17 ms·

50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

645 points by deegles 8y ago

oil25 8y ago
This undue exaggeration about sugar lobby influence has been thoroughly debunked - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747 Aside, it is really a shame how reductionist the popular view of nutrition is that we come to scapegoating "fat" or "sugar". T. Colin Campbell says it well: This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure. Reductionist experimentation is valuable for understanding nutrient structure and function, but it too often encourages endless speculation and confusion caused by highly subjective, personal preferences as to which factor to favor in research and to offer to the market. https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discussion-about-saturated-fat/ https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discu...
- hirundo 8y ago
  > there is a serious danger in interpreting the inevitable twists and turns of research and policy as the product of malevolent playbooks and historical derailments. Neither malevolence nor conspiracy need be invoked to fear sugar lobby influence. A simple confluence of strong incentives and ambiguity in nutrition science is sufficient. It's entirely possible for sugar lobbyists to believe their products are safe and wholesome and channel funding to scientists and institutions that believe the same. All we need to be concerned is 1. A finding that a powerful and concentrated industry is providing massive funding to research and regulatory bodies at all levels. 2. A recognition that their motivated reasoning is at least as powerful as our own. No mustache twirling villains need apply.
- ggm 8y ago
  You read the article or the abstract? I read the abstract. It doesn't (to me) actually rebut all and any conspiracy theories it rebuts some and says people went too far. It doesn't say there was no industry shilling or industry funded science distortion. What do you think it says? I'm not a believer in a single grand sugar conspiracy. I am a believer in industry lobbying distortions in science funding. It's common for any industry with downside risks to consider funding science which suits their message. Why do you think we have an issue across science about non publication of negative results and hiding datasets?
- pascalxus 8y ago
  Nutrition is so much more nuanced than any of us really know. Everytime I think i know something, I learn more details and learn that there's even more to it. Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon or from 16 hours of fasting. But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda? In any case, it's good that people are starting to think about these things, the pros and cons. Hopefully, people can learn why it's good/bad and thus enable them to make better decisions the next time they need something sweet. On a related note, I heard Dr. Berg say, sugar craving are a sign that your body is not getting enough potassium. Evolutionarily that would make sense, since fruits are higher in potassium than almost anything else except vegetables.
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    > But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda? No, but 1 can (maybe 100-160 calories), isn’t close to most people’s daily calorie burn. Sure it might push you over the limit, all other things being equal, and it doesn’t do you much good (aside from the water content), but it’s not going to kill you.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      My dad used to tell me this story of how when he was in his 20s he had a can of drink and he was looking away at something and as he looked back at the can to take another sip he just saw a bee crawling inside the can. Never say never.
      - koolba 8y ago
        Was he deathly allergic to bee stings?
  - will_brown 8y ago
    >You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon You “could” but that will also not help, and actually hurt, with the natural inflammation from running. If you ran the marathon in ketosis, you really wouldn’t be in a “glycogen depleted State” - even though that’s what ketosis generally is - because your body and brain are primarily running on ketones and internally producing all the minimal glucose the body/brain actually require. In either case after a marathon your muscles will be catabolic, so protein is good, and of course water/electrolytes. But really it should be telling your example of using sugar responsibly is after running a marathon.
- willsun 8y ago
  The Science rebuttal raises an interesting philosophical question - if evidence about industry influence is not slam-dunk, as it asserts SRF's influence here was not[1] - then to what extent is it appropriate that meta-conversations about nutrition science invoke external "machinations" to strengthen scientific shifts? For example, if, say >95% of the shift from "bad fat" to "bad sugar" was driven by improved scientific methodology (which the Science article seems to suggest), it seems like a risk of disproportionately highlighting the remaining negligible influence may artificially support the new status quo. [1] "As we have also shown, the sugar industry approached Hegsted only after learning of the results of his dairy industry–backed study suggesting that fat and not sugar was a factor in heart disease. “There was no, ‘We’ll get money from them and make the results come out this way,’” recalled Lown, who worked in the department. “It didn’t happen that way,” he said."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Udik 8y ago
  More than "reductionist" I'd call it naive. It's the same mental short circuit that's behind the usual "this one weird trick" and "doctors hate her": the idea, or dream, that we can find a single culprit- and therefore a single solution- for all our problems. One time it's fat you shouldn't eat, then it switches to sugars, then you should eat proteins, etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure. I don't think you can compare fat and sugar. Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years and one that's been common for at best a couple hundred years. The association of high sugar diets with diabetes is pretty strong, as an example of potential harm. The complete elimination of refined sugar from one's diet is fairly practical. Fat, broadly has been part of the human diet since before the evolution of modern humans. It's something that can't really eliminated and certainly shouldn't be. So, this "no reductionism" argument is fairly crude itself, reductionist-even, actually.
  - Udik 8y ago
    > Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years This sounds frankly absurd to me. Sucrose- the normal white sugar- simply breaks down into glucose and fructose; all three sugars- sucrose, glucose and fructose- are found in all fruits in 8-15% proportion on weight (much more for dried fruit, of course). They have always been part of our diet, even before we started hunting animals. It's not because you see it as a white powder it's right to assume it's a new ingredient in our diet. It's not.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
And if I remember from a nutritionist who posted here, the way we lose weight is by breathing CO2 out. Food is extracted for its nutrients in our digestive tract and excreted. Yet the way we lose weight is by breathing. (I cannot find the source of that claim)
- grouseway 8y ago
  TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE
  - grondilu 8y ago
    Also a DNews video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw
- jdblair 8y ago
  All you're talking about is metabolism and respiration. All metabolism oxidizes fuel (broadly speaking, fats and sugars) and generates C02. Excluding anaerobic metabolism, which only happens in times of heavy exercise or hypoxia, all metabolism results in C02.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration It’s technically true that we (animals) can convert fat into CO2 and water. But we burn this fat to release energy. If we don’t need this energy (if we consume more calories than we burn), the fat just accumulates.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Yes, this is true - and if you think about it, can't be any different way, really. I mean, where else would it go? No chemical reaction can destroy any noticeable amount of mass. Excretions - like peeing and pooping - don't carry out too much mass too. So how else you'd get rid of some mass?
zw123456 8y ago
I dunno. You know… my grandpa drank a 5th of whiskey a day and smoked one cigar a day until the day he died. Age 102. Sometimes I think that you enjoy the heck out of life and don't worry about anything. Shrug. I hope genetics matters more :)
- jm__87 8y ago
  Not sure why you're downvoted. There is a guy by the name of Peter Attia who has spent a lot of time studying centenarians and his conclusion has basically been, these people won the genetic lottery for longevity. He of course thinks those of us who aren't so lucky with genes can achieve similar results through diet and exercise. Very interesting stuff.
  - taurath 8y ago
    The question is do you want to play against the averages (smokers more likely to die sooner for example), or above them - it comes to a personal choice. What isn’t a personal choice is how little we control the environment in formative years. Kids growing up with parents that are told cheap carbs are healthy are gonna have a hard time changing later when it turns out it’s not healthy at all.
    - jm__87 8y ago
