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50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
- zeristor 2y agoSugar industry, tobacco industry, oil industry. Which other industries have distorted reality, and which future ones will be revealed in the coming decades?
- Workaccount2 2y agoLiterally every industry does their best to distort reality to what best fits them. People naturally do this too, so it's not particularly surprising or even necessarily malevolent.
- xhkkffbf 2y agoAnd if oil, sugar and tobacco are out, where can we work guilt-free? At one recent discussion, a tenured sociology professor said her industry was not bad. And someone else chimed in by pointing out that they take huge tax dollar grants to churn out near worthless degrees studying research that often can't be replicated. And then they load on student debt to get the kids to pay for it. This made the snooty, tenured scold shut up.
- fsagx 2y agomedia
- gsky 2y agoPlastic industry and chemical (pesticide) industry
- rqtwteye 2y agoThe plastic industry is basically an extension of oil
- bell-cot 2y agoNot that it's any secret (now) - but how 'bout the alcoholic beverage industry, and the pharmaceuticals industry?
- Mehticulous 2y agoRecycling.
- Ma8ee 2y agoThat one is a bit complex. Recycling things like paper, metal and glass works very well, in particular if they are sorted at the source. Most plastics can’t be recycled cost effective, which a lot of plastics producers have work very hard to hide.
- AceyMan 2y agoI've been wanting to post an Ask HN on this: What's to stop us from going back to steel, paper and glass? You know, packaging we can actually recycle.
- namdnay 2y agoConvenience
- nick3443 2y agoProfits
- Pasorrijer 2y agoLast three years I've been in the Netherlands, all pop was glass bottles, similar with most water
- vpribish 2y agoclose the externality with a carbon tax
- apothegm 2y agoCost differences and price sensitivity.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoAnd more importantly, how much of a tax would it take to make single-use plastic bottles uneconomical? Are we talking 20 cents?
- whatshisface 2y agoEvery single one. PR is a normal corporate department.
- michaelt 2y agoThat seems a bit reductive. Most industries employ honest people, don’t have to cover up anything major. There’s a big difference between slightly misleading marketing (say, calling your 10% hand stitched clothes “hand stitched”) and outright paying scientists to cover up genuine harms to health and the environment.
- fwip 2y agoMost big industries are, at the least, hiding labor rights violations overseas or among migrant workers. Usually legal, of course, but not ethical.
- chucksmash 2y agoWhen someone asks for examples of particularly bad actors, replying "everybody is a bad actor" is a pat non-answer that communicates nothing except the answerer's disillusionment.
- zemvpferreira 2y agoTrue, but it’s useful disillusionement that conveys useful knowledge: companies must be monitored. Every industry, left to itself, will commit horrible acts for profit. There’s no such thing as an ethical business in the dark.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chucksmash 2y agoI disagree. Think of the places where corruption is endemic. Having an outlook of "well, everybody is corrupt" normalizes the behavior and makes it easier to justify sliding into corruption oneself. If the outlook were useful, it would help to fix the problem instead of doing the opposite. The disillusionment doesn't offer any benefit that can't also be gained with a touch of common sense alone. But going from "some people are terrible, sometimes" to "everybody is terrible" forecloses any possibility of improvement.
- leetrout 2y agoAI
- tekla 2y agoTech Startups
- willsmith72 2y agoNot just startups
- grecy 2y agoKeep that in mind when you read or hear news about anything. Someone has a vested interest in the side of the story you’re getting, and they may have even paid for it.
- Mistletoe 2y agoYou are missing the worst one of all. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” -Dwight Eisenhower farewell address 1961 Did we listen? Nope.
- hackly 2y agoWar/Weapons industry has been very active lately.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y agoEvery other movie coming out of Hollywood features the army, guns or military equipment in some fashion. Cinema is a PR channel for this industry.
- bun_terminator 2y agoadvertising companies still pretending (and pushing the idea) that ads work
- dantyti 2y agotbf, they still work, but my educated guess would be that the overall ROI distribution looks similar to the gambling/adult industries: a minority of the population bringing in an outsized return due to peculiarities in how their brains work
- oops 2y agoAuto industry with the creation of suburbs and jaywalking laws.
- jraby3 2y agoBanana industry basically had America destroying democracies in S America so we could access their resources. United Fruit. Great book about it The Fish that Ate the Whale. https://www.amazon.com/Fish-That-Ate-Whale-Americas/dp/1250033314 https://www.amazon.com/Fish-That-Ate-Whale-Americas/dp/12500...
