The whole phenomenon of sugar and fructose being added to virtually everything is beyond comprehension. There are so many people, fat and slim, saying they don't want to be fat, yet eating foods with added sugar every day. Why not just replace all the added sugar with erythritol, for example? The whole situation with sugar reminds me of the situation with opium in early 19th century China
The reason is that in the 1970s and 80s people started freaking out about fat. Everyone from the FDA to USDA to family doctor was telling people fat was bad.
So food producers started making fat-free versions of everything. Only problem is it tasted like shit. So what did they do? They added sugar. So now you have sugar added to everything from salad dressing to pasta sauce to bread and muffins. The latter probably had some all along but the fat free varieties had a lot more.
Edit: I'll add that saturated fat was considered especially evil, which begat trans-fats substituted everywhere. Turned out they were even worse.
Bottom line, eat minimally processed meats and plants and you can stop worrying about it.
“Dr. Mark Hegsted, professor of nutrition at Harvard University and one of the three nutritionists who helped write the report, said: "There will undoubtedly be many people who will say we have not proven our point; we have not demonstrated that the dietary modifications we recommend will yield the dividends expected.
"The question to be asked therefore, is not why should we change our diet, but why not. "What are the risks associated with eating less meat, less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, less sugar, less salt and more fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fat - and cereal products - especially whole-grain cereals? There are none that can be identified and important benefits can be expected."”
I find the history of that fascinating since the Nixon administration felt pressure to do something about the then-dramatic obesity crisis on a time-scale which was too short for the scientific process. They had some of it right (eat your vegetables!) but the big mistakes with fat and salt made the problem so much worse.
I find it interesting why that doctor's reasoning is flawed: in reality, people don't just follow advice wholesale, they follow some of it based on how much willpower they have for change. By choosing some things to follow over others, they are implicitly making a trade-off.
But to make a good trade, you need to know the relative benefits of two parts of the advice. Giving up fats might be good and/or neutral; but if it exhausts your willpower to avoid sugar, and you indulge, then you are worse off.
Yeah, there's a really interesting psychological angle to this — telling people to reduce, say, sugar or the most processed fats is very different from effectively asking them to give up most of what they enjoy in food. A less ambitious play probably would have come a lot closer to accomplishing their goal.
There's also an angle about how this pushed a lot of people to heavily processed foods because leaving out everything on that bad list left a much narrower list of things you could make at home which were also tasty.
> I find it interesting why that doctor's reasoning is flawed
I can't imagine a scenario where that cereal/grain recommendation in GP quote isn't sponsored or populistic at the time though.
And while their method/reasoning wasn't flawed if they indeed had no research opposing their recommendation, that's kind of a straw man from the main issue of avoiding fat being legitimately bad.
You need energy, and you get some from protein which you desperately need, but you can't get all your energy from protein, and that leaves you fats or carbs. Of those it's so much worse to avoid fat than carbs.
There was no fat to remove from pasta sauce.
Maybe they also figured out that sugar was addictive and added it everywhere to sell even more food with sugar?
It doesn't matter, I add sugar even after adding oil.
And usually there are onions instead of garlic and you need to add less salt when using onions because they are already sweet.
You need to add sugar to contrast tomato acidity, it has nothing to do with sugar addiction.
And it has been like this since forever, not only from the '70s.
Source: even my grandmother added a pinch of sugar when cooking pasta sauce.
A very little bit of sugar that's in a pinch isn't any kind of a problem. Even a tbsp isn't that much. The problem is the massive amount they put in drinks of all types...and foods of all types. They even put it in bread for heck's sakes.
In terms of taking the edge off of tomato sauce, shredded carrots works pretty well. I don't use sugar in any of my cooking, and no one has noticed.
Even without sugar, bread contains a lot of carbohydrates that break down right into sugar just by coming into contact with the spit in your mouth.
If you think that's not true, simply take a sugar-low bread (check the food label, don't just go for organic/whole-grain, those usually have more sugar) and taste it for a while in your mouth. You'll notice it starts to become sweeter in your mouth.
And that's actually not an issue. As you probably know, glucose is the fuel our bodies and brains run on, and while your body can break down proteins to glucose in a pinch, it's not actually healthy (despite what proponents of ketosis diets will tell you). It's especially hard on the kidneys.
As long as you stick to proper bread without the crazy added sugar, and preferably whole grain (actual whole grain, not just marketing "whole grain"), it's not an issue. Unless you try to subsist on literally only bread, of course.
I'm not talking about various proteins and rather about starch, which is a natural part of a good bread. The enzymes in your mouth and digestive system will break down starch to normal Glucose without a problem.
If everything you are eating has sugar added, the item you eat without it will taste bitter and/or bland. Or the sugar made the bland (picked early etc) tomatoes used in the sauce more palateable.
I think this is generally true, but I'm not sure how to explain pasta sauces since I've been paying more attention.
Sugar content in pasta sauces is almost random. Varies from 3 to 10 grams per serving at least. It seems to vary more than almost any other premade item I buy.
And yet, even though I still eat junk too often, and like some treacle, I would not sort sauces based on sugar content.
I can't tell if there's no correlation or if it is literally reversed for my taste buds, but often the high sugar ones are the worst to me.
Just a theory, but maybe the sugar enhances some flavors, like garlic, but masks others, like basil, rather than drawing them all out equally?
I'm not sure how well sugar's complex affect on taste is understood by food scientists, let alone smaller or newer food brands. (What do the generic brands have, a couple chefs and a couple rounds of taste tests? No idea.)
Maybe there are too many possible combinations of ingredients and market segments for producers to all agree on the proper role of sugar, and maybe they're mostly guessing.
If that's true, then we could all probably stand much less added sugar than we/they realize.
You add sugar especially when using fresh tomatoes for the sauce.
The tomato passata already has a bit of sugar.
Ever tried an homemade tomato passata made with fresh tomatoes before adding sugar?
I remember that the home made one sometimes was so acidic that it literally tingled my mouth.
Most chicken sold is pumped up with water (because water is cheaper than chicken). To bind the water, they add a ton of salt. To counteract the salty taste, they add sugar. As a side effect, it makes skinless boneless chicken breasts less likely to dry out if you overcook them slightly.
The end result is that most people find the taste of non-pumped chicken unappealing, because they're simply used to the faked-up salt/sugar chicken.
Yup. Bought a precooked whole chicken at Wegmans a couple weeks ago. The small printed said up to 12% was water and other ingredients (e.g., salt). All we wanted was chicken.
There's a term in the industry that's used for the amount of sugar that makes a food tastier/more addictive while not making it too sweet, don't remember what it is though. But yeah, it's like you said, they add it to everything to make it better tasting and more addictive.
There was some lab-rat study super long ago where they got mice/rats addicted to sugar and cocaine, then let them pick between the two - and they chose the sugar every single time.
I just finished reading "Grain Brain" (as a follow up to "Wheat Belly" a couple yrs ago. GF aside, both books are - or should be - a wake up call. We're eating ourselves ill. So much so we don't even realize it.