      I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to give the first poster I responded to some credit. There needs to be a balance between quantity and quality of life. For some, they will enjoy drinking and smoking. Personally, I think meditation and mindfulness is a better path. But quality of life matters a lot. Edit: I also didn't mean to imply that I think the key to a long life is simply not worrying. The key to a long life is definitely a combination of genetics and how well you take care of yourself. But part of taking care of yourself is worrying less.
      - zw123456 8y ago
        I do think stress plays a role. Full disclosure, I work out every day and eat pretty healthy, I am not dismissing science, just saying, enjoying life is, IMHO, and important component. Enjoy your time on this planet. It is wonderous, all the beauty and ugliness are in an existential way, amazing.
gjsman-1000 8y ago
My college _writing_ teacher forced students like myself to read a long and very repetitive book on the subject called Salt, Sugar, Fat. It was an interesting read for the first 1/3 of the book, but extremely dense and the last 2/3 felt like a rehashing of the first 1/3. 480 pages of Food companies are evil. She also had a nasty tendency to bring in lots and lots of political discussion into the writing class, to where the twice-a-week, 90 minute long "writing sessions" felt like 20 minutes writing, 70 minutes theories and politics. But that's another story.
- mathattack 8y ago
  My college Writing teacher carried an agenda too. Completely turned me off to a very useful subject.
  - ggm 8y ago
    Is it possible you didn't like them and project this into the use of politics in writing class, or that you disliked their politics? Or is it just that you disliked politics at all? I imagine I'd have felt the same about religion. (Although there is a lot of good writing in religious texts, proselytizing needs style)
    - gjsman-1000 8y ago
      No, like, this was overt politics and a shameful reminder of some campuses today. Examples: 1. I was one of three male students in the class of 25. She then goes on to bash white male privilege. (Oddly, she is married to a white male.) I can feel the eyeballs on me. 2. A TED talk about abusive behavior against women online. Critical topic, sure, but it began with 5 minutes of the woman reciting out-loud the worst examples against herself with extremely colorful language, then going on to partially blame... white men. (Again, I can feel the eyeballs!) 3. This was REALLY offensive in my book: She forced us to read a 10-page-long (fictional) story, in class, about someone wrote about a man showing up at somebody's door and trying to coerce the girl to leave the house so as to rape her. No joke. I could go on. I am not going anywhere near her office again.
scurvy 8y ago
So the sugarbusters people were right after all?
ralmidani 8y ago
50 Years Ago, Meat Industry Quietly Paid Pseudo-Scientists to Blame Carbs (2066)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Passthepeas 8y ago
  except a low carb diet is completely possible without the use of animal products, so that point doesn't really hold water.
  - darawk 8y ago
    A low fat diet is completely possible without the use of sugar. What's your point?
    - timbit42 8y ago
      It would taste like crap and no one would eat it.
      - darawk 8y ago
        You could use artificial sweeteners. Also, there's plenty of lean meats or plant-based diets that are low in fat and sugar while remaining reasonably palatable.
        grondilu 8y ago
        Where is the energy supposed to come from if there is neither fat nor sugar?
        proteinman 8y ago
        Protein. And there are carbonhydrates besider sugar...
partiallypro 8y ago
Someone watched Adam Ruins Everything
- timbit42 8y ago
  Adam is pretty late on this topic.
thisisweirdok 8y ago
Spoiler: They're both bad without moderation. How many of these pieces possibly need to be written.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I took Intro to Psychology in my mid to late twenties. We were required to participate in a study as part of the class. IIRC, the study was being performed by a grad student in pursuit of their degree. So, really, both the "scientist" and subjects of the study were kind of compelled to participate. No one was there of their free will. We were all trying to tick off an educational checkbox on our way to a sheepskin in hopes of a better paycheck someday. So they played some audio tape of a black person and white person talking. The theory was that they would switch the labels around and see if the same words were interpreted differently depending on whether you thought they were said by a black person or a white person. The problem is that this was about as effective as switching the labels as to who was male and who was female on an audio recording of a discussion. None of us were fooled by labeling the black speaker "white." We could tell by the sound of their voice. I participate regularly in unpaid surveys to get points for a reward program. They are often stupid questions like "Which pet would you prefer? A kitten? Or a puppy?" And I randomly click one when the real answer is "I'm not a pet person. I'm not likely to ever own either." But "None of the above" is never an option. It's rare for me to see a survey that I feel is well designed and well executed. I think most of them are pretty sucktastic even before getting into questions of "Was this some Machiavellian plot?" In many cases, it makes more sense to attribute it to unconscious bias or conflict of interest, not Machivellian plot. I rarely feel that the people involved are talented enough to successfully pull off some Machivellian plot. The grad student thought she was all clever at telling us the black guy was really white, as evidenced by how she behaved at the big reveal, while we looked at her like "I can't believe you think we were really fooled by this." (I am not simply inferring this. Another student, coincidentally a black guy, outright told her "We weren't fooled. You can tell he's black when he speaks.") Food interactions with the body are quite complex and there are myriad other factors involved. We really need to move past the fat vs sugar debate entirely. It's overly simplistic.
- antt 8y ago
  I'm not sure what a social science study has to do with a biology study. If you feed rats sugar and 50% of them die of heart attacks and you have a control group where it's 10% you have found something about sugar and rats. I'm not sure what the number in this case were but the sugar lobby scientists did a meta study where they used the logic in your post to throw out the studies that made sugar look bad, while keeping all the ones where it looked good. At any rate the people who I've seen use the "It's just incompetence not malice" defense were most often both.
debt 8y ago
This is pretty fucking evil considering how bad sugar is to the body.
hoardack 8y ago
This is, like, the third time this month we’re seeing blah-blah-blah-sugar on the front page of HN. I have a lot of fat friends, and I hate to say it, but I watched them over the years, and it wasn’t sugar that made them huge and unhealthy. It was indulgence, carelessness and zero motivation to exert will power. And they were mostly really smart people. But they didn’t give a fuck. And I’m using past tense “were” because some of them lost that youthful glow as their circumstance became evident. Sugar might cause some harm among the slower folk among us, but middling intelligence (or worse) is a hazard on its own, and changing the perception of sugar won’t fix stupid. Obesity is a psychological side effect, just like hoarding. It’s not just one input, it’s a sustained habit of constant intake in general.
- alrs 8y ago
  The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Yes but it feels so good to repeat it.
  - zorga 8y ago
    That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen, you are still responsible for yourself no matter the biology of how the effects work. With very very few exceptions, people are fat because they eat too much food, it's as simple as that. If you overeat (as an adult), you are to blame, it's not anyone else's fault. I agree with the OP.
    - purple_ducks 8y ago
      > That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it A fantastic lesson in how to not understand addiction in the slightest. I look forward to a more mature response when you get past whatever juvenile phase your comment is the product of.
xkgt 8y ago
While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there was no reverse push from the fat industry? Was it less organized than the sugar industry or were the profit margins more slender?
- askvictor 8y ago
  You do see studies coming up from time to time about the benefits of this oil or that oil (e.g. olive oil). I suspect the science is similarly biased.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Maybe the "industry" is too fragmented? Although the best fat to eat is leaf lard from pigs (the secret to a really good pie crust), the fat we consume comes in a variety of meat products, oils of numerous plants, nuts including avocados, etc.
- sn41 8y ago
  Here's a conjecture - "Sugar" is a product. There is an industry and a lobby for that. Fat is not really a single product (meat, edible oil, chocolate etc.), so probably there was no single lobby which could co-ordinate the effort. Now there is a lot of effort from the meat industry to promote particular diets, so that's perhaps a form of "pushback".
  - Cei3oyoh 8y ago
    The keto/paleo/etc. diet fads almost certainly are supported in part by the meat industry.
    - GordonS 8y ago
