9 ms·

Study links sugar-filled drinks to millions of heart disease and diabetes cases

107 points by hochmartinez 2y ago

epicureanideal 2y ago
IMO a substantial (not 100%) root cause of all this is that many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible. This leads to all kinds of medical issues down the road, which then is handled by emergency medical services, or very severe health problems that are very difficult to treat.
- jayd16 2y ago
  You don't need to be busy to guzzle down soda, Gatorade, sweet tea, etc. Its just pervasive.
- lithocarpus 2y ago
  I imagine this is a substantial cause. And, sugar is also a physical addiction, and many children are given it in varying degrees of excessive amounts from childhood even if they're not particularly subjected to stress. There is a spectrum of kinds of sugars but I imagine they could be weighted by something like glycemic index for measuring the degree of impact.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Perhaps, and we should continue to work on that, but exploitative and exhausting labor has been an issue for ten millenia or so at least. We may well not see it fixed in our lives. But the particular failings of the modern western diet are relatively new and might still be remedied or reversed without waiting for the whole labor and exploitation issue to be sorted.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The difference is that the previous methods of exhausting labor provided physical exercise as a side effect. As brutal as that was on the body, it did have some health benefits. In contrast to modern American/Asian work culture, which is high stress and sedentary.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      While there exists a lot of sedentary work in the US and that has consequences, there's still a great deal of physical work done in the US as well, and a very high number of non-working people with plenty of time for personal exercise if they wanted to pursue it. Yet the profound wellness problems we're talking about apply to all of those groups.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        The hollowing out of American agriculture and manufacturing employment (sequentially) was a major shift, that moved those employees to sedentary jobs. Optional exercise (after work) is not the same this as mandatory exercise (for work).
    - lithocarpus 2y ago
      There's some truth there, but no matter how active one is, one can still out-eat the exercise with sugar.
    - djaouen 2y ago
      > which is high stress and sedentary Soon, we might even reach low stress and not back-breaking! *Gasp*!
      - bobmcnamara 2y ago
        Some of us grew up with childhood friends who cleaned the meat plants at night. A practice that continues to this day. You can always tell - they stink of bleach in the morning.
    - 2y ago
- cj 2y ago
  I think this was also true 50 years ago. I’m unconvinced that we’re working harder today compared to the past. I do agree society overall is higher stress mainly due to the internet and constant attention grabbing in all directions.
  - abnercoimbre 2y ago
    Couple that with lack of in-person communities. They are ephemeral at best now.
  - epicureanideal 2y ago
    It may not be physically as hard but I think the work is more precarious, and the cost of living is much higher for basics like housing, so the stress may be higher.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > but I think the work is more precarious It was a lot easier to fire people in those days. > the cost of living is much higher for basics like housing Around Seattle there are still a number of older homes. They are tiny and cheaply built compared to modern homes.
      - llm_trw 2y ago
        50 years ago mean 1975, not 1935. It was a lot harder to fire people then.
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    The repetitiveness of modern labor has moved full body physical labour to single point of failure on your body tasks with the likelier end result being you will end up crippled in some way (and having to just work with it) or have other overuse injuries which then leads to constant chronic pain.
- hnpolicestate 2y ago
  "toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible." I've basically succumb to everything you list to survive working in a maddeningly dysfunctional school. And it's precisely "function as long as possible ". I have to disassociate somehow from the incompetence and corruption around me. Ativan and diet Coke help. I assume billions globally are doing the same thing to cope. The best metaphor I've come up with is that it feels like I play for a sub 60 win baseball team.
  - black_13 2y ago
    [dead]
- ajross 2y ago
  > many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort That seems spun. I don't think any of that is substantiated in any kind of rigorous way. Median americans today are wealthier than any population in human history, are working more than their compatriots elsewhere in the world but less than their parents, have more leisure time, travel more, etc... There's lots of things to complaint about, and there always will be. But really this kind of "Everything is Awful" rhetoric is just vibes. Yes, life sucks. It sucked worse for your ancestors.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > Yes, life sucks. It sucked worse for your ancestors. Most of the time you are right, but the Baby Boomers are a pretty big outlier in this regard There is no question that the average Baby Boomer has had it much better than their children and grandchildren have
