Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Prologue: This is the third in a series of several essays that will discuss ongoing scientific controversies, a specific type of which are often referred to in the science press and elsewhere as “Wars” – for instance, this essay covers the War on Sugar. Kahan, in his recent “On the Sources of Ordinary Science Knowledge and Extrarodinary Science Ignorance”, refers to such controversies as “the Science Communication Problem” characterized by their “signature form of persistent contestation”. For the record, I admire Kahan’s analysis, but do not agree with it. The purpose of the series is to illuminate the similarities and differences involved in each of these controversies. I will share my analysis in an essay at the end of the series. Earlier essays in this series are here and here.
Warning: This is not a short essay. Dig in when you have time to read a longer piece.
“Our bodies need one type of sugar, called glucose, to survive. ‘Glucose is the number one food for the brain, and it’s an extremely important source of fuel throughout the body,’ says Dr. Kristina Rother, an NIH pediatrician and expert on sweeteners. But there’s no need to add glucose to your diet, because your body can make the glucose it needs by breaking down food molecules like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
“Some sugars are found naturally in foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and milk. ‘These are healthful additions to your diet,’ says Dr. Andrew Bremer, a pediatrician and NIH expert on sweeteners. ‘When you eat an orange, for instance, you’re getting a lot of nutrients and dietary fiber along with the natural sugars.”
“Although sugar itself isn’t bad,’ says Rother, ‘sugar has a bad reputation that’s mostly deserved because we consume too much of it. It’s now in just about every food we eat.” – NIH “Sweet Stuff”
I’ve bolded the central issue in the War on Sugar. The proponents of the War on Sugar – those fighting to eliminate — or at least sharply reduce the amount of – sugar from the American diet have painted sugar as bad – have made sugar into a villain – because it is too popular – people like it and, in the opinion of the anti-sugar advocates, eat too much of it. We should additionally note that sugars are one of the carbohydrates that the body breaks down into glucose – also known as blood sugar. This illogic – sugar is bad because we eat too much of it — is then used to vilify food producers who use sugar in their products – positioned as unnecessary, too much, wrong kind – an endless attack on a substance that is not only innocent, but is a necessary part of the human diet and the main source of quick energy for most higher life forms on earth.
The War on Sugar is dissimilar to the two previous Science Wars discussed so far in this series: The Salt Wars and the Great Barrier Reef Wars. In those previously covered wars, we found two groups of scientists, one on each apparent more-or-less polarized side of the issue, each surrounded by followers in civil society – activist groups, media, and citizens – who are also polarized on the issues involved. In the War on Sugar, we find almost exclusively a large monolithic body of science and health researchers, ‘science popularizers’ and government agencies waging an endless battle against what they see as the inertia of the general public – who for the most part refuse to do as they are told and give up, or at least eat less, sugar — and, as is common in science wars, assert that there is a conspiracy called Big Sugar (which includes all food producers and anyone else not aligned with their view).
The anti-sugar forces use logic like this: “Several studies have found a direct link between excess sugar consumption and obesity and cardiovascular problems worldwide,” Bremer says. Because of these harmful effects, many health organizations recommend that Americans cut back on added sugars.” (NIH – ibid