      FWIW, I don't think low carb diets are fad, they're here to stay. I agree with the last point though.
- oil25 8y ago
  > While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there was no reverse push from the fat industry? The "fat" industry is the animal agriculture industry and it has heavily swayed and influenced American dietary guidelines for decades. Various food industries presented their side of the argument at a second senate hearing in 1977. This meeting resulted in a watered down version of the Dietary Goals, with less emphasis on reducing meat and dairy products. The American Medical Association also protested the McGovern Report, because it said that providing this basic knowledge on what we should eat might interfere with the medical doctor’s right to prescribe, even though doctors then, and now, know nothing about human nutrition. The effects of the McGovern Report were widespread, and as a result, the consumption of meat, eggs, and milk fell, temporarily. Industries fought back successfully with every means at their disposal, including hiring lobbyists, purchasing medical and nutrition experts, launching huge advertising campaigns, driving the nutrition education of our children with their bias, and funding nutrition research that favored their products. Their success can be measured by the US food availability data, which documents an increase in mean daily total energy intake from 2,057 kcal in 1970, to 2,405 kcal in 1990, and 2,674 kcal in 2008. We eat more oil, meat, and dairy now than when the McGovern Report was published in 1977. The incidence of obesity and type-2 diabetes has both doubled in that same period of time. These figures are undeniable evidence that industry won and Americans lost. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm
gamma-male 8y ago
I think PhDs don't necessarily realize how the world rely on them. You're pretty much out of school when you receive a PhD.
mgamache 8y ago
This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. This type of corrupting influence (direct or indirect) provides enough uncertainty to allow people to ignore all research that doesn't confirm their personal bias. It also fuels the anti-science groups that claim conspiracies to hide the 'truth'.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. In one sense maybe but it's hard for any one other factor to be larger than sugar in contributing to the decline of American (and world-wide) health.
  - squirrelicus 8y ago
    > decline in world-wide health Wat. Data please.
    - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
      Every nation that switches to a western (American) diet gets fat.
      - Udik 8y ago
        American, maybe. Western, really? https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink.com/two-maps-and-one-graph-comparing-obesity-in-america-and-europe-2604513773.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink.com/two-maps-and-one-g... It seems that obesity in Europe affects 1/4 to 1/5, while in the US is 1/3. The EU country with highest incidence of obesity is alse the one that is famous for its lack of a (decent) food culture, the UK. As an Italian, I find it hard to convince myself that US obesity problems have one single cause to blame, sugar, rather than a food culture that is generally bent towards the childishly fancy: grilled meat, fried stuff, overwhelming sauces, the super-fatty, the uber-sugary, no vegetables and very little home cooking.
        8y ago
ummonk 8y ago
And 50 years later I still struggle to find yogurt that hasn’t been stripped of its fat at office snack fridges.
- sjwright 8y ago
  I often struggle to find yoghurt for children that is flavoured but not intensely sweetened... though even that's beginning to change in Australia with some great options from a few different brands. Look at these macros—pretty impressive for a kids food: http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2017-02-07-at-5.46.58-PM.png http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Screen... Unfortunately they only sell it in pouches—no option to buy the same product in a large tub.
  - bluejekyll 8y ago
    Yogurt is fairly easy to make at home, especially with electric pressure cookers like instant pot. Then you can guarantee what goes into it.
    - staticassertion 8y ago
      And home made yogurt tastes sooooooo good.
    - masonic 8y ago
      Where do you get cultures (or determine which are naturally present)?
      - triviatise 8y ago
        just buy yogurt with live cultures. back when I used to make my own yogurt I would just put a tablespoon of dannon into a gallon of whole milk.
      - lurker_primo 8y ago
        If you look at the box, it'll say active culture present. Any yoghurt with active culture will do. Once you have your first batch ready, you can reuse it.
kovek 8y ago
Slightly related to research and meta-studies. The other day I was wondering: what stops a researcher from publishing random numbers (following some distribution they pick) as the results of their experiments?
- jowiar 8y ago
  The general thing that's supposed to stop this is replication -- when an experiment is published, another researcher should be able to replicate the results. Here's an example of researchers being caught doing exactly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_contact_changes_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_contact_changes_minds
- MertsA 8y ago
  Reproducibility. What's worrying is the surprisingly large number of papers that are not reproducible. Most of that is likely not because of fraud though. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022282817303334 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002228281...
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  Not unheard of, but usually there are credentials and reputations behind researchers' names which other peer-reviewers/editors will know. Many articles are invited articles or follow-ups to previous articles. Seems very unlikely that most reputable scientists would put their careers on the line for provably fraudulent data when they can just p-hack or use biased methods on actual data. It's much easier to get caught fabricating, than cutting corners or using biased approaches.
nayuki 8y ago
Relevant talks by Robert Lustig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI "Sugar -- the elephant in the kitchen" (20 minutes, year 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (90 minutes, year 2009)
- Applejinx 8y ago
  I've known and talked about the latter one for years. I can't follow all the science, but a surprising amount is comprehensible and the conclusions are always straightforward. The takeaway: it's sugar that makes you fat, and all sugar is sugar. There's NO advantage to other forms like fruit sugars etc, it might as well all be high fructose corn syrup.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" talk when it first appeared on YouTube completely changed my attitude towards refined sugars. I highly recommend it. My parents are European, in childhood my mother (and her mother) would regularly give up sugar completely for months at a time to control their weight. They weren't scientific people, and couldn't explain any of the mechanisms or anything - but they taught us kids that sugar and sweets make you fat. It was not treated as any special lesson or profound knowledge, it was basic common sense back in their home country. I vividly remember them riffing me for putting so much ketchup on hotdogs or hamburgers whenever we grilled american style, saying it's mostly sugar (and I was getting fat...). As a result I've always controlled my sugar intake in adulthood, but the Lustig video gave a scientific explanation for the mechanism of action behind my inherited vague understanding of sweetened foods being fattening. I went from somewhat moderating consumption to avoiding it and refined carbs in general like the plague. My health has improved substantially. It was impactful enough that I emailed Robert Lustig to thank him years later, he even replied.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    I'm European. Is it not common sense in the rest of the world that sweet things make you fat? Wow.
5partan 8y ago
>rats were given a diet low in fat and high in sugar, was rejected because "such diets are rarely consumed by man." Hm, Maybe that’s why it is estimated that by 2020 3/4 of all Americans will be obese? The United States are truly a GREAT Country :)
- csmeder 8y ago
  The grisly (1) part is that (far as I know) no other decision (2) in human history has caused more early death. (1) I say grisly because the effects of diabetes, heart disease, and many other obesity related conditions can be devastating to the patient and their family. (2) When I say decision I mean both the owners of the sugar company and the Harvard professor. I wonder to what degree he privately was aware of the amount of death and pain he caused with his choice.
  - csmeder 8y ago
    Fact check. Knowing that heart disease was the number one cause of death in the US, I assumed the number of deaths would be high. At 300k deaths a year related to obesity, it is a high number, but no where near the number of deaths caused by wars that could be argued were caused by a person’s decision. Thus it turns out my first statement was wrong. This is a good reminder to fact check before posting.
jMyles 8y ago
That's why it's important to personally check to which "science" comports with your living experience. In this age (and in the one we're entering), it's important to not only personally check, but to promulgate your assessments throughout your social graph in order to keep "science" in check with science.