Both books are filled with pseudoscience and unfounded speculation. As with any "avoid these specific foodstuffs!" diet, it is destined to fail, because we humans are imperfect, we will not be able to adhere to such diets in the long term, and we will do everything in our power to find loopholes and excuses.
The only diet* I've had any luck with is the No S Diet: No Snacks, No Sweets, No Seconds, Except (sometimes) on days that start with "S".
So while I agree that cutting out added sugars is a damn good idea, I very much disagree with the unfounded "all carbs and grains are BAD!" alarmism.
It's not perfect, it doesn't make huge promises and it's not going to make the weight magically disappear instantly or even over a period of weeks, it's a long-term thing. But it is straight-forward and (most importantly) relatively easy to adhere to, and it doesn't require massive amount of effort, like diets where you have to count every calorie and in-depth micromanage your nutrients. Of course there is plenty of room for cheating (you could eat a whole plate of chocolate and call it a "meal"), but that's a fault of all diets where you're not actively forced by someone else to adhere to the rules.
Short-term diets are stupid and counterproductive. We don't need diets or temporary crash weight loss, which just leads to yo-yoing. We need actual, lasting lifestyle changes to make sure the weight stays off and we stay healthy.
That said, I think it's obvious that most people need to challenge the status quo of their diet. For Grain Brain to remind them "you are what you eat" is a step in the right direction. For both to suggest that you can be sensitive to gluten so give it up for 30 days...well, that's not going to hurt anyone either.
Moi? I read them as guidelines and suggestions. Sure, perhaps not 100% pure science, but there was a time when science said the world was flat, smoking was ok, etc.
To say "this things are worth looking at as you revist your health" might not be ideal. But neither is a bag of chips and a stack of cookies.
Ultimately it's about:
- Changing your relationship with food. Food is for health, not to experience an aural orgasm.
- Lifestyle. Diet is just one way to mind your health. Junk is junk, whether that's food, friends, or information. Trying to fix your health only via diet is, as you note, a fool's errand.
The odds are stacked against us. Working in the nutrition and fitness space has really opened my eyes into how poor nutrition over time really starts impacting lives. Even people who don't eat 'bad', still are having lots of health issues. So much sugar and other stuff in foods that are typically billed as healthy.
I'll have to check out those books, they sound really interesting. You might want to check out the book "The Case Against Sugar", it tells the story of sugar and is really interesting.
Yes. But those odds are not impossible. If you make an effort to be smart about what you consume you can over come the odds. No effort? Well, that's never a formula for victory. I mean there are plenty of alternatives to soda. But people don't choose them.
That's really strange that it was that early. If you look at pictures or videos of normal people from that time period, the main thing I always notice is how thin everyone looked.
It's likely processed foods and junk wasn't quite as prolific yet, and it also takes time to put on weight.
I imagine people were also eating much more whole foods as well, so saturation could have been lower regardless of what was in the junk food on the shelves at the time.
A study linked on HN recently also showed that sugars relationship to obesity snd diabetes may be that it changes your metabolism over time, and that change to your metabolism is what has you put on fat.
The guy claims he gained about 15kg over a one month period by substituting sugary foods into his diet while keeping his caloric intake the same. That's a massive claim which you'd expect to be backed up by pretty rigorous testing, yeah? Not even close. He doesn't even count his calories.
The whole time I was watching I was waiting to see the numbers. Spoiler alert: there aren't any. Halfway through the 'experiment' he states that he's never counted calories before, proceeds to do it just once, and then claims that his intake appears to be the same as it was before. To embark on a project like this and only measure your caloric intake once throughout the entire thing is incredibly disingenuous behaviour.
If you read reviews about What the Health online, you'll see that lot of it is vegan propaganda. They've manipulated facts (like mentioning relative probability as opposed to absolute) so that they seem more dangerous than it actually is.
Yeah, I second that. I starts out very credible but if you examine what they say, especially regarding sugar and carbs it becomes very clear that it's vegan propaganda and skewing its facts heavily
Erythritol can cause digestive discomfort for some [1], which is why I suspect it isn't prevalent.
It was an eye opener to me how many packaged goods have sugar (HFCS) added, when intuitively it seems there was no good reason for any added sweet flavor to be present. By (mostly) assiduously reading the ingredients (the only source of truth, which is why it is often in the smallest print), I am often able to avoid purchasing rubbish that has no business driving me ever faster to a painful death.
There are some goods that are proudly sugar free (on the marketing speak and in the ingredients list) and I make sure to buy these when possible.
The shocking thing is if you completely drop sugar from your diet you still notice plenty of sweet things. The only changes is the threshold before you consider something sweet.
IMO, we need to have a big fat "This is Candy!" label on anything that's got more than 1 gram of sugar/hfcs/whatever per serving. Yes, that includes Apple Juice and other 'hidden' sweeteners.
I agree on this. Added sugar to me means candy or cake, and while I like candy and cake, they are definitely a "small portions, very infrequently" type thing.
Peanuts are composed mostly of polyunsaturated fat (mostly omega 6 and very low omega 3) and macademia nuts are mostly monounsaturated fats. If you care about your omega 6 to omega 3 ratio in the diet then macademia nuts are probably better for you.
Peanuts are candy. Just look at a snickers/payday/Mr. Goodbar or 50+ others that add peanuts with say caramel/chocolate/etc. They can be fine as part of a larger dish, but really don't make a heathy snack on their own.
I am not redefining Candy, I am using non food definition of candy to make a point. "Something that is pleasing or pleasurable, usually in a superficial way"
Peanuts are frequently used as part of a wide range of sweets for texture. But, they are also sweet enough to not be out of place and in no way make them heathy by proxy. Similarly, eating a full serving of penuts regularly is generally a bad idea.
I'd imagine it's because erythritol isn't absorbed, so it just sits there in your gut drawing water out osmotically. That will make you feel really uncomfortable really quickly.
There's an interesting book on this topic that discusses both how it happened and what that does to our brains and bodies - "The Hacking of the American Mind" by Robert Lustig [1]. The book also is about other ways our brain is affected by a substance or behavior, but mostly about sugar. I highly recommend it.
Robert Lustig is a quack although. Many of the things he said in his famous online talk are outright lie.
He gave an example of Japanese and their healthiness, yet they eat way more fructose than the USA citizen he cites. There's a whole other bunch of misinformation in his speech and his studies are filled with flawed design (no control group, p hacking etc.).
Why is it that he's so popular on HN? Did I miss a recent front page post or something?
I swear every time I'm in a nutrition related thread I see somebody mention his name or a book he wrote or talk he did. I used to be pretty deep into weightlifting and nutrition, and I don't know that I ever once ran into his name in all my reading, and I spent a stupid amount of time reading about macro + micro nutrients.
Because he's a very talented charlatan, wrapping up his arguments in very convincing pseudoscience, and he seems to have fooled a lot of nerds with his approach.
Although, I believe Lustig changed the narrative and is currently promoting diets rich in starch (which means high volume - low calories) and most of his studies produce a caloric deficit (while he denies it despite the fact that less calories are metabolized due to digestion of starch).
