5 ms·

Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research (2016)

62 points by t0bia_s 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tashoecraft 3y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ ^ Not the final edit but has more text.
hello_computer 3y ago
With all of the keto grifters on the internet, I suspect this is merely a pendulum-swing to another mistake. There are so many novelties in what the average person eats today--dyes, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, packaging residue, thickeners, artificial sweeteners, preservatives... and the manufacture of each one is a moving target (changing feedstocks, equipment, process, etc). Some are used in such minute quantities, or are legally classified so broadly, that they don't even have to be specifically labeled. All I know is that the boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style, and lived in decent health to a ripe old age, while the fair-trade free-range organic millennials seem to be falling apart at the seams. Before anyone lectures me on epistemology, I offered this as a data point, not an academic study. Industry wants to move product. If fat is the problem--or at least if people think it is--industry moves to sugar. If sugar is the problem, they'll move back to fat. An inconvenience, but an easily surmountable one. Packaging and preservatives would be a tougher nut to crack--far fewer options. An entire market segment could be up-ended if a single option were suddenly forbidden. It may not even be the food. The younger generation has been on a staggering number of medications in their formative years. Boomers are also inveterate pill-poppers, but not from early childhood. Think of the difference between giving aspirin to a child or to an adult. There may be another "reye's syndrome" hiding here.
- nullfield 3y ago
  I can’t help but feel like, while the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not’ data’, lots and lots of people make the same observation about “Boomers”. The human body has been working with fat and sugar and such a lot longer than all the newer, more engineered stuff, making it seem even more reasonable.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    The human body has been working with fat and sugar Most people didn't have much access to sugar until the sugar islands were cultivated a few hundred years ago. Before that it was just fruit which was probably less sweet, has fiber in it and was more rare. all the newer, more engineered stuff Like what specifically?
    - hello_computer 3y ago
      azo dyes (already banned in the EU), trisodium phospate (we used to use this to clean walls for painting, now we use it in noodle manufacture to keep the machine from clogging), titanium dioxide (colorant and possible carcinogen), plasticizers leached from the packaging (BPA [a weak synthetic estrogen], BPS, BPF)... the soaps, lotions, and cosmetics also have a number of novel (to human consumption anyway) components, which can enter the bloodstream dermally. One of my chemistry professors remarked that bodies take longer to decompose now due to the residual amounts of tetrasodium EDTA in our bodies from hair shampoo. For a while, many young men were getting gynecomastia from the lavender and tea tree oil in their shampoos and body washes. Many of the crops are doused in glyphosate during both growth and harvest, so there's weed killer in the cheerios now, and we're just supposed to accept that. Most of us do.
      - smolder 3y ago
        + Brominated vegetable oil (also banned in the EU)
    - 3y ago
- sramsay 3y ago
  > All I know is that the boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style, and lived in decent health to a ripe old age That's a data point. > while the fair-trade free-range organic millennials seem to be falling apart at the seams. That's not a data point. That's a broad statement that generalizes about a population, and yes: It would be a good to see a source that indicates that an entire generation is "falling apart at the seams" either as a result of their preference for "fair trade free range organic" food or their avoidance of fat and sugar -- if, indeed, that is even true of the population in question.
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    It is a data point because it is the same family, similar genetics, similar upbringing, similar socioeconomic status. One generation ate crap and did okay. Another was more cautious, but to no avail. As to whether or not that diet is causal, I made no statement or suggestion. I don't even have an opinion on it. I am merely stating that, according to the science of the day, they did "the right thing", but the situation did not improve.
    - sramsay 3y ago
      Forgive me, I think I read you wrong. It sounds like you meant, "the millennials in my family". Which, yes: I see what you're saying.
- keybored 3y ago