    - ajross 2y ago
      Not numerically. Median real income today is more than twice what it was in the 60's. FWIW: there's a... sociological problem with arguments framed around that. When you measure US citizen wealth in the 1960's it looks unimpressive[1]. When you picture a "baby boomer", you see a working class family with no debt behind a white picket fence in a beautiful new subdivision living a great life on just the one income. And those families existed! So what gives? You're looking at a family headed by a working class white man. Not everyone could get those "working class" jobs that supported a family in the suburbs. There was plenty of poverty in the 60's, it was just hidden along with the single moms and minority communities we didn't record. Things today are a lot more even, which means that the "white picket fence" demographic perceives things going in the opposite direction from what's actually happening. [1] Relative to today, anyway. The US in the 60's was obviously an extremely wealthy country!
      - bluefirebrand 2y ago
        > Not numerically. Median real income today is more than twice what it was in the 60's The 60s is not really relevant to any discussion about Baby Boomers, who would have been teens at the oldest in the 60s Compare the years they were in their prime
- pengaru 2y ago
  What matters is that the most conveniently accessible food isn't the damn dear worst thing you should be regularly eating large quantities of. Our food environment is the opposite of that. The stress only exacerbates the impulsive/comfort eating side of things, but it wouldn't be such a big deal if everyone were om nomming tasty organic carrots all day every day. Orange skin, sure, but not obesity and heart disease.
- JackYoustra 2y ago
  ...or it's just the default choice and people choose the default choice when they're thinking of other things?
- CyberDildonics 2y ago
  These are the same kind of vague, hand wavy distractions that would have been used to excuse or muddy the waters around tobacco 30 years ago. "Probably just stress" is not an excuse that explains the systemic health problems that come from excess sugar.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Has bigSugar been tweaking the formula of the additives used to make the product more addicting? Let’s not forget how heinous bigTobacco behaved. Refining corn into high fructose corn syrup still isn’t the same to me, but their lobbying campaigning is the same. If it comes out that they have knowledge of adverse effects of their product and still pushed that hard, then they should be dealt with in the harshest of punishment. Otherwise, comparison to bigTobacco isn’t quite right
    - portaouflop 2y ago
      Of course they have knowledge of the adverse effects of sugar and are lobbying to prevent any legislation trying to curtail putting it into literally everything
    - CyberDildonics 2y ago
      Additives have nothing to do with it and are a complete distraction. Sugar has detrimental health effects and excessive sugar has more extreme health effects. The important thing now is that this is accepted and understood instead of people casting doubt like "maybe it's just stress".
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Bone studies of American colonists showed they regularly overloaded their bones, and died young.
- taeric 2y ago
  I confess I'm not clear what you are looking for the root cause of? I would be interested in seeing the costs of, for example, emergency medical services laid out by demographics. My understanding was that emergency services are very localized to where they are used. With perverse incentives hitting their uses. That said, in specific context of this article, this comment reads as a deflection away from the high levels of sugar being consumed in the US. Curious to hear why you'd think we are not high on those numbers.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Psychologization of disease is often an indicator of the fact that we don't fully understand the cause-and-effect yet. Note how "stress" has taken approximately the same explanatory role that "sin" used to have two or three centuries ago.
- dangus 2y ago
  What does this have to do with sugary drinks though? It’s very easy to isolate out people who drink sugary drinks to people who don’t who are in the same general environment with similar life pressures. Also, you are getting kind of loose with your definition of negative substances. Coffee is on your list despite being generally known to be neutral to good for you: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/top-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/top-evidence-based-heal...
- the_cat_kittles 2y ago
  japanese diet is low on sugar, so your point is wrong
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    They have the same problems of overwork and stress as the US though- plus adding in western diet getting more and more popular. Looking at numbers from 2021 Japan had about half the rate of diabetes compared to the US: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/diabetes-rates-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/diabetes-rates-by-countr...
- from-nibly 2y ago
  Keep it up, how else are nurses going to have a job?