I believe he also likes referencing fructose extract consumption studies that have no direct mapping to a real diet. For example, consumping 100g of fructose through fruit won't do you any harm.
Sugar and high fructose corn syrup get added to a ton of foods that don't need extra sweetening. Some varieties of Vlasic dill pickles, for example, have HFCS added. It's insane.
For the past few months I've been trying to avoid added sugar in everything except for some baked goods (like zuchini bread or birthday cake). It took a couple weeks to get used to, but now I prefer food without it and when I try something with added sweetener it tastes too sweet.
The fact that people even consider adding sugar to ordinary food is mind-boggling to me. Sure, adding a small pinch to pasta sauce as a seasoning is reasonable, in quantities less than you would usually add salt.
But seriously dumping sugar in food, so it actually tastes noticeably sweet? That's just insane.
I think it's not weight-by-weight equivalent. I believe that a tiny amount of Erythritol is enough to be equivalently sweet relative to a much larger amount of sugar.
That being said: I'm not sure if it's enough to make it cheaper than sugar.
Good point, and there is another twist I realized: sugar is used as filler (e.g. for removed fat in low-fat stuff), so Erythritol might not work because same volume of it would make it unbearably sweet.
Personally, I'd prefer they just kept the original fat and call it a day as there seems to be absolutely nothing wrong with it health-wise.
> Doses over 50 grams (1.8 oz) can cause severe diarrhea, plus a significant increase in nausea and stomach rumbling.
I don't know what the weight ratio would be to substitute that for sugar, but a can of soda has ~40g of sugar so I'm guessing you need to be careful with it similar to other sugar alcohols.
That comparison is a great one. Sugar is addictive as well.
Processed food isn't engineered and manufacturered to benefit the consumer. It's designed to increase consumption.
What's most troubling is, it seems, plenty of people can't connect the dots between what they consume and their health. It's disheartening that we need a law that says, "You can't look down and see your penis when you pee...watch what you eat." Where do ppl think all that extra weight comes from, sunshine?
Added sugar is the insidious enemy. Forget the anti-grain alarmism and so on, if we can just cut the added sugar from our diets, that's a 80-90% solution that's actually achievable, compared to the insanity of trying to completely cut out all carbs.
We're hard-wired to be attracted to sweet and fatty foods, because those were important back when food was scarce and a calorie surplus was basically unheard of. Now that food is abundant (at least in the developed world) that same hard-wired attraction is a burden that we need to consciously challenge every day.
I'm a big fan of the No S Diet (http://nosdiet.com/ - no affiliation) because it's straight-forward, easy to adhere to and has worked for me. It also doesn't try to sell you anything, it just asks you to cut out added sugars, limit your meals to single servings and to not eat between meals.
At least with erythritol some people have bad reactions to it. Nothing life threatening as far as I know, but it can give me very bad gas, and for one other person I know it's like eating Olestra Chips[1]. That said there are other sweeteners that don't seem to have that effect but they don't seem to behave quite as closely to sugar in cooking as erythritol does.
Most sugar substitutes are indigestible by humans, but readily metabolized by gut bacteria. This can result in a "Satan's Diarrhea Hatebears" scenario [0], especially when suddenly consumed in large amounts.
Tagatose has become my go-to sugar substitute. It is indistinguishable from sugar for me. There's an interesting article in Wired about its discovery and properties here:
> Why not just replace all the added sugar with erythritol, for example?
Why not just stop sweetening things. When I took my family to the US for three months the children were astonished at how sweet everything was. You can tell that something is wrong when even children complain that things are too sweet to eat.
I sometimes wonder which materials I directly interact with on a regular basis that people in a few decades wouldn't touch for anything short of large amounts of money. History tells us there are probably a few. Guessing at least a couple are plastics or plastic additives/coatings of some kind. Maybe whatever they replaced BPA with. Possibly gasoline will qualify. Probably one or two things currently on/in our food.
The diesel fumes you get from walking along any road will probably be high on the list.
One reason why that VW scandal was so morally objectionable is that diesel emissions are fairly local pollutants. Skimping on filtering them offloads an extreme negative externality to every person who gets near your customer/product; it's like poisoning a well. And of course, VW sure isn't alone in cutting inconvenient corners for cash.
Lead solder will probably also be up there. Yeah, yeah, ROHS and REACH and whatever, but there are plenty of exemptions and the barrel-scrapers just ignore them anyways.
Funfact: The highest concentration of NO2 is not found around pedestrians but inside the cars. Most models don't have suitable filter in the standard issue outside of Europe and Japan (and there only the higher-class private ones).
Yes, the issue is the cabin air filter. The simple paper pollen filters don't do anything against NO2 - we measure the same values inside and outside.
Most filters with active charcoal will reduce the NO2 concentration a lot. It is recommended to replace them after 1-2 years or a certain distance, but we don't have numbers on this - still, it is clear the filters degrade after a while.
Nanoparticles. They irritate your lungs in ways that are very similar to asbestos irritation. And of course, it's your body's reaction to the irritation that kills you.
Well, that a cream, not dust. So is more of a skin issue, so then the question there is whether it penetrates the skin and turns out to do stuff to the tissue underneath.
I guess that the problem with a lot of these things is that we don't have good (enough?) predictive models for long-term damage.
I expect the practice of of "sous vide in plastic bags" to be shown as long-term unhealthy sooner or later.
It's one of those things where I wonder if the plastics really are as safe as claimed, or just "safer than the standard we set (and we didn't set it high, and our way of measuring is flawed)".
It's a good point. I can't remember the last time I saw a plastic bag that gave a safe temperature range right there on the bag or package containing the bags.
You'd think they would say Safe for food up to 200 degrees F or something.
Some years ago (and I mean decades) my teenage self read somewhere or heard someone talking of the unknown dangers of some gas being released by motherboards (think: silent killers).
I think we are about to go through a change in how flame retardants are classified and handled. The chemicals in use today (in clothing, mattresses, lounges and other fabrics) are known toxic and carcinogenic.
Gasoline is absolutely already on that list. It's a little bit crazy that we're allowed to interact so casually with such a potent solvent and known carcinogen (mostly due to the benzene content) on an everyday basis.
I was shocked to discover that my apartment had lead flashing around the roof and balcony, so I researched it a bit, and read some reassuring stuff claiming it was safe (and has less toxic run-off than zinc), and some other less-than-reassuring stuff, so I'm not totally convinced it's safe for my cats to sit in contact with on the balcony.
Of course workers installing it must be careful, but it's claimed to be not harmful to people using the building, or to the environment (from run-off). Just don't lick it or let kids play with it.
On principle, I'd rather have flashing that's ok to lick, and safe for kids to play with and cats to sit on, but that's just not an option at this time.
Lead roofing and flashings are much more likely to be a health hazard for people working with the materials than for people using the building.
Lead has been used for roofing for centuries and is one of the oldest flashing materials. It is durable and soft enough to be formed into complex shapes. Lead roofing and flashings can last over 200 years. Generally speaking, lead roofing or flashing that is in good shape may safely be left in place.
Lead can be used safely if worker exposure is monitored and lead is handled properly to avoid skin contact, ingestion, and exposure to lead dust and fumes.