  I’ve found in general (from a few years back, not based on this submission) that the arguments of the low-carb camp are very convincing. Fat is an essential macro. carb-sugar is entirely optional. > With all of the keto grifters on the internet, I suspect this is merely a pendulum-swing to another mistake. You suspect. In a vacuum (without data) this pendulum-swing argument is equally convincing as both carbo-macros-are-good and fat-macros-are-good. You don’t get any extra points for seemingly taking a step back and concluding it’s-all-the-same. Exactly because it’s just “I suspect”. The grift in keto seems entirely optional. You can eat low-carb or keto based on things you get at the supermarket. > Industry wants to move product. We have to eat. So I guess anything but calorie-deficit or photosynthesis can be accused of being a grift?
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    Academia pumped-out paper after paper--for over 50 years--on how terrible fat was for you, and now that it has become so very difficult to convince people that that emperor has clothes, they are pivoting to a different bogey-man. This was never the slow march of science, and it still isn't. One guy gets his money from Procter and Gamble, another gets it from publishing royalties, another gets it from youtube monetization. It is all a grift. The actual truth is probably hiding on some Peruvian amateur scientist's blog these days. I never wrote "it's all the same". I did write that it may be something else entirely, and that some of the more likely suspects are not investigated with the same intensity--probably because a conclusive answer would upset many apple carts. to ta988: for publishing royalties, i'm not talking about research papers, but popular books / articles. teicholz is a one-woman industry in that respect. not saying that she's right or wrong, but that she (like many others in this space) is both financially and reputationally locked-into a narrative, which is not really science.
    - DontchaKnowit 3y ago
      Yo are somewhat correct but honestly you just must have become aware of keto after it had passed through the cultural meat grinder of consumerism. Back in like 2012, keto was extremely fringe, niche, and almost all of the keto literature online was genuine science/nutritional hobbyists who were enthusiastic about revealing the deception inherent in our nations nutritional guidelines as a result of lobbying. There was no grift there whatsoever. Now theres lots of grifters, but the core idea of keto is an incredibly powerful dieting strategy for many people and has very positive effects on symptoms of a number of difference health problems.
- nradov 3y ago
  While I have no proof of this, I suspect many of the Millenials' health problems are more mental (including psychosomatic) than dietary. To stereotype a bit, they generally seem less resilient and more prone to catastrophizing minor physical problems that older generations would have just dealt with.
  - smeej 3y ago
    Psychosomatic, and(/or) psychogenic. There comes a point where the influence of the mind actually makes things physiologically wrong, which becomes even harder to untangle.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    They also barely move their bodies.
    - yowlingcat 3y ago
      I think this is the elephant in the room that is generationally hard to address. At least in America, all demographics have gotten more sedentary over time, but Millennials in particular. To your point, it doesn't really matter what you eat if you live a sedentary lifestyle with more screentime and less physical activity than is ideal. To put it in a neutral way, I would not be surprised if many emergent cultural wars nominally about body acceptance are actually more a societal reaction to this root cause.
  - vlod 3y ago
    Some humour/sarcasm to illustrate your point: "No better way to sum up the generations" https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/s4nbru/no_better_way_to_sum_up_the_generations/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/s4nbru/no_better_way_...
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  When boomers were the age of millennials, they were eating foods that were just foods. They weren't overly engineered. The 80s came about, scientists decided that fat was a problem, and so they started removing fat from food. But in order to make those foods palatable, they needed to add a filler. They chose the cheapest one, most addictive one: sugar. Then when people got tired of eating oat bran with everything, they added the fat back but kept the sugar. So now you've got the very worst of both worlds. Likewise, when boomers were growing up, even the pre-packaged food they ate was packaged in wax paper and glass. Everything today is some form of plastic. It's much harder to become obese if you aren't eating products that come out of food labs.
- settsu 3y ago
