11 ms·

Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

132 points by laurex 8y ago

travisoneill1 8y ago
Why has everything got to be an "Evil Corporations" plot? I remember explicitly learning that sugar is bad for you from the food pyramid in elementary school and implicitly from being told I can't have candy well before. If some companies tried to convince people that sugar is healthy they wasted their money. Every few years we get a new food bogeyman, so seems like whatever science is out there is far from conclusive. I have a hard time believing that the link between sugar and all these diseases is so obvious that it was found and buried by what is essentially a marketing department of some food company, while completely eluding every independent researcher out there.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
How long do we wait for "market forces" to magically correct under the information asymmetry of rich corporations vs the common person which inhibit the public from understanding the danger introduced in order to make more money?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  The free market can only work if everybody had perfect information and no secrets. Otherwise whoever has more information can manipulate reality.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Meaning the free market doesn't work without strict continual intervention.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Exactly. A truly free market is unstable and will be anarchy. That's not something the typical "free marketer" wants.
      - jlawson 8y ago
        You're ascribing extremist anarcho-capitalist views to what you call the 'typical "free marketer"'. This is false; the typical free market advocate understands there is a limited role for government intervention. Basic examples: Police, fire services, military, currency, lighthouses.
        maxxxxx 8y ago
        I think you have misread my comment. I think the typical free marketer wants that companies can do whatever they want while still protected by the state.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      I think we need a new term. Let's call it the Free Enough Market.
  - cgrand-net 8y ago
    Perfect information and unlimited computing power.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      I think this is a more important point that is always missed in free market debates. You need not only perfect information, but also unlimited computation power and skill to compute necessary information. If you can get a CSV file of global potato and onion producers with transportation cost, but you have no means of solving this TSP problem, you will not make an optimal decision. In particular, relevant to this thread, if you have a magical CSV file created by an Oracle associating every food available in US with how "healthy" they are and how much calory they provide, in order to build a 2500 calory diet that maximizes health and minimizes cost, you need to solve a knapsack-like problem. In this environment market will necessarily be a little random not because we don't have enough information but because we don't have enough computational power.
      - cheald 8y ago
        This is generally the argument against command economies, in _favor_ of market economies. It's formally referred to as the Economic Calculation Problem.
        gnulinux 8y ago
        I wasn't making a point against/in favor of free market nor was I suggesting this was a hidden factor I just unraveled. I just don't see this discussed in free market debates, here or in reddit but I think this is a very practical problem for some markets. I personally try to take as much rational decisions as possible and one of the limiting factors for me is knowing good enough algorithms to efficiently compute rational decisions. Of course, we don't have perfect information, so that's a problem too. EDIT: I must also admit that I know absolutely nothing about economics. I'm a regular software engineer.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      Don't forget infinite time.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    The free market can work very well if various individuals are missing a lot of information. In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. Our economy is far more complex than any person or organization can understand. The information, and decision-making, are distributed. In contrast, socialism can only work if the central planners have perfect information and no secrets. That's why it hasn't ever worked - information can't be centralized like that; the economy is too complex. So it ends up depending on a central actor to manipulate reality (see China today or any other socialist economy ever and the blatant lies in their economic statistics). The issue with sugary drinks isn't that people lack information. The information is written on the side of every soda can; it is nearly a perfect-information situation. The issue is that people are irrational in other ways (related to time preference and inability to moderate impulses or re-evaluate habits).