This document sets out to provide a scientifically sound appraisal of the use of lead sheet in construction applications.
Research findings in the document show that lead sheet poses no risk to the environment, even when water run-off is taken into account, and does not present any risk to human beings. Providing simple hygienic precautions are observed people who handle significant quantities of lead do not expose themselves to health risks.
Low environmental impact of lead sheet on buildings
A study conducted in 2005 looked at the environmental impact of lead sheet used in the building industry. With the following conclusions:
There is no risk related to emissions of lead sheet into the environment.
These conclusions are still valid even if it is assumed that all building roofs are disconnected from the sewer system and that the runoff enters the environment directly.
Surveys of rainwater from domestic tanks have identified lead contamination as a potential problem. Results have been variable with exceedances of the ADWG health-related guideline value of 10 µg/L (NHMRC & NRMMC 2004) ranging from 0% to 15% of samples collected (SA Health unpublished results 1999-2009; Simmons et al. 2001; Chapman et al. 2006 and 2008; Morrow et al. 2007; Huston et al. 2009; Rodrigo et al. 2009). In addition to these results a survey in Melbourne recorded a particularly high exceedance frequency of 33% (Magyar 2008).
As discussed in other sections the reduction of lead concentrations in paint and the introduction of lead free petrol have decreased the risk from paint and general traffic emissions. However, roof materials and uncoated lead flashing in particular remain a potential source of contamination (Simmons et al. 2001; Chapman et al. 2006; Magyar et al. 2008; Huston et al. 2009), as rainwater tends to be acidic and may mobilise lead, and possibly other metals, into solution. The increasing availability of lead-free or coated lead flashing is expected to reduce future concentrations of lead in rainwater tanks.
Roof catchments used in the collection of rainwater for drinking should not include uncoated lead flashing. Alternative materials should be used in new roofs or when renovating or extending roofs. In existing roofs, painting of uncoated flashing will reduce the risk of contamination. Lead may also enter rainwater from lead washers for roofing screws. These can be replaced with plastic washers.
Leaching of lead into roof run-off may be more of a problem from poorly maintained roofs and gutters, where the process could be increased by the action of water made acidic with organic substances from materials such as leaf litter.
Sunblock I bet. Rubbing that cream into your skin multiple times per day can't be good. In the hiking community, many hikers are moving to sun blocking clothing. There are even sun gloves now.
Presumably sunblock is more chemically exotic and thus is more likely to be harmful due to greater variance in harm, lack of knowledge about the mechanisms of harm, inability to fully characterize the harm using current tests, etc.
That's a meaningless statistic on its own. Does it shorten 5.4% of people's lives by 5 minutes each? or does it kill 5.4% of people while they're children? The reality will be somewhere between those extremes but the number alone tells us nothing interesting.
I wouldn't be surprised if evidence comes out that changes alcohol consumption drastically. Yes people have been drinking alcohol for centuries, but it was originally as a way to preserve calories, avoid drinking unsafe water, and as a crude medical treatment.
Today the main reason people drink is to get merry and drunk, and forget about life's problems. The alcohol we drink is (usually) no longer natural, it's processed and refined on an industrial level.
I'm sure everybody knows someone who was an alcoholic and the issues it caused them. On the other hand, it's common knowledge that smoking causes major health issues, yet people still do it...
I've already changed my alcohol consumption. Firstly, I cut down on my overall consumption: most days I don't drink any alcohol at all, and at events I try to stick with 4-5 beers maximum. I sometimes stretch that a bit at festivals, but those only happen once every ~3 months or so and the intake is usually spread out over 8-10 hours.
Secondly, I very much prefer less processed types, such as wine, whisky and unfiltered beer. I stay far far away from alcopops and similar drinks.
It may be anecdotal evidenece, but I get far fewer hangovers now, even if I drink to the same amount as I used to.
The obesity code by Dr. Jason Fung gives some great insights into what we know, and in the end it's quite simple. Our body regulates weight through insulin, so try to keep the insulin levels as low as possible and have extended periods every day where you don't eat.
I've made a complete switch to stainless steel, cast iron (both enameled and bare) and carbon steel.
I particularly enjoy using my inexpensive carbon steel pan that I got from a local kitchen supply store, I find it even better than an actual cast iron pan. It's made from 3mm plate steel and it's smooth like old-fashioned cast iron pans, so after about a month of regular use, I would honestly call it nonstick. Certainly nonstick enough for eggs or fish.
As an added bonus, it will last basically forever as long as you don't warp it from thermal shock or let it sit while wet, so it rusts. You can take away most other items in my kitchen and I wouldn't be too upset, but don't ever touch my carbon steel pan and wood spatula!
The problem is it starts breaking down at around 250C, and if you leave a pan on a stove it can easily get above that temperature. The chemicals it breaks down into are known neurotoxins, and are especially lethal to birds.
In Europe (especially Italy where I believe Teflon is banned in cookware) ceramic coatings are becoming the standard for non-stick cookware.
I hope the silicon stuff is OK; I prefer that as it's point of thermal breakdown is way past anything I want in my kitchen anyway (aside from direct open flames which I don't currently use but know some cooking does).
I also prefer the ceramic linings, since those are more likely to be OK in my mostly uneducated opinion. (However the type of material is different, and hopefully less likely to leach).
There are a lot of environmental and societal factors that would get you rather than anything that we probably don't know about yet.
Sugar and Tobacco are probably outliers simply because of the sheer quantity in which humans consume them (or used to, for smokers). That itself increases greatly the chances that they will directly cause some kind of cancers.
Now if in the future, we change our society and progress medical science far enough that we live well past 100 years, that is when we should be worried about dangers from materials that we only occasionally come into contact with. Even then, cancer treatments would probably be a routine thing by then...
I guess my point is that you would more likely die in a car accident than from something we're not aware of just yet.
Also, asbestos is all over the place in a lot of homes. Plus many locations also have Radon gas seeping in. These things are known about, but mostly ignored because of the cost to fix them.
Here in the UK if traces of asbestos are found the entire building is quarantined while a team of workers in hazchem suits and breathing apparatus removes it!
That's a good idea. But I think the TV dinner itself might be worse for you than ingesting whatever the by-product of microwaving the dinner's plastic container might be.
It's likely that engineering a lifestyle that does not result in eating TV dinners is healthier. Sure, it's getting cause-and-effect backwards, but I'm certain there is something there... :)
The effects of vehicular pollution? If sitting in your garage with a running car kills you, obviously being surrounded by traffic all day in the cities we live in must be absolutely terrible for you.
"For older women, breathing air that is heavily polluted by vehicle exhaust and other sources of fine particulates nearly doubles the likelihood of developing dementia, finds a study published Tuesday."
Soy doesn't contain estrogen, it contains phytoestrogens. This is a common misunderstanding.
Phytoestrogens include isoflavones in soy, which can have a wide variety of effects, (including decreasing estrogen levels) depending on gut flora, age, sex, hormone levels
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074428/
I only upvoted you because Aspartame is such an interesting case - no other food that I can think of has had such vitrol thrown at it, yet every single scientific study has shown no effect on blood sugar, the chemical is simple, the two compounds it breaks down to in the liver are already present in the body and its properties are well known.
