4 ms·

Sugar is the big one and it being added to everything is the most likely source of the modern obesity epidemic. Seriously. Just try to find packaged or restaur

by api 3y ago

Sugar is the big one and it being added to everything is the most likely source of the modern obesity epidemic. Seriously. Just try to find packaged or restaurant foods without added sugar. You pretty much have to make all your own food. We got a bread machine to reduce sugar in our diet, among other things.

tekla 3y ago
The obesity epidemic is because people eat too much. Calories are stupid cheap. You can eat nothing but sugar and still lose weight if you burn more than you eat (See McD and Twinkies experiment)
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Of course sugar doesn’t magically make one fat. The problem is that the body doesn’t register how many calories it’s eaten with sugar (and “processed” food in general), and so you can’t rely on that natural mechanism to know how much to eat. I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Clearly we need some regulation around how processed food must produce satiety and not just flavor, the current setup is not working.
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
    It's also crazy addictive. People don't think it be a drug, but it do.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    It's not just that sugar doesn't satiate hunger, the body actually craves it. In pre-agricultural times, calories were scarce and sugar (glucose or fructose) was an easy way to get a lot of calories quickly. The palate evolved to favor things like honey, fruit, berries, and other sources of sugar. The few thousand years since food has not been univerally scarce have not changed that.
  - loeg 3y ago
    > I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Clearly we need some regulation around how processed food must produce satiety and not just flavor, the current setup is not working. I kind of agree, but people are irrationally attached to unhealthy, high caloric-density foods. If you tried to regulate away or even just tax ice cream, soda, and chips, people would riot in the streets. Regulating unhealthy food is extremely unpopular.
    - acuozzo 3y ago
      Regulation wouldn't fix the underlying problem anyway. Plenty of food addicted persons get obese from eating gargantuan amounts of "normal" food. When I used to be obese, my weakness was sushi rice. Getting my binge-eating "high" required only a high quantity of food. Hell, I would eat a lot of Nori if I were desperate enough. Go to a Puerto Rican cookout in NYC and look at what the heavier persons are eating. They're not waiting until dessert time to start digging in. They're eating plate after plate of Arroz con Pollo.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      >but people are irrationally attached to unhealthy I'd disagree, we are rationally attracted to these things because the state of pretty much all animal life has been boom/bust cycles of food. That's why our bodies get fat in the first place. A reserve for when the lean times come. Humans, bees, and ants are some of the few creatures that break this cycle well.
      - loeg 3y ago
        You're ascribing motivation and agency to evolutionary pressures. I'm talking about individual behavior. Evolution isn't rational or irrational.
  - acuozzo 3y ago
    > I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Is it a matter of natural instinct(s)? I don't think so. Using food as a drug to cope with your life is not natural. It's understandable given our "modern environment", but it's certainly not a natural outcome. Food addiction is the #1 cause of obesity. HFCS and other food additives come in a distant second if we're assigning blame. (To make matters worse, once obesity sets in, Leptin & friends take over to add a physiological addiction on to the psychological one!)
- bena 3y ago
  Yes, but sugar is incredibly calorie dense. A teaspoon of sugar (or about 5 grams) is about 20 calories. A 12 oz can of most soft drinks have about 40 grams. They clock about 140 calories. All from sugar. You're going to hit 2000 calories way before you feel like you've eaten anything significant if you get all of your calories from sugar.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >The obesity epidemic is because people eat too much. Calories are stupid cheap. Not really... It's kinda like saying "My cars engine blows up when I put nitromethane in the gas tank", well, we aren't designed to run on nitromethane. And yea, you could probably run your car on that fuel if you highly restricted the injectors to drastically reduce the incoming fuel. If you just eat sugar every day it seems pretty likely in 40 years you'd get ass cancer and die. The human body requires fiber for intestinal health. Fiber is something that has been removed in mass in our diets and turned back into animal feed. Fiber also gives you a feeling of fullness and helps prevent over consumption.
hn_user82179 3y ago
Definitely this. I spent a few weeks trying to eat 'no added sugar or sweetener or high fructose corn syrup' and it was incredibly difficult, tons of things I would've assumed didn't have sugar (bread, salad dressing, condiments like ketchup, soup, peanut butter, etc). You can find brands or alternatives for all of these things but it makes your grocery shopping take at least twice as long to examine the labels of 10 different bread loaves and you usually have to pay more for the fancier or organic version for one that doesn't have additives.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by api 3y ago

