatty acids and glycerol is also inhibited > Increased lipid synthesis – insulin forces fat cells to take in blood glucose, which is converted into triglycerides (aka fat) > Increased esterification of fatty acids – forces adipose tissue to make neutral fats (i.e., triglycerides) from fatty acids > Decreased lipolysis – forces reduction in conversion of fat cell lipid stores into blood fatty acids and glycerol Kcals in kcals out fails practically every overweight person over 30 I know. But they won't hear about biochemistry. Poor folks aren't even eating that much, but what they do eat sufficiently inhibits liberation of the many-months-worths of energy stores they carry around all day. Don't envy them, full of energy yet out of energy!
    - dabadoo 10y ago
      Kcals in/out is literally the conservation of mass. Increasing fat synthesis doesn't mean your body can magically make up mass.
mping 10y ago
Was under the impression he ate food with sugar, hidden sugar as he call it. Plus, he went from no sugar to 40g so it's not not comparable to the avg person
DanBC 10y ago
He completely changed his diet from cooked from scratch to "foods perceived as healthy but which contain hidden sugar". He claims he controlled for fat intake. It's likely that taking on that much sugar all of a sudden would require him to increase his fluid intake, and so some of the weight may be water.
aidenn0 10y ago
The more sugar I eat at one meal, the hungrier I am at the next meal. It's entirely possible that his caloric intake went up by a lot more than the 619kCal per day he got of sugar.
shamaku 10y ago
40 grams of sugar? 40 teaspoons is closer to 160+ grams.

swagv1 10y ago

I thought bored journalists who did binge or denial experiments on themselves went out of style in 2015. Please don't come back.

relics443 10y ago

Ignoring confounding variables, and a sample size of one caused me to discount this "study". While I'm sure sugar consumption is an issue, this escapade seems like more of a capitalist venture than anything else.

GoToRO 10y ago
Nobody said it was a study... But if you want to see what effect 40 teaspoons of sugar a day have on yourself then you don't care about anybody else. It's like beeing in a plane that crashes: you don't care that a proper study says that you only have a chance of 1 in 10 milion to die when you are already in a plane that crashes.

DanBC 10y ago

"That Sugar Film" is interesting, and worth a watch. The stuff about dental health in poor parts of America is gruesome. He's pushing his agenda pretty hard. It's good that it's an obvious bias, but it makes the film a bit exhausting to watch. The "sugar is pure evil" line is relentlessly pushed through the film. That's a shame, because he has some really good points, especially around foods perceived as healthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Sugar_Film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Sugar_Film

mynameislegion1 10y ago
With all this recent vilification of sugar, I start to wonder if 10 years from now we will suddenly realize that it's more complicated than that, as we've found with fat and cholesterol? ... and in the mean time supermarkets will get filled with "healthy" they're-not-unripe-they're-low-sugar fruit, and organic sugar-reduced 100% apple juice...

tomohawk 10y ago

I made one change. I avoided any foods with high fructose corn syrup. I wasn't over weight, but doing that one thing had many positive results. I dropped unnecessary belly fat. I had better, more consistent energy throughout the day. Sharper focus. I am no longer interested in cheap desert type stuff - it tastes like crap. When I eat a desert now, I go for something that's really nice, and I really enjoy it. It's not calories in / calories out. The bodies response to HFC is to open up the gate to converting whatever nutrients you've eaten recently into fat. Eating that little candy from the jar on your co-workers desk after lunch? That's a big deal.

hrodriguez 10y ago

I didn't watch the film or do other research except for reading the article. I just wonder what the effects of a lifetime of bad eating, smoking and who knows what else... did to his body previously. He may have already built-up some medical issues. Any problems he had previously weren't reported and analysed in the article. A "healthy" diet for 3 years doesn't miraculously erase his past. To suddenly go into a divergent new shock diet without a slow adjustment period could have the body reacting in ways that were unforeseen as a way of protecting itself. I'm not suggesting, in the least, that 40 teaspoon of a sugar every single day is good for anyone(LOL). It just seems that lots of people in that range would have off days where they hit that high for a day or two... followed by lower sugar intakes for several days (giving the body time to heal or adjust). It just reminds me of the "Deadly Facts about Water" meme: https://imgur.com/gallery/hv8sL2J https://imgur.com/gallery/hv8sL2J

devoply 10y ago
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. As for adjusting you don't need a period of adjustment to go from a sugar riddled diet to a non-sugar riddled diet. Or to ease into it. I have never read anything to suggest something like that. You need to do that with exercise because the fat built up in your arteries might break off and clog your heart. Or the arteries are too narrow as it is and exertion might cause problems in you won't get enough blood running properly in your system which could cause other cadiovascular problems.
- endentru 10y ago
  I think hrodriguez meant that it was the shock of going from a ~3 year low-sugar diet to a 40-tablespoon-per-day diet that was responsible for the sudden influx of negative effects, one that might not have been seen if he gradually eased into the high sugar diet.
  - hrodriguez 10y ago
    Exactly. For example, I don't consume alcohol. When I do so on the rare occasion, just a little hits me very hard. Regular drinkers don't have this issue. I would never think of going from zero alcohol to consuming a bottle of vodka every day. I also enjoy a pretty healthy diet/lifestyle - low-salt, low-fat, fruits, veggies, plenty of fiber, regular exercise... I find that my body reacts very badly if I "treat" myself and indulge throughout the day in whatever everyone else consumes so freely. No such issue if it's just a single meal. I need to taper in (ie, the Holidays are a good example). High salt, high-fat meals are especially hard hitting. I can counter this with lots more water, fiber for example. I also know that if I remained on these richer diets, eventually my body wouldn't react so strongly but I would also need to make other dietary changes. Damon Gameau admits he did not make other changes to his diet. The experiment was a non-stop, high-dose, sugar binge (40 tsp is incredibly high) that went from 0-100 mph in a microsecond.