- Fomite 8y ago
  This feels like saying "It's important to check science against a biased sample of confirmation bias."
  - jMyles 8y ago
    I dispute both your use of the word "science" and your characterization, "a biased sample of confirmation bias." The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results. And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation bias," but instead an interwoven web that connects to the entirety of living human society and which helps you glean truth about the world. I realize that Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are all interconnected and capable of learning from and teaching each other and the internet is young. There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural company, pharmaceutical company, or government. Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect. Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is another. I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I feel confident that it's necessary.
    - Fomite 8y ago
      "The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results." You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant funding. "And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation bias, but instead an interwoven web that helps you glean truth about the world. I realize that Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are all interconnected and capable of learning from and teaching each other." I don't know why you're taking a jaded, skeptical approach to science, but an idealistic one to your social graph. Your social graph is biased. It just is. Homophily and communities are things for a reason. "There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural company, pharmaceutical company, or government." You have just described, especially with that last one, all research. "Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect. Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is another. I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I feel confident that it's necessary." While I think critical engagement with science is essential, "checking it against lived experience" is comparing your biased anecdotes to study results, and trying to draw a conclusion from that. That, itself, is not science, and is absolutely the fuel behind things like the use of "As a mother..." in antivaccine discussions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gnulinux 8y ago
I grew up somewhere else and came to US when I was 18 for college. One thing that struck me was, people add sugar to their yogurt. All my life I added salt to my yogurt. I mean, I was perfectly familiar with fruit yogurt, but adding straight up sugar was new to me. My favorite snack is adding cucumber, olive oil and tons of salt to yogurt. The first time my American roommate from LA saw me eating this, he literally lost himself. He almost puked. He said "this is so against the idea of yogurt. Yogurt must be eaten sweet".
- masonic 8y ago
  people add sugar to their yogurt. I literally have never seen this. For my own use, sugar stats are my top criteria for rejecting yogurt.
  - lolc 8y ago
    I think you misunderstood. Buying yogurt with sugar in it is "adding sugar to yogurt". Someone had to do it for you.
    - jgtrosh 8y ago
      In French cantines, yoghurt is either sweetened beforehand or packs of sugar are available. It's very common to add sugar after opening, but it makes little difference with sweetened yoghurt (at least in taste).
- fireattack 8y ago
  While yogurts in America are indeed way too sweet, sweet yogurt is definitely not just an American thing. I, also from somewhere in another hemisphere, never heard of "salty yogurt". (By sweet yogurt, of course people (American or not) normally don't "add sugar" on-the-fly. It is done during making the yogurts.)
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    No I don't think it's exclusively American, as I said I was familiar with fruit yogurts (which is basically yogurt + sugar + "fruit flavors"). My American roommates would add sugar to their yogurts "on the fly", like one of them added cane sugar, and the other added honey.
subcosmos 8y ago
We (UCSF) have a lovely database of internal food industry documents for those of you wanting to search for, and discover, new dirt :) Also, we've got tobacco and chemical industry collections! https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/ https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/
- gerdesj 8y ago
  Thanks for the link - that is quite a resource.
MikeGale 8y ago
For years I've essentially not consumed sugar except for that in vegetables etc. I still suffer from this rubbish though: 1. I often can't find any meat in the supermarket that has not been denatured by having the fat removed. 2. I reject a lot of products which I suspect I'd like because they have added sugar. 3. I have to tamp down on my anger when I hear somebody rabbiting on about the dangers of fat. Humans truly are a stupid species. Best to ignore "Public Health" advice, too much of it is demonstrably idiocy.
- lhinds 8y ago
  I was listening to the car radio only yesterday, tuned into a mainstream station and an advert came on for one of the major supermarkets. The gist of the advert was the holiday seasons had passed and you might be looking to lose some of the "excesses" e.g. body fat, so why not get some x brand low fat (high sugar) yogurts, six for the price of four. I just said to myself, how can they get away with putting out a clear lie and one that is a health hazard.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    The general public is still largely stuck in the past and actually thinks low fat foods == non-fattening foods. So it's effective marketing.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Yet another example of marketing being way underregulated and generally harmful to society.
- grondilu 8y ago
  > 1. I often can't find any meat in the supermarket that has not been denatured by having the fat removed. Youtuber Thomas Delauer makes the case that this is not such a big deal since you can always mix lean meat with other sources of fat (like butter or coco nut oil). Also I once heard that toxins are accumulated in fat tissue so if you eat animals that were poorly fed (for instance cows fed with grains instead of grass), by only eating lean cuts you dodge that bullet. The ideal meat might come from extinct megafauna anyway : I'm personally seduced by the theory that the neolithic revolution was some kind of a hack we had to pull off when we hunted down all big game to extinction at the end of the last glaciation.
narven 8y ago
Milk industry did the same thing to make people think milk is good for people
edoo 8y ago
This explains the full corruption of the food pyramid. Not all carbs are equal. Fast carbs damage you.
known 8y ago
Isn't govt suppose to protect us from these types of frauds?
alecco 8y ago
Indeed. And now it's the turn of the Dairy industry. Many papers funded by Big Dairy in Canada and other places in the last few years.
bad_user 8y ago
There is no research that proves saturated fat is in any way harmful to humans. Quite the contrary, humans are designed to digest saturated fat effortlessly and saturated fat provides the majority of our energy needs, regardless of what we eat. The available studies only show that high fat diets can lead to an increase of LDL particles in the bloodstream but there are two problems with such studies ... For one LDL isn’t bad per se, LDL providing just transport for triglycerides in the bloodstream and it’s more important what those particles contain. Saturated fat leads to big, fluffy LDL particles which aren’t considered to be a threat. On the contrary it is sugar that leads to LDL particles that are low density and dangerous. If you’re worried about LDL, it’s much better to cut the sugar and the poly-unsaturated fat. The second problem with such studies are the common confounders: sugar and PUFAs. Whenever you see negative claims about fat in studies, read the actual study and more often than not you’ll see sucrose or PUFAs being used in the diet of the subjects. What’s absolutely ridiculous is that excess carbohydrates get converted to saturated fat. Our body only needs about 600 calories per day from carbohydrates, the rest being converted to fat. It is saturated fat that provides a majority of the daily energy needs, not just in humans, but in all mammals.
- cageface 8y ago
  Yet the longest lived populations on the planet eat diets loaded with carbs and mostly unsaturated fats. https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-carb-or-keto-diets-could-lead-to-shorter-lifespan/ https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-carb-...
tim333 8y ago
I wonder if you could sue anyone for damages? The harm done must be in the trillions by now.
Quequau 8y ago
My mother was a head nurse / nurse practitioner before she retired and to this day she is a fountain of unwanted, long disproved (or at least questioned) nutritional "facts" which she repeats endlessly. The one that has grated on me for decades is old propaganda from WWII about carrots promoting eye health and bestowing night vision... though fats are easily in her top five evil substances list. There is literally nothing I've been able to do to change behavior, including keeping an entire directory full of publications of studies refuting whatever falsehood she's spouting to read out loud at the dinner table when I come to visit.
lurkertroll 8y ago
So why did we listen to the one anti fat study and ignore the countless anti sugar studies