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      It's not a perfect information situation. Industry puts out an enourmous amount of misinformation and people who don't do a lot of research can easily be confused (which is the goal). I still remember how long the tobacco industry successfully fought the consensus that smoking is harmful.
      - jlawson 8y ago
        It seems that your opinion is: People drink soda unhealthily not because they've been tricked by Coca Cola misinformation campaigns into thinking that soda is healthy. Your view is that people think soda is healthy. To describe the idea is to refute it. Ask a few soda drinkers if they think soda is healthy.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      > In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. cough
foxfired 8y ago
I started to notice that sugar content has increased in sodas. I used to work in a grocery store 12/13 years ago, and I remember stacking sodas on the shelves. The sugar content was 35g. I stacked them everyday so as far as I remember this was the norm at the time for a one serving in California. Only a couple months ago, I started looking at the labels of sodas again. The content varies from 39g to 55g in California. I was recently in Utah, and I took a picture of label of ginger ale. I compared it to the exact same can in California, the one in CA has less sugar content.
- nradov 8y ago
  Are you sure that's adjusted for serving size?
  - Puer 8y ago
    I would also be interested in this. Many soft drink recipes are well-established and rarely adjusted because even small, well-intentioned changes can damage the brand and customer loyalty. Furthermore, it seems counterintuitive that producers would increase sugar content by as much as 1.57 times because that would inherently cost them significantly more money over time.
    - will_brown 8y ago
      Well it’s also the type of sugar. Before the 70’s HFCS didn’t exist and it didn’t hit mainstream until the early 80’s. Soft drinks are now predominately made with HFCS which includes multiple sugars, some that are broken down in the liver and others that go into the blood steam and require insulin. Keep in mind one of the reasons most foods include HFCS is because it’s subsidized and cheaper than say cane sugar, so they could probably add 1.57 times the HFCS and still save money compared to cane sugar.
      - Puer 8y ago
        You're right, but the aforementioned "12/13" years ago was only 2006. I don't think many significant changes have been made in that period, but I may be wrong.
maxxxxx 8y ago
It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything. Just looked at my girlfriend's Starbucks Chai tea container. 100g sugar! She would be better off drinking a bottle of Coke. And Starbucks are supposed to be good guys . On a related note: how do they get that much sugar into these drinks? If I made a liter of Chai tea and poured 100g sugar into it I don't think it would be drinkable.
- Avery3R 8y ago
  Starbucks has always been sugar with a side of coffee. That's its appeal.
- vertex-four 8y ago
  Starbucks are supposed to be good guys? I thought they were pretty well known as the shop that produces sugary milkshakes with caffeine in them.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I never go there so I don't know their products. But I always had the impression that they are riding on a reputation of being a 'responsible' business compared to for example Coca-Cola. But based on the nutrition label of the Chai I guess Starbucks is really just another sugar water manufacturer.
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      Hmm. I don’t know what their marketing is like in the US, but it’s certainly nothing close to responsible/healthy where I am. Their thing has always been trying to be the social space of choice for young adults here - i.e. if you want to hang out with friends or kill time you go to Starbucks.
    - Semaphor 8y ago
      I always thought of Starbucks as the store for people who want to drink coffee but don't actually like coffee
    - 8y ago
truthfantastic 8y ago