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  There's always decent paying jobs for more beauracratized elements that require relatively little effort and pay at least enough to live off of! People enjoy working hard, and with a college degree there is often no need to work hard if you don't want to.
- snarf21 2y ago
  It has more to do with the food industrial complex in the US. A lot of the "sugar" in US foods is corn syrup, which has been subsidized ~$48B in the last 25 years. Most low fat foods are just replaced with double the sugar to make them more palatable. Although it as gotten slightly better, the food pyramid is somehow still the responsibility of the USDA; whose job it is to great food surplus. It should always been part of HHS because of the massive cost consequences, especially by the time people are on Medicare.
  - bobmcnamara 2y ago
    I remember this! It was Nixon!
- TuringNYC 2y ago
  >> IMO a substantial (not 100%) root cause of all this is that many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible. I'm sure there are many truths and probably different realities for different cohorts of individuals. I will share a personal story which might seem almost shocking for GenZ+ as they enter the workforce: - My dad had a normal degree from a normal university in Accounting - My had had a normal 9-5 job. No family connection/etc, he was an immigrant - My dad was able to afford a home for us -- in the city -- on his salary alone (not a dual income). The homeprice:annualsalary ratio was 2:1. If he God-forbid lost his salary both my mom and dad would have tried to look for a job to help finances, most normal jobs would cover the mortgage/taxes Not to say there werent laborers in the 1970s, etc, but this was a very common scenario. It allowed you to work to meet needs and spend the rest of your time with family. You didnt have 5 espressos to try and crank more pull-requests at night after the kids fall asleep.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    People always quote the 1950s to 80s as some golden age, and surely it was for some, not all who lived it, like your father, but it was due to the very specific circumstances of World War 2 and how only the US was not destroyed while much of Europe and Asia was. We were able to lend a lot of money to these countries and rise our standard of living significantly, but that is the exception that proves the rule. Recency bias especially is prevalent for this sort of thinking. Unless you want another world war, that time period is simply irreplicable.
    - TuringNYC 2y ago
      You raise good points, and I certainly do not hope for another world war. I do hope a different thing though -- normal interest rates (normal being something different than what we've seen in the past 30yrs). One thing you'll see in the mid-90s and beyond is artificially lowered rates, which cheapen money. Low rates boost asset prices, so they are great for asset owners (and there are very few asset owners in the US on a % basis.) This doest really help normal people, because while borrowing becomes cheaper, prices go up commensurately. Debt:income ratios inflate. Costs inflate overall. Overall it hurts normal people because you end up with the same outcome but more leverage and hence more risk. Worse, because rates are low, income-seekers (e.g., insurance companies, foundations) steer away from traditional means of income (bonds) towards buying up homes, infra, assets, as they "reach for yield". Again, this just worsens the problem for everyone. With rates lowered and debt volumes ballooning, we've given a one-time boost to asset owners and in the process, spread stress and risk to all working class individuals.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Don't forget they are working multiple zero hour jobs. I.E. the job is at most part time so you need at least two, but the job also doesn't only not guaranty what days/shift hours you will work next week, it doesn't guarantee you will work any hours at all. Hence it is a zero hour job. Personally I think having more than 10% zero hour jobs should be illegal, as well as having multiple 'part time' positions to take the place of having full time positions.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  What does that have to do with eating more sugar which seems to have a direct causal effect on becoming fatter and getting diabetes? Lots of countries over millennia have worked hard and have been stressed, often much more than us today, yet they were by and large not obese (no pun intended), the only thing that changed in the last century was the rise of processed foods with high amounts of sugar.
Luc 2y ago
Better link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4
rustdeveloper 2y ago
Interesting data for sugar in products scraped from Walmart: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/scraping-walmart https://scrapingfish.com/blog/scraping-walmart
- swatcoder 2y ago
  I was really excited to read this, but it's very shallow and barely presents any data at all. It's main and mostly meaningless conclusion is that there are more skus in the Walmart catalog for sugar-dominated products than for any protein- or fat-dominated ones, and that online reviewers generally tend to leave better reviews for those. Nothing about actual sales volume, promotional actions by Walmart, or monetary or nuyitional share of food consumed (or even purchased), etc -- any of which might say something more impactful.
Someone1234 2y ago
Previous discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42625193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42625193
ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
I stopped eating sugar and carbs completely and it changed my life. No brain fog, more energy, no anxiety, no depression. I cant communicate to people enough how much it improved my life. Nothing else worked, no therapy, no talking through things. It was a biological problem with my diet. I used to think I had ADHD, turns out I just needed to eat healthy. Prime steak and chicken, veggies, some dairy, lots of nuts. That's about it
- oxag3n 2y ago
  Do you mean refined sugars and processed carbs, or carbs in general (i.e. going Keto)?
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
    Full keto
    - NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
      But you eat vegetables?
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Some vegetables are OK on keto IIRC. Leafy greens, asparagus, squash. Avoid the starchy ones.
      - swatcoder 2y ago
        Once started, your body will usually stay in ketosis even with a modest and non-trivial budget of carbs, on the order of maybe 10-20g, excluding fiber. That allows for a wide variety of veggie choices, as well as a some wiggle room for modest servings of nuts, legumes, beans, etc But basically there's no room at all for stuff like breads or rice or potatoes or sweetened drinks except as the finest accents. Never as the centerpiece of a meal. It's a very different way of living and eating, but can feel extremely invigorating and seems to be broadly healthy for most people.
    - 2y ago
ClassyJacket 2y ago
How is this news? At this point isn't this like saying "smoking linked to lung cancer cases"? I'm sure the study itself has merit but I don't get why it's on the front page.
WalterBright 2y ago
When I eat a hamburger bun, it tastes like cake. The amount of sugar added to everything is horrific. Even "healthy" supplements like protein powder are filled with sugar. Sheesh. If I wanted it to be sweet, I could just dump a cup of sugar in it. And no, I don't want artificial sweeteners instead, either.
- taeric 2y ago
  I'm more than a little curious what buns you are eating. :D That or what cake? It has surprised me how hard it has been to find a protein powder that isn't sweetened. Usually by stevia, nowadays. By far the thing with the most sugar added that I was late to give up, is a standard yogurt. Tried making our own vanilla yogurt, once. I don't think we succeeded at making it as sweet as what we went in expecting. Despite an absurd amount of sugar added in.
  - Ancalagon 2y ago
    FYI you can buy raw organic pea protein powder at your local sprouts grocery market. I used to use it religiously because whey would give me stomach problems and all the other pea proteins had stevia in them
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > By far the thing with the most sugar added that I was late to give up, is a standard yogurt. The yogurt Nazi in me feels compelled to point out that standard yogurt has no added sugars, and is offended that someone conflates that with vanilla yogurt. :-) Reminds me of twenty years ago where stores routinely sold yogurt makers. Except they didn't make yogurt. They made frozen yogurt. You needed yogurt as an ingredient. Face palm. Plain yogurt - without gelarin, pectin and sugars - is really awesome food. People should try it! Really easy to make at home as well with an instant pot. And yes. Plain yogurt is sour. It hasn't gone bad.
    - portaouflop 2y ago
      I’m currently visiting the Americas and it’s insane how hard it is to find yogurt without sugar. Just yesterday I bought some by mistake that looked like plain yogurt- upon closer inspection it turned out it had sugar added to it (masquerading as honey but we all know that that’s just sugar in almost all cases)
hedora 2y ago
It’s worth mentioning that artificial sweeteners and ultra-processed foods that are advertised as low-carb/low-sugar are probably worse for you than sugar water. Minimally processed foods that don’t have all the fiber ripped out of them (like sugar and white flour do) seem to be the best bet these days.
xyst 2y ago
The number of companies peddling “0 sugar” drinks but the list of ingredients shows a shit ton of sugar substitutes is wild to me. Have met people that think their “diet” drink is healthy because the stupid label says “zero sugar!!” Thus this gives them a reason to consume it many times in the day. Yet a glance at the ingredients list shows synthetic sugar or “sugar substitute”.
- hedora 2y ago
  The worst offenders are the “organic” ones, which don’t even indicate that the drink has been sweetened. Even if I wasn’t 99% sure that crap was poison, I find it cloyingly sweet in an unbearable way, and can’t imagine voluntarily ingesting it.
bilsbie 2y ago
I always thought it curious that we crave sugar so much yet have zero interest in eating straight sugar.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  Try cycling (the world of). Explain.... On long rides, I drink 500ml of water to 200g of sugar. Actual sugar. My max-best is greater than 400km in 24hrs. No sugar, no go. Monday (tomorrow for me) I have an up-to-125k group ride planned. I added 25g of sugar, to get my body fueled, and ready, to my potatoe-based meal. I try not to bonk (sugar crash), but gummi bears and Coke (ahem! [tm]) are your friends.
m3kw9 2y ago
I can see people that drink a lot of coke type sodas are trying to find a different study to dispute it.
deactivatedexp 2y ago
lol insurance beverage rich people games are funny