It is if you preface the discussion by saying in my experience. That limits the group to people I've had contact with that the word average would apply.
Aspartame has been extensively studied and no adverse effect has been found. Why do you think that? Is it because "scary chemical"? And is it worse than sugar?
I don’t know about the chemical itself, but it’s sold as a substitute for sugar without the ill effect, and likely has a similar metabolic effect to sugar.
It can't have a similar metabolic effect to sugar. For one, it's a peptide, not a carbohydrate. Also, in the quantities it's consumed in, there are very few calories.
Now, for phenylketonurics it's problematic, but they have severe dietary restrictions anyway.
The only problem I'm aware of with aspartame is that consumption of any sweetener is associated with weight gain, possibly due to changes in the brain's association between taste and calorie intake.
Sugar is not far from being a drug in my opinion. It certainly feels addictive and has a definite impact on physical and mental state (especially true with respect to children). In that sense, it should undergo the same level of regulation...
I used to be boy scout. A week long camp typically gets lot more tolerable around day 3. At the same time the kids typically run out of candy and cell phone battery.
I'd say the problem is not high blood sugar from eating too much sugar. The problem is low blood sugar about 30min after eating all that sugar. And kids are great at keeping themselves busy enough, so they don't notice being hungry. But they do get cranky without exception.
And even then the problem is not the candy. It's the fact that they supplement "real food" with candy. And the blood sugar seesaw starts to reverb.
I'm all for eating way less sugar, but you might as well say people are addicted to food. The body needs energy, of course providing it with energy alters its physical and mental state.
Totally agree that in current times food is an addiction. Since when do we need to eat 3 meals a day? At least 90 percent of modern humans history, we used hunting and gathering to survive. Only in the last 10 percent we have agriculture, and much much later, refrigerators, supermarkets and convenience stores. If we needed this much food our species wouldn't last a week before agriculture. Spoiler alert: we lasted 300,000 years.
Agreed - and it's been proven (citation needed) that a low calorie diet prolonges life.
But here we are, needing to consume more energy because we do things (good, bad, useless or wasteful) with our time (and these things aren't directly looking for food.)
Yes but it causes an immediate spike in blood glucose levels, which if unused, is stored as fat. That's what makes it dangerous - people generally seem to consume sugar when it is least needed, making it especially detrimental.
I think I saw a documentary where they showed that brain scans of people addicted to sugar looked the same as those addicted to cocaine, and in some lab-rat study where they got rats/mice addicted to both sugar and cocaine, and got the choice to picke between them, they chose sugar over cocaine 9 times out of 10.
I recently started the Whole 30 diet (paleo), and it's nearly impossible to avoid sugar, corn starch, and dextrose. Almost all fooeds seem to have one of those. Often for no reason: why put sugar in beans and bacon, or corn starch in turkey?
The amount of money I'm spending on food jumped by 3x. It seems accurate to say that if you're poor, you're almost forced to eat sugar for economic reasons.
Almost all prepared, packaged, or preserved foods have one of those.
The solution is actually pretty simple: eat meals made from base/raw ingredients only.
Beans, nuts, meats, vegetables, fruits, vegetable oils, spices... Endless varieties of stuff to cook with, combine, and eat alone. People just aren't used to eating this way, because prepackaged crap has been the norm for so long.
You are right that if you're poor, it's difficult to eat this way, though.
> if you're poor, it's difficult to eat this way, though.
And it is difficult for some poor people to eat this way because their cultural poverty exacerbates or even causes their financial poverty. Their parents (if they were lucky enough to have two) didn't teach them to prepare basic meals, sharpen a knife, or care for a frying pan. Each of these skills is a barrier to entry, and they add up quickly for basic meals.
It's not the only major barrier, but I think that we have really pulled the rug out from the poorest by exchanging cultural norms for convenience and a net rise in costs.
Depends where you live. Fresh food from an independent grocer is noticeably cheaper, fresher, longer-lasting, and tastier than any of the food (packaged or fresh) from major supermarkets here in Australia.
Just finished my whole30 and it is indeed eye opening what’s in seemingly normal food like you mention. While it was a difficult month I do think it was a worthwile endeavor. Good luck to you! P.S. check your spices, some of those even have added ingredients for shelf life, anti-clumping, color, etc
Sugar is common for curing meats like bacon. I don't know if it plays a role in pulling out the water like salt does, but I know some use it to offset the strong saltiness. I think it also provides for some bacteria which help preserve the meat.
While I think paleo diets are going too far in the wrong direction in the search for a dietary solution, I emphasize with your observed problems. It seems that sugar is simply added by default to far too many foods.
The biggest thing I would suggest is to avoid canned foods, especially beans. Buy dried beans instead. They don't take that much effort to cook, the only thing is that you need to remember to soak them overnight (and discard the soaking water) before cooking. As an added bonus, dried beans, lentils, chickpeas and so on are inexpensive and widely available.
You could also get a pressure cooker, which is just a good idea in general, and will allow you to cook beans directly in about an hour.
No, that's because you have the artificial requirement to eat meat and stuff, which usually has additives. I've been in a whole food plant based diet and it's super cheap to buy all of the fruits, vegetables, grains, etc in bulk.
I think it's a proxy for our unwillingness or inability to tackle cognitive processing issues. Sometimes I talk about my mental health symptoms and people are 'well social media is making you ill,' but I have been struggling to articulate my cognitive difficulties to people since the 1970s. If I ever find myself with a large money surplus I would really like to spend some of it on MRIs or whatever sort of brain scan could help me figure out where my cognitive bottlenecks are.
You may be interested in the writings of Marshall McLuhan. He was a philosopher and analyst of media who wrote about the effects of television (and all other forms of media) and gained popularity in the 60's and 70's.
One point he noted was how instantaneous global communication via television (and later the internet) enabled terrorists to hijack global attention:
>Terrorism is an invention through which any two armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners.
No, they weren't. They became, over time, accepted sources of trusted and emotionally engaging information, but IIRC studies many decades ago showed that—controlling for consumption of other news media like newspapers—increased consumption of news content from either or both broadcast media was associated with decreased knowledge of current events. They were never sources of reliable information (and, yes, from early on there were negative reactions against the mass acceptance, just as there are today for social media.)
That our industry sponsored studies on the effects of social media, and buried the studies that showed harm? One hopes not, but the scenario where an industry sponsors studies into the harmfulness of its own products, has proven over and over again to be a recipe for bad science. And as this article shows, the file drawer effect can cause billions of QALYs of harm.
Now would be the time do do something about it, not 30-40 years from now.
The high bit is that all studies must be registered in advance and report their data. If you're a researcher, you shouldn't agree to do a study where the results won't be reported if the sponsor doesn't like them.
Happy Jax => Sugar Crisp => Super Sugar Crisp => Super Golden Crisp => Golden Crisp
But it's still "Sugar Crisp" in Canada, where Sugar Bear still says "Can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp"! Do they have better truth in advertising laws there or something?