645 points by deegles 8y ago

This undue exaggeration about sugar lobby influence has been thoroughly debunked - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747 Aside, it is really a shame how reductionist the popular view of nutrition is that we come to scapegoating "fat" or "sugar". T. Colin Campbell says it well: This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure. Reductionist experimentation is valuable for understanding nutrient structure and function, but it too often encourages endless speculation and confusion caused by highly subjective, personal preferences as to which factor to favor in research and to offer to the market. https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discussion-about-saturated-fat/ https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discu...

hirundo 8y ago
> there is a serious danger in interpreting the inevitable twists and turns of research and policy as the product of malevolent playbooks and historical derailments. Neither malevolence nor conspiracy need be invoked to fear sugar lobby influence. A simple confluence of strong incentives and ambiguity in nutrition science is sufficient. It's entirely possible for sugar lobbyists to believe their products are safe and wholesome and channel funding to scientists and institutions that believe the same. All we need to be concerned is 1. A finding that a powerful and concentrated industry is providing massive funding to research and regulatory bodies at all levels. 2. A recognition that their motivated reasoning is at least as powerful as our own. No mustache twirling villains need apply.
ggm 8y ago
You read the article or the abstract? I read the abstract. It doesn't (to me) actually rebut all and any conspiracy theories it rebuts some and says people went too far. It doesn't say there was no industry shilling or industry funded science distortion. What do you think it says? I'm not a believer in a single grand sugar conspiracy. I am a believer in industry lobbying distortions in science funding. It's common for any industry with downside risks to consider funding science which suits their message. Why do you think we have an issue across science about non publication of negative results and hiding datasets?
pascalxus 8y ago
Nutrition is so much more nuanced than any of us really know. Everytime I think i know something, I learn more details and learn that there's even more to it. Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon or from 16 hours of fasting. But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda? In any case, it's good that people are starting to think about these things, the pros and cons. Hopefully, people can learn why it's good/bad and thus enable them to make better decisions the next time they need something sweet. On a related note, I heard Dr. Berg say, sugar craving are a sign that your body is not getting enough potassium. Evolutionarily that would make sense, since fruits are higher in potassium than almost anything else except vegetables.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  > But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda? No, but 1 can (maybe 100-160 calories), isn’t close to most people’s daily calorie burn. Sure it might push you over the limit, all other things being equal, and it doesn’t do you much good (aside from the water content), but it’s not going to kill you.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    My dad used to tell me this story of how when he was in his 20s he had a can of drink and he was looking away at something and as he looked back at the can to take another sip he just saw a bee crawling inside the can. Never say never.
    - koolba 8y ago
      Was he deathly allergic to bee stings?
- will_brown 8y ago
  >You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon You “could” but that will also not help, and actually hurt, with the natural inflammation from running. If you ran the marathon in ketosis, you really wouldn’t be in a “glycogen depleted State” - even though that’s what ketosis generally is - because your body and brain are primarily running on ketones and internally producing all the minimal glucose the body/brain actually require. In either case after a marathon your muscles will be catabolic, so protein is good, and of course water/electrolytes. But really it should be telling your example of using sugar responsibly is after running a marathon.
willsun 8y ago
The Science rebuttal raises an interesting philosophical question - if evidence about industry influence is not slam-dunk, as it asserts SRF's influence here was not[1] - then to what extent is it appropriate that meta-conversations about nutrition science invoke external "machinations" to strengthen scientific shifts? For example, if, say >95% of the shift from "bad fat" to "bad sugar" was driven by improved scientific methodology (which the Science article seems to suggest), it seems like a risk of disproportionately highlighting the remaining negligible influence may artificially support the new status quo. [1] "As we have also shown, the sugar industry approached Hegsted only after learning of the results of his dairy industry–backed study suggesting that fat and not sugar was a factor in heart disease. “There was no, ‘We’ll get money from them and make the results come out this way,’” recalled Lown, who worked in the department. “It didn’t happen that way,” he said."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Udik 8y ago
More than "reductionist" I'd call it naive. It's the same mental short circuit that's behind the usual "this one weird trick" and "doctors hate her": the idea, or dream, that we can find a single culprit- and therefore a single solution- for all our problems. One time it's fat you shouldn't eat, then it switches to sugars, then you should eat proteins, etc.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 8y ago
This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure. I don't think you can compare fat and sugar. Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years and one that's been common for at best a couple hundred years. The association of high sugar diets with diabetes is pretty strong, as an example of potential harm. The complete elimination of refined sugar from one's diet is fairly practical. Fat, broadly has been part of the human diet since before the evolution of modern humans. It's something that can't really eliminated and certainly shouldn't be. So, this "no reductionism" argument is fairly crude itself, reductionist-even, actually.
- Udik 8y ago
  > Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years This sounds frankly absurd to me. Sucrose- the normal white sugar- simply breaks down into glucose and fructose; all three sugars- sucrose, glucose and fructose- are found in all fruits in 8-15% proportion on weight (much more for dried fruit, of course). They have always been part of our diet, even before we started hunting animals. It's not because you see it as a white powder it's right to assume it's a new ingredient in our diet. It's not.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

And if I remember from a nutritionist who posted here, the way we lose weight is by breathing CO2 out. Food is extracted for its nutrients in our digestive tract and excreted. Yet the way we lose weight is by breathing. (I cannot find the source of that claim)

grouseway 8y ago
TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE
- grondilu 8y ago
  Also a DNews video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ialLlcdcw
jdblair 8y ago
All you're talking about is metabolism and respiration. All metabolism oxidizes fuel (broadly speaking, fats and sugars) and generates C02. Excluding anaerobic metabolism, which only happens in times of heavy exercise or hypoxia, all metabolism results in C02.
mr_toad 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration It’s technically true that we (animals) can convert fat into CO2 and water. But we burn this fat to release energy. If we don’t need this energy (if we consume more calories than we burn), the fat just accumulates.
smsm42 8y ago
Yes, this is true - and if you think about it, can't be any different way, really. I mean, where else would it go? No chemical reaction can destroy any noticeable amount of mass. Excretions - like peeing and pooping - don't carry out too much mass too. So how else you'd get rid of some mass?

zw123456 8y ago

I dunno. You know… my grandpa drank a 5th of whiskey a day and smoked one cigar a day until the day he died. Age 102. Sometimes I think that you enjoy the heck out of life and don't worry about anything. Shrug. I hope genetics matters more :)

jm__87 8y ago
Not sure why you're downvoted. There is a guy by the name of Peter Attia who has spent a lot of time studying centenarians and his conclusion has basically been, these people won the genetic lottery for longevity. He of course thinks those of us who aren't so lucky with genes can achieve similar results through diet and exercise. Very interesting stuff.
- taurath 8y ago
  The question is do you want to play against the averages (smokers more likely to die sooner for example), or above them - it comes to a personal choice. What isn’t a personal choice is how little we control the environment in formative years. Kids growing up with parents that are told cheap carbs are healthy are gonna have a hard time changing later when it turns out it’s not healthy at all.
  - jm__87 8y ago
    I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to give the first poster I responded to some credit. There needs to be a balance between quantity and quality of life. For some, they will enjoy drinking and smoking. Personally, I think meditation and mindfulness is a better path. But quality of life matters a lot. Edit: I also didn't mean to imply that I think the key to a long life is simply not worrying. The key to a long life is definitely a combination of genetics and how well you take care of yourself. But part of taking care of yourself is worrying less.
    - zw123456 8y ago
      I do think stress plays a role. Full disclosure, I work out every day and eat pretty healthy, I am not dismissing science, just saying, enjoying life is, IMHO, and important component. Enjoy your time on this planet. It is wonderous, all the beauty and ugliness are in an existential way, amazing.