there is no proven link between sugar consumption and diabetes and heart disease. total consumption of sugar has been declining since the early 2000s [1] yet we have seen an accelerated increase in diabetes cases since then. this is a very poor article pushing a poorly supported conspiracy theory [2], so it is strange to see it published on an official university website. [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039079/ [2]https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/science.aaq1618 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/science.aaq1618
skilled 8y ago
The crazy part is that a lot of people would go absolutely insane if their sugar was to be cut off all of a sudden. That's the one thing we don't want to hear. And in doing so, pretend that everything is great. The same goes for canned and long shelf-life food. If you eat a healthy diet then getting naturally occuring sugars is not a problem. And I understand the argument that eating 'healthy' might not be possible for everyone. Especially someplace like US where organic food costs ten times more than anything else.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  What’s wrong with canned food?
  - Jill_the_Pill 8y ago
    The plastic liners leach into acidic foods.
- truthfantastic 8y ago
  what's the problem with people eating canned food or sugar? why do you think organic food is healthier than non-organic food? this post is typical of most of the posts in this and other threads concerning nutrition - lots of assertion and personal opinion, and judgements about others diets, none of it supported by research.
- NikolaeVarius 8y ago
  So, your argument is that on a healthy diet, you can eat whatever you want. Got it. And the fallacy that organic food = healthy is absolutely mind boggling to me. Study after study has shown that there is minimal difference in the nutritional quality of "organic" vs "non-organic" foods. It doesn't matter, and also the perceived benefit to the environment is nil. And whats wrong with canned and long shelf-life food? Are you against vegetables being kept for long periods of time without refrigeration and maintaining 99% of their nutritional content? Ditto for Jams and Honey which are both long shelf-life food due to their extreme abundance of "natural" sugar.
oblib 8y ago
Sugar, all by itself is bad (awful bad), but when you add "Red 40" to the mix children go into instant hyperactive-overdrive. They start bouncing off the walls and you might as well be feeding them crack cocaine. I spent a total of 24 days watching our grandkids this year and everyone of them was a battle over what they'd eat. I could not get the oldest (11 years old now) to take a single bite of real food during the course of two 10 day stints or the past four days. I did only slightly better with his younger sister, 5 years old now, and she's getting worse, not better. Last night we had a huge spread of wonderful homemade food for Christmas Dinner and those two kids didn't taste a bit of it. It's like watching my grandkids get slowly poisoned. It's insane and there is nothing I can do about it.
- Puer 8y ago
  That sounds like poor parenting more than anything else. Also, the "sugar -> hyperactive ADHD kids!" thing is a myth.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblib 8y ago
    It is no doubt poor parenting. And no, sugar does make kids hyperactive. You really only have to spend time with them to know this. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't.
    - luc4sdreyer 8y ago
      Actually, sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. As soon as you double-blind the people evaluating the children's activity levels, no one can tell which children had sugar. Here are some links to the research: https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth#1 https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyper... https://www.psychologicalscience.org/uncategorized/myth-too-much-sugar-causes-hyperactivity-in-children.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/uncategorized/myth-too-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#Nutrition,_food,_and_drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#... The reason most people have this misconception is confirmation bias. Children are almost always eating sugar, and almost always "hyperactive". If you still don't believe me, (I'm sure _your_ children are different), do your own study. It would be a fun thing to do with your children, and very easy. It's very important that make it double blinded: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-double-blind-study-2795103 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-double-blind-study-27... If you're right and your study shows it, you'll overturn a 30 year scientific consensus, and probably become internationally famous.
mack1001 8y ago
Sugar industry mirrors the approach that the oil industry has taken. Both should be addressed aggressively by introducing real education, researching and developing worthwhile alternatives. Both have unprecedented costs to humanity.
