13 ms·

Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

239 points by notlukesky 7y ago

umvi 7y ago
How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- knolax 7y ago
  Didn't we try that with prohibition?
  - jmondi 7y ago
    Um, prohibition is the complete ban of all alcohol. umvi is proposing the ban of alcohol related advertising. One is completely different than the other.
  - mfatica 7y ago
    Banning advertising of something is a bit different than banning the thing itself
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jhrmnn 7y ago
    The Scandinavian countries show that if you do not prohibit completely, but just make people jump through some hoops to get it and/or make it very expensive, it sort of works.
    - retiredcoder 7y ago
      I find that there is much more smoking (including indoor) and drinking in Denmark than most of any other place I lived, or maybe I am just older now and can’t the hangovers are much longer??
      - dmoy 7y ago
        Maybe they meant Sweden/Norway only? I'm not sure. I think the alcohol tax in Sweden is like a full 7x higher than Denmark. I could be wrong there. This is second hand from an old co worker, and years out of date.
        jhrmnn 7y ago
        Yes, I had Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in mind. Iceland is very strict. Denmark is pretty continental in this regard.
    - johnnyletrois 7y ago
      I think Swedes just end up buying more when visiting systembolaget. And students buy van loads on road trips to Germany.
- ex3ndr 7y ago
  It is banned in Russia, zero effect.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    That it doesn't work in Russia is far from proof that it couldn't work elsewhere. Edit: Prohibition on advertising is not prohibition on alcohol. I reject the relevance of this suggested equivalency. There is no risk of organized crime getting supercharged by a prohibition on alcohol advertisements.
    - innot 7y ago
      Alcohol prohibition in the US that happened in the twenties doesn't seem to have helped as well?
      - bunderbunder 7y ago
        I guess it depends on what you mean by "helped". I've seen a few figures, none of which indicated that it had no effect on alcohol consumption in the US, and none of which indicated that it came anywhere close to eradicating alcohol consumption, either. It's naturally hard to estimate, given that it was all done clandestinely so there aren't really any official figures to use, but I got the impression that you could say with some measure of confidence that it reduced consumption by somewhere between 30% and 70%.
    - bunderbunder 7y ago
      { "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demonstrate one without also demonstrating the other. Not entirely sure where I'm going with this. But I would say that failure to prove that a group of people responds to advertising is not the same thing as proving that a group of people does not respond to advertising. So, if we really have demonstrated that banning advertising didn't have an effect on demand for alcohol in Russia, we'd expect to also see that alcohol companies don't even want to advertise their products in Russia, because they know it would just be wasting money. Do we see that?
- dpq 7y ago
  I distinctly recall these (and much more restrictive) measures having been tried in the U.S. almost exactly 100 years ago, to a very modest success. Sugar seems to be an easier target, because there are sweeteners like aspartame. Alcohol almost by definition doesn't have a healthy replacement.
  - maddyboo 7y ago
    Cannabis.
    - Tade0 7y ago
      Cannabis is not healthy.
      - OJFord 7y ago
        Nor is it an 'alcohol replacement' :/
      - edmundsauto 7y ago
        AFAICT, there's not much definitive research that shows the harms of cannabis consumption. I'm aware of the research that clearly counterindicates usage by teenagers and young adults due to continued brain development issues, but is there evidence that cannabis consumption is unhealthy otherwise? I think even the larger cohort studies failed to connect joint smoking with ear/nose/throat/lung cancer, much to the consternation of people who like to throw down the "combusting and inhaling anything has to be bad for you" statement.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rabbitonrails 7y ago
  You must be fun at parties.
  - dang 7y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments to Hacker News? We're hoping for better than internet default here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Alex3917 7y ago
  For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.
  - dyarosla 7y ago
    Source re:addictiveness?
    - pmarreck 7y ago
      Alcohol: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... Sugar: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-...
      - buboard 7y ago
        the second is not a good source. The title is misleading as the article itself says experts don't agree. I don't think it's clear what is an "addiction", as addiction is part of how humans (and all brains) work. reinforcement of reward is necessary for normal function. The most discrete sign of addiction would be the molecular switch DeltaFosB which is manifest in behavioral and drug addictions. However, for things like sugar things are more nuanced. The two are also hard to compare side-to-side because alcohol addiction is like 50-70% genetic, and the effects tend affect other people more severely while sugar basically harms the person who eats it.
        pmarreck 7y ago
        > the second is not a good source. That's the genetic fallacy. They link to a number of other sources from that article with supporting information such as a Connecticut College study and a Princeton University study. I would deem university sources "good" (although you're still subject to cherry-picking and the like)
- elorant 7y ago
  Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.
  - jsty 7y ago
    Would limiting alcohol advertising really have that dramatic an effect on the 'good' wine market? I can't recall the last time I bought a decent bottle of wine because it was advertised.
    - cataphract 7y ago
      Do wine tasting events count as advertisements? That's how I and many people try new wines.
    - elorant 7y ago
      Yes because I don't trust reviews. I do on the other hand trust specific brands that I've tried before. So if they have a new label I'd like to know it. And the best way to know that is from ads on printed magazines.
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    A small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied. Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.
    - michelpp 7y ago
      Yeast are fungi.
    - pfortuny 7y ago
      Every edible thing comes from the excrement of others. Do you eat yoghourt?
- moroleth 7y ago
  Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop socializing the easy way.
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    > significantly harder to get addicted to Are you sure about that? It has negatively affected millions of people in the US. "A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this month finds that the rate of alcohol use disorder, or what's colloquially known as “alcoholism,” rose by a shocking 49 percent in the first decade of the 2000s." One in eight American adults. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2647079 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
    - moroleth 7y ago
      I'm talking about typical usage in a social setting. People may drink a few beers a couple days in a week for months, or even years, and quit without any issues. Hardly the same with an equivalent "social dose" in cigarettes.
  - iliaznk 7y ago
    Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to – the 1st part of your sentence seems to contradict the 2nd: nowadays people can't think of getting together and not drinking and that's to me exactly because they got addicted to socializing under alcohol so much they can't socialize normally without it.
    - retiredcoder 7y ago
      And that’s reinforced by advertisement over and over again. While there are so many fun activities not involving alcohol. Seems like most of team building events nowadays boils down to pretentious dinner plus drinking to celebrate?
- runarberg 7y ago
  It’s banned in Iceland. The big breweries simply offer a low alcohol with the same branding and advertise those. Poor tourists end up being the only ones buying them, not knowing they are low alcohol, as they are allowed to sell the low alcohol beers in the grocery stores while regular beer can only be sold at the state run liqueur stores.
  - V-2 7y ago
    Vodka companies in Poland were even more inventive. One of them started a yacht rental enterprise (or something along these lines), and proudly advertised "łódka Bols". "Łódka" meaning a boat, and coincidentally rhyming with "wódka" (or vodka). Another opened a horse holiday farm, whose abbreviation - "WTK", following the brand's well recognizable name - happens to sound pretty much like "wódka" :)
- jithesh 7y ago
  Alcohol consumption is by choice by adults, where as sugar consumption is not - children's food are mostly sugary items today in the market. They get addicted by the time they are teenagers, and for many of them (30% or above of all the kids), due to resulting obesity, rest of their lives are spent fixing/fighting it - depression and health issues.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Alcoholism is like 50% genetic.