  You would seem to have a valid point about the tendency for "pendulum swings" in diet trends (well, especially in fads), as well the additives that are seemingly much more common in processed foods made for the American market (I mean, if you simply look at the number of those additives that are specifically prohibited elsewhere, it can almost be alarming.) However, when you say "boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style", 1) I'm assuming you meant "my family", and 2) the point of the link is that Boomers as a whole didn't eat a lot of sugar until fat was demonized by campaigns specifically intended to "downplay the risks of sugar and highlight the hazards of fat"†. And I don't believe they consumed comparatively nearly as much sugar as their children. And let's not even get started on the topic of high fructose corn syrup (which is problematic for more reasons than potential negative health effects.) Seriously, if you look at just how many food products in a typical American supermarket have added sweeteners, it's can be staggering. † https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
- ta988 3y ago
  I remember reading studies about how parents diet had an impact on their kids through epigenetics.
- alejohausner 3y ago
  Another thing that’s changed since young boomers roamed the earth is soil depletion. Decades of farming the heartland in the US midwest have used up all the zinc and boron and other minerals in the soil. If you consult the USDA food tables, they list the nutrients in foods, but those measurements were done back int 1940s and 50s, and things have changed.
jelsisi 3y ago
Cutting out added sugar and supplementing Vitamin D have both significantly improved the quality of my life. I now have the feeling that all the info we need to live a healthy life is out there and that good health is slowly becoming a choice. I'm optimistic that the internet has dampened the power that some of these corporations have had over our nutrition. I'm looking forward to supplementing omega 3s and seeing if that has any effect.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  > I now have the feeling that all the info we need to live a healthy life is out there and that good health is slowly becoming a choice While not incorrect, that's an interesting framing as your great-grandparents and most of their lineage already had all the needed info too. Cultures can't really survive hundreds or thousands of years without sorting out a reliable way for their members to thrive well enough, a knowledge that gets gradually and continuously encoded in their food traditions. Our modern culture may be gaining insight into how to squeeze a little more wellness out of late life, or take a little more specific control when edge cases need attention, but those gains came on the tails of a dramatic disruption of cultural knowledge that was already there and already encoded in communities' daily intuitive eating practice. We have finer and more evidenced ideas now, but it's going to take many generations to convert that from the intellectual, explicit knowledge we have now into a widespread practice that people no longer need to invest attention in.
  - dullcrisp 3y ago
    Yes but we’re also not suffering from starvation and disease as much to the best of my knowledge, so that’s something.
- simmerup 3y ago
  Cutting out sugar made such an improvement to my life that now whenever I see food companies trying to sell us shit and say it’s healthy I get inordinately angry with them.
- hedora 3y ago
  Remember: Carbs turn to the same thing as added sugar before they even hit your stomach. My current approach is to look at the % daily value for carbs and for fiber whenever I buy bread, cereal, etc. If the carbs are higher than the fiber I buy something else. There are a few switches that worked out particularly well: Flour -> Corn tortillas, and the Ezekiel brand (or other recipies-from-the-bible-themed varieties from the same company) sprouted whole grain bread at the store. Stuff marked "low carb" or "keto" often is primarily mode of bizarre ingredients like extracted starch. Worse, they often contain artificial / organic non-caloric sweeteners that are way worse than just eating sugar.
oxqbldpxo 3y ago
The Incas used coca leaves to suppress hunger and cravings when traveling long distances. Could be useful for people to chew coca leaves the same way, because sugar is super addictive and ver lucrative for Blackrock. They sell you the sugar in the morning to then sell you the prescriptions in the evening. It is the best next thing after oil and gas.
- openasocket 3y ago
  You know coca is the plant that we get cocaine from, right? The Incas ate it because of the effects of the cocaine. I think it’s a little crazy to suggest that people switch from sugar to cocaine for health reasons
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    We give thousands of children a year amphetamines from grade 1 because they can't sit still in class, why not just open up the market a bit further? Could help lessen the stress on Semaglutide manufacturing.
  - alexpotato 3y ago
    People use caffeine the same way today. e.g. you will often see health influencers mention that black coffee early in the morning is a good way to suppress appetite.
  - iramiller 3y ago
    And you know how much Coca is needed to make Cocaine? Might as well compare chewing a piece of sugar cane to drinking HFCS.