solveit 8y ago
The article, while making copious allusions to damning research, is light on actual damning research and heavy on rhetoric. The linked website (http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu) is also full of references to studies that are suggestive but nothing conclusive. What's really worrying is the constant refrain that they just "knew" something had to be wrong. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their research. They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case (https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/diabetes-food-myths/myth-sugar-causes-diabetes https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eat...). All in all, with references to research that is weaker than they suggest, fearmongering rhetoric, and pushing a narrative of Big Sugar stifling honest, brave scientists, this article is indistinguishable to a layman (me) from an antivaxxer screed. And honestly? The comments here are also indistinguishable from comments on an antivax website.
- will_brown 8y ago
  >They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case In good faith anyone talking about sugar consumption being the cause of diabeties is obviously talking about type 2. Your linked articles is muddying the waters and introducing type 1 highlighting people are born with type 1...no one thinks type 1 has anything to do with sugar consumption. That is elementary and bad faith discussion. Type 2 is when the body no longer responds to insulin. What triggers insulin? Types of sugar not processed by the liver, which go into the blood and requirie the body to produce insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. With type 2 the body continues to produce insulin normally but the body no longer responds to the insulin...it’s all triggered by sugar. To put it another way if you remove sugars requiring insulin production from the diet...100% of type 2 cases can be prevented. Only laymen argue this point as it’s not controversial...all thats needed is a single case of type 2 to disprove that, but none exist to date. Further, many cases of type 2 can actually be reversed through diet (ie avoid sugars that trigger insulin spikes) and lifestyle changes. How about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease? Do you believe that is not caused by the other types of sugar (ie sugar processed in the liver)?
tyfon 8y ago
My father in-law is in hospital right now with gallstones and various other infections due to this. He had severe stomach pain and went to the hospital. Tomorrow he'll be transported to another hospital via helicopter and airplane for operation. It's not too serious when treated but the doctors say it's due to high sugar intake. Personally I prefer natural sugar over the artificial stuff but, as with everything else, moderation is key.
- nradov 8y ago
  What do you mean by "artificial stuff"? Pretty much all sugar sold for human consumption comes from natural plant sources: corn, beets, sugar cane.
  - tyfon 8y ago
    Aspartame, sucralose, saccharin etc
Ologn 8y ago
In a desire to eat healthier, I decided instead of eating candy as a snack, I would eat dried mangoes. It naturally contains fiber, Vitamin C and natural sugars. When I go to the supermarket and look at the labels, I see most of the brands don't just have the mango's natural sugar, but add extra sugar as well. If I go that route, I might as well have a candy bar. Luckily, one brand I found does not add extra sugar.
- nradov 8y ago
  If you can shop at Costco they have good prices on dried mango with no added sugar.
dgudkov 8y ago
>Stop Blaming Yourself I'm not sure if such advice is good. Of course, the industry should start reducing/removing added sugar from products. You can keep eating what you're eating, keep blaming the evil corporations and wait for ages until the industry starts changing. Or, you know, you can take a bit of responsibility for own eating habits and get noticeably healthier in a matter of weeks. Adapt to the reality where most packaged products are full of sugary stuff and therefore should be avoided as if they are spoiled. Maybe buy less packaged products, and buy more fresh food. Maybe cook sometimes instead of watching TV. Maybe start paying more attention to ingredients and don't buy products which contents is more appropriate for a chemical lab rather than a kitchen. It doesn't take much and it definitely is not "an incredible burden" as the article states. Yes, it's a burden, but far from "incredible". And no, you don't necessarily have to start going to the gym to become healthier. It would be a nice addition to your new lifestyle, but it's not strictly required.