- Mizza 7y ago
  I like this idea. Another thing we can do is to demand an FDA-approval process for recreational drugs! Dr. David Nutt has been developing a safer alcohol alternative, Alcarelle [1], but is having trouble finding a foothold in the marketplace as we have no process for safe-substance certification! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alcohol-hangover-liver-damage-alcosynth-david-nutt-a8841141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alco...
- Creationer 7y ago
  I've lived in countries with extremely liberal alcohol laws: low taxes, liberal advertising, 24/7 availability, drinking allowed on the street. I've lived in others where Alcohol advertising is banned, availability is limited to Government-run stores at certain times, and the taxes are very high. Binge drinking and general abuse seemed to be much higher in the latter. Particularly people seemed to get drunk before leaving the house, or used drugs, since both were cheaper than buying alcohol at a venue. If anything is going to be restricted in the form of tax or advertising, hard spirits should bear the brunt instead of beer and wine. It might also make sense to loosen up taxes at licensed venues, which are controlled environments with trained bartenders and security.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    I don't think you can draw a cause and effect relationship here. Just as important are social attitudes towards alcohol.
paulcarroty 7y ago
And sitting without physical activity too, please, it's much more dangerous.
- teamski 7y ago
  Exercise is important especially for your brain but bad nutrition has a much higher impact than no exercise.
  - buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, how did you become so knowledgeable about nutrition? This comment, and your other (now deleted) comment make it seem like you are really confident that you know more than everyone else. My biggest complaint about learning about nutrition is that everyone says opposing things, and it is really difficult for me to know what is right and what is snake oil. Any tips on learning the “right” way to be healthy?
    - retiredcoder 7y ago
      Moderation and diversification seems to be a good hedge for a healthy portfolio. That and also cooking more at home, be in contact with your food is a way to eat simpler and for me that is key.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - shijie 7y ago
      Not the person you’re replying to but I suggest listening through Chris Masterjohn’s “mastering nutrition” podcast. I am a huge fan of his evidence-based approach. He has a PHD in nutrition and while that in and of itself is not the reason I hold his opinion in high regard, at least he’s credentialed. Highly recommend.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      I would recommend getting a variety of sources of information while staying very skeptical of any outlandish claims. However, the reason why diet is more important than exercise is that exercise doesn't burn many calories compared to how many calories you need for your body's upkeep during a day.[0] Look at those numbers and keep in mind that a daily recommended caloric intake is at 2000 kcal. Now look at caloric values of food - carbs and protein are at around 4 kcal per gram and fat is 9 kcal per gram. Take pineapple juice for instance - it has around 60 kcal per 100 ml. If you drink 2 glasses of that (400ml) then that's already more than 10% of your daily calories. People often drink an entire liter per day though. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories...
tus87 7y ago
No, it was time 30 years ago. Now it's too late.
darkpuma 7y ago
That's simply not going to happen because there is no "second hand sugar" scenario. Even alcohol, which is incredibly destructive to third parties by any measure (domestic abuse, drunk driving, etc), hasn't successfully been publicly vilified to the same extent as smoking.
- mantas 7y ago
  Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar". Some people being addicted to sugar makes food makers add sugar where it's not needed or increase it's quantity a lot. So you have harder time limiting your sugar input.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    > "Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar". What? How? They can as much sugar as they like, none of it is getting into me. No airline has ever force-fed me sugar.
    - kart23 7y ago
      I think the commenter is referring to an obese passenger.
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        If they're large enough, they have to buy 2 seats anyway, so it shouldn't be a huge issue.
- philwelch 7y ago
  It was, back in the 1920's.
  - wincy 7y ago
    And that worked out.
s33n 7y ago
Is there much difference between sugar and refined carbs like white bread?
- lisper 7y ago
  Yes. Complex carbs are chains of glucose. Sugar has fructose which is much worse for you than glucose (assuming you are not diabetic of course).
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    But they do contain the same amount of calories per gram, so obesity is unaffected.
    - lisper 7y ago
      That’s only true if you eat the same quantity of both. The other problem with sugar is that it doesn’t satisfy hunger as effectively as starch so you typically end up consuming more of it. The best bang for the caloric buck in terms of hunger satiation is actually fat and protein.
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        Don't forget fiber. Honestly, a good, high-fiber carbohydrate is about as good as you can get for satiety/gram, except maybe for fat. I think you'll find a bowl of oatmeal hard to beat for satiety, and that's super high in carbohydrates (~70% carbs). Compare that to a glazed donut, which has fewer carbs and more fat, and I think you'll find that the oatmeal is more satisfying. I think most diets ignore perhaps the most important part of successfully losing weight: feeling reasonably full. IMO, the macros don't matter nearly as much as the satiety of the food you eat, since feeling full is a huge help when trying to avoid excess calories.
- mantas 7y ago
  Some difference - definitely. Does it count as "much"? Depends on your definition of "much". Glycemic index is interesting starting point to look into this. Not all white bread is identical either. Sugar content may vary a lot from brand to brand. Glycemic index too.
negativeions 7y ago
More importantly how about eating meat like smoking? That is a much more closer comparison. Don't believe me? Get educated, peon.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  How about you tell us why it is a closer comparison, instead of being insulting?
  - makeszerosense3 7y ago
    Both cause cancer.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      As does sunlight.
    - Klaudiaaa 7y ago
      noppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- rtyuiop 7y ago
  Why do you consider smoking is bad for you? You get lithium from smoking tobacco and lithium increases the production of white blood cells like neutrophils which destroy bacteria and debris in the body. Lithium also helps to stabilise the mood probably because some studies suggest bacteria can affect mood in humans, an area the medical profession largely ignore. Neutrophils also consume sugar before consuming bacteria, perhaps another way to keep bacterial infections managable. Either way, is smoking really that bad considering the smoke raises liver enzymes as do the charred parts of meat cooked using sources of infrared radiation. One other point about smoking which has been recognised by the meat industry is that gas treated meat using carbon monoxide as a preservative helps to stall the growth of bacteria, and smokers will also be inhaling carbon monoxide which can stay in the red blood cells for upto around 6-8hrs. No studies exist to show if this inhaled carbon monoxide has an antibacterial effect in the body but its possible carbon monoxide besides killing a person in high enough quantity could also have an antibacterial effect considering there are about 6lb of bacteria in the average body carrying out all sorts of functions some good some not. So is smoking really that bad or is it a fast way to self medicate considering anything inhaled will get straight into the bloodstream where it can have an immediate effect before the liver breaks these chemicals down into metabolites, some of which can also have an effect on the body as noted in various pharmaceutical drug studies and illegal drug studies such as cocaine?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nipponese 7y ago
While we're on the topic of telling people how to live, why don't we keep the sugar and simply start exercising?
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  You can't outrun the spoon.
alexbanks 7y ago
Nope.
teamski 7y ago
haha deleted
- ddorian43 7y ago
  So you're on keto ?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cuddlecake 7y ago
    I think keto is even lower on carbs. At most 20-30g per day (only nuts and vegetables, basically). But, obviously, like 99% of people, the parent poster lacks the willpower to do that. wink wink
- haolez 7y ago
  And what happened to you afterwards? :)
- Toine 7y ago
  How do you feel now ? 10% better? 50%? 200%?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fizwhiz 7y ago
  2nd half of your comment is redundant.