- whatshisface 2y agoSo the company could access their resources. No Americans, save for retiring government appointees, got so much as a banana.
- exe34 2y agothe companies were owned by shareholders who profited handsomely.
- ethbr1 2y agoTechnically all Americans got bananas, because the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) and the Standard Fruit Company (now Dole) subverted nations to ensure uninterrupted supply.
- red-iron-pine 2y agoand, like, bananas are cheap as hell. pretty common, even in Canada. imagine if they were as rare as dragonfruit or durian
- jraby3 2y agoAt the time the book takes place in they were very rare. Most Americans had never eaten or seen a banana.
- pier25 2y agoAI, social media
- icydeadposts 2y agoCognitive dissonance means many here won't agree. Easier to point fingers than do self reflection and neutral critical thinking.
- jaco6 2y agoConsumer software industry
- DarkmSparks 2y agogreen energy industry is far more active than the oil industry now, especially green energy companies owned by oil companies with dry oil fields.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoCrypto.
- rqtwteye 2y agoBig tech and advertising industry.
- swayvil 2y agoNews industry?
- dylan604 2y agoIndustrial ranching/farming
- valval 2y agoWhat makes ranching/farming industrial?
- dylan604 2y agoOwnership, size, practices. For farming, the growing of monoculture crops with heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. For ranching, over populated constrained pens depending hormones and antibiotics to keep the animals “healthy” long enough to get to desired size before slaughter.
- yard2010 2y agoFacebook and instagram industry
- lisper 2y agoCrypto.
- carlmr 2y agoMeat industry. They're pushing "big sugar lied to you" (true), "(saturated) fat good for you!", which is contrary to most evidence we have. Only because sugar is bad for you does not mean fat is good for you. Evidence is rather on the side of complex carbs, high fiber, moderate protein, moderate unsaturated fat and low saturated fat intake.
- dinfinity 2y agoYes, fat is 'good for you'. Without consuming it, you die. But I would say that in general, 'x is good/bad for you' is a harmful oversimplification. Sugar is also not 'bad for you'. It's not that simple. Glucose is important and sometimes extremely beneficial to consume (in any form). As for saturated fat: it's complicated. Correlation != causation. For transfats we have a pretty good idea via which causal mechanism problems arise. For saturated fat we only have correlations. Given how hard nutritional research is and especially how hard it is to draw conclusions from it, I would say it's better to refrain from feigning confidence on substances where the jury really is still out.
- carlmr 2y ago>Yes, fat is 'good for you'. Without consuming it, you die. Right, in small amounts though. You don't need that much. Eat a handful of nuts and you're good. It's like a teaspoon of sugar in your tea won't cause huge issues. Cold drinks with 10 teaspoons in a bottle however are a problem.
- valval 2y agoYou should point out that weak evidence is on the side of those things. Frankly, the number of carbs and fiber you need throughout your life is 0.
- consteval 2y ago> Frankly, the number of carbs and fiber you need throughout your life is 0 Sincerely, what are you talking about? It's been well-known a diet high in fiber lowers your risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Also, no carb diets are largely bullshit. There's plenty of complex carbs with many nutrients. The problem is while "no carb" might be somewhat effective, it's not sustainable for the vast majority of people. That, to me, makes it very close to worthless.
- 11235813213455 2y agoTourism, Airplanes, Flights transport industries
- dboreham 2y agoFacebook industry.
- deely3 2y agoAI insdustry.
- philosopher1234 2y agoThe distorting power of money. And then think: if it can distort our collective understanding of the world, could it distort our government, our elections, etc.? The problem with capitalism is that it destroys democracy. Money distributes to a small group of people who then have overwhelming influence over the government, available information, and so on. We also see that as money flows away from the poor, and the affordability of essential goods like housing, food, and healthcare worsen, those who should gain from democracy rightfully grow to hate it, and vote to destroy it (e.g voting for Trump). We need a new economics.
- dartos 2y agoIdk if capitalism is solely to blame. Is not like we’ve seen less corruption on the other end of the spectrum. Many European countries are also capitalist, but don’t seem (at least from the outside) to have the same rampant corporate influence on government as the US. Granted they are more open to socialist policy, most of which seem like good ideas. We have some companies in the US that have been around for nearly as long as the country itself. These companies pre-dated regulation and had a hand in building it. As a legislator, you’d want input from experts before writing laws. IMO that’s why corporate involvement in politics is so normal in the US. I’m not sure if that the case for many European countries. It’d be great to find a new economic axis that can break us out of the planned economy/radical free market axis.