132 points by laurex 8y ago

Why has everything got to be an "Evil Corporations" plot? I remember explicitly learning that sugar is bad for you from the food pyramid in elementary school and implicitly from being told I can't have candy well before. If some companies tried to convince people that sugar is healthy they wasted their money. Every few years we get a new food bogeyman, so seems like whatever science is out there is far from conclusive. I have a hard time believing that the link between sugar and all these diseases is so obvious that it was found and buried by what is essentially a marketing department of some food company, while completely eluding every independent researcher out there.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

How long do we wait for "market forces" to magically correct under the information asymmetry of rich corporations vs the common person which inhibit the public from understanding the danger introduced in order to make more money?

maxxxxx 8y ago
The free market can only work if everybody had perfect information and no secrets. Otherwise whoever has more information can manipulate reality.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Meaning the free market doesn't work without strict continual intervention.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Exactly. A truly free market is unstable and will be anarchy. That's not something the typical "free marketer" wants.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      You're ascribing extremist anarcho-capitalist views to what you call the 'typical "free marketer"'. This is false; the typical free market advocate understands there is a limited role for government intervention. Basic examples: Police, fire services, military, currency, lighthouses.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        I think you have misread my comment. I think the typical free marketer wants that companies can do whatever they want while still protected by the state.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    I think we need a new term. Let's call it the Free Enough Market.
- cgrand-net 8y ago
  Perfect information and unlimited computing power.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    I think this is a more important point that is always missed in free market debates. You need not only perfect information, but also unlimited computation power and skill to compute necessary information. If you can get a CSV file of global potato and onion producers with transportation cost, but you have no means of solving this TSP problem, you will not make an optimal decision. In particular, relevant to this thread, if you have a magical CSV file created by an Oracle associating every food available in US with how "healthy" they are and how much calory they provide, in order to build a 2500 calory diet that maximizes health and minimizes cost, you need to solve a knapsack-like problem. In this environment market will necessarily be a little random not because we don't have enough information but because we don't have enough computational power.
    - cheald 8y ago
      This is generally the argument against command economies, in _favor_ of market economies. It's formally referred to as the Economic Calculation Problem.
      - gnulinux 8y ago
        I wasn't making a point against/in favor of free market nor was I suggesting this was a hidden factor I just unraveled. I just don't see this discussed in free market debates, here or in reddit but I think this is a very practical problem for some markets. I personally try to take as much rational decisions as possible and one of the limiting factors for me is knowing good enough algorithms to efficiently compute rational decisions. Of course, we don't have perfect information, so that's a problem too. EDIT: I must also admit that I know absolutely nothing about economics. I'm a regular software engineer.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Don't forget infinite time.
- jlawson 8y ago
  The free market can work very well if various individuals are missing a lot of information. In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. Our economy is far more complex than any person or organization can understand. The information, and decision-making, are distributed. In contrast, socialism can only work if the central planners have perfect information and no secrets. That's why it hasn't ever worked - information can't be centralized like that; the economy is too complex. So it ends up depending on a central actor to manipulate reality (see China today or any other socialist economy ever and the blatant lies in their economic statistics). The issue with sugary drinks isn't that people lack information. The information is written on the side of every soda can; it is nearly a perfect-information situation. The issue is that people are irrational in other ways (related to time preference and inability to moderate impulses or re-evaluate habits).
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It's not a perfect information situation. Industry puts out an enourmous amount of misinformation and people who don't do a lot of research can easily be confused (which is the goal). I still remember how long the tobacco industry successfully fought the consensus that smoking is harmful.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      It seems that your opinion is: People drink soda unhealthily not because they've been tricked by Coca Cola misinformation campaigns into thinking that soda is healthy. Your view is that people think soda is healthy. To describe the idea is to refute it. Ask a few soda drinkers if they think soda is healthy.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    > In fact, the free market is the only system known that works so well in situations where every actor is very information-poor. cough

foxfired 8y ago

I started to notice that sugar content has increased in sodas. I used to work in a grocery store 12/13 years ago, and I remember stacking sodas on the shelves. The sugar content was 35g. I stacked them everyday so as far as I remember this was the norm at the time for a one serving in California. Only a couple months ago, I started looking at the labels of sodas again. The content varies from 39g to 55g in California. I was recently in Utah, and I took a picture of label of ginger ale. I compared it to the exact same can in California, the one in CA has less sugar content.

nradov 8y ago
Are you sure that's adjusted for serving size?
- Puer 8y ago
  I would also be interested in this. Many soft drink recipes are well-established and rarely adjusted because even small, well-intentioned changes can damage the brand and customer loyalty. Furthermore, it seems counterintuitive that producers would increase sugar content by as much as 1.57 times because that would inherently cost them significantly more money over time.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Well it’s also the type of sugar. Before the 70’s HFCS didn’t exist and it didn’t hit mainstream until the early 80’s. Soft drinks are now predominately made with HFCS which includes multiple sugars, some that are broken down in the liver and others that go into the blood steam and require insulin. Keep in mind one of the reasons most foods include HFCS is because it’s subsidized and cheaper than say cane sugar, so they could probably add 1.57 times the HFCS and still save money compared to cane sugar.
    - Puer 8y ago
      You're right, but the aforementioned "12/13" years ago was only 2006. I don't think many significant changes have been made in that period, but I may be wrong.

maxxxxx 8y ago

It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything. Just looked at my girlfriend's Starbucks Chai tea container. 100g sugar! She would be better off drinking a bottle of Coke. And Starbucks are supposed to be good guys . On a related note: how do they get that much sugar into these drinks? If I made a liter of Chai tea and poured 100g sugar into it I don't think it would be drinkable.