haunter 7y ago
Social media is the new smoking not sugar
- buboard 7y ago
  Hacker news is my new smoking
jmull 7y ago
FYI: This article is referring to requiring sugary products to use plain packaging: > ...suggested sweets, snacks and sugary drinks should be wrapped in plain packaging to make them less appealing, given the excess consumption of the sweet stuff (I think some of the responses here are assuming the question is about treating sugar like smoking in other respects.)
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I think people are afraid of a slippery slope. Legislation is almost always done in a slippery slope manner - at first you limit things a little and wait until people accept it. After a while you limit some more, then some more and then some more. You can do whatever you want with sugar, but it's not going to solve the obesity problem. Not only are carbs one of the few macro nutrients we can digest, they're also in pretty much everything.
  - anchpop 7y ago
    What do you think will solve the obesity problem? People weren't obese like they are now 100 years ago. Something must have changed
    - raziel2701 7y ago
      Serving sizes have increased. Fat has been removed from a lot of dairy foods and replaced with extra carbohydrates. Sugar is unnecessarily added to bread. People work a lot and commute a lot and don't feel like putting in time to cook when they can just stop by the drive thru. A lot of cities are very car-centric and people walk less or bike less. We are very stressed and eating a pizza feels good man, a slight relief from our terrible lives. Our jobs are very sedentary, take 8 hours of our time, drive home, eat, go to sleep, wake up, do it again. Snacks are mostly carbohydrates: bagels, donuts, chips, chocolate, granolas. It's hard to eat healthy, you have to make it yourself, but that costs time and effort, which you don't have much of because we work a lot. It takes a conscious effort to say no to all of these delicious things, and that's hard to sustain. I think the environment we've created is setting us up for failure in the sense that the easiest and most available options for us in food and jobs, are not good for us in the long run. I'm gonna go take a walk.
kyriakos 7y ago
Start by moving sugary products away from children. Also banning shops selling sweets near the cashier.
_bxg1 7y ago
It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water". I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a way to define it, but it'll be hard.
- prepend 7y ago
  Foods with added sugar should be an easy starting point.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    If they can come up with a way to measure that that can't be gamed
- zanny 7y ago
  If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar. It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar. If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    And what about a pasta that ends up with some sugars from the process of being made? What's the difference between "natural pasta" and "sugar added pasta"? > If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything. Extremely disagree.
  - arcticfox 7y ago
    What about high-fructose corn syrup soda? You could just say it's a corn-based drink with no 'added sugar'.
gregmac 7y ago
I started eating keto over a year ago, and found that I totally lost my appetite for sugary and other carb-based foods, so have just kept it up. One thing that was eye opening to me was from paying close attention to food labels. I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. What surprised me was how basically they just substitute fat for sugar. Ceasar dressing normal has 1g carbs and 4g fat per Tbsp (45 cal), but low calorie is 4g carbs and 1.5g fat per Tbsp (30 cal). This adds up, and I think I was actually eating a pretty unhealthy balance of macronutrients (fat/protein/carbs) while thinking I was eating healthy, despite my BMI slowly creeping up over a decade to being middle of "overweight" (I'm now in the middle of "normal" range, just from changing my diet). Well I think treating sugar like smoking is far too extreme, I do think the demonization of fat along with the addition of excess sugar to "healthy" food options is a terrible combination, and that needs to end.
- richk449 7y ago
  > I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. It amazes me how many people make this mistake.
  - solveit 7y ago
    I mean, the industry only spends hundreds of millions pushing this impression, so...
    - richk449 7y ago
      Sure, but nobody sees cigarette adds, and actually says "I smoke because it makes me look cool". Nobody sees beer ads and says "I drink because it makes pretty girls hang out with me". Yet many many people say "I buy the diet food because I am watching my weight". Generally speaking, people are pretty good at rationally analyzing advertisements. The ads may still be effective, but almost nobody believes them at face value. Except for diet/low-fat/natural products. It's like people turn off their bullshit detectors for them. I just don't understand why.
- 7y ago
scythe 7y ago
I think a smaller but still effective first step would be to label sugary products as such. Many people may be unaware of the number of things they consume which are more than 50% refined sugar by dry weight. A great deal of "fruit" products fall in to this category.
DigitalTerminal 7y ago
Slight difference is that most parents don't give children cigarettes at the age of 2...
nv-vn 7y ago
How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? As a kid my parents didn't care too much about what I ate. I regularly had sweets of any kind as a kid. I certainly have no addiction to sugar because of that. I probably drink soda less than once a month and have cake/ice cream/chocolate/candy at about the same frequency. Meanwhile, people I grew up with who were never allowed sugar seem much more addicted to it, eating sweets with every meal or as a snack. Earlier this week I heard someone at work talking about how their child has never eaten any kind of sweets before and personally this just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
- cataphract 7y ago
  I don't think it's so much denying people what to do with their bodies, as much countering all the ways they were being manipulated into overconsumption. The market and social forces, left unchecked, have resulted in a bleak situation: for instance, I've noticed that the frozen goods aisle in most urban supermarkets has slowly become dominated by ice creams and other deserts, pizzas and french fries, together frequently making up > 3/4 of the area, the rest being frozen vegetables, fish and meat. I think this trend needs to be countered because I don't believe most people made the conscious choice "I'm mostly eating crap now".
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  > How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? Would the conversation be different if this were about ads for opioids targeted at children?
  - nv-vn 7y ago
    Yes. The fiction that sugar is somehow equivalent to hard drugs has continuously been pedaled without any basis in reality. Opioids have measurable and easily observable psychoactive effects and cause physical dependence. They limit one's ability to function as a normal human if consumed on a regular basis and an overdose of opioids can result in instant death. Even if you claim that eating sugar is "as addictive as cocaine" as the catch phrase goes, sugar lacks the power to cause you to nod off for hours, wake up with withdrawal symptoms like diarrhea/vomiting/flu-like symptoms, and kill you on the spot from an accidental overdose. Sugar also isn't regularly consumed in ways that destroy your arteries or nasal cavity. And when is the last time you've seen somebody crash a car because they were inebriated from eating too much sugar? The comparison between the two is complete non-sense and I believe that you can see just as clear as me why that is the case.
impatient_bacon 7y ago
God I hope so. I grew up obese and am now about halfway through undoing the damage using a ketogenic diet. I really do think sugar sweetened drinks should be banned for sale to children under 18, as that causes the most damage.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  So, they're only allowed water? Because you're also banning juice and milk with they ban.
  - impatient_bacon 7y ago
    Parents can buy whatever they want for their kids, I said nothing about banning consumption. Milk would be fine, however most juices and chocolate milk are pretty bad for you.
  - manmal 7y ago
    That would be a good thing. Milk consumption greatly reduces iron absorption (and health benefits are iffy to say the least), and fruit is better eaten than drank. Our digestive system is built on the idea of chewing food (through vagus nerve stimulation).
  - jammygit 7y ago
    “Sweetened” in the verb form, as in added sugar I think s/he meant
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  I feel fortunate to genuine enjoy sugar-free carbonated beverages (from plain carbonated water to the varieties with mild flavorings, e.g., La Croix). So many people can't appreciate the subtleties of these beverages because their high-sugar diets. I forget what exactly caused me to switch, but I realized in college that buying soda with a meal made it significantly more expensive (e.g., $7.50 meal was now $9.50). Tight on money, it's a quick way to squeeze an extra meal or two. Still wanted something more than water, so I tried the soda machine's carbonated soda water tab. Now, it's my go-to! (Sidenote: a good number of restaurants do not have soda water tabs on their machines. I find it to be a slight annoyance). Folks that only enjoy sweetened carbonated beverages, I think, can't even imagine enjoyed unsweetened carbonated. But it is totally possible to eventually reach that state.
