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Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to

Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.

com2kid 2y ago
> Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Emphasis on refined sugar. Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it. Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
cogman10 2y ago
While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it. Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion. That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.
- sabbaticaldev 2y ago
  > That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic there is no way to separate the discussion, doing so it’s just to avoid solving the issue that is to regulate refined sugar
- johnyzee 2y ago
  Refined sugar is extremely concentrated compared to the natural sources. You need like 50 kilos of sugar cane to produce one kilo of refined sugar, and through multiple steps of heavy industrial processes. You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization. In the natural environment, said other ingredients would be the angry swarm of bees?
  - hackingonempty 2y ago
    Sugar is literally evaporated sugar cane juice. You need a lot of cane to make a little sugar because water is heavy. "refinining" is just separating out the molasses to make it white and so the molasses can be sold separately. You only need "heavy industrial processes" to make it profitably at scale.
    - johnyzee 2y ago
      The refined sugar you buy in the store ('table sugar') is clarified with phosphoric acid and bleached using a number of other chemicals. In addition to this, it goes though a number of other industrial processing steps that you would not be able to perform at home. Hence, it is 'highly processed'.
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal. Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either. > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate > Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, Alcohol is a literal poison that you should not consume at all. Sugar is a basic dietary requirement. Of course, all nutrients should be consumed in moderation, but that's not unique to sugar in any way.
- tredre3 2y ago
  > Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either. The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function. > The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary? Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
    - bityard 2y ago
      > Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary? You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees? > It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet. You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere hours after eating.
standardUser 2y ago
If you don't eat sugar directly your body will produce it. And unless you plan on eating no fruits or vegetables I can't imagine a diet devoid of all sugar.
- bityard 2y ago
  Maybe you can't imagine it, but lots of people do it all the same.
  - standardUser 2y ago
    What you are referring to would be something akin to a hyper-strict keto diet, which I think nearly all medical professionals would consider ill-advised if not outright dangerous.
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  There is a lot of stuff I can't eat because the amount of added sugar is disgusting.
  - standardUser 2y ago
    Yeah, but even a cup of celery contains a gram of sugar. Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. You could never eat any fruits or vegetables! But lots of people avoid excess sugar, me included.
    - syntaxless 2y ago
      > Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. This is relatively easy for anyone on a carnivore diet.
      - Gibbon1 2y ago
        It's actually not hard to eat a diet that doesn't have a lot of fructose. More difficult to avoid heavily processed carbohydrates that are absorbed too quickly.
zby 2y ago
Actually carbs are necessary and carbs are sugars. In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. Personally I am not sure I am buying the narrative about fructose - but it is plausible that it might be bad - but glucose you'll have in your blood even if you don't eat any sugar - because your own body produces it if you don't get it from the food directly. I wonder why nobody has started sweetening stuff with glucose as a 'healthy sweetener'. It is maybe 3 times more expensive than normal sugar - but I guess this is mostly because it is not a common product - cane sugar in Poland is of the same price - and the impact on the price of the end product would be marginal.
- syntaxless 2y ago
  > In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. What is “long?” There are people living years on no carbs at all.
  - shafyy 2y ago
    Who is living years without any carbs?
    - bityard 2y ago
      The Inuit, for starters. Oh, and me.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        So far as I can tell, Inuit get about 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, because of all the glycogen from the raw meat they consume. But I am only looking at summaries outside a bunch of paywalls, so I can't confirm the quotes on the wikipedia page.
    - syntaxless 2y ago
      People on zero carb and carnivore diets.
Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
Almost correct, except sugar consumption has been declining for decades. The peak was prior to 2000 IIRC
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Yeah there used to be a children’s breakfast cereal called Super Sugar Crisp and the cartoon character promoting it in commercials was named Sugar Bear. Foods in the ‘70s and ‘80s were loaded with sugar.
  - owlninja 2y ago
    Pretty sure this still exists and in the US it is called "Golden Crisp". I personally always loved it :)
watwut 2y ago
That is just eating disorder kind of thinking. Stop spreading it. You can eat sugar, it wont harm you. Pretty much anything harms you in super large quantities. Sacharids are good for you in general, just like faits, protein and everything else.