gjsman-1000 8y ago

My college _writing_ teacher forced students like myself to read a long and very repetitive book on the subject called Salt, Sugar, Fat. It was an interesting read for the first 1/3 of the book, but extremely dense and the last 2/3 felt like a rehashing of the first 1/3. 480 pages of Food companies are evil. She also had a nasty tendency to bring in lots and lots of political discussion into the writing class, to where the twice-a-week, 90 minute long "writing sessions" felt like 20 minutes writing, 70 minutes theories and politics. But that's another story.

mathattack 8y ago
My college Writing teacher carried an agenda too. Completely turned me off to a very useful subject.
- ggm 8y ago
  Is it possible you didn't like them and project this into the use of politics in writing class, or that you disliked their politics? Or is it just that you disliked politics at all? I imagine I'd have felt the same about religion. (Although there is a lot of good writing in religious texts, proselytizing needs style)
  - gjsman-1000 8y ago
    No, like, this was overt politics and a shameful reminder of some campuses today. Examples: 1. I was one of three male students in the class of 25. She then goes on to bash white male privilege. (Oddly, she is married to a white male.) I can feel the eyeballs on me. 2. A TED talk about abusive behavior against women online. Critical topic, sure, but it began with 5 minutes of the woman reciting out-loud the worst examples against herself with extremely colorful language, then going on to partially blame... white men. (Again, I can feel the eyeballs!) 3. This was REALLY offensive in my book: She forced us to read a 10-page-long (fictional) story, in class, about someone wrote about a man showing up at somebody's door and trying to coerce the girl to leave the house so as to rape her. No joke. I could go on. I am not going anywhere near her office again.

scurvy 8y ago

So the sugarbusters people were right after all?

ralmidani 8y ago

50 Years Ago, Meat Industry Quietly Paid Pseudo-Scientists to Blame Carbs (2066)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Passthepeas 8y ago
except a low carb diet is completely possible without the use of animal products, so that point doesn't really hold water.
- darawk 8y ago
  A low fat diet is completely possible without the use of sugar. What's your point?
  - timbit42 8y ago
    It would taste like crap and no one would eat it.
    - darawk 8y ago
      You could use artificial sweeteners. Also, there's plenty of lean meats or plant-based diets that are low in fat and sugar while remaining reasonably palatable.
      - grondilu 8y ago
        Where is the energy supposed to come from if there is neither fat nor sugar?
        proteinman 8y ago
        Protein. And there are carbonhydrates besider sugar...

partiallypro 8y ago

Someone watched Adam Ruins Everything

timbit42 8y ago
Adam is pretty late on this topic.

thisisweirdok 8y ago

Spoiler: They're both bad without moderation. How many of these pieces possibly need to be written.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I took Intro to Psychology in my mid to late twenties. We were required to participate in a study as part of the class. IIRC, the study was being performed by a grad student in pursuit of their degree. So, really, both the "scientist" and subjects of the study were kind of compelled to participate. No one was there of their free will. We were all trying to tick off an educational checkbox on our way to a sheepskin in hopes of a better paycheck someday. So they played some audio tape of a black person and white person talking. The theory was that they would switch the labels around and see if the same words were interpreted differently depending on whether you thought they were said by a black person or a white person. The problem is that this was about as effective as switching the labels as to who was male and who was female on an audio recording of a discussion. None of us were fooled by labeling the black speaker "white." We could tell by the sound of their voice. I participate regularly in unpaid surveys to get points for a reward program. They are often stupid questions like "Which pet would you prefer? A kitten? Or a puppy?" And I randomly click one when the real answer is "I'm not a pet person. I'm not likely to ever own either." But "None of the above" is never an option. It's rare for me to see a survey that I feel is well designed and well executed. I think most of them are pretty sucktastic even before getting into questions of "Was this some Machiavellian plot?" In many cases, it makes more sense to attribute it to unconscious bias or conflict of interest, not Machivellian plot. I rarely feel that the people involved are talented enough to successfully pull off some Machivellian plot. The grad student thought she was all clever at telling us the black guy was really white, as evidenced by how she behaved at the big reveal, while we looked at her like "I can't believe you think we were really fooled by this." (I am not simply inferring this. Another student, coincidentally a black guy, outright told her "We weren't fooled. You can tell he's black when he speaks.") Food interactions with the body are quite complex and there are myriad other factors involved. We really need to move past the fat vs sugar debate entirely. It's overly simplistic.

antt 8y ago
I'm not sure what a social science study has to do with a biology study. If you feed rats sugar and 50% of them die of heart attacks and you have a control group where it's 10% you have found something about sugar and rats. I'm not sure what the number in this case were but the sugar lobby scientists did a meta study where they used the logic in your post to throw out the studies that made sugar look bad, while keeping all the ones where it looked good. At any rate the people who I've seen use the "It's just incompetence not malice" defense were most often both.

debt 8y ago

This is pretty fucking evil considering how bad sugar is to the body.

hoardack 8y ago

This is, like, the third time this month we’re seeing blah-blah-blah-sugar on the front page of HN. I have a lot of fat friends, and I hate to say it, but I watched them over the years, and it wasn’t sugar that made them huge and unhealthy. It was indulgence, carelessness and zero motivation to exert will power. And they were mostly really smart people. But they didn’t give a fuck. And I’m using past tense “were” because some of them lost that youthful glow as their circumstance became evident. Sugar might cause some harm among the slower folk among us, but middling intelligence (or worse) is a hazard on its own, and changing the perception of sugar won’t fix stupid. Obesity is a psychological side effect, just like hoarding. It’s not just one input, it’s a sustained habit of constant intake in general.

alrs 8y ago
The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Yes but it feels so good to repeat it.
- zorga 8y ago
  That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen, you are still responsible for yourself no matter the biology of how the effects work. With very very few exceptions, people are fat because they eat too much food, it's as simple as that. If you overeat (as an adult), you are to blame, it's not anyone else's fault. I agree with the OP.
  - purple_ducks 8y ago
    > That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it A fantastic lesson in how to not understand addiction in the slightest. I look forward to a more mature response when you get past whatever juvenile phase your comment is the product of.

xkgt 8y ago

While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there was no reverse push from the fat industry? Was it less organized than the sugar industry or were the profit margins more slender?

askvictor 8y ago
You do see studies coming up from time to time about the benefits of this oil or that oil (e.g. olive oil). I suspect the science is similarly biased.
jessaustin 8y ago
Maybe the "industry" is too fragmented? Although the best fat to eat is leaf lard from pigs (the secret to a really good pie crust), the fat we consume comes in a variety of meat products, oils of numerous plants, nuts including avocados, etc.
sn41 8y ago
Here's a conjecture - "Sugar" is a product. There is an industry and a lobby for that. Fat is not really a single product (meat, edible oil, chocolate etc.), so probably there was no single lobby which could co-ordinate the effort. Now there is a lot of effort from the meat industry to promote particular diets, so that's perhaps a form of "pushback".
- Cei3oyoh 8y ago
  The keto/paleo/etc. diet fads almost certainly are supported in part by the meat industry.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    FWIW, I don't think low carb diets are fad, they're here to stay. I agree with the last point though.
oil25 8y ago
> While there is no doubt that this happened, any one has any idea why there was no reverse push from the fat industry? The "fat" industry is the animal agriculture industry and it has heavily swayed and influenced American dietary guidelines for decades. Various food industries presented their side of the argument at a second senate hearing in 1977. This meeting resulted in a watered down version of the Dietary Goals, with less emphasis on reducing meat and dairy products. The American Medical Association also protested the McGovern Report, because it said that providing this basic knowledge on what we should eat might interfere with the medical doctor’s right to prescribe, even though doctors then, and now, know nothing about human nutrition. The effects of the McGovern Report were widespread, and as a result, the consumption of meat, eggs, and milk fell, temporarily. Industries fought back successfully with every means at their disposal, including hiring lobbyists, purchasing medical and nutrition experts, launching huge advertising campaigns, driving the nutrition education of our children with their bias, and funding nutrition research that favored their products. Their success can be measured by the US food availability data, which documents an increase in mean daily total energy intake from 2,057 kcal in 1970, to 2,405 kcal in 1990, and 2,674 kcal in 2008. We eat more oil, meat, and dairy now than when the McGovern Report was published in 1977. The incidence of obesity and type-2 diabetes has both doubled in that same period of time. These figures are undeniable evidence that industry won and Americans lost. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/oct/mcgovern.htm