kazinator 7y ago
I'm not harmed if I'm sitting next to a someone who is consuming sugar. What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  That could get exciting. Think of all the factors we could base health insurance on. Risky outdoor activities? Higher premiums. Biking to work? Higher premiums. Alternatively, we could work to help everyone become healthier, and then use as large a risk pool as possible to leverage the benefits of insurance.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    The problem with "we can work to help" is that "we" will at times be helping even if another "we" doesn't see it as particularly helpful. I have a problem with the presumption of unrelenting competence, good faith, and humaneness in a bureaucratic organization despite the inevitable pressure from various political factions and lobbying groups.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    Shrug; I'm honestly just grasping at a straw there to form a plausible hypothesis of how someone else's sugar consumption affects me in the way that cigarette smoke does. Since I have to pay taxes and forced public health insurance premiums (that are based on my income rather than claim history or health), that's what it must be. Anything unhealthful indulged by a large segment of the population is increasing that burden.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Well, life insurance does that. I recall having someone over to check my health and they had me fill out a form detailing the types of activities I do (it even covered skydiving). Since I'm healthy, I got a fantastic rate. However, nothing like that happened for my health insurance. The closest I have is a program that helps pay for my gym membership if I go regularly. The really silly thing is that I'm not able to go regularly because I ride my bike a lot, yet I am likely more healthy because of that than many of the people who go to the gym regularly. Honestly, I would totally be down with a voluntary system like that for things like obesity, smoking, etc. If I present a lower risk to the insurance company, shouldn't I be rewarded with lower rates? If that were the case, I think more people would make real changes to their lives instead of fiddling with fad diets, pedometers, and gym memberships. Saving $20/month on a gym membership or getting a free Fitbit is less motivating than saving $100/month for being healthy.
sureaboutthis 7y ago
I have a feeling most of the addiction came from the food and drink industry. Perhaps the amount of sugar contained in the industry provided foods should be restricted to some sane amount and not a quantity to induce you to eat it. This way, the home cook can control their sugar intake and the home cook cannot produce the number of available goods one eats by just picking it off the shelf at a store. Higher end restaurants that cook their own food won't be restricted this way either and that's a good thing because one goes to such places for food you don't normally get at home but fast food restaurants get most of their food from factory stores where sugar content can and should be restricted for the same reason grocery store food should--sweetening foods makes you want them more.
dfilppi 7y ago
No unless second hand sugar is a thing.
j_m_b 7y ago
Is it time to start treating regulation like the cancer that it is? Is it time to start calling people who think they know what's best for everyone what they really are, dictators? I hate to break it to you, but life is gonna kill yah one way or the other.
elil17 7y ago
Should we trust the government to decide what food is “healthy”? Absolutely not. Just look at how many times the “recommenced diet” has changed in the past few decades. There’s no reason to expect that the current evidence against sugar is more correct than previous (now debunked) evidence against fat. What’s more, what’s healthy depends on who you are. People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily. Instead of focusing on trying to figure out what is and isn’t good for you, we should focus on making sure people have access to foods we already know are healthy by eliminating urban food deserts.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily. What is refeeding syndrome?
  - elil17 7y ago
    In early treatment of extremely restrictive eating disorders, calorie consumption has to be increased slowly over the course of about a week to avoid electrolyte imbalances. That’s usually done under the supervision of a doctor. After someone’s later on in recovery, it isn’t a concern.
- vbuwivbiu 7y ago
  come on now sugar isn't healthy for anyone.
  - solveit 7y ago
    Citation very much needed.
- tomjen3 7y ago
  Eating disorders can be some of the most dangerous things you can suffer from (anorexia has a mortality of 30% if I remember correctly); however on a population scale the damage is dwafted buy the damage from obesity because so many more people are seriously fat.
stillbourne 7y ago
What? No! Fucking hell. Speak to a nutritionist. You need carbs! They aren't bad when eaten in the correct amount and type. The body uses glycogen and glucose for energy, the problem isn't sugar, the problem is a lack of understanding by the public on the topics of exercise, food and health. I don't know about anyone else but all three school types (private, public, and charter) in America seem to neglect this type of information when teaching PE. We seem to treat PE as strictly a means to burn off excess energy for overactive adolescents instead of using this as an opportunity to understand the biological mechanisms involved in converting food to fuel. That is not to say that this information is not taught but it seems that its only ever taught as an extracurricular when a student picks up a sport such as football. Even then its almost treated like tribal knowledge passed down from the coach to the players. All of this is further hampered by other factors as well such as the disappearing HomeEc curriculum, the general faddness of dieting in the press (this article being a good example) and a misconception on the behalf of the public on matters related to food consumption. There is almost a mysticism/dogma about how food works that seems to prevail over discourse related to nutrition these days. Furthermore, there is a return to quackery lately with things such as alkaline diets and such despite the fact that most of the foods that they suggest to eat, such as fruit, are often more acidic rather than basic. I blame this on MLMs trying to sell water to middle class retards too stupid to understand that they are being swindled. Sugar is not the Great Satan of food. It's simply people that are too ignorant to understand what they are eating will continue to make poor choices.
RandomInteger4 7y ago
No, it's not. This is ridiculous. Sugar is bad in large quantities, but there's no such thing as second hand sugar consumption, which is the main reason why anybody wanted to regulate smoking, since nobody wants to get lung cancer from working in a place where everyone else is doing something harmful. What we need to do with regard to sugar is get people to have some got dang self control, which starts with proper education K-12 and decent menus for school lunches.
jmbi 7y ago
I think it's time to treat porn like smoking. The increasingly harmful effects [1] on society are becoming more apparent. [1]: http://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/NCOSE_Pornography-PublicHealth_ResearchSummary_8-2_17_FINAL-with-logo.pdf http://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/NCOSE_Po...
josteink 7y ago
In my younger, smoking years, when the anti-smoking lobby grew stronger and managed to land more and more restrictions on smoking, to the degree that you almost felt like a leper... I remember telling my anti-smoking, chocolate-eating friends “you know one day they will come for you too, right?” That sure didn’t take long. Let’s see how they feel about it this time around.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Did you not eat chocolate? Did all of your anti-smoking friends had the urge to eat chocolate during breaks or social events? That’s a very odd characterization. Smoking is banned for under 18 already, and affects others around you, while chocolate does not (an I really saying this?). As seen in the article, sugar is a bigger issue for the 4-18 age range. I’m sure your friends feel absolutely fine.
  - josteink 7y ago
    > Did you not eat chocolate? No. I don’t eat chocolate, don’t drink soda and don’t have sugar in my coffee. You may find that crazy, but what’s really crazy is having no vices at all. Trying to ban them all is sure to make us all unhappy.
pfdietz 7y ago
Yet another application of Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
zzo38computer 7y ago
Smoking has second hand smoke, but I think sugar is internal to your body rather than all everywhere like smoking is. So, it is not same kind of thing and should not be treat like same kind of thing, due to that.
Klaudiaaa 7y ago
no
methodiosmel 7y ago
No