107 points by hochmartinez 2y ago

IMO a substantial (not 100%) root cause of all this is that many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible. This leads to all kinds of medical issues down the road, which then is handled by emergency medical services, or very severe health problems that are very difficult to treat.

jayd16 2y ago
You don't need to be busy to guzzle down soda, Gatorade, sweet tea, etc. Its just pervasive.
lithocarpus 2y ago
I imagine this is a substantial cause. And, sugar is also a physical addiction, and many children are given it in varying degrees of excessive amounts from childhood even if they're not particularly subjected to stress. There is a spectrum of kinds of sugars but I imagine they could be weighted by something like glycemic index for measuring the degree of impact.
swatcoder 2y ago
Perhaps, and we should continue to work on that, but exploitative and exhausting labor has been an issue for ten millenia or so at least. We may well not see it fixed in our lives. But the particular failings of the modern western diet are relatively new and might still be remedied or reversed without waiting for the whole labor and exploitation issue to be sorted.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The difference is that the previous methods of exhausting labor provided physical exercise as a side effect. As brutal as that was on the body, it did have some health benefits. In contrast to modern American/Asian work culture, which is high stress and sedentary.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    While there exists a lot of sedentary work in the US and that has consequences, there's still a great deal of physical work done in the US as well, and a very high number of non-working people with plenty of time for personal exercise if they wanted to pursue it. Yet the profound wellness problems we're talking about apply to all of those groups.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      The hollowing out of American agriculture and manufacturing employment (sequentially) was a major shift, that moved those employees to sedentary jobs. Optional exercise (after work) is not the same this as mandatory exercise (for work).
  - lithocarpus 2y ago
    There's some truth there, but no matter how active one is, one can still out-eat the exercise with sugar.
  - djaouen 2y ago
    > which is high stress and sedentary Soon, we might even reach low stress and not back-breaking! *Gasp*!
    - bobmcnamara 2y ago
      Some of us grew up with childhood friends who cleaned the meat plants at night. A practice that continues to this day. You can always tell - they stink of bleach in the morning.
  - 2y ago
cj 2y ago
I think this was also true 50 years ago. I’m unconvinced that we’re working harder today compared to the past. I do agree society overall is higher stress mainly due to the internet and constant attention grabbing in all directions.
- abnercoimbre 2y ago
  Couple that with lack of in-person communities. They are ephemeral at best now.
- epicureanideal 2y ago
  It may not be physically as hard but I think the work is more precarious, and the cost of living is much higher for basics like housing, so the stress may be higher.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > but I think the work is more precarious It was a lot easier to fire people in those days. > the cost of living is much higher for basics like housing Around Seattle there are still a number of older homes. They are tiny and cheaply built compared to modern homes.
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      50 years ago mean 1975, not 1935. It was a lot harder to fire people then.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  The repetitiveness of modern labor has moved full body physical labour to single point of failure on your body tasks with the likelier end result being you will end up crippled in some way (and having to just work with it) or have other overuse injuries which then leads to constant chronic pain.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
"toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible." I've basically succumb to everything you list to survive working in a maddeningly dysfunctional school. And it's precisely "function as long as possible ". I have to disassociate somehow from the incompetence and corruption around me. Ativan and diet Coke help. I assume billions globally are doing the same thing to cope. The best metaphor I've come up with is that it feels like I play for a sub 60 win baseball team.
- black_13 2y ago
  [dead]
ajross 2y ago
> many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort That seems spun. I don't think any of that is substantiated in any kind of rigorous way. Median americans today are wealthier than any population in human history, are working more than their compatriots elsewhere in the world but less than their parents, have more leisure time, travel more, etc... There's lots of things to complaint about, and there always will be. But really this kind of "Everything is Awful" rhetoric is just vibes. Yes, life sucks. It sucked worse for your ancestors.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > Yes, life sucks. It sucked worse for your ancestors. Most of the time you are right, but the Baby Boomers are a pretty big outlier in this regard There is no question that the average Baby Boomer has had it much better than their children and grandchildren have