gamma-male 8y ago

I think PhDs don't necessarily realize how the world rely on them. You're pretty much out of school when you receive a PhD.

mgamache 8y ago

This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. This type of corrupting influence (direct or indirect) provides enough uncertainty to allow people to ignore all research that doesn't confirm their personal bias. It also fuels the anti-science groups that claim conspiracies to hide the 'truth'.

joe_the_user 8y ago
This is way bigger than sugar or even one segment of research. In one sense maybe but it's hard for any one other factor to be larger than sugar in contributing to the decline of American (and world-wide) health.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  > decline in world-wide health Wat. Data please.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
    Every nation that switches to a western (American) diet gets fat.
    - Udik 8y ago
      American, maybe. Western, really? https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink.com/two-maps-and-one-graph-comparing-obesity-in-america-and-europe-2604513773.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink.com/two-maps-and-one-g... It seems that obesity in Europe affects 1/4 to 1/5, while in the US is 1/3. The EU country with highest incidence of obesity is alse the one that is famous for its lack of a (decent) food culture, the UK. As an Italian, I find it hard to convince myself that US obesity problems have one single cause to blame, sugar, rather than a food culture that is generally bent towards the childishly fancy: grilled meat, fried stuff, overwhelming sauces, the super-fatty, the uber-sugary, no vegetables and very little home cooking.
      - 8y ago

ummonk 8y ago

And 50 years later I still struggle to find yogurt that hasn’t been stripped of its fat at office snack fridges.

sjwright 8y ago
I often struggle to find yoghurt for children that is flavoured but not intensely sweetened... though even that's beginning to change in Australia with some great options from a few different brands. Look at these macros—pretty impressive for a kids food: http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2017-02-07-at-5.46.58-PM.png http://www.tamarvalleydairy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Screen... Unfortunately they only sell it in pouches—no option to buy the same product in a large tub.
- bluejekyll 8y ago
  Yogurt is fairly easy to make at home, especially with electric pressure cookers like instant pot. Then you can guarantee what goes into it.
  - staticassertion 8y ago
    And home made yogurt tastes sooooooo good.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Where do you get cultures (or determine which are naturally present)?
    - triviatise 8y ago
      just buy yogurt with live cultures. back when I used to make my own yogurt I would just put a tablespoon of dannon into a gallon of whole milk.
    - lurker_primo 8y ago
      If you look at the box, it'll say active culture present. Any yoghurt with active culture will do. Once you have your first batch ready, you can reuse it.

kovek 8y ago

Slightly related to research and meta-studies. The other day I was wondering: what stops a researcher from publishing random numbers (following some distribution they pick) as the results of their experiments?

jowiar 8y ago
The general thing that's supposed to stop this is replication -- when an experiment is published, another researcher should be able to replicate the results. Here's an example of researchers being caught doing exactly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_contact_changes_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_contact_changes_minds
MertsA 8y ago
Reproducibility. What's worrying is the surprisingly large number of papers that are not reproducible. Most of that is likely not because of fraud though. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022282817303334 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002228281...
WhompingWindows 8y ago
Not unheard of, but usually there are credentials and reputations behind researchers' names which other peer-reviewers/editors will know. Many articles are invited articles or follow-ups to previous articles. Seems very unlikely that most reputable scientists would put their careers on the line for provably fraudulent data when they can just p-hack or use biased methods on actual data. It's much easier to get caught fabricating, than cutting corners or using biased approaches.

nayuki 8y ago

Relevant talks by Robert Lustig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmC4Rm5cpOI "Sugar -- the elephant in the kitchen" (20 minutes, year 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (90 minutes, year 2009)

Applejinx 8y ago
I've known and talked about the latter one for years. I can't follow all the science, but a surprising amount is comprehensible and the conclusions are always straightforward. The takeaway: it's sugar that makes you fat, and all sugar is sugar. There's NO advantage to other forms like fruit sugars etc, it might as well all be high fructose corn syrup.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" talk when it first appeared on YouTube completely changed my attitude towards refined sugars. I highly recommend it. My parents are European, in childhood my mother (and her mother) would regularly give up sugar completely for months at a time to control their weight. They weren't scientific people, and couldn't explain any of the mechanisms or anything - but they taught us kids that sugar and sweets make you fat. It was not treated as any special lesson or profound knowledge, it was basic common sense back in their home country. I vividly remember them riffing me for putting so much ketchup on hotdogs or hamburgers whenever we grilled american style, saying it's mostly sugar (and I was getting fat...). As a result I've always controlled my sugar intake in adulthood, but the Lustig video gave a scientific explanation for the mechanism of action behind my inherited vague understanding of sweetened foods being fattening. I went from somewhat moderating consumption to avoiding it and refined carbs in general like the plague. My health has improved substantially. It was impactful enough that I emailed Robert Lustig to thank him years later, he even replied.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I'm European. Is it not common sense in the rest of the world that sweet things make you fat? Wow.

5partan 8y ago

>rats were given a diet low in fat and high in sugar, was rejected because "such diets are rarely consumed by man." Hm, Maybe that’s why it is estimated that by 2020 3/4 of all Americans will be obese? The United States are truly a GREAT Country :)

csmeder 8y ago
The grisly (1) part is that (far as I know) no other decision (2) in human history has caused more early death. (1) I say grisly because the effects of diabetes, heart disease, and many other obesity related conditions can be devastating to the patient and their family. (2) When I say decision I mean both the owners of the sugar company and the Harvard professor. I wonder to what degree he privately was aware of the amount of death and pain he caused with his choice.
- csmeder 8y ago
  Fact check. Knowing that heart disease was the number one cause of death in the US, I assumed the number of deaths would be high. At 300k deaths a year related to obesity, it is a high number, but no where near the number of deaths caused by wars that could be argued were caused by a person’s decision. Thus it turns out my first statement was wrong. This is a good reminder to fact check before posting.

jMyles 8y ago

That's why it's important to personally check to which "science" comports with your living experience. In this age (and in the one we're entering), it's important to not only personally check, but to promulgate your assessments throughout your social graph in order to keep "science" in check with science.