239 points by notlukesky 7y ago

umvi 7y ago

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
knolax 7y ago
Didn't we try that with prohibition?
- jmondi 7y ago
  Um, prohibition is the complete ban of all alcohol. umvi is proposing the ban of alcohol related advertising. One is completely different than the other.
- mfatica 7y ago
  Banning advertising of something is a bit different than banning the thing itself
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jhrmnn 7y ago
  The Scandinavian countries show that if you do not prohibit completely, but just make people jump through some hoops to get it and/or make it very expensive, it sort of works.
  - retiredcoder 7y ago
    I find that there is much more smoking (including indoor) and drinking in Denmark than most of any other place I lived, or maybe I am just older now and can’t the hangovers are much longer??
    - dmoy 7y ago
      Maybe they meant Sweden/Norway only? I'm not sure. I think the alcohol tax in Sweden is like a full 7x higher than Denmark. I could be wrong there. This is second hand from an old co worker, and years out of date.
      - jhrmnn 7y ago
        Yes, I had Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in mind. Iceland is very strict. Denmark is pretty continental in this regard.
  - johnnyletrois 7y ago
    I think Swedes just end up buying more when visiting systembolaget. And students buy van loads on road trips to Germany.
ex3ndr 7y ago
It is banned in Russia, zero effect.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  That it doesn't work in Russia is far from proof that it couldn't work elsewhere. Edit: Prohibition on advertising is not prohibition on alcohol. I reject the relevance of this suggested equivalency. There is no risk of organized crime getting supercharged by a prohibition on alcohol advertisements.
  - innot 7y ago
    Alcohol prohibition in the US that happened in the twenties doesn't seem to have helped as well?
    - bunderbunder 7y ago
      I guess it depends on what you mean by "helped". I've seen a few figures, none of which indicated that it had no effect on alcohol consumption in the US, and none of which indicated that it came anywhere close to eradicating alcohol consumption, either. It's naturally hard to estimate, given that it was all done clandestinely so there aren't really any official figures to use, but I got the impression that you could say with some measure of confidence that it reduced consumption by somewhere between 30% and 70%.
  - bunderbunder 7y ago
    { "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demonstrate one without also demonstrating the other. Not entirely sure where I'm going with this. But I would say that failure to prove that a group of people responds to advertising is not the same thing as proving that a group of people does not respond to advertising. So, if we really have demonstrated that banning advertising didn't have an effect on demand for alcohol in Russia, we'd expect to also see that alcohol companies don't even want to advertise their products in Russia, because they know it would just be wasting money. Do we see that?
dpq 7y ago
I distinctly recall these (and much more restrictive) measures having been tried in the U.S. almost exactly 100 years ago, to a very modest success. Sugar seems to be an easier target, because there are sweeteners like aspartame. Alcohol almost by definition doesn't have a healthy replacement.
- maddyboo 7y ago
  Cannabis.
  - Tade0 7y ago
    Cannabis is not healthy.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      Nor is it an 'alcohol replacement' :/
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      AFAICT, there's not much definitive research that shows the harms of cannabis consumption. I'm aware of the research that clearly counterindicates usage by teenagers and young adults due to continued brain development issues, but is there evidence that cannabis consumption is unhealthy otherwise? I think even the larger cohort studies failed to connect joint smoking with ear/nose/throat/lung cancer, much to the consternation of people who like to throw down the "combusting and inhaling anything has to be bad for you" statement.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rabbitonrails 7y ago
You must be fun at parties.
- dang 7y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments to Hacker News? We're hoping for better than internet default here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Alex3917 7y ago
For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.
- dyarosla 7y ago
  Source re:addictiveness?
  - pmarreck 7y ago
    Alcohol: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... Sugar: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-...
    - buboard 7y ago
      the second is not a good source. The title is misleading as the article itself says experts don't agree. I don't think it's clear what is an "addiction", as addiction is part of how humans (and all brains) work. reinforcement of reward is necessary for normal function. The most discrete sign of addiction would be the molecular switch DeltaFosB which is manifest in behavioral and drug addictions. However, for things like sugar things are more nuanced. The two are also hard to compare side-to-side because alcohol addiction is like 50-70% genetic, and the effects tend affect other people more severely while sugar basically harms the person who eats it.
      - pmarreck 7y ago
        > the second is not a good source. That's the genetic fallacy. They link to a number of other sources from that article with supporting information such as a Connecticut College study and a Princeton University study. I would deem university sources "good" (although you're still subject to cherry-picking and the like)
elorant 7y ago
Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.
- jsty 7y ago
  Would limiting alcohol advertising really have that dramatic an effect on the 'good' wine market? I can't recall the last time I bought a decent bottle of wine because it was advertised.
  - cataphract 7y ago
    Do wine tasting events count as advertisements? That's how I and many people try new wines.
  - elorant 7y ago
    Yes because I don't trust reviews. I do on the other hand trust specific brands that I've tried before. So if they have a new label I'd like to know it. And the best way to know that is from ads on printed magazines.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  A small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied. Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.
  - michelpp 7y ago
    Yeast are fungi.
  - pfortuny 7y ago
    Every edible thing comes from the excrement of others. Do you eat yoghourt?
moroleth 7y ago
Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop socializing the easy way.
- eternalny1 7y ago
  > significantly harder to get addicted to Are you sure about that? It has negatively affected millions of people in the US. "A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this month finds that the rate of alcohol use disorder, or what's colloquially known as “alcoholism,” rose by a shocking 49 percent in the first decade of the 2000s." One in eight American adults. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2647079 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
  - moroleth 7y ago
    I'm talking about typical usage in a social setting. People may drink a few beers a couple days in a week for months, or even years, and quit without any issues. Hardly the same with an equivalent "social dose" in cigarettes.
- iliaznk 7y ago
  Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to – the 1st part of your sentence seems to contradict the 2nd: nowadays people can't think of getting together and not drinking and that's to me exactly because they got addicted to socializing under alcohol so much they can't socialize normally without it.
  - retiredcoder 7y ago
    And that’s reinforced by advertisement over and over again. While there are so many fun activities not involving alcohol. Seems like most of team building events nowadays boils down to pretentious dinner plus drinking to celebrate?
runarberg 7y ago
It’s banned in Iceland. The big breweries simply offer a low alcohol with the same branding and advertise those. Poor tourists end up being the only ones buying them, not knowing they are low alcohol, as they are allowed to sell the low alcohol beers in the grocery stores while regular beer can only be sold at the state run liqueur stores.
- V-2 7y ago
  Vodka companies in Poland were even more inventive. One of them started a yacht rental enterprise (or something along these lines), and proudly advertised "łódka Bols". "Łódka" meaning a boat, and coincidentally rhyming with "wódka" (or vodka). Another opened a horse holiday farm, whose abbreviation - "WTK", following the brand's well recognizable name - happens to sound pretty much like "wódka" :)
jithesh 7y ago
Alcohol consumption is by choice by adults, where as sugar consumption is not - children's food are mostly sugary items today in the market. They get addicted by the time they are teenagers, and for many of them (30% or above of all the kids), due to resulting obesity, rest of their lives are spent fixing/fighting it - depression and health issues.
- buboard 7y ago
  Alcoholism is like 50% genetic.
Mizza 7y ago
I like this idea. Another thing we can do is to demand an FDA-approval process for recreational drugs! Dr. David Nutt has been developing a safer alcohol alternative, Alcarelle [1], but is having trouble finding a foothold in the marketplace as we have no process for safe-substance certification! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alcohol-hangover-liver-damage-alcosynth-david-nutt-a8841141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alco...
Creationer 7y ago
I've lived in countries with extremely liberal alcohol laws: low taxes, liberal advertising, 24/7 availability, drinking allowed on the street. I've lived in others where Alcohol advertising is banned, availability is limited to Government-run stores at certain times, and the taxes are very high. Binge drinking and general abuse seemed to be much higher in the latter. Particularly people seemed to get drunk before leaving the house, or used drugs, since both were cheaper than buying alcohol at a venue. If anything is going to be restricted in the form of tax or advertising, hard spirits should bear the brunt instead of beer and wine. It might also make sense to loosen up taxes at licensed venues, which are controlled environments with trained bartenders and security.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  I don't think you can draw a cause and effect relationship here. Just as important are social attitudes towards alcohol.