tekla 3y ago

The obesity epidemic is because people eat too much. Calories are stupid cheap. You can eat nothing but sugar and still lose weight if you burn more than you eat (See McD and Twinkies experiment)

pfannkuchen 3y ago
Of course sugar doesn’t magically make one fat. The problem is that the body doesn’t register how many calories it’s eaten with sugar (and “processed” food in general), and so you can’t rely on that natural mechanism to know how much to eat. I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Clearly we need some regulation around how processed food must produce satiety and not just flavor, the current setup is not working.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  It's also crazy addictive. People don't think it be a drug, but it do.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It's not just that sugar doesn't satiate hunger, the body actually craves it. In pre-agricultural times, calories were scarce and sugar (glucose or fructose) was an easy way to get a lot of calories quickly. The palate evolved to favor things like honey, fruit, berries, and other sources of sugar. The few thousand years since food has not been univerally scarce have not changed that.
- loeg 3y ago
  > I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Clearly we need some regulation around how processed food must produce satiety and not just flavor, the current setup is not working. I kind of agree, but people are irrationally attached to unhealthy, high caloric-density foods. If you tried to regulate away or even just tax ice cream, soda, and chips, people would riot in the streets. Regulating unhealthy food is extremely unpopular.
  - acuozzo 3y ago
    Regulation wouldn't fix the underlying problem anyway. Plenty of food addicted persons get obese from eating gargantuan amounts of "normal" food. When I used to be obese, my weakness was sushi rice. Getting my binge-eating "high" required only a high quantity of food. Hell, I would eat a lot of Nori if I were desperate enough. Go to a Puerto Rican cookout in NYC and look at what the heavier persons are eating. They're not waiting until dessert time to start digging in. They're eating plate after plate of Arroz con Pollo.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >but people are irrationally attached to unhealthy I'd disagree, we are rationally attracted to these things because the state of pretty much all animal life has been boom/bust cycles of food. That's why our bodies get fat in the first place. A reserve for when the lean times come. Humans, bees, and ants are some of the few creatures that break this cycle well.
    - loeg 3y ago
      You're ascribing motivation and agency to evolutionary pressures. I'm talking about individual behavior. Evolution isn't rational or irrational.
- acuozzo 3y ago
  > I think it’s crazy that the default outcome in our current modern environment if you follow your natural instincts is obesity. Is it a matter of natural instinct(s)? I don't think so. Using food as a drug to cope with your life is not natural. It's understandable given our "modern environment", but it's certainly not a natural outcome. Food addiction is the #1 cause of obesity. HFCS and other food additives come in a distant second if we're assigning blame. (To make matters worse, once obesity sets in, Leptin & friends take over to add a physiological addiction on to the psychological one!)
bena 3y ago
Yes, but sugar is incredibly calorie dense. A teaspoon of sugar (or about 5 grams) is about 20 calories. A 12 oz can of most soft drinks have about 40 grams. They clock about 140 calories. All from sugar. You're going to hit 2000 calories way before you feel like you've eaten anything significant if you get all of your calories from sugar.
pixl97 3y ago
>The obesity epidemic is because people eat too much. Calories are stupid cheap. Not really... It's kinda like saying "My cars engine blows up when I put nitromethane in the gas tank", well, we aren't designed to run on nitromethane. And yea, you could probably run your car on that fuel if you highly restricted the injectors to drastically reduce the incoming fuel. If you just eat sugar every day it seems pretty likely in 40 years you'd get ass cancer and die. The human body requires fiber for intestinal health. Fiber is something that has been removed in mass in our diets and turned back into animal feed. Fiber also gives you a feeling of fullness and helps prevent over consumption.

hn_user82179 3y ago

Definitely this. I spent a few weeks trying to eat 'no added sugar or sweetener or high fructose corn syrup' and it was incredibly difficult, tons of things I would've assumed didn't have sugar (bread, salad dressing, condiments like ketchup, soup, peanut butter, etc). You can find brands or alternatives for all of these things but it makes your grocery shopping take at least twice as long to examine the labels of 10 different bread loaves and you usually have to pay more for the fancier or organic version for one that doesn't have additives.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]