7 ms·

For anyone wondering, this is not an experiment, it's an epidemiological study. I've commented about it on HN before [1], but nutritional epidemiology is in its

by narush 5y ago

For anyone wondering, this is not an experiment, it's an epidemiological study. I've commented about it on HN before [1], but nutritional epidemiology is in its own league of shady science. If you didn't know, 80% of things you eat give you cancer [2]. That being said, sugar is bad. Main-lining sugar by drinking it in huge concentrations seems even worse! Edit: that being said, if you are doing nutritional epidemiology, or any data science for that matter, check out Mito [3]! It's what I do when I'm not shit-posting on sugar on HN :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26764060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26764060 [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23193004/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23193004/ [3] https://trymito.io/hn https://trymito.io/hn

andi999 5y ago
Which sugar is bad? Is fructose as bad as glucose?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Usually, glucose is regarded as the worst from an insulin resistance perspective - makes it way directly to your blood causing a large spike in blood sugar. Fructose isn’t as bad from that perspective because it has to be metabolized by the liver first. But with that in mind, consuming too much fructose can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease which is basically cirrhosis but from other causes.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  For testosterone, they’re looking a sugar sweetened beverages which would either be sucrose or glucose-fructose (HFCS), so it cannot be answered Here’s a recent study that found that sucrose and fructose double liver fat production when compared to glucose. Both need more “processing” than glucose making them more expensive. My theory is that the body compensates for this by trying to increase fat stored. The study found that this happens even with moderate amounts of sugar. https://scitechdaily.com/even-moderate-amounts-of-added-sugar-doubles-bodys-fat-production/ https://scitechdaily.com/even-moderate-amounts-of-added-suga... >Ninety-four healthy young men took part in the study. Every day for a period of seven weeks, they consumed a drink sweetened with different types of sugar, while the control group did not. The drinks contained either fructose, glucose or sucrose (table sugar which is a combination of fructose and glucose). The researchers then used tracers (labeled substances that can be traced as they move through the body) to analyze the effect of sugary drinks on lipid metabolism. >Fructose and sucrose double fat production beyond food intake
  - mizzack 5y ago
    > sucrose and fructose double liver fat production when compared to glucose Of course it does. Sucrose is 50/50 fructose/glucose and fructose uses the liver as the metabolic pathway but glucose does not. Pretty clueless that the linked article tries to correlate these results with type 2 diabetes, when insulin resistance is caused by glucose intake. The only correlation there is that if you're consuming a lot of fructose, you're probably consuming a lot of glucose, too.
- narush 5y ago
  No idea - good q!
- jonplackett 5y ago
  It's the fructose.
101001001001 5y ago
I second this. Nutritional epidemiology is a crime against science and is responsible for countless deaths and billions in lost productivity, unnecessary medical treatment. Fight against nutritional epidemiology for the good of society.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  > responsible for countless deaths and billions in lost productivity, unnecessary medical treatment Wow. Links to supporting documents?
  - 101001001001 5y ago
    I didn’t get my opinion from a paper. I got it from reading countless papers. Figure it out for yourself
    - WalterGR 5y ago
      So no evidence. Got it.
      - 101001001001 5y ago
        There are mountains of evidence. It gets overlooked because of the momentum of dogma and the entangling of politics, dogma and research grants/funding. And it’s spread out over many, many individual topics and issues. It doesn’t lend itself to a comment or a single literature review. I will explain exactly how you can see for yourself. You only have to do one thing. Simply try to understand for yourself the biological underpinnings of human disease. Try to understand it for yourself. This will involve cracking open a biochemistry textbook. It’s not a trivial matter. It started for me when I got to a certain age and said to myself, gee, I’m getting to the age where I should understand heart disease. So I googled heart disease. And I kept going down the rabbit hole. Luckily I already had a background in biology and chemistry. Believe it or not, that single decision ultimately unraveled into the opinion expressed in my original comment. I am looking forward to what you find. Happy trails.
knuthsat 5y ago
Sugar is not bad. Just like meat or bacon is not bad. Why would sugar on its own be bad? Obviously it's the whole lifestyle and diet that is bad. There are cyclist that carb load by eatig raw sugar and have no metabolic issues like some of the overweight diabetics do when they drink their second gallon of sugary coca cola.
- 01100011 5y ago
  I think you can make a solid case that, for most people, fructose and therefore sucrose is bad in any significant quantity. Sure, fructose can help replenish liver energy stores if you're an athlete, but most people aren't.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    This always confused me. Why does the WHO only have guidelines on "added sugar", why not all sugar? Based on a naive reading of things, I removed fruit from my diet as well, but that's against WHO guidelines: I used to eat like 3 Fuji/Envy a day (haha).
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      I remember reading a news story that an international organization (in my memory it was the UN) wanted to issue a warning about all sugar, but the US government representatives lobbied hard for the wording to be changed, because of the US food industry. Sadly I once tried to refind this story by googling but couldn't find it again, so I might as well be screaming, "the second coming is nigh!"
      - renewiltord 5y ago
        It's got to be either this or some sort of absorption mechanism with fiber+fructose, right? I've heard the following few, but I have no evidence: * The lobbying thing * That fiber gets you full so you don't eat as much fructose * That fiber modifies the absorption process
kleinsch 5y ago
[2] 80% of things you eat have studies correlating them with increased or decreased risk of cancer
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  80% of people who report they don’t drink sugar do other shit to look after their health too - and are probably richer amongst other cofactors.
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    80% of people who report they don't drink sugar are probably lying or consume sweeteners that still give an insulin boost
- narush 5y ago
  Thanks for clarifying!
latenightcoding 5y ago
What does "mito" have to do with anything lol. "nutritional epidemiology is shady science, but if you are doing it try my side project mito" can't argue with that.
- cma 5y ago
  It is really shady spamming from him, unrelated to anything.
1e-9 5y ago
I agree there is an enormous amount of shady nutritional nonsense. I disagree with characterizing this study in that way. This study appears credible for suggesting an association. The authors do not misrepresent this. They acknowledge it does not determine any causality or solutions. Determining causality is expensive and time consuming. There is not enough research funding available to do that for every plausible hypothesis. We need retrospective studies such as this to determine where further funding should be applied.