- swed420 2y ago> It’d be great to find a new economic axis that can break us out of the planned economy/radical free market axis. Here's one start: https://jacobin.com/2019/03/sam-gindin-socialist-planning-models https://jacobin.com/2019/03/sam-gindin-socialist-planning-mo...
- dartos 2y agoThat seems to be more a guide on how to sell socialism rather than providing another economic axis. Did I miss something?
- fsagx 2y ago(2016)
- Mistletoe 2y agoThey are probably both bad in excess, since that’s how calories work.
- cynicalpeace 2y agoExcept animal fat is not ultra processed. 200 calories of Oreos is simply not the same as 200 calories of red meat. Anything in excess is bad, though, agreed.
- iamwpj 2y agoIt can still be simple -- look at it like this: 200 calories of Oreos provides very little additional benefits, while 200 calories of meat provides more additional benefits for your diet. It doesn't matter as much when comparing Oreos to meat, but it really matters when you're comparing orange juice to soda. The processing might play a factor, but really you're looking for calories containing nutrients that keep you alive and healthy -- processing level is pretty subjective.
- devoutsalsa 2y ago~3500 calories of orange juice and ~3500 calories of soda will both add 1 pound of mass I to your body.
- multiplegeorges 2y agoYeah, because they are both intensely sugary. 3500 calories of lean meat won't.
- cynicalpeace 2y agoI would say OJ and soda should both be avoided. I compared Oreos to red meat because two medical students argued with me that Oreos, which are vegan, were equivalent or even better than red meat. They believed this because the medical establishment had gone full tilt against red meat for the past 50 years. And of course they used their authority on the subject as an excuse for believing something insane.
- javaunsafe2019 2y agoHold your horses, saturated fat is still no good …
- bun_terminator 2y agoThere are people who disagree with that idea
- lr4444lr 2y ago... in excess. Like sugar.
- kmoser 2y agoAs a kid I had a hand-me-down World Book Encyclopedia that was published in the late 1950s and I clearly remember the entry for "Sugar" starting with something very similar to, "Not only does sugar taste good, but it's good for you!" (I tried showing it to my parents in the hopes of them allowing more sugary desserts, but fortunately they weren't buying it.) I came to find out decades later that many of the entries in the World Book Encyclopedia were written by industry.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoAnd people still can't hold two things in their head: Saturated fat and added sugar are both bad. Two things can be bad!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thih9 2y agoAlso they can be fine in moderation. Similarly, if you find a zero added sugar low saturated fats treat and eat too much of that, then you can still run into problems. It seems more productive to me to not classify food as “bad” but to focus on balanced diets, including sugars and fats, in healthier proportions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoOf course. They aren't poison- eating one added sugar or saturated fat won't kill you. It's if you make it a habit.
- thih9 2y agoThat’s my point. Instead of calling it “bad” it would be more accurate to call it something else; “occasional”, “treat”, etc.
- atmavatar 2y agoThe hard part is that the food industry in the US has seen fit to add sugar to everything. Sometimes it seems like the only way to avoid overeating sugar is to make everything from scratch, which is both time and (often times) financially inefficient.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI disagree. It takes me 30 mins to do a week of homemade lunches and dinner mostly cooks itself after a few mins of prep.
- submeta 2y ago„Manufacturing consent“, as Noam Chomsky has described it with regards to media. How many areas can you think of where the public is misled. „Yeah, sugar is not to blame.“ or „Smoking does not cause cancer.“ or „You need to eat meat for good health.“ These opininons are pushed by powerful media conglomerates. But not only health-wise: Think Ukraine war, Gaza (portraying them constantly as aggressors, the other side as defenders), environment (still lots of people deny environmental changes), harmfulness of weapons in the US, and so much more.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoConflating propaganda from think-tanks, and PR from think-tanks is disastrous for our oligarch... I mean democracy.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoI had the good fortune that the people the government sent to my school to teach such nonsense were the unhealthiest people I had ever seen in my life up to that point. A good priming for a 7 year old into distrusting the government and the start of a resolve to a general rule of thumb that the people telling me how to be healthy should at least appear healthy themselves.