At the 1904 World Fair, the Quaker Oats Company made a candy-coated puffed cereal, a wheat-based product similar to Cracker Jack's candy-coated popcorn. The product concept was re-introduced unsuccessfully in 1939 by another business as Ranger Joe, the first pre-sweetened, candy-coated breakfast cereal. Post Foods introduced their own version in 1948. The Post version was originally called Happy Jax, and was renamed to Sugar Crisp the next year. The name was later changed to Super Sugar Crisp, and in 1985, it was changed again to Super Golden Crisp. Finally, it was changed to Golden Crisp (during a time when many cereals dropped the word "Sugar" from their titles) in the American market.
In the early 1970s, there was a short-lived variation on the original Sugar Crisp, called Super Orange Crisp, which had orange-flavored O's in it.
The product is still sold as Sugar Crisp in Canada. In Canada, the box still displays the Sugar Bear mascot and the phrase "Can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp."
Anecdotal evidence - I have seen kids grow up nicely on daily bowl of milk and cereal. I suspect it's because cereal also contains minerals and vitamins, which, in time, help.
The corn flakes I usually eat for breakfast have basically 0 nutritional value, I think the entire 1kg box contains about 800kJ, no sugar and the rest of that is then mostly air or filler.
Being overweight is a much stronger correlate to cancer and heart disease than "sugar".
And, despite what you might have read in the press, it's nowhere near a consensus that sugar is the primary cause of being overweight. You really think a 50-year-old study is the smoking gun that's going to usher in a consensus among nutrition scientists everywhere?
Personally, I buy Stephen Guyenet's theory that palatability is the driver of overweight. I think it's increasing palatability and falling food costs.
Sugar seems to pretty obviously make people overweight. Especially in liquid form. And if this is not a consensus, well, see the title of this post. This isn't a hard thing to test.
Interesting but not surprising. Pharmaceutical companies, for instance, don't publish or cancel studies that show unfavorable results all the time and no one makes a fuss. Who knows the loss to the community and consumers at large in terms of knowledge and health?
Beyond that, the take away is yet again: If it's a shortcut or if it's delicious, it's bad for you. (gazes longingly at holiday cookies on desk)
I don't know, I certainly find chicken (with skin and bone, and no salt/sugar marinade, thank you!) with rice and plenty of veggies to be quite delicious. A lot more delicious than cookies, honestly.
I've been trying to live by the No S Diet for a while, and it seems to be working for me, I highly recommend it.
When reading a book about Alan Turing, I came across a reference to "Natural Wonders, 1928" by Edwin Tenney Brewster (free in iBooks and on the web) - where he refers to Chapter 38: Of Sugar and other Poisons :=)
It's not surprising that after we made fat the demon, the supply change replaced fat with with sugar (at least in yogurts) and type 2 diabetes is now rampant.
I started the keto diet with intermittent fasting about a month ago. Lost 13kg, doesn't have cravings anymore, doesn't feel hungry all the time, and it's easier now to consentrate, fall asleep and wake up.
Defenetly feels like carbohydrates/sugar is poison.
I'm on a keto diet, lost 2 kg over 2 months but was already quite fit. Didn't feel much different. I truly believe that all the "keto changed everything about my life!" hype is basically just overweight people loosing weigh and misinterpreting all the benefits of no-longer being overweight as being related to the carbohydrates.
Don't feel hungry all the time? Working out regularly does that too you no-matter what you eat. Easier to concentrate? Funny enough, most research on cutting carbohydrates out your diet indicates that it reduces your mental fitness, but again, if you were overweight and you're losing weight, that's going to have that effect. Easier to fall asleep and wake up? Well again, just working out and not being overweight will help you here.
Not saying that keto doesn't work or doesn't have unique aspect to it, but at the end of the day, to me it seems that 80% of it is just calories in, calories out. Then 20% about making it easier to actually stick to that. And the remaining 98% is all hype.
Keto diet is terrible for you. You are losing weight because you are sick. It's the refined carbs and sugar that are not good, you just need to get them from whole sources with the fiber and all.
If you interpret no longer being on cholesterol medication, high blood pressure medication, PPI's, along with no longer having elevated AST/ALT levels and elevated triglyceride levels, then yes, I guess I'm terribly sick - for over 3 years now.
Stick to what you know because nutrition is not it.
In my online experience, 90% of people who straight up attack keto like this are vegans who want to keep propping up the dogma that 'animal products = bad for you'. They often also assume that keto = eating only meat.
Because ketosis is forcing your body to create glucose from protein, which is a very energy-demanding process (that is good), but it's also extremely hard on your kidneys.
It is possibly fine to be in ketosis for a little while (and it can serve a medical purpose), but you should absolutely not keep it up long-term.
As with all crash diets where a lot of weight is lost rapidly, the weight is very likely to pile back on when the diet is over.
I consider sugar to be no different from cocaine (not that I ever tried), but we crave for it the same way people who consume that drug or any other, crave for. Sugar is everywhere, and it's our main source of energy, being that our body feels terrible when its levels are low, but as soon as you eat it feels wonderful. The same goes with cocaine.
It's a bit similar but I don't think it's good to make second-hand comparisons. Cravings are not a simple binary. Like, if you consume cocaine for pleasure then you can have a craving to keep doing more until you run out or its time to go home or whatever. But below a certain threshold the craving isn't that strong, so you could have a little bit and then get on with your day, much as you might have a cup of coffee in the morning but you don't necessarily want it round the clock.
I would like to see more researches on ketosis diet. Seen by medicine as something that occurs when in starvation, I see it as the natural state of the human body. I eat once a day and I don't feel like I'm starving. And when I eat I don't feast.
I also find my mood is very steady and mellow instead of the constant rush and burn on a high carb diet.
The lack of research is concerning. I'm refraining from staying on the diet for too long and am opting to cycle in and out of it by re-introducing carbs periodically.
Eating an elevated amount of proteins on the often recommended ketonic diets (high protein, low carb) makes your kidneys work harder to process this elevated level of protein, expelling more sodium, calcium and potassium, which also increases the risk of kidney stones.
If you're in really good health before you start a ketonic diet, it's probably not too much of an issue. But if you have an underlying kidney condition already, it could exacerbate that condition and possibly lead to kidney damage or failure. If you are diabetic, in the worst case it could lead to ketoacidosis and coma, and potentially be life threatening.
Add to this that apparently most of the dramatic weight loss seen on a ketonic diet is simply water weight, in some cases people also start losing muscle. That's not what you want, obviously. A ketonic diet is a really poor choice for someone who wants to put on muscle.
There are better and significantly less dangerous ways to lose weight.
High protein intake shouldn't be a recommended keto diet, because the body will use gluconeogenesis to process protein into glucose, so you'll never be on ketoses, and therefor suffer from all side effects mentioned by you. It should be a diet high on fats.
There's a plethora of E-numbers which are a safe alternative [1] (according to the EU). I could quote them, but you might as well just click on the link instead.
They're supposedly easy to recognize as they're in the E95? and E96? range. Unfortunately the fear for E-numbers has caused manufacturers to stop mentioning them and instead naming the ingredients again.