paulcarroty 7y ago

And sitting without physical activity too, please, it's much more dangerous.

teamski 7y ago
Exercise is important especially for your brain but bad nutrition has a much higher impact than no exercise.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, how did you become so knowledgeable about nutrition? This comment, and your other (now deleted) comment make it seem like you are really confident that you know more than everyone else. My biggest complaint about learning about nutrition is that everyone says opposing things, and it is really difficult for me to know what is right and what is snake oil. Any tips on learning the “right” way to be healthy?
  - retiredcoder 7y ago
    Moderation and diversification seems to be a good hedge for a healthy portfolio. That and also cooking more at home, be in contact with your food is a way to eat simpler and for me that is key.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shijie 7y ago
    Not the person you’re replying to but I suggest listening through Chris Masterjohn’s “mastering nutrition” podcast. I am a huge fan of his evidence-based approach. He has a PHD in nutrition and while that in and of itself is not the reason I hold his opinion in high regard, at least he’s credentialed. Highly recommend.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I would recommend getting a variety of sources of information while staying very skeptical of any outlandish claims. However, the reason why diet is more important than exercise is that exercise doesn't burn many calories compared to how many calories you need for your body's upkeep during a day.[0] Look at those numbers and keep in mind that a daily recommended caloric intake is at 2000 kcal. Now look at caloric values of food - carbs and protein are at around 4 kcal per gram and fat is 9 kcal per gram. Take pineapple juice for instance - it has around 60 kcal per 100 ml. If you drink 2 glasses of that (400ml) then that's already more than 10% of your daily calories. People often drink an entire liter per day though. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories...

tus87 7y ago

No, it was time 30 years ago. Now it's too late.

darkpuma 7y ago

That's simply not going to happen because there is no "second hand sugar" scenario. Even alcohol, which is incredibly destructive to third parties by any measure (domestic abuse, drunk driving, etc), hasn't successfully been publicly vilified to the same extent as smoking.

mantas 7y ago
Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar". Some people being addicted to sugar makes food makers add sugar where it's not needed or increase it's quantity a lot. So you have harder time limiting your sugar input.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  > "Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar". What? How? They can as much sugar as they like, none of it is getting into me. No airline has ever force-fed me sugar.
  - kart23 7y ago
    I think the commenter is referring to an obese passenger.
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      If they're large enough, they have to buy 2 seats anyway, so it shouldn't be a huge issue.
philwelch 7y ago
It was, back in the 1920's.
- wincy 7y ago
  And that worked out.

s33n 7y ago

Is there much difference between sugar and refined carbs like white bread?

lisper 7y ago
Yes. Complex carbs are chains of glucose. Sugar has fructose which is much worse for you than glucose (assuming you are not diabetic of course).
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But they do contain the same amount of calories per gram, so obesity is unaffected.
  - lisper 7y ago
    That’s only true if you eat the same quantity of both. The other problem with sugar is that it doesn’t satisfy hunger as effectively as starch so you typically end up consuming more of it. The best bang for the caloric buck in terms of hunger satiation is actually fat and protein.
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Don't forget fiber. Honestly, a good, high-fiber carbohydrate is about as good as you can get for satiety/gram, except maybe for fat. I think you'll find a bowl of oatmeal hard to beat for satiety, and that's super high in carbohydrates (~70% carbs). Compare that to a glazed donut, which has fewer carbs and more fat, and I think you'll find that the oatmeal is more satisfying. I think most diets ignore perhaps the most important part of successfully losing weight: feeling reasonably full. IMO, the macros don't matter nearly as much as the satiety of the food you eat, since feeling full is a huge help when trying to avoid excess calories.
mantas 7y ago
Some difference - definitely. Does it count as "much"? Depends on your definition of "much". Glycemic index is interesting starting point to look into this. Not all white bread is identical either. Sugar content may vary a lot from brand to brand. Glycemic index too.

negativeions 7y ago

More importantly how about eating meat like smoking? That is a much more closer comparison. Don't believe me? Get educated, peon.

buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
How about you tell us why it is a closer comparison, instead of being insulting?
- makeszerosense3 7y ago
  Both cause cancer.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    As does sunlight.
  - Klaudiaaa 7y ago
    noppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
rtyuiop 7y ago
Why do you consider smoking is bad for you? You get lithium from smoking tobacco and lithium increases the production of white blood cells like neutrophils which destroy bacteria and debris in the body. Lithium also helps to stabilise the mood probably because some studies suggest bacteria can affect mood in humans, an area the medical profession largely ignore. Neutrophils also consume sugar before consuming bacteria, perhaps another way to keep bacterial infections managable. Either way, is smoking really that bad considering the smoke raises liver enzymes as do the charred parts of meat cooked using sources of infrared radiation. One other point about smoking which has been recognised by the meat industry is that gas treated meat using carbon monoxide as a preservative helps to stall the growth of bacteria, and smokers will also be inhaling carbon monoxide which can stay in the red blood cells for upto around 6-8hrs. No studies exist to show if this inhaled carbon monoxide has an antibacterial effect in the body but its possible carbon monoxide besides killing a person in high enough quantity could also have an antibacterial effect considering there are about 6lb of bacteria in the average body carrying out all sorts of functions some good some not. So is smoking really that bad or is it a fast way to self medicate considering anything inhaled will get straight into the bloodstream where it can have an immediate effect before the liver breaks these chemicals down into metabolites, some of which can also have an effect on the body as noted in various pharmaceutical drug studies and illegal drug studies such as cocaine?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nipponese 7y ago

While we're on the topic of telling people how to live, why don't we keep the sugar and simply start exercising?

rootusrootus 7y ago
You can't outrun the spoon.

alexbanks 7y ago

Nope.

teamski 7y ago

haha deleted

ddorian43 7y ago
So you're on keto ?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cuddlecake 7y ago
  I think keto is even lower on carbs. At most 20-30g per day (only nuts and vegetables, basically). But, obviously, like 99% of people, the parent poster lacks the willpower to do that. wink wink
haolez 7y ago
And what happened to you afterwards? :)
Toine 7y ago
How do you feel now ? 10% better? 50%? 200%?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fizwhiz 7y ago
2nd half of your comment is redundant.

haunter 7y ago

Social media is the new smoking not sugar

buboard 7y ago
Hacker news is my new smoking

jmull 7y ago

FYI: This article is referring to requiring sugary products to use plain packaging: > ...suggested sweets, snacks and sugary drinks should be wrapped in plain packaging to make them less appealing, given the excess consumption of the sweet stuff (I think some of the responses here are assuming the question is about treating sugar like smoking in other respects.)