Avery3R 8y ago
Starbucks has always been sugar with a side of coffee. That's its appeal.
vertex-four 8y ago
Starbucks are supposed to be good guys? I thought they were pretty well known as the shop that produces sugary milkshakes with caffeine in them.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I never go there so I don't know their products. But I always had the impression that they are riding on a reputation of being a 'responsible' business compared to for example Coca-Cola. But based on the nutrition label of the Chai I guess Starbucks is really just another sugar water manufacturer.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    Hmm. I don’t know what their marketing is like in the US, but it’s certainly nothing close to responsible/healthy where I am. Their thing has always been trying to be the social space of choice for young adults here - i.e. if you want to hang out with friends or kill time you go to Starbucks.
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    I always thought of Starbucks as the store for people who want to drink coffee but don't actually like coffee
  - 8y ago

truthfantastic 8y ago

there is no proven link between sugar consumption and diabetes and heart disease. total consumption of sugar has been declining since the early 2000s [1] yet we have seen an accelerated increase in diabetes cases since then. this is a very poor article pushing a poorly supported conspiracy theory [2], so it is strange to see it published on an official university website. [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039079/ [2]https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/science.aaq1618 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1126/science.aaq1618

skilled 8y ago

The crazy part is that a lot of people would go absolutely insane if their sugar was to be cut off all of a sudden. That's the one thing we don't want to hear. And in doing so, pretend that everything is great. The same goes for canned and long shelf-life food. If you eat a healthy diet then getting naturally occuring sugars is not a problem. And I understand the argument that eating 'healthy' might not be possible for everyone. Especially someplace like US where organic food costs ten times more than anything else.

jacobolus 8y ago
What’s wrong with canned food?
- Jill_the_Pill 8y ago
  The plastic liners leach into acidic foods.
truthfantastic 8y ago
what's the problem with people eating canned food or sugar? why do you think organic food is healthier than non-organic food? this post is typical of most of the posts in this and other threads concerning nutrition - lots of assertion and personal opinion, and judgements about others diets, none of it supported by research.
NikolaeVarius 8y ago
So, your argument is that on a healthy diet, you can eat whatever you want. Got it. And the fallacy that organic food = healthy is absolutely mind boggling to me. Study after study has shown that there is minimal difference in the nutritional quality of "organic" vs "non-organic" foods. It doesn't matter, and also the perceived benefit to the environment is nil. And whats wrong with canned and long shelf-life food? Are you against vegetables being kept for long periods of time without refrigeration and maintaining 99% of their nutritional content? Ditto for Jams and Honey which are both long shelf-life food due to their extreme abundance of "natural" sugar.

oblib 8y ago

Sugar, all by itself is bad (awful bad), but when you add "Red 40" to the mix children go into instant hyperactive-overdrive. They start bouncing off the walls and you might as well be feeding them crack cocaine. I spent a total of 24 days watching our grandkids this year and everyone of them was a battle over what they'd eat. I could not get the oldest (11 years old now) to take a single bite of real food during the course of two 10 day stints or the past four days. I did only slightly better with his younger sister, 5 years old now, and she's getting worse, not better. Last night we had a huge spread of wonderful homemade food for Christmas Dinner and those two kids didn't taste a bit of it. It's like watching my grandkids get slowly poisoned. It's insane and there is nothing I can do about it.

Puer 8y ago
That sounds like poor parenting more than anything else. Also, the "sugar -> hyperactive ADHD kids!" thing is a myth.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- oblib 8y ago
  It is no doubt poor parenting. And no, sugar does make kids hyperactive. You really only have to spend time with them to know this. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't.
  - luc4sdreyer 8y ago
    Actually, sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. As soon as you double-blind the people evaluating the children's activity levels, no one can tell which children had sugar. Here are some links to the research: https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth#1 https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyper... https://www.psychologicalscience.org/uncategorized/myth-too-much-sugar-causes-hyperactivity-in-children.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/uncategorized/myth-too-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#Nutrition,_food,_and_drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#... The reason most people have this misconception is confirmation bias. Children are almost always eating sugar, and almost always "hyperactive". If you still don't believe me, (I'm sure _your_ children are different), do your own study. It would be a fun thing to do with your children, and very easy. It's very important that make it double blinded: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-double-blind-study-2795103 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-double-blind-study-27... If you're right and your study shows it, you'll overturn a 30 year scientific consensus, and probably become internationally famous.