Fomite 8y ago
This feels like saying "It's important to check science against a biased sample of confirmation bias."
- jMyles 8y ago
  I dispute both your use of the word "science" and your characterization, "a biased sample of confirmation bias." The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results. And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation bias," but instead an interwoven web that connects to the entirety of living human society and which helps you glean truth about the world. I realize that Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are all interconnected and capable of learning from and teaching each other and the internet is young. There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural company, pharmaceutical company, or government. Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect. Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is another. I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I feel confident that it's necessary.
  - Fomite 8y ago
    "The whole point is that research conducted with a lot of money on the line is often not science as you and I know it. It's not curious, dispassionate application of the scientific method with clear, honest reporting of the results." You're talking to a working scientist with a substantial amount of grant funding. "And, ideally, your social graph is not merely "a biased sample of confirmation bias, but instead an interwoven web that helps you glean truth about the world. I realize that Facebook isn't this. But give it time. We are all interconnected and capable of learning from and teaching each other." I don't know why you're taking a jaded, skeptical approach to science, but an idealistic one to your social graph. Your social graph is biased. It just is. Homophily and communities are things for a reason. "There's no reason in 2018 - and certainly not in the decades to come - to blindly trust any research funded by, for example, a large agricultural company, pharmaceutical company, or government." You have just described, especially with that last one, all research. "Checking results against lived experience is one check and is not perfect. Analyzing the research itself, to the degree that that's practical, is another. I'm not saying that the solution I've outlined is sufficient, but I feel confident that it's necessary." While I think critical engagement with science is essential, "checking it against lived experience" is comparing your biased anecdotes to study results, and trying to draw a conclusion from that. That, itself, is not science, and is absolutely the fuel behind things like the use of "As a mother..." in antivaccine discussions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gnulinux 8y ago

I grew up somewhere else and came to US when I was 18 for college. One thing that struck me was, people add sugar to their yogurt. All my life I added salt to my yogurt. I mean, I was perfectly familiar with fruit yogurt, but adding straight up sugar was new to me. My favorite snack is adding cucumber, olive oil and tons of salt to yogurt. The first time my American roommate from LA saw me eating this, he literally lost himself. He almost puked. He said "this is so against the idea of yogurt. Yogurt must be eaten sweet".

masonic 8y ago
people add sugar to their yogurt. I literally have never seen this. For my own use, sugar stats are my top criteria for rejecting yogurt.
- lolc 8y ago
  I think you misunderstood. Buying yogurt with sugar in it is "adding sugar to yogurt". Someone had to do it for you.
  - jgtrosh 8y ago
    In French cantines, yoghurt is either sweetened beforehand or packs of sugar are available. It's very common to add sugar after opening, but it makes little difference with sweetened yoghurt (at least in taste).
fireattack 8y ago
While yogurts in America are indeed way too sweet, sweet yogurt is definitely not just an American thing. I, also from somewhere in another hemisphere, never heard of "salty yogurt". (By sweet yogurt, of course people (American or not) normally don't "add sugar" on-the-fly. It is done during making the yogurts.)
- gnulinux 8y ago
  No I don't think it's exclusively American, as I said I was familiar with fruit yogurts (which is basically yogurt + sugar + "fruit flavors"). My American roommates would add sugar to their yogurts "on the fly", like one of them added cane sugar, and the other added honey.

subcosmos 8y ago

We (UCSF) have a lovely database of internal food industry documents for those of you wanting to search for, and discover, new dirt :) Also, we've got tobacco and chemical industry collections! https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/ https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/food/

gerdesj 8y ago
Thanks for the link - that is quite a resource.

MikeGale 8y ago

For years I've essentially not consumed sugar except for that in vegetables etc. I still suffer from this rubbish though: 1. I often can't find any meat in the supermarket that has not been denatured by having the fat removed. 2. I reject a lot of products which I suspect I'd like because they have added sugar. 3. I have to tamp down on my anger when I hear somebody rabbiting on about the dangers of fat. Humans truly are a stupid species. Best to ignore "Public Health" advice, too much of it is demonstrably idiocy.

lhinds 8y ago
I was listening to the car radio only yesterday, tuned into a mainstream station and an advert came on for one of the major supermarkets. The gist of the advert was the holiday seasons had passed and you might be looking to lose some of the "excesses" e.g. body fat, so why not get some x brand low fat (high sugar) yogurts, six for the price of four. I just said to myself, how can they get away with putting out a clear lie and one that is a health hazard.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  The general public is still largely stuck in the past and actually thinks low fat foods == non-fattening foods. So it's effective marketing.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Yet another example of marketing being way underregulated and generally harmful to society.
grondilu 8y ago
> 1. I often can't find any meat in the supermarket that has not been denatured by having the fat removed. Youtuber Thomas Delauer makes the case that this is not such a big deal since you can always mix lean meat with other sources of fat (like butter or coco nut oil). Also I once heard that toxins are accumulated in fat tissue so if you eat animals that were poorly fed (for instance cows fed with grains instead of grass), by only eating lean cuts you dodge that bullet. The ideal meat might come from extinct megafauna anyway : I'm personally seduced by the theory that the neolithic revolution was some kind of a hack we had to pull off when we hunted down all big game to extinction at the end of the last glaciation.

narven 8y ago

Milk industry did the same thing to make people think milk is good for people

edoo 8y ago

This explains the full corruption of the food pyramid. Not all carbs are equal. Fast carbs damage you.

known 8y ago

Isn't govt suppose to protect us from these types of frauds?

alecco 8y ago

Indeed. And now it's the turn of the Dairy industry. Many papers funded by Big Dairy in Canada and other places in the last few years.

bad_user 8y ago

There is no research that proves saturated fat is in any way harmful to humans. Quite the contrary, humans are designed to digest saturated fat effortlessly and saturated fat provides the majority of our energy needs, regardless of what we eat. The available studies only show that high fat diets can lead to an increase of LDL particles in the bloodstream but there are two problems with such studies ... For one LDL isn’t bad per se, LDL providing just transport for triglycerides in the bloodstream and it’s more important what those particles contain. Saturated fat leads to big, fluffy LDL particles which aren’t considered to be a threat. On the contrary it is sugar that leads to LDL particles that are low density and dangerous. If you’re worried about LDL, it’s much better to cut the sugar and the poly-unsaturated fat. The second problem with such studies are the common confounders: sugar and PUFAs. Whenever you see negative claims about fat in studies, read the actual study and more often than not you’ll see sucrose or PUFAs being used in the diet of the subjects. What’s absolutely ridiculous is that excess carbohydrates get converted to saturated fat. Our body only needs about 600 calories per day from carbohydrates, the rest being converted to fat. It is saturated fat that provides a majority of the daily energy needs, not just in humans, but in all mammals.

cageface 8y ago
Yet the longest lived populations on the planet eat diets loaded with carbs and mostly unsaturated fats. https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-carb-or-keto-diets-could-lead-to-shorter-lifespan/ https://www.bluezones.com/2018/09/news-study-finds-low-carb-...

tim333 8y ago

I wonder if you could sue anyone for damages? The harm done must be in the trillions by now.

Quequau 8y ago

My mother was a head nurse / nurse practitioner before she retired and to this day she is a fountain of unwanted, long disproved (or at least questioned) nutritional "facts" which she repeats endlessly. The one that has grated on me for decades is old propaganda from WWII about carrots promoting eye health and bestowing night vision... though fats are easily in her top five evil substances list. There is literally nothing I've been able to do to change behavior, including keeping an entire directory full of publications of studies refuting whatever falsehood she's spouting to read out loud at the dinner table when I come to visit.

lurkertroll 8y ago

So why did we listen to the one anti fat study and ignore the countless anti sugar studies