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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

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)
watwut 3y ago
Pretty sure people eate rice and grains before few hundred years ago. They eate a lot of carbohydrates.
- adrian_b 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  The context here is fructose, you're mixing it up with glucose. Both technically sugars, but very different effects. People have had access to lactose for a long time too, but fructose is the issue.
  - watwut 3y ago
    The context here is "fat vs sugar". To which reaction was "they were eating fruits not sugar". The context here is that major food group that was pretty significant source of calories - complex carbohydrates was skipped creating dichotomy between sugar and fat.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      Fresh fruits have only a low content of sugar. The recommendations that I have seen are that up to around 50 g of sugar per day (25 g of fructose) should be fine. Most fresh fruits have about 10% of sugar, so you need to eat more than a pound or a half of kg to reach levels of sugar intake that could be unhealthy. Only a few fruits have more sugar, above 15%, e.g. grapes, fresh figs or fresh dates. Even with those you must eat an amount over what would satiate most people, in order to get too much sugar. On the other hand, if you eat one chocolate (many of which contain 60% or more sugar) or a few candies you are likely to have already exceeded an acceptable daily intake.
      - watwut 3y ago
        Like, who cares. My argument was about potatoes, rice, bread, ... Sure if you eat full chocolate every day and are nor teenager or weightlifter you probably eat too much of it. And still, that doew not mean you nmed to cut complex carbohydrates and go keto ... especially if argument is how people 300 years ago eate. It was not keto.
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Again, sugar is a shorthand for fructose. Whenever this comes up someone muddies the water by saying that glucose is a sugar too but that isn't what is being talked about.

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)

watwut 3y ago

Pretty sure people eate rice and grains before few hundred years ago. They eate a lot of carbohydrates.

adrian_b 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
CyberDildonics 3y ago
The context here is fructose, you're mixing it up with glucose. Both technically sugars, but very different effects. People have had access to lactose for a long time too, but fructose is the issue.
- watwut 3y ago
  The context here is "fat vs sugar". To which reaction was "they were eating fruits not sugar". The context here is that major food group that was pretty significant source of calories - complex carbohydrates was skipped creating dichotomy between sugar and fat.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Fresh fruits have only a low content of sugar. The recommendations that I have seen are that up to around 50 g of sugar per day (25 g of fructose) should be fine. Most fresh fruits have about 10% of sugar, so you need to eat more than a pound or a half of kg to reach levels of sugar intake that could be unhealthy. Only a few fruits have more sugar, above 15%, e.g. grapes, fresh figs or fresh dates. Even with those you must eat an amount over what would satiate most people, in order to get too much sugar. On the other hand, if you eat one chocolate (many of which contain 60% or more sugar) or a few candies you are likely to have already exceeded an acceptable daily intake.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Like, who cares. My argument was about potatoes, rice, bread, ... Sure if you eat full chocolate every day and are nor teenager or weightlifter you probably eat too much of it. And still, that doew not mean you nmed to cut complex carbohydrates and go keto ... especially if argument is how people 300 years ago eate. It was not keto.
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Again, sugar is a shorthand for fructose. Whenever this comes up someone muddies the water by saying that glucose is a sugar too but that isn't what is being talked about.