  - ajross 2y ago
    Not numerically. Median real income today is more than twice what it was in the 60's. FWIW: there's a... sociological problem with arguments framed around that. When you measure US citizen wealth in the 1960's it looks unimpressive[1]. When you picture a "baby boomer", you see a working class family with no debt behind a white picket fence in a beautiful new subdivision living a great life on just the one income. And those families existed! So what gives? You're looking at a family headed by a working class white man. Not everyone could get those "working class" jobs that supported a family in the suburbs. There was plenty of poverty in the 60's, it was just hidden along with the single moms and minority communities we didn't record. Things today are a lot more even, which means that the "white picket fence" demographic perceives things going in the opposite direction from what's actually happening. [1] Relative to today, anyway. The US in the 60's was obviously an extremely wealthy country!
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      > Not numerically. Median real income today is more than twice what it was in the 60's The 60s is not really relevant to any discussion about Baby Boomers, who would have been teens at the oldest in the 60s Compare the years they were in their prime
pengaru 2y ago
What matters is that the most conveniently accessible food isn't the damn dear worst thing you should be regularly eating large quantities of. Our food environment is the opposite of that. The stress only exacerbates the impulsive/comfort eating side of things, but it wouldn't be such a big deal if everyone were om nomming tasty organic carrots all day every day. Orange skin, sure, but not obesity and heart disease.
JackYoustra 2y ago
...or it's just the default choice and people choose the default choice when they're thinking of other things?
CyberDildonics 2y ago
These are the same kind of vague, hand wavy distractions that would have been used to excuse or muddy the waters around tobacco 30 years ago. "Probably just stress" is not an excuse that explains the systemic health problems that come from excess sugar.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Has bigSugar been tweaking the formula of the additives used to make the product more addicting? Let’s not forget how heinous bigTobacco behaved. Refining corn into high fructose corn syrup still isn’t the same to me, but their lobbying campaigning is the same. If it comes out that they have knowledge of adverse effects of their product and still pushed that hard, then they should be dealt with in the harshest of punishment. Otherwise, comparison to bigTobacco isn’t quite right
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    Of course they have knowledge of the adverse effects of sugar and are lobbying to prevent any legislation trying to curtail putting it into literally everything
  - CyberDildonics 2y ago
    Additives have nothing to do with it and are a complete distraction. Sugar has detrimental health effects and excessive sugar has more extreme health effects. The important thing now is that this is accepted and understood instead of people casting doubt like "maybe it's just stress".
WalterBright 2y ago
Bone studies of American colonists showed they regularly overloaded their bones, and died young.
taeric 2y ago
I confess I'm not clear what you are looking for the root cause of? I would be interested in seeing the costs of, for example, emergency medical services laid out by demographics. My understanding was that emergency services are very localized to where they are used. With perverse incentives hitting their uses. That said, in specific context of this article, this comment reads as a deflection away from the high levels of sugar being consumed in the US. Curious to hear why you'd think we are not high on those numbers.
inglor_cz 2y ago
Psychologization of disease is often an indicator of the fact that we don't fully understand the cause-and-effect yet. Note how "stress" has taken approximately the same explanatory role that "sin" used to have two or three centuries ago.
dangus 2y ago
What does this have to do with sugary drinks though? It’s very easy to isolate out people who drink sugary drinks to people who don’t who are in the same general environment with similar life pressures. Also, you are getting kind of loose with your definition of negative substances. Coffee is on your list despite being generally known to be neutral to good for you: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/top-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/top-evidence-based-heal...
the_cat_kittles 2y ago
japanese diet is low on sugar, so your point is wrong
- portaouflop 2y ago