- rqtwteye 2y agoI had a similar thought when I did my yearly checkup at Kaiser some years ago. The doctor what interviewed me looked like hell. I thought for them any health advice they are giving is just a theoretical concept that they clearly don’t live by.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoI’m curious why does your ire land with the government, instead of landing with the sugar companies that took over the government? Do you view it as a failed promise that they would represent you and that that was something that should be expected given history? Is it a moral failing of the government person? I suppose the confusing thing to me is that people who rail about the government, are simply complaining about the power of companies to control it.
- luckylion 2y ago> the sugar companies that took over the government If those sugar companies now _are_ the government (after they've taken it over, as you say), the question becomes: do you like those sugar companies? Do you trust them?
- adsfjkalskdf 2y agoWhen there's a revolving door between the two, there's not really much of a difference. It's simply a distrust and distaste for the American elites (public and private). There are some elites that are self sacrificial and view other Americans as countrymen and not units to extract from but they are very few. As somebody who rails about the government, it's fundamentally an elite problem. You can propose any system you want, but if those running it are rotten it's not going to work.
- vishnugupta 2y ago[2016]
- kwar13 2y agoRemember kids, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and any sugary cereal is good for you as long as it's low fat!
- osigurdson 2y agoLoved by kids and mom's too! I probably watched 1000 commercials that said that.
- paulpauper 2y agoBut national sugar consumption has fallen since the early 2000s despite rising rates of obesity https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sugar-1.png https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Su... I think it has more to do with 'too many calories' than blaming sugar.
- bluedino 2y agoWe had pop tarts and cereals and carnation instant breakfast in the 70's and 80's and kids weren't fat. Not to mention fruit roll ups and koolaid and...
- ethbr1 2y agoDoes "sugar" include high fructose corn syrup? Because a lot of US sweetener consumption has moved away from sugar to corn, because subsidies.
- valval 2y agoFor a fun and eye-opening experiment, you can try eating less than 20% of your daily calories from carbs. For, say, a month. For added fun, you can try to eat “too many calories” as well. After, you can report to me how successful you were in gaining weight.
- rendaw 2y agoThis is absolutely a smoking gun, but I still don't understand exactly how it works. So TLDR the sugar industry paid for (1?) literature review paper that said that existing papers reporting risks of sugar were flawed. But what I hear is that _until recently_ sugar research has been put on the backburner, and only recently are people starting to re-examine the links between sugar and heart health. How are these two related? Did the one paper really put people off researching it for 50 years?
- zahlman 2y agoTalking about fat seems to have been more attractive because it's more "obvious" (see also: how long we were stuck on wrong ideas about dietary cholesterol, and still seem to be about sodium). Also because there's more chemical variety in fats to argue about. You can have complete fats vs. fatty acids separated from a triglyceride backbone; you can have saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids; and each point of "unsaturation" (where there is a double bond between carbons in the "backbone" of the molecule) allows for cis/trans isomerism. With sugar you basically only have glucose and fructose, and chains thereof, to think about; and that also covers starches automatically.
- addicted 2y ago[2016] Yeah, sugar isn’t good for you. It’s a lot of concentrated calories. And possibly has some other issues as well. Probably stay well below the guidelines. An occasional sweet treat isn’t gonna kill you but don’t go guzzling down coke instead of water. Lots of fats aren’t good for you either. Especially the saturated kind. PS: Is there a concerted pro fat effort going on HN right now? We’ve had 1 opinion piece by a non scientist journalist paid by industry to pretend saturated fat is good for you against all evidence so far, and now we have a 2016 article being pushed up to the top defending fats without being marked as such, within hours.
- sokka_h2otribe 2y agoI think if someone finds low fats good for them, then there isn't much reason to shout it from the mountaintops If someone finds high fats good for themselves, then they might feel lied to and want to shout it. That may be reason for what youre observing.