mack1001 8y ago

Sugar industry mirrors the approach that the oil industry has taken. Both should be addressed aggressively by introducing real education, researching and developing worthwhile alternatives. Both have unprecedented costs to humanity.

solveit 8y ago

The article, while making copious allusions to damning research, is light on actual damning research and heavy on rhetoric. The linked website (http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu) is also full of references to studies that are suggestive but nothing conclusive. What's really worrying is the constant refrain that they just "knew" something had to be wrong. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their research. They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case (https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eating-with-diabetes/diabetes-food-myths/myth-sugar-causes-diabetes https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eat...). All in all, with references to research that is weaker than they suggest, fearmongering rhetoric, and pushing a narrative of Big Sugar stifling honest, brave scientists, this article is indistinguishable to a layman (me) from an antivaxxer screed. And honestly? The comments here are also indistinguishable from comments on an antivax website.

will_brown 8y ago
>They then keep following up with references to diabetes, as if diabetes is obviously a sugar consumption problem, but I understand that that's not the case In good faith anyone talking about sugar consumption being the cause of diabeties is obviously talking about type 2. Your linked articles is muddying the waters and introducing type 1 highlighting people are born with type 1...no one thinks type 1 has anything to do with sugar consumption. That is elementary and bad faith discussion. Type 2 is when the body no longer responds to insulin. What triggers insulin? Types of sugar not processed by the liver, which go into the blood and requirie the body to produce insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. With type 2 the body continues to produce insulin normally but the body no longer responds to the insulin...it’s all triggered by sugar. To put it another way if you remove sugars requiring insulin production from the diet...100% of type 2 cases can be prevented. Only laymen argue this point as it’s not controversial...all thats needed is a single case of type 2 to disprove that, but none exist to date. Further, many cases of type 2 can actually be reversed through diet (ie avoid sugars that trigger insulin spikes) and lifestyle changes. How about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease? Do you believe that is not caused by the other types of sugar (ie sugar processed in the liver)?

tyfon 8y ago

My father in-law is in hospital right now with gallstones and various other infections due to this. He had severe stomach pain and went to the hospital. Tomorrow he'll be transported to another hospital via helicopter and airplane for operation. It's not too serious when treated but the doctors say it's due to high sugar intake. Personally I prefer natural sugar over the artificial stuff but, as with everything else, moderation is key.

nradov 8y ago
What do you mean by "artificial stuff"? Pretty much all sugar sold for human consumption comes from natural plant sources: corn, beets, sugar cane.
- tyfon 8y ago
  Aspartame, sucralose, saccharin etc

Ologn 8y ago

In a desire to eat healthier, I decided instead of eating candy as a snack, I would eat dried mangoes. It naturally contains fiber, Vitamin C and natural sugars. When I go to the supermarket and look at the labels, I see most of the brands don't just have the mango's natural sugar, but add extra sugar as well. If I go that route, I might as well have a candy bar. Luckily, one brand I found does not add extra sugar.

nradov 8y ago
If you can shop at Costco they have good prices on dried mango with no added sugar.

dgudkov 8y ago

>Stop Blaming Yourself I'm not sure if such advice is good. Of course, the industry should start reducing/removing added sugar from products. You can keep eating what you're eating, keep blaming the evil corporations and wait for ages until the industry starts changing. Or, you know, you can take a bit of responsibility for own eating habits and get noticeably healthier in a matter of weeks. Adapt to the reality where most packaged products are full of sugary stuff and therefore should be avoided as if they are spoiled. Maybe buy less packaged products, and buy more fresh food. Maybe cook sometimes instead of watching TV. Maybe start paying more attention to ingredients and don't buy products which contents is more appropriate for a chemical lab rather than a kitchen. It doesn't take much and it definitely is not "an incredible burden" as the article states. Yes, it's a burden, but far from "incredible". And no, you don't necessarily have to start going to the gym to become healthier. It would be a nice addition to your new lifestyle, but it's not strictly required.