4 ms·

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

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 2y ago
[deleted]
CyberDildonics 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
    + Brominated vegetable oil (also banned in the EU)
- watwut 2y ago
  Pretty sure people eate rice and grains before few hundred years ago. They eate a lot of carbohydrates.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    "Rice and grains" and the like contain only starch. The physiological effects of starch, which is composed only of glucose, are very different from the effects of sugar, half of which is fructose. Until about two hundred years ago, all the sources of concentrated sugar, i.e. honey, cane sugar, dried fruits and boiled fruit juice were very expensive in comparison with other kinds of food and very few people could afford to eat them more frequently than a few times per year, at more important holidays. Almost nobody could eat food with high content of sugar every day, like most people do now. The availability of sugar or glucose-fructose mixtures that are cheaper than almost any other kind of food, so they are now added to reduce the cost of industrially-processed food, is a very recent phenomenon.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Hunter-gatherer tribes such as the Hadza get a significant fraction of their calories from honey and other simple sugars. They don't seem worse off for it. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4654 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4654
      - adrian_b 2y ago
        They also are so active that all the ingested fructose must be oxidized immediately, instead of being converted by the liver into fat, as it happens in the more sedentary modern people.
    - watwut 2y ago
      Historically, they would not had that many vegetables available to eat daily either. Likewise, meat was quite expensive. In quite a lot of places, beans and such vegetable proteins were not available all that much on regular basis. Majority of contemporary diets, including keto, vegan, vegetarian were impossible or expensive. Raising bees for honey is not a new thing by any standard. Another thing is that historically, malnutrition was a thing, not just something rare. The people would be getting serious diseases or be dying because of this or that missing in the food, there were whole epidemics of diseases that basically do not exist anymore.
flyingspaceship 2y ago
It's been known for a long time that these things cause health problems especially among sedentary people, however. It wasn't uncommon for the rich to be fat and ill hundreds of years ago. I was reading Emma by Jane Austen recently which was written in the late 1800s and the story opens with the main father going on a tirade about cake being bad for you and nobody else caring. It is a scene that would fit all over the place today. It feels as though abundant, cheap and rich food has simply been scaled up to the level where the damage it does has become too visible to ignore anymore. It's not just a few lazy rich guys getting plump, it's the entire population.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

CyberDildonics 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
  + Brominated vegetable oil (also banned in the EU)
watwut 2y ago
Pretty sure people eate rice and grains before few hundred years ago. They eate a lot of carbohydrates.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  "Rice and grains" and the like contain only starch. The physiological effects of starch, which is composed only of glucose, are very different from the effects of sugar, half of which is fructose. Until about two hundred years ago, all the sources of concentrated sugar, i.e. honey, cane sugar, dried fruits and boiled fruit juice were very expensive in comparison with other kinds of food and very few people could afford to eat them more frequently than a few times per year, at more important holidays. Almost nobody could eat food with high content of sugar every day, like most people do now. The availability of sugar or glucose-fructose mixtures that are cheaper than almost any other kind of food, so they are now added to reduce the cost of industrially-processed food, is a very recent phenomenon.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Hunter-gatherer tribes such as the Hadza get a significant fraction of their calories from honey and other simple sugars. They don't seem worse off for it. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4654 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4654
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      They also are so active that all the ingested fructose must be oxidized immediately, instead of being converted by the liver into fat, as it happens in the more sedentary modern people.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Historically, they would not had that many vegetables available to eat daily either. Likewise, meat was quite expensive. In quite a lot of places, beans and such vegetable proteins were not available all that much on regular basis. Majority of contemporary diets, including keto, vegan, vegetarian were impossible or expensive. Raising bees for honey is not a new thing by any standard. Another thing is that historically, malnutrition was a thing, not just something rare. The people would be getting serious diseases or be dying because of this or that missing in the food, there were whole epidemics of diseases that basically do not exist anymore.

flyingspaceship 2y ago

It's been known for a long time that these things cause health problems especially among sedentary people, however. It wasn't uncommon for the rich to be fat and ill hundreds of years ago. I was reading Emma by Jane Austen recently which was written in the late 1800s and the story opens with the main father going on a tirade about cake being bad for you and nobody else caring. It is a scene that would fit all over the place today. It feels as though abundant, cheap and rich food has simply been scaled up to the level where the damage it does has become too visible to ignore anymore. It's not just a few lazy rich guys getting plump, it's the entire population.