- jackschultz 2y agoHere's the other thread for reference[0], and yeah, something might be going on. The referenced one from yesterday is by Nina Teicholz who is meat industry paid to confuse people like us. If you read the other post, at least watch this about the author [1]. If you read that post, watch that video. So many cases in human history are where one thing is believed, people and studies come and show that it's false, and then it takes a really long time for culture to come around to it. Earth being round, tobacco, climate change among others. Based on what the non-industry funded science shows, saturated fat being considered any bit healthy is in the long stage of culture taking a long time to accept what the science is saying. And it's not helped by studies with industry funding that know how to skirt the edges. Many places to choose from, but here's one from Dr. Barnard talking about sugar vs saturated fats [2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41957637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41957637 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkqWdY5_2-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkqWdY5_2-8 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xeHDqBB6X0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xeHDqBB6X0
- paulpauper 2y agoIt’s a lot of concentrated calories. It's not that dense though. Fat is 2.25x as calorie dense as sugar. Many are surprised to learn that peanuts, fatty meats, oils, butters, and granolas have more calories per gram compared to Skittles. The only way to avoid overeating fat is to make the portions sizes absurdly small. There is often a shock at learning that only a tablespoon of peanut butter, which is a miniscule amount of food, is 100 calories. It's trivially easy to adds hundreds of calories with butters and other fats.
- OptionOfT 2y agoI come from a generation greatly impacted by this. Fat was bad. We got reduced fat milk, everything was fat removed stuff. We at margarine. But the breakfast cereals were laden with sugar. To this day this trend continues. I saw a box of cookies at Fry's the other day. Reduced fat! But same calories as the non-reduced fat box, just less fat and more sugar.
- EasyMark 2y agoIthink the problem here is eating Oreos at all, normal or low fat, it’s garbage food.
- consteval 2y agoPeople will have tasty snacks no matter what. You won't be able to convince everyone to just not eat "garbage food".
- senko 2y agoMy rule of thumb for “reduced X” or “no Y” labels is to assume the (food) product’s got loads of everything else, and that heuristic rarely lets me down.
- opengears 2y agoI feel like we are in a point of time where science is enshittified so much, it will be almost impossible to come back to a reasonable and sustainable interaction with the world and ecosystem around us.
- mchanson 2y agoThis is just doomerism and painting with a planet wide brush. IMHO it's not so simple. There has been much laudable and scientific progress in the past 50 years. Higgs Boston discovery and mRNA vaccines being two that come to mind. And examples of progress that science helped start and then international and national institutions brought to the masses: Smallpox eradication, HIV treatment, lower childhood mortality, etc.
- paulpauper 2y agoSugar is often blamed for the obesity epidemic in America. But the data--anecdotal and clinical--shows that high-fat diets do not perform better compared to low-fat diets for weight loss.
- slipperybeluga 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- osigurdson 2y agoIn general, it is wise not to dismiss everything as a conspiracy theory. Flat earth and moon landing conspiracies are not the same as those that involve corrupting a small number of individuals for massive gain.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gklitz 2y agoInterestingly the push to reduce fat, which led to increased sugar coincide with the onset of the obesity epidemic. But of-cause correlation isn’t causation.
- nazgulnarsil 2y agoNutrition researcher here. The combination of free acids and free sugars seems to have a synergistically terrible effect on metabolism. The man who discovered diabetes tried to warn about this. The bottom line is you don't want processed carbs or processed fats. They aren't in a form that is much available in the environment, even supposed similar items like pure honey or cream don't show the same effects. Eat starches, fruit, and natural fats (animal, fish, nuts).
- zahlman 2y agoMy understanding is that the long glucose chains in starches are still more readily broken down by the human body than individual glucose-fructose bonds in sugar. I've heard conflicting stories about fructose by itself, too (maybe worse than glucose, maybe not; maybe a positive for satiety but depending on how it's timed etc.)
- nazgulnarsil 2y agofrozen, thawed and reheated rice and potatoes triples their resistant starch content, drastically increasing their satiety.
- alecco 2y agoPlease do a post on this. I think the food industry is causing this fat vs. sugar debate to confuse people.
- naming_the_user 2y agoMost dietary advice IMO is bloody obvious. If you eat a load of sugar in one sitting you will feel sick, lethargic, have a sugar high or some combination. It also literally _feels_ bad for your teeth. Having a coke or a cookie every now and then is fine but constantly eating it just feels off. Eating lean chicken with a small amount of butter or oil feels obviously healthy. Most of the other gaps are just things like OK, you're working 50 hours a week to optimise your bank account, just wind that back a tiny bit and spend 5 hours on your personal health, stop being a mug and take it seriously. It's like when people ask "how do you have time to...". You turn off the TV and Instagram for a bit (no problem with using them, just maybe not for 2-3 hours a day) and pick up that book you wanted to read or whatever. Job done. It's both trivially easy and very hard if you make it a core aspect of your personality that you are some sort of helpless plebian.