  They have the same problems of overwork and stress as the US though- plus adding in western diet getting more and more popular. Looking at numbers from 2021 Japan had about half the rate of diabetes compared to the US: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/diabetes-rates-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/diabetes-rates-by-countr...
from-nibly 2y ago
Keep it up, how else are nurses going to have a job?
DiscourseFan 2y ago
There's always decent paying jobs for more beauracratized elements that require relatively little effort and pay at least enough to live off of! People enjoy working hard, and with a college degree there is often no need to work hard if you don't want to.
snarf21 2y ago
It has more to do with the food industrial complex in the US. A lot of the "sugar" in US foods is corn syrup, which has been subsidized ~$48B in the last 25 years. Most low fat foods are just replaced with double the sugar to make them more palatable. Although it as gotten slightly better, the food pyramid is somehow still the responsibility of the USDA; whose job it is to great food surplus. It should always been part of HHS because of the massive cost consequences, especially by the time people are on Medicare.
- bobmcnamara 2y ago
  I remember this! It was Nixon!
TuringNYC 2y ago
>> IMO a substantial (not 100%) root cause of all this is that many Americans are highly stressed, in precarious financial positions, with toxic work environments, pushed to work at above 100% effort (meaning, unsustainable) permanently, so they turn to excessive amounts of calories, caffeine, prescription or illegal drugs, to try to continue to function as long as possible. I'm sure there are many truths and probably different realities for different cohorts of individuals. I will share a personal story which might seem almost shocking for GenZ+ as they enter the workforce: - My dad had a normal degree from a normal university in Accounting - My had had a normal 9-5 job. No family connection/etc, he was an immigrant - My dad was able to afford a home for us -- in the city -- on his salary alone (not a dual income). The homeprice:annualsalary ratio was 2:1. If he God-forbid lost his salary both my mom and dad would have tried to look for a job to help finances, most normal jobs would cover the mortgage/taxes Not to say there werent laborers in the 1970s, etc, but this was a very common scenario. It allowed you to work to meet needs and spend the rest of your time with family. You didnt have 5 espressos to try and crank more pull-requests at night after the kids fall asleep.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  People always quote the 1950s to 80s as some golden age, and surely it was for some, not all who lived it, like your father, but it was due to the very specific circumstances of World War 2 and how only the US was not destroyed while much of Europe and Asia was. We were able to lend a lot of money to these countries and rise our standard of living significantly, but that is the exception that proves the rule. Recency bias especially is prevalent for this sort of thinking. Unless you want another world war, that time period is simply irreplicable.
  - TuringNYC 2y ago
    You raise good points, and I certainly do not hope for another world war. I do hope a different thing though -- normal interest rates (normal being something different than what we've seen in the past 30yrs). One thing you'll see in the mid-90s and beyond is artificially lowered rates, which cheapen money. Low rates boost asset prices, so they are great for asset owners (and there are very few asset owners in the US on a % basis.) This doest really help normal people, because while borrowing becomes cheaper, prices go up commensurately. Debt:income ratios inflate. Costs inflate overall. Overall it hurts normal people because you end up with the same outcome but more leverage and hence more risk. Worse, because rates are low, income-seekers (e.g., insurance companies, foundations) steer away from traditional means of income (bonds) towards buying up homes, infra, assets, as they "reach for yield". Again, this just worsens the problem for everyone. With rates lowered and debt volumes ballooning, we've given a one-time boost to asset owners and in the process, spread stress and risk to all working class individuals.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Don't forget they are working multiple zero hour jobs. I.E. the job is at most part time so you need at least two, but the job also doesn't only not guaranty what days/shift hours you will work next week, it doesn't guarantee you will work any hours at all. Hence it is a zero hour job. Personally I think having more than 10% zero hour jobs should be illegal, as well as having multiple 'part time' positions to take the place of having full time positions.
satvikpendem 2y ago
What does that have to do with eating more sugar which seems to have a direct causal effect on becoming fatter and getting diabetes? Lots of countries over millennia have worked hard and have been stressed, often much more than us today, yet they were by and large not obese (no pun intended), the only thing that changed in the last century was the rise of processed foods with high amounts of sugar.