Mirioron 7y ago
I think people are afraid of a slippery slope. Legislation is almost always done in a slippery slope manner - at first you limit things a little and wait until people accept it. After a while you limit some more, then some more and then some more. You can do whatever you want with sugar, but it's not going to solve the obesity problem. Not only are carbs one of the few macro nutrients we can digest, they're also in pretty much everything.
- anchpop 7y ago
  What do you think will solve the obesity problem? People weren't obese like they are now 100 years ago. Something must have changed
  - raziel2701 7y ago
    Serving sizes have increased. Fat has been removed from a lot of dairy foods and replaced with extra carbohydrates. Sugar is unnecessarily added to bread. People work a lot and commute a lot and don't feel like putting in time to cook when they can just stop by the drive thru. A lot of cities are very car-centric and people walk less or bike less. We are very stressed and eating a pizza feels good man, a slight relief from our terrible lives. Our jobs are very sedentary, take 8 hours of our time, drive home, eat, go to sleep, wake up, do it again. Snacks are mostly carbohydrates: bagels, donuts, chips, chocolate, granolas. It's hard to eat healthy, you have to make it yourself, but that costs time and effort, which you don't have much of because we work a lot. It takes a conscious effort to say no to all of these delicious things, and that's hard to sustain. I think the environment we've created is setting us up for failure in the sense that the easiest and most available options for us in food and jobs, are not good for us in the long run. I'm gonna go take a walk.

kyriakos 7y ago

Start by moving sugary products away from children. Also banning shops selling sweets near the cashier.

_bxg1 7y ago

It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water". I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a way to define it, but it'll be hard.

prepend 7y ago
Foods with added sugar should be an easy starting point.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  If they can come up with a way to measure that that can't be gamed
zanny 7y ago
If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar. It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar. If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  And what about a pasta that ends up with some sugars from the process of being made? What's the difference between "natural pasta" and "sugar added pasta"? > If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything. Extremely disagree.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  What about high-fructose corn syrup soda? You could just say it's a corn-based drink with no 'added sugar'.

gregmac 7y ago

I started eating keto over a year ago, and found that I totally lost my appetite for sugary and other carb-based foods, so have just kept it up. One thing that was eye opening to me was from paying close attention to food labels. I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. What surprised me was how basically they just substitute fat for sugar. Ceasar dressing normal has 1g carbs and 4g fat per Tbsp (45 cal), but low calorie is 4g carbs and 1.5g fat per Tbsp (30 cal). This adds up, and I think I was actually eating a pretty unhealthy balance of macronutrients (fat/protein/carbs) while thinking I was eating healthy, despite my BMI slowly creeping up over a decade to being middle of "overweight" (I'm now in the middle of "normal" range, just from changing my diet). Well I think treating sugar like smoking is far too extreme, I do think the demonization of fat along with the addition of excess sugar to "healthy" food options is a terrible combination, and that needs to end.

richk449 7y ago
> I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. It amazes me how many people make this mistake.
- solveit 7y ago
  I mean, the industry only spends hundreds of millions pushing this impression, so...
  - richk449 7y ago
    Sure, but nobody sees cigarette adds, and actually says "I smoke because it makes me look cool". Nobody sees beer ads and says "I drink because it makes pretty girls hang out with me". Yet many many people say "I buy the diet food because I am watching my weight". Generally speaking, people are pretty good at rationally analyzing advertisements. The ads may still be effective, but almost nobody believes them at face value. Except for diet/low-fat/natural products. It's like people turn off their bullshit detectors for them. I just don't understand why.
7y ago

scythe 7y ago

I think a smaller but still effective first step would be to label sugary products as such. Many people may be unaware of the number of things they consume which are more than 50% refined sugar by dry weight. A great deal of "fruit" products fall in to this category.

DigitalTerminal 7y ago

Slight difference is that most parents don't give children cigarettes at the age of 2...

nv-vn 7y ago

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? As a kid my parents didn't care too much about what I ate. I regularly had sweets of any kind as a kid. I certainly have no addiction to sugar because of that. I probably drink soda less than once a month and have cake/ice cream/chocolate/candy at about the same frequency. Meanwhile, people I grew up with who were never allowed sugar seem much more addicted to it, eating sweets with every meal or as a snack. Earlier this week I heard someone at work talking about how their child has never eaten any kind of sweets before and personally this just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

cataphract 7y ago
I don't think it's so much denying people what to do with their bodies, as much countering all the ways they were being manipulated into overconsumption. The market and social forces, left unchecked, have resulted in a bleak situation: for instance, I've noticed that the frozen goods aisle in most urban supermarkets has slowly become dominated by ice creams and other deserts, pizzas and french fries, together frequently making up > 3/4 of the area, the rest being frozen vegetables, fish and meat. I think this trend needs to be countered because I don't believe most people made the conscious choice "I'm mostly eating crap now".
jniedrauer 7y ago
> How about we just let people choose what to do with their body? Would the conversation be different if this were about ads for opioids targeted at children?
- nv-vn 7y ago
  Yes. The fiction that sugar is somehow equivalent to hard drugs has continuously been pedaled without any basis in reality. Opioids have measurable and easily observable psychoactive effects and cause physical dependence. They limit one's ability to function as a normal human if consumed on a regular basis and an overdose of opioids can result in instant death. Even if you claim that eating sugar is "as addictive as cocaine" as the catch phrase goes, sugar lacks the power to cause you to nod off for hours, wake up with withdrawal symptoms like diarrhea/vomiting/flu-like symptoms, and kill you on the spot from an accidental overdose. Sugar also isn't regularly consumed in ways that destroy your arteries or nasal cavity. And when is the last time you've seen somebody crash a car because they were inebriated from eating too much sugar? The comparison between the two is complete non-sense and I believe that you can see just as clear as me why that is the case.

impatient_bacon 7y ago

God I hope so. I grew up obese and am now about halfway through undoing the damage using a ketogenic diet. I really do think sugar sweetened drinks should be banned for sale to children under 18, as that causes the most damage.

Mirioron 7y ago
So, they're only allowed water? Because you're also banning juice and milk with they ban.
- impatient_bacon 7y ago
  Parents can buy whatever they want for their kids, I said nothing about banning consumption. Milk would be fine, however most juices and chocolate milk are pretty bad for you.
- manmal 7y ago
  That would be a good thing. Milk consumption greatly reduces iron absorption (and health benefits are iffy to say the least), and fruit is better eaten than drank. Our digestive system is built on the idea of chewing food (through vagus nerve stimulation).
- jammygit 7y ago
  “Sweetened” in the verb form, as in added sugar I think s/he meant
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I feel fortunate to genuine enjoy sugar-free carbonated beverages (from plain carbonated water to the varieties with mild flavorings, e.g., La Croix). So many people can't appreciate the subtleties of these beverages because their high-sugar diets. I forget what exactly caused me to switch, but I realized in college that buying soda with a meal made it significantly more expensive (e.g., $7.50 meal was now $9.50). Tight on money, it's a quick way to squeeze an extra meal or two. Still wanted something more than water, so I tried the soda machine's carbonated soda water tab. Now, it's my go-to! (Sidenote: a good number of restaurants do not have soda water tabs on their machines. I find it to be a slight annoyance). Folks that only enjoy sweetened carbonated beverages, I think, can't even imagine enjoyed unsweetened carbonated. But it is totally possible to eventually reach that state.