com2kid 2y ago

> Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Emphasis on refined sugar. Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it. Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.

cogman10 2y ago

While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it. Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion. That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.

sabbaticaldev 2y ago
> That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic there is no way to separate the discussion, doing so it’s just to avoid solving the issue that is to regulate refined sugar
johnyzee 2y ago
Refined sugar is extremely concentrated compared to the natural sources. You need like 50 kilos of sugar cane to produce one kilo of refined sugar, and through multiple steps of heavy industrial processes. You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization. In the natural environment, said other ingredients would be the angry swarm of bees?
- hackingonempty 2y ago
  Sugar is literally evaporated sugar cane juice. You need a lot of cane to make a little sugar because water is heavy. "refinining" is just separating out the molasses to make it white and so the molasses can be sold separately. You only need "heavy industrial processes" to make it profitably at scale.
  - johnyzee 2y ago
    The refined sugar you buy in the store ('table sugar') is clarified with phosphoric acid and bleached using a number of other chemicals. In addition to this, it goes though a number of other industrial processing steps that you would not be able to perform at home. Hence, it is 'highly processed'.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal. Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either. > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate > Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, Alcohol is a literal poison that you should not consume at all. Sugar is a basic dietary requirement. Of course, all nutrients should be consumed in moderation, but that's not unique to sugar in any way.

tredre3 2y ago
> Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either. The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function. > The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary? Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
  - bityard 2y ago
    > Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary? You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees? > It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet. You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere hours after eating.

standardUser 2y ago

If you don't eat sugar directly your body will produce it. And unless you plan on eating no fruits or vegetables I can't imagine a diet devoid of all sugar.

bityard 2y ago
Maybe you can't imagine it, but lots of people do it all the same.
- standardUser 2y ago
  What you are referring to would be something akin to a hyper-strict keto diet, which I think nearly all medical professionals would consider ill-advised if not outright dangerous.
Gibbon1 2y ago
There is a lot of stuff I can't eat because the amount of added sugar is disgusting.
- standardUser 2y ago
  Yeah, but even a cup of celery contains a gram of sugar. Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. You could never eat any fruits or vegetables! But lots of people avoid excess sugar, me included.
  - syntaxless 2y ago
    > Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. This is relatively easy for anyone on a carnivore diet.
    - Gibbon1 2y ago
      It's actually not hard to eat a diet that doesn't have a lot of fructose. More difficult to avoid heavily processed carbohydrates that are absorbed too quickly.

zby 2y ago

Actually carbs are necessary and carbs are sugars. In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. Personally I am not sure I am buying the narrative about fructose - but it is plausible that it might be bad - but glucose you'll have in your blood even if you don't eat any sugar - because your own body produces it if you don't get it from the food directly. I wonder why nobody has started sweetening stuff with glucose as a 'healthy sweetener'. It is maybe 3 times more expensive than normal sugar - but I guess this is mostly because it is not a common product - cane sugar in Poland is of the same price - and the impact on the price of the end product would be marginal.

syntaxless 2y ago
> In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. What is “long?” There are people living years on no carbs at all.
- shafyy 2y ago
  Who is living years without any carbs?
  - bityard 2y ago
    The Inuit, for starters. Oh, and me.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      So far as I can tell, Inuit get about 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, because of all the glycogen from the raw meat they consume. But I am only looking at summaries outside a bunch of paywalls, so I can't confirm the quotes on the wikipedia page.
  - syntaxless 2y ago
    People on zero carb and carnivore diets.

Wolfenstein98k 2y ago

Almost correct, except sugar consumption has been declining for decades. The peak was prior to 2000 IIRC

SoftTalker 2y ago
Yeah there used to be a children’s breakfast cereal called Super Sugar Crisp and the cartoon character promoting it in commercials was named Sugar Bear. Foods in the ‘70s and ‘80s were loaded with sugar.
- owlninja 2y ago
  Pretty sure this still exists and in the US it is called "Golden Crisp". I personally always loved it :)

watwut 2y ago

That is just eating disorder kind of thinking. Stop spreading it. You can eat sugar, it wont harm you. Pretty much anything harms you in super large quantities. Sacharids are good for you in general, just like faits, protein and everything else.