62 points by t0bia_s 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5099084/ ^ Not the final edit but has more text.

hello_computer 3y ago

With all of the keto grifters on the internet, I suspect this is merely a pendulum-swing to another mistake. There are so many novelties in what the average person eats today--dyes, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, packaging residue, thickeners, artificial sweeteners, preservatives... and the manufacture of each one is a moving target (changing feedstocks, equipment, process, etc). Some are used in such minute quantities, or are legally classified so broadly, that they don't even have to be specifically labeled. All I know is that the boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style, and lived in decent health to a ripe old age, while the fair-trade free-range organic millennials seem to be falling apart at the seams. Before anyone lectures me on epistemology, I offered this as a data point, not an academic study. Industry wants to move product. If fat is the problem--or at least if people think it is--industry moves to sugar. If sugar is the problem, they'll move back to fat. An inconvenience, but an easily surmountable one. Packaging and preservatives would be a tougher nut to crack--far fewer options. An entire market segment could be up-ended if a single option were suddenly forbidden. It may not even be the food. The younger generation has been on a staggering number of medications in their formative years. Boomers are also inveterate pill-poppers, but not from early childhood. Think of the difference between giving aspirin to a child or to an adult. There may be another "reye's syndrome" hiding here.

nullfield 3y ago
I can’t help but feel like, while the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not’ data’, lots and lots of people make the same observation about “Boomers”. The human body has been working with fat and sugar and such a lot longer than all the newer, more engineered stuff, making it seem even more reasonable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  The human body has been working with fat and sugar Most people didn't have much access to sugar until the sugar islands were cultivated a few hundred years ago. Before that it was just fruit which was probably less sweet, has fiber in it and was more rare. all the newer, more engineered stuff Like what specifically?
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    azo dyes (already banned in the EU), trisodium phospate (we used to use this to clean walls for painting, now we use it in noodle manufacture to keep the machine from clogging), titanium dioxide (colorant and possible carcinogen), plasticizers leached from the packaging (BPA [a weak synthetic estrogen], BPS, BPF)... the soaps, lotions, and cosmetics also have a number of novel (to human consumption anyway) components, which can enter the bloodstream dermally. One of my chemistry professors remarked that bodies take longer to decompose now due to the residual amounts of tetrasodium EDTA in our bodies from hair shampoo. For a while, many young men were getting gynecomastia from the lavender and tea tree oil in their shampoos and body washes. Many of the crops are doused in glyphosate during both growth and harvest, so there's weed killer in the cheerios now, and we're just supposed to accept that. Most of us do.
    - smolder 3y ago
      + Brominated vegetable oil (also banned in the EU)
  - 3y ago
sramsay 3y ago
> All I know is that the boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style, and lived in decent health to a ripe old age That's a data point. > while the fair-trade free-range organic millennials seem to be falling apart at the seams. That's not a data point. That's a broad statement that generalizes about a population, and yes: It would be a good to see a source that indicates that an entire generation is "falling apart at the seams" either as a result of their preference for "fair trade free range organic" food or their avoidance of fat and sugar -- if, indeed, that is even true of the population in question.
- hello_computer 3y ago
  It is a data point because it is the same family, similar genetics, similar upbringing, similar socioeconomic status. One generation ate crap and did okay. Another was more cautious, but to no avail. As to whether or not that diet is causal, I made no statement or suggestion. I don't even have an opinion on it. I am merely stating that, according to the science of the day, they did "the right thing", but the situation did not improve.
  - sramsay 3y ago
    Forgive me, I think I read you wrong. It sounds like you meant, "the millennials in my family". Which, yes: I see what you're saying.
keybored 3y ago
I’ve found in general (from a few years back, not based on this submission) that the arguments of the low-carb camp are very convincing. Fat is an essential macro. carb-sugar is entirely optional. > With all of the keto grifters on the internet, I suspect this is merely a pendulum-swing to another mistake. You suspect. In a vacuum (without data) this pendulum-swing argument is equally convincing as both carbo-macros-are-good and fat-macros-are-good. You don’t get any extra points for seemingly taking a step back and concluding it’s-all-the-same. Exactly because it’s just “I suspect”. The grift in keto seems entirely optional. You can eat low-carb or keto based on things you get at the supermarket. > Industry wants to move product. We have to eat. So I guess anything but calorie-deficit or photosynthesis can be accused of being a grift?
- hello_computer 3y ago