Has it actually been proven that natural fats are bad for you? I always thought fat is healthier than sugar. Both sugar and fat are required part of healthy diet but I’d rather eat some pork sausage than ice cream or chocolate. It seems much healthier to me but I could be totally wrong and this is just some irrational belief I hold.
Salt isn't dangerous, as long as you get enough fluids, your kidneys are healthy and you don't overdo it. In other words yeah moderation is key, but sausages (and other cured meats) can have a surprising salt content.
Sugar routinely gets added to a lot of foodstuffs you wouldn't expect it in. But if you're primarily eating home-made sausages, you're probably not going to have any issues, they're mostly in processed and ready-made foods.
I am not sure, how appropriate this is, but a related question/poll:
there is the stereotype, that hackers/IT guys are in general fat/unhealthy.
But in my experience, this is not at all true. It might just be my circles of people (mostly germans around 30), but most of the IT guys I know, take good care of their body, eat healthy and do all kinds of sports. Even though some are now starting to get lazy, the overall picture for me is, that most are healthy, above average (compared to people of their age).
So I am curious, how the world is for other people here on HN?
Office of 5 developers here - UK, in our 20s and 30s. We have a marathon runner / CrossFitter, a triathlonner, martial artist, and a weightlifter. Only one of us isn't into some kind of "fitness", although he doesn't have a car so he walks everywhere. None of use are overweight by anyone's standards.
I have made this observation as well (Denmark, age range around 30-55ish). In this IT department, I honestly cannot find any colleagues that are outright unhealthy. Most of them are actually very dedicated cyclists or runners, we've had a couple of weightlifters too.
People with higher education often take better care of their bodies. Here is my theory: A couple of decades ago, IT didn't require much education, because there weren't many schools doing IT. So many people without higher education worked in IT.
I would go more with, a lot of sad, fat kids at home, discovered the world of computers, where they could shine, because nobody cared how they looked in the real world, it only mattered what they could do. And this stereotype definitely still exists, I would be curious, how many of the HN crowd fit into it, but I can understand, that nobody wants to out himself like that.
edit: and I believe every fat person, knows and knew, that being fat is bad, but when you are sad and eating is your allmost only joy, what can you do? Starving and give up that little bit of happiness?
I don't have any higher education, I took the vocational school route for electronics and IT support, got a job and worked my way up through experience and various courses/certifications.
Maybe I'm a good example, because I used to be rather overweight (125+kg) and inactive. After I started working in IT, I've slimmed down to below 100kg and I've been doing crossfit for ~5 years.
Count the isles in your supermarket, how many of them are nearly 100% dedicated to sugar and sugary products? Think back 30 years, is this the way you remember it? Saying diabetes and sugar aren't related while in America there is a massive influx of diabetes diagnoses is like saying your dog ate your homework.
I find it hard to follow nutritional advise when there are so many charlatans taking advantage of women trying to lose weight without any health concern.
A Medicine degree shouldn't be necessary in order to eat well.
Any reliable source where I can learn the 'nutritional 101' in layman terms?
Only available on Netflix US and Canada as well as a handful theater screenings. I've said it before but it almost seems as if those documentaries try to limit their audience. I can't count the number of times I stumbled upon interesting small, niche and independent documentaries only to find out that they are only screening in a few limited locations worldwide without any purchasing option in sight.
It took almost 40 years to prove that smoking causes lung cancer.
Similarly, despite unambiguous scientific evidence, it still seems acceptable to deny that man-made CO2 release into the atmosphere causes global warming.
There's actually a good book covering these two instances and others: "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming"
> It took almost 40 years to prove that smoking causes lung cancer.
Yep, and the Sugar Industry used the same tactics as Big Tobacco. They cleverly paid 'Researchers' to conclude that 'There's just not enough evidence, so more evidence is needed' and kept kicking the can down the road. They also did a media blitz campaign to discredit the real scientists who proved the tobacco links / sugar links to cancer.[1]
You have to wonder how many people died because of that. Maybe this is nieve, but it feels like there should be harsh punishment for suppressing or manipulating information that can prevent or lead to people’s death.
Yeah, it's kinda weird that you can get the death penalty for killing one person, but the industry that kills several hundred thousand people per year with their products not only gets away with fines, but gets to continue selling the deadly product.
Tobacco was the core of many states' economies, and still remains a massive industry which makes many people wealthy.
Dealing with CO2 emissions would have required dealing with fossil fuel use... and that's tons of money and power in play there.
Sugar is, at the very least, another substance people crave, and has been making people rich for hundreds of years.
Delaying tactics are feasible when you have billions or trillions of dollars, control regulatory bodies, own politicians, scientists, and armies of lawyers. Delaying tactics on the orders of just a few decades means generations of VP's and C-levels getting unfathomably rich, as well as key shareholders. So... fuck the harm, delay, delay, delay.
The key is that you have to not give a shit about anyone other than yourself, or be genuinely deluded.
> The key is that you have to not give a shit about anyone other than yourself
This is actually quite difficult. Despite its shortcomings (and perhaps ironically) religion can be effective at convincing people to put others first but I would say the default behavior in most people is "I only care about myself and family first". This default behavior is exacerbated when people follow the influence of greed, lust, etc.
Its a double edge sword. Most religions require suspension of critical reasoning as well in order to "take on faith" that which cannot be proven (or is outright wrong).
The result is basically training people to be susceptible to propaganda.
another major key factor is to maintain majority of [voting] population in the mental state impossible to penetrate by voice of reason. Such state is typically initiated by low quality education and maintained by local and global populist hysteria (that includes religion) based on anger, fear, envy, ...
did we just go through a "modern" bubble ? I feel like most of post ww2 era was most the dream of a new perception of the world that could sustain its distortion field for a few decades:
- oil based energy now wrecking havoc
- "science" based nutrition
- free market
- communication technology
I'm listing the dark parts but there's something odd in the way we probably all swallowed the pill with such a big grin for so long and now pop, lies lies lies; also you're dying because of stupid practices fueled by greedy scammers.
- oil-based energy powered our global economy that was able to research alternative forms of energy
- both nutrition and science have always been an unfinished work, "we don't know everything" != "we know nothing"
- free markets, for their faults, are still better than any other base system we've come up with
- communications technology, I'd hazard we're still grasping with the repurcussions of this re: democracy and many other pre-existing systems. But the fact that I read about the Rohingya genocide by Myanmar again on the front page of the BBC this morning would indicate it has its advantages to the world too
yeah I paint a dark picture, probably too dark, but I have a different view, at least on the information. Today I see and know "all" at least that's what you think. I know what the press feel is important (one month greece is doomed, next month they forgot what greece is). It's almost pure noise. I'm starting to believe that space and isolation has its value, at least to a degree. Then there are the social implications. It's very weird.
I wish someone could explain in detail what EXACTLY is meant by "sugar". It's become an overloaded term.
When we say sugar, do we JUST mean refined, processed, isolated sugars of the likes of candy bars, sodas, etc?
Or do we mean carbohydrates in general, which are broken down by enzymes in our saliva (amylase) into sugars?