Luc 2y ago

Better link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4

rustdeveloper 2y ago

Interesting data for sugar in products scraped from Walmart: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/scraping-walmart https://scrapingfish.com/blog/scraping-walmart

swatcoder 2y ago
I was really excited to read this, but it's very shallow and barely presents any data at all. It's main and mostly meaningless conclusion is that there are more skus in the Walmart catalog for sugar-dominated products than for any protein- or fat-dominated ones, and that online reviewers generally tend to leave better reviews for those. Nothing about actual sales volume, promotional actions by Walmart, or monetary or nuyitional share of food consumed (or even purchased), etc -- any of which might say something more impactful.

Someone1234 2y ago

Previous discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42625193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42625193

ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago

I stopped eating sugar and carbs completely and it changed my life. No brain fog, more energy, no anxiety, no depression. I cant communicate to people enough how much it improved my life. Nothing else worked, no therapy, no talking through things. It was a biological problem with my diet. I used to think I had ADHD, turns out I just needed to eat healthy. Prime steak and chicken, veggies, some dairy, lots of nuts. That's about it

oxag3n 2y ago
Do you mean refined sugars and processed carbs, or carbs in general (i.e. going Keto)?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
  Full keto
  - NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
    But you eat vegetables?
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Some vegetables are OK on keto IIRC. Leafy greens, asparagus, squash. Avoid the starchy ones.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      Once started, your body will usually stay in ketosis even with a modest and non-trivial budget of carbs, on the order of maybe 10-20g, excluding fiber. That allows for a wide variety of veggie choices, as well as a some wiggle room for modest servings of nuts, legumes, beans, etc But basically there's no room at all for stuff like breads or rice or potatoes or sweetened drinks except as the finest accents. Never as the centerpiece of a meal. It's a very different way of living and eating, but can feel extremely invigorating and seems to be broadly healthy for most people.
  - 2y ago

ClassyJacket 2y ago

How is this news? At this point isn't this like saying "smoking linked to lung cancer cases"? I'm sure the study itself has merit but I don't get why it's on the front page.

WalterBright 2y ago

When I eat a hamburger bun, it tastes like cake. The amount of sugar added to everything is horrific. Even "healthy" supplements like protein powder are filled with sugar. Sheesh. If I wanted it to be sweet, I could just dump a cup of sugar in it. And no, I don't want artificial sweeteners instead, either.

taeric 2y ago
I'm more than a little curious what buns you are eating. :D That or what cake? It has surprised me how hard it has been to find a protein powder that isn't sweetened. Usually by stevia, nowadays. By far the thing with the most sugar added that I was late to give up, is a standard yogurt. Tried making our own vanilla yogurt, once. I don't think we succeeded at making it as sweet as what we went in expecting. Despite an absurd amount of sugar added in.
- Ancalagon 2y ago
  FYI you can buy raw organic pea protein powder at your local sprouts grocery market. I used to use it religiously because whey would give me stomach problems and all the other pea proteins had stevia in them
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > By far the thing with the most sugar added that I was late to give up, is a standard yogurt. The yogurt Nazi in me feels compelled to point out that standard yogurt has no added sugars, and is offended that someone conflates that with vanilla yogurt. :-) Reminds me of twenty years ago where stores routinely sold yogurt makers. Except they didn't make yogurt. They made frozen yogurt. You needed yogurt as an ingredient. Face palm. Plain yogurt - without gelarin, pectin and sugars - is really awesome food. People should try it! Really easy to make at home as well with an instant pot. And yes. Plain yogurt is sour. It hasn't gone bad.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    I’m currently visiting the Americas and it’s insane how hard it is to find yogurt without sugar. Just yesterday I bought some by mistake that looked like plain yogurt- upon closer inspection it turned out it had sugar added to it (masquerading as honey but we all know that that’s just sugar in almost all cases)

hedora 2y ago

It’s worth mentioning that artificial sweeteners and ultra-processed foods that are advertised as low-carb/low-sugar are probably worse for you than sugar water. Minimally processed foods that don’t have all the fiber ripped out of them (like sugar and white flour do) seem to be the best bet these days.

xyst 2y ago

The number of companies peddling “0 sugar” drinks but the list of ingredients shows a shit ton of sugar substitutes is wild to me. Have met people that think their “diet” drink is healthy because the stupid label says “zero sugar!!” Thus this gives them a reason to consume it many times in the day. Yet a glance at the ingredients list shows synthetic sugar or “sugar substitute”.

hedora 2y ago
The worst offenders are the “organic” ones, which don’t even indicate that the drink has been sweetened. Even if I wasn’t 99% sure that crap was poison, I find it cloyingly sweet in an unbearable way, and can’t imagine voluntarily ingesting it.

bilsbie 2y ago

I always thought it curious that we crave sugar so much yet have zero interest in eating straight sugar.

Ylpertnodi 2y ago
Try cycling (the world of). Explain.... On long rides, I drink 500ml of water to 200g of sugar. Actual sugar. My max-best is greater than 400km in 24hrs. No sugar, no go. Monday (tomorrow for me) I have an up-to-125k group ride planned. I added 25g of sugar, to get my body fueled, and ready, to my potatoe-based meal. I try not to bonk (sugar crash), but gummi bears and Coke (ahem! [tm]) are your friends.

m3kw9 2y ago

I can see people that drink a lot of coke type sodas are trying to find a different study to dispute it.

deactivatedexp 2y ago

lol insurance beverage rich people games are funny