by narush 5y ago

andi999 5y ago

Which sugar is bad? Is fructose as bad as glucose?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arcticbull 5y ago
Usually, glucose is regarded as the worst from an insulin resistance perspective - makes it way directly to your blood causing a large spike in blood sugar. Fructose isn’t as bad from that perspective because it has to be metabolized by the liver first. But with that in mind, consuming too much fructose can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease which is basically cirrhosis but from other causes.
twobitshifter 5y ago
For testosterone, they’re looking a sugar sweetened beverages which would either be sucrose or glucose-fructose (HFCS), so it cannot be answered Here’s a recent study that found that sucrose and fructose double liver fat production when compared to glucose. Both need more “processing” than glucose making them more expensive. My theory is that the body compensates for this by trying to increase fat stored. The study found that this happens even with moderate amounts of sugar. https://scitechdaily.com/even-moderate-amounts-of-added-sugar-doubles-bodys-fat-production/ https://scitechdaily.com/even-moderate-amounts-of-added-suga... >Ninety-four healthy young men took part in the study. Every day for a period of seven weeks, they consumed a drink sweetened with different types of sugar, while the control group did not. The drinks contained either fructose, glucose or sucrose (table sugar which is a combination of fructose and glucose). The researchers then used tracers (labeled substances that can be traced as they move through the body) to analyze the effect of sugary drinks on lipid metabolism. >Fructose and sucrose double fat production beyond food intake
- mizzack 5y ago
  > sucrose and fructose double liver fat production when compared to glucose Of course it does. Sucrose is 50/50 fructose/glucose and fructose uses the liver as the metabolic pathway but glucose does not. Pretty clueless that the linked article tries to correlate these results with type 2 diabetes, when insulin resistance is caused by glucose intake. The only correlation there is that if you're consuming a lot of fructose, you're probably consuming a lot of glucose, too.
narush 5y ago
No idea - good q!
jonplackett 5y ago
It's the fructose.