  Academia pumped-out paper after paper--for over 50 years--on how terrible fat was for you, and now that it has become so very difficult to convince people that that emperor has clothes, they are pivoting to a different bogey-man. This was never the slow march of science, and it still isn't. One guy gets his money from Procter and Gamble, another gets it from publishing royalties, another gets it from youtube monetization. It is all a grift. The actual truth is probably hiding on some Peruvian amateur scientist's blog these days. I never wrote "it's all the same". I did write that it may be something else entirely, and that some of the more likely suspects are not investigated with the same intensity--probably because a conclusive answer would upset many apple carts. to ta988: for publishing royalties, i'm not talking about research papers, but popular books / articles. teicholz is a one-woman industry in that respect. not saying that she's right or wrong, but that she (like many others in this space) is both financially and reputationally locked-into a narrative, which is not really science.
  - DontchaKnowit 3y ago
    Yo are somewhat correct but honestly you just must have become aware of keto after it had passed through the cultural meat grinder of consumerism. Back in like 2012, keto was extremely fringe, niche, and almost all of the keto literature online was genuine science/nutritional hobbyists who were enthusiastic about revealing the deception inherent in our nations nutritional guidelines as a result of lobbying. There was no grift there whatsoever. Now theres lots of grifters, but the core idea of keto is an incredibly powerful dieting strategy for many people and has very positive effects on symptoms of a number of difference health problems.
nradov 3y ago
While I have no proof of this, I suspect many of the Millenials' health problems are more mental (including psychosomatic) than dietary. To stereotype a bit, they generally seem less resilient and more prone to catastrophizing minor physical problems that older generations would have just dealt with.
- smeej 3y ago
  Psychosomatic, and(/or) psychogenic. There comes a point where the influence of the mind actually makes things physiologically wrong, which becomes even harder to untangle.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  They also barely move their bodies.
  - yowlingcat 3y ago
    I think this is the elephant in the room that is generationally hard to address. At least in America, all demographics have gotten more sedentary over time, but Millennials in particular. To your point, it doesn't really matter what you eat if you live a sedentary lifestyle with more screentime and less physical activity than is ideal. To put it in a neutral way, I would not be surprised if many emergent cultural wars nominally about body acceptance are actually more a societal reaction to this root cause.
- vlod 3y ago
  Some humour/sarcasm to illustrate your point: "No better way to sum up the generations" https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/s4nbru/no_better_way_to_sum_up_the_generations/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/s4nbru/no_better_way_...
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
When boomers were the age of millennials, they were eating foods that were just foods. They weren't overly engineered. The 80s came about, scientists decided that fat was a problem, and so they started removing fat from food. But in order to make those foods palatable, they needed to add a filler. They chose the cheapest one, most addictive one: sugar. Then when people got tired of eating oat bran with everything, they added the fat back but kept the sugar. So now you've got the very worst of both worlds. Likewise, when boomers were growing up, even the pre-packaged food they ate was packaged in wax paper and glass. Everything today is some form of plastic. It's much harder to become obese if you aren't eating products that come out of food labs.
settsu 3y ago
You would seem to have a valid point about the tendency for "pendulum swings" in diet trends (well, especially in fads), as well the additives that are seemingly much more common in processed foods made for the American market (I mean, if you simply look at the number of those additives that are specifically prohibited elsewhere, it can almost be alarming.) However, when you say "boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style", 1) I'm assuming you meant "my family", and 2) the point of the link is that Boomers as a whole didn't eat a lot of sugar until fat was demonized by campaigns specifically intended to "downplay the risks of sugar and highlight the hazards of fat"†. And I don't believe they consumed comparatively nearly as much sugar as their children. And let's not even get started on the topic of high fructose corn syrup (which is problematic for more reasons than potential negative health effects.) Seriously, if you look at just how many food products in a typical American supermarket have added sweeteners, it's can be staggering. † https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
ta988 3y ago
I remember reading studies about how parents diet had an impact on their kids through epigenetics.
alejohausner 3y ago
Another thing that’s changed since young boomers roamed the earth is soil depletion. Decades of farming the heartland in the US midwest have used up all the zinc and boron and other minerals in the soil. If you consult the USDA food tables, they list the nutrients in foods, but those measurements were done back int 1940s and 50s, and things have changed.