kazinator 7y ago

I'm not harmed if I'm sitting next to a someone who is consuming sugar. What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.

rootusrootus 7y ago
That could get exciting. Think of all the factors we could base health insurance on. Risky outdoor activities? Higher premiums. Biking to work? Higher premiums. Alternatively, we could work to help everyone become healthier, and then use as large a risk pool as possible to leverage the benefits of insurance.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  The problem with "we can work to help" is that "we" will at times be helping even if another "we" doesn't see it as particularly helpful. I have a problem with the presumption of unrelenting competence, good faith, and humaneness in a bureaucratic organization despite the inevitable pressure from various political factions and lobbying groups.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Shrug; I'm honestly just grasping at a straw there to form a plausible hypothesis of how someone else's sugar consumption affects me in the way that cigarette smoke does. Since I have to pay taxes and forced public health insurance premiums (that are based on my income rather than claim history or health), that's what it must be. Anything unhealthful indulged by a large segment of the population is increasing that burden.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Well, life insurance does that. I recall having someone over to check my health and they had me fill out a form detailing the types of activities I do (it even covered skydiving). Since I'm healthy, I got a fantastic rate. However, nothing like that happened for my health insurance. The closest I have is a program that helps pay for my gym membership if I go regularly. The really silly thing is that I'm not able to go regularly because I ride my bike a lot, yet I am likely more healthy because of that than many of the people who go to the gym regularly. Honestly, I would totally be down with a voluntary system like that for things like obesity, smoking, etc. If I present a lower risk to the insurance company, shouldn't I be rewarded with lower rates? If that were the case, I think more people would make real changes to their lives instead of fiddling with fad diets, pedometers, and gym memberships. Saving $20/month on a gym membership or getting a free Fitbit is less motivating than saving $100/month for being healthy.

sureaboutthis 7y ago

I have a feeling most of the addiction came from the food and drink industry. Perhaps the amount of sugar contained in the industry provided foods should be restricted to some sane amount and not a quantity to induce you to eat it. This way, the home cook can control their sugar intake and the home cook cannot produce the number of available goods one eats by just picking it off the shelf at a store. Higher end restaurants that cook their own food won't be restricted this way either and that's a good thing because one goes to such places for food you don't normally get at home but fast food restaurants get most of their food from factory stores where sugar content can and should be restricted for the same reason grocery store food should--sweetening foods makes you want them more.

dfilppi 7y ago

No unless second hand sugar is a thing.

j_m_b 7y ago

Is it time to start treating regulation like the cancer that it is? Is it time to start calling people who think they know what's best for everyone what they really are, dictators? I hate to break it to you, but life is gonna kill yah one way or the other.

elil17 7y ago

Should we trust the government to decide what food is “healthy”? Absolutely not. Just look at how many times the “recommenced diet” has changed in the past few decades. There’s no reason to expect that the current evidence against sugar is more correct than previous (now debunked) evidence against fat. What’s more, what’s healthy depends on who you are. People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily. Instead of focusing on trying to figure out what is and isn’t good for you, we should focus on making sure people have access to foods we already know are healthy by eliminating urban food deserts.

DanBC 7y ago
> People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily. What is refeeding syndrome?
- elil17 7y ago
  In early treatment of extremely restrictive eating disorders, calorie consumption has to be increased slowly over the course of about a week to avoid electrolyte imbalances. That’s usually done under the supervision of a doctor. After someone’s later on in recovery, it isn’t a concern.
vbuwivbiu 7y ago
come on now sugar isn't healthy for anyone.
- solveit 7y ago
  Citation very much needed.
tomjen3 7y ago
Eating disorders can be some of the most dangerous things you can suffer from (anorexia has a mortality of 30% if I remember correctly); however on a population scale the damage is dwafted buy the damage from obesity because so many more people are seriously fat.

stillbourne 7y ago

What? No! Fucking hell. Speak to a nutritionist. You need carbs! They aren't bad when eaten in the correct amount and type. The body uses glycogen and glucose for energy, the problem isn't sugar, the problem is a lack of understanding by the public on the topics of exercise, food and health. I don't know about anyone else but all three school types (private, public, and charter) in America seem to neglect this type of information when teaching PE. We seem to treat PE as strictly a means to burn off excess energy for overactive adolescents instead of using this as an opportunity to understand the biological mechanisms involved in converting food to fuel. That is not to say that this information is not taught but it seems that its only ever taught as an extracurricular when a student picks up a sport such as football. Even then its almost treated like tribal knowledge passed down from the coach to the players. All of this is further hampered by other factors as well such as the disappearing HomeEc curriculum, the general faddness of dieting in the press (this article being a good example) and a misconception on the behalf of the public on matters related to food consumption. There is almost a mysticism/dogma about how food works that seems to prevail over discourse related to nutrition these days. Furthermore, there is a return to quackery lately with things such as alkaline diets and such despite the fact that most of the foods that they suggest to eat, such as fruit, are often more acidic rather than basic. I blame this on MLMs trying to sell water to middle class retards too stupid to understand that they are being swindled. Sugar is not the Great Satan of food. It's simply people that are too ignorant to understand what they are eating will continue to make poor choices.

RandomInteger4 7y ago

No, it's not. This is ridiculous. Sugar is bad in large quantities, but there's no such thing as second hand sugar consumption, which is the main reason why anybody wanted to regulate smoking, since nobody wants to get lung cancer from working in a place where everyone else is doing something harmful. What we need to do with regard to sugar is get people to have some got dang self control, which starts with proper education K-12 and decent menus for school lunches.

jmbi 7y ago

I think it's time to treat porn like smoking. The increasingly harmful effects [1] on society are becoming more apparent. [1]: http://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/NCOSE_Pornography-PublicHealth_ResearchSummary_8-2_17_FINAL-with-logo.pdf http://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/NCOSE_Po...

josteink 7y ago

In my younger, smoking years, when the anti-smoking lobby grew stronger and managed to land more and more restrictions on smoking, to the degree that you almost felt like a leper... I remember telling my anti-smoking, chocolate-eating friends “you know one day they will come for you too, right?” That sure didn’t take long. Let’s see how they feel about it this time around.

ricardobeat 7y ago
Did you not eat chocolate? Did all of your anti-smoking friends had the urge to eat chocolate during breaks or social events? That’s a very odd characterization. Smoking is banned for under 18 already, and affects others around you, while chocolate does not (an I really saying this?). As seen in the article, sugar is a bigger issue for the 4-18 age range. I’m sure your friends feel absolutely fine.
- josteink 7y ago
  > Did you not eat chocolate? No. I don’t eat chocolate, don’t drink soda and don’t have sugar in my coffee. You may find that crazy, but what’s really crazy is having no vices at all. Trying to ban them all is sure to make us all unhappy.

pfdietz 7y ago

Yet another application of Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

zzo38computer 7y ago

Smoking has second hand smoke, but I think sugar is internal to your body rather than all everywhere like smoking is. So, it is not same kind of thing and should not be treat like same kind of thing, due to that.

Klaudiaaa 7y ago

methodiosmel 7y ago