101001001001 5y ago

I second this. Nutritional epidemiology is a crime against science and is responsible for countless deaths and billions in lost productivity, unnecessary medical treatment. Fight against nutritional epidemiology for the good of society.

WalterGR 5y ago
> responsible for countless deaths and billions in lost productivity, unnecessary medical treatment Wow. Links to supporting documents?
- 101001001001 5y ago
  I didn’t get my opinion from a paper. I got it from reading countless papers. Figure it out for yourself
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    So no evidence. Got it.
    - 101001001001 5y ago
      There are mountains of evidence. It gets overlooked because of the momentum of dogma and the entangling of politics, dogma and research grants/funding. And it’s spread out over many, many individual topics and issues. It doesn’t lend itself to a comment or a single literature review. I will explain exactly how you can see for yourself. You only have to do one thing. Simply try to understand for yourself the biological underpinnings of human disease. Try to understand it for yourself. This will involve cracking open a biochemistry textbook. It’s not a trivial matter. It started for me when I got to a certain age and said to myself, gee, I’m getting to the age where I should understand heart disease. So I googled heart disease. And I kept going down the rabbit hole. Luckily I already had a background in biology and chemistry. Believe it or not, that single decision ultimately unraveled into the opinion expressed in my original comment. I am looking forward to what you find. Happy trails.

knuthsat 5y ago

Sugar is not bad. Just like meat or bacon is not bad. Why would sugar on its own be bad? Obviously it's the whole lifestyle and diet that is bad. There are cyclist that carb load by eatig raw sugar and have no metabolic issues like some of the overweight diabetics do when they drink their second gallon of sugary coca cola.

01100011 5y ago
I think you can make a solid case that, for most people, fructose and therefore sucrose is bad in any significant quantity. Sure, fructose can help replenish liver energy stores if you're an athlete, but most people aren't.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  This always confused me. Why does the WHO only have guidelines on "added sugar", why not all sugar? Based on a naive reading of things, I removed fruit from my diet as well, but that's against WHO guidelines: I used to eat like 3 Fuji/Envy a day (haha).
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    I remember reading a news story that an international organization (in my memory it was the UN) wanted to issue a warning about all sugar, but the US government representatives lobbied hard for the wording to be changed, because of the US food industry. Sadly I once tried to refind this story by googling but couldn't find it again, so I might as well be screaming, "the second coming is nigh!"
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      It's got to be either this or some sort of absorption mechanism with fiber+fructose, right? I've heard the following few, but I have no evidence: * The lobbying thing * That fiber gets you full so you don't eat as much fructose * That fiber modifies the absorption process

kleinsch 5y ago

[2] 80% of things you eat have studies correlating them with increased or decreased risk of cancer

andy_ppp 5y ago
80% of people who report they don’t drink sugar do other shit to look after their health too - and are probably richer amongst other cofactors.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  80% of people who report they don't drink sugar are probably lying or consume sweeteners that still give an insulin boost
narush 5y ago
Thanks for clarifying!

latenightcoding 5y ago

What does "mito" have to do with anything lol. "nutritional epidemiology is shady science, but if you are doing it try my side project mito" can't argue with that.

cma 5y ago
It is really shady spamming from him, unrelated to anything.

1e-9 5y ago

I agree there is an enormous amount of shady nutritional nonsense. I disagree with characterizing this study in that way. This study appears credible for suggesting an association. The authors do not misrepresent this. They acknowledge it does not determine any causality or solutions. Determining causality is expensive and time consuming. There is not enough research funding available to do that for every plausible hypothesis. We need retrospective studies such as this to determine where further funding should be applied.