If the latter then can we conclude carbohydrates in general are cancer causing? I'm no biologist, or medical professional, so this all gets really confusing when you start thinking beyond the simple "sugar is bad" assertion.
Of the people I know who have been on a sugar-free diet, all of them continued to eat carrots, even though carrots have an interesting amount of sugar.
Coca Cola® (63) vs White Rice (72). Higher is worse. By using that logic, chicken nuggets and Pizza Hut beat plain potatoes. Clearly not a good recipe for a healthy diet.
Both pizza and chicken nuggets are higher in fat and protein so don't spike insulin or blood glucose levels. The preservatives and additives make the Pizza Hut pizza and frozen chicken nuggets unhealthy for other reasons.
If you were making your own baked chicken nuggets or pizza from quality ingredients then they are definitely healthier than potatoes or white rice, assuming the calorie intake was the same.
This is counter-intuitive to most people because of all the misinformation around the benefits of a low-fat diet [1].
Refined sugar is the worst and refined carbohydrates are not that much better. I found that Dr. Fung's book and videos are the most informative and most scientific explanations of these concepts [1].
Fruits and vegetables are full of sucrose, it is the most commonly occurring sugar in plants. If splitting more sucrose (or is fructose really the problem?) increases your chance of cancer, it means very little on its own. Would you get the same results if they matched the starches to the glucose equivalent, rather than the same mass?
Which is why I don't see why they would bother to suppress a result like this, but I guess the public interpretation would likely be the outrageous "specifically refined table sugar gives you cancer", so I can't exactly blame 'em for wanting to.
A 12 oz can of Coca Cola has twice the sugar content of an apple, without the beneficial fiber or vitamins.
How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers millions of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality.
If we eat better food that is more sustainable the food industry will do well. You replace the giant producers with lots of small farms. People pay more for food per calorie, but balanced out by fewer calories.
The food mafia won't like this though so they'll lobby for laws to avoid it.
I'm actually in the process of founding a small farm :-)
I tend to conflate the food industry with the food mafia though, and I'm highly skeptical of the long term prospects of civilization if we pursue our growth-based economy.
Resources on earth are finite, efficiency can't rise past (or approach) 100%, and the amount of entropy we generate today is already too high for the rest of the biosphere, leading to its collapse.
By focusing on healthy food with higher margin. That could cause people to eat less and be thinner and food companies would keep their revenues because margin would be higher (think free range eggs, chicken that lived outside in good conditions instead of horrible food factories where they are treated horribly).
I actually hope we get there :-) but it would mean that people would have to spend a higher share of their income on food.
When it comes to stripping people of their cash, the competition is fierce, and we humans are usually not very good at long term thinking.
Guilt- and shame-based marketing is not very effective (boasting health/societal benefits is indirectly guilt tripping people), less than hey look at this shiny $product that would make you sooo cool among your peers. Shiny! Buy now! And don't get me started on addiction-based products, like junk food (or screen-based products, be them games or serial TV shows).
I mean government would need to subsidize food for poor people. Large parts of population today rely on cheap food (prepackaged meals or fast food) because they can't really afford higher quality more expensive food.
So government would need to subsidize healthy food similar to the way it is subsidizing green energy (electric cars for example). And probably tax fast food so that kind of business becomes unprofitable.
While I don't necessarily agree with GP, and don't disagree with you, I feel compelled to point out that your comment is almost orthogonal to his. Your points have little to do with what the GP wrote about.
As a consumer, I try to think about the ingredients of a product: if it is mostly chemicals (in contrast do agricultural products), then the product probably isn't healthy.
Where I come from, if a person buys and eats junk and gets obese, that's their own fault, not the fault of the person who sells junk, and certainly not the fault of taxpayers. Their additional costs should come out of their own pockets.
We should tax the companies that profit to fund public education on these issues... If the public is not aware of the risks, they cannot be at fault because they never made a decision.
How do you mean? My understanding is that it would affect insurance rates for the overweight, unless of course insurers are not allowed to set rates based on bodyfat guidelines? I'd accept that it's costly here in Canada though, definitely an increase in emergency medical service load.
About one third of Americans receive government-funded health care, mostly through Medicare and Medicaid.
Additionally, when uninsured people visit the emergency room and can't pay for the service, the ER is not allowed to turn them away, and the rest of us end up paying for it.
Fruit & vegetables full of sucrose? That seems a little exaggerated. An onion, for instance, is 90% water, 4% sugars, 3% other carbs and 2% fibre. A coke, on the other hand, is 90% water, 10% sugar (either HFCS or sucrose, depending on your locale) and not an iota of fibre.
Would a coke onion (84% water, 10% sugar, 5% fibre, [1% other stuff {caramel colouring, deactivated coca leaf extract, etc.}]) be a bad source of sucrose?
Pineapple is about 6% sucrose, red delicious Apples are about 2% sucrose (the rest being mostly fructose, and some glucose), bananas have more than 5% sucrose (As do mangoes, nectarines, and varieties of apple like pink lady).
I guess an important point to make is how easy it is to consume a sugary drink. I can very easily sit down and drink a tall glass of orange juice but not so easily could I sit down and eat the six oranges that would be used to make that oj.
no that's not true. current thinking is just that if you eat fruites and vegs that you probably don't eat so much that you can get sick.
however when it comes to drinks (i.e. smoothies, apple juice, orange juice) we already know that they could be as worse as cola. (from a sugar perspective). fructose is as worse as sacarose for a human beign if you eat/drink too much of it. it is just worse in another way i.e. it can give you different diseases.
Well the problem is just that people consume way more sucrose than fructose. That's why there is probably never a bad word about it.
Basically everything should be consumed with care and moderation, but with the current generation it gets harder and harder (less time -> less time to cook -> excessive use of fast food, etc..)
no, really, current thinking is that whole fruit is better than juice or smoothies because blending releases the sugar, which is otherwise somewhat bound to the fibre.
Of course, it's far easier to overconsume blended fruit, but there are studies showing an increased risk of t2 diabetes from drinking limited amounts of fruit juice, and over consumption isn't the whole story.
Right, fruit juice is definitely problematic since it completely removes the fibre. I only skimmed those articles but it seemed to be talking about juice, not e.g. smoothies where the fibre from the fruit is still present. If I make a smoothie from a packet of blueberries, I assume that gives more or less the same benefits as eating them.
There is a difference in the way the body processes sucrose and fructose from plants and that from refined sugar. Plants have all kinds of other nutrients that necessarily go into the stomach at the same time as the fructose and sucrose.
Yeah, and given that the study was specifically about the metabolic output of the gut bacteria of mice, I am very suspicious of anyone jumping to the conclusion that this has even a decent chance of having any relevance to humans. Overall, of course sugar increases likelihood of cancer. Everything which provides energy to the body is because it might provide that energy to dividing cancerous cells. Anything which increases cellular activity increases the risk of cancer, whether it be heat, friction, calories, whatever. Reducing caloric intake is the only proven reliable means of life extension for a reason. But beyond that basic contribution it would be very hard to see how such basic molecules could contribute significantly.