jelsisi 3y ago

Cutting out added sugar and supplementing Vitamin D have both significantly improved the quality of my life. I now have the feeling that all the info we need to live a healthy life is out there and that good health is slowly becoming a choice. I'm optimistic that the internet has dampened the power that some of these corporations have had over our nutrition. I'm looking forward to supplementing omega 3s and seeing if that has any effect.

swatcoder 3y ago
> I now have the feeling that all the info we need to live a healthy life is out there and that good health is slowly becoming a choice While not incorrect, that's an interesting framing as your great-grandparents and most of their lineage already had all the needed info too. Cultures can't really survive hundreds or thousands of years without sorting out a reliable way for their members to thrive well enough, a knowledge that gets gradually and continuously encoded in their food traditions. Our modern culture may be gaining insight into how to squeeze a little more wellness out of late life, or take a little more specific control when edge cases need attention, but those gains came on the tails of a dramatic disruption of cultural knowledge that was already there and already encoded in communities' daily intuitive eating practice. We have finer and more evidenced ideas now, but it's going to take many generations to convert that from the intellectual, explicit knowledge we have now into a widespread practice that people no longer need to invest attention in.
- dullcrisp 3y ago
  Yes but we’re also not suffering from starvation and disease as much to the best of my knowledge, so that’s something.
simmerup 3y ago
Cutting out sugar made such an improvement to my life that now whenever I see food companies trying to sell us shit and say it’s healthy I get inordinately angry with them.
hedora 3y ago
Remember: Carbs turn to the same thing as added sugar before they even hit your stomach. My current approach is to look at the % daily value for carbs and for fiber whenever I buy bread, cereal, etc. If the carbs are higher than the fiber I buy something else. There are a few switches that worked out particularly well: Flour -> Corn tortillas, and the Ezekiel brand (or other recipies-from-the-bible-themed varieties from the same company) sprouted whole grain bread at the store. Stuff marked "low carb" or "keto" often is primarily mode of bizarre ingredients like extracted starch. Worse, they often contain artificial / organic non-caloric sweeteners that are way worse than just eating sugar.

oxqbldpxo 3y ago

The Incas used coca leaves to suppress hunger and cravings when traveling long distances. Could be useful for people to chew coca leaves the same way, because sugar is super addictive and ver lucrative for Blackrock. They sell you the sugar in the morning to then sell you the prescriptions in the evening. It is the best next thing after oil and gas.

openasocket 3y ago
You know coca is the plant that we get cocaine from, right? The Incas ate it because of the effects of the cocaine. I think it’s a little crazy to suggest that people switch from sugar to cocaine for health reasons
- sickofparadox 3y ago
  We give thousands of children a year amphetamines from grade 1 because they can't sit still in class, why not just open up the market a bit further? Could help lessen the stress on Semaglutide manufacturing.
- alexpotato 3y ago
  People use caffeine the same way today. e.g. you will often see health influencers mention that black coffee early in the morning is a good way to suppress appetite.
- iramiller 3y ago
  And you know how much Coca is needed to make Cocaine? Might as well compare chewing a piece of sugar cane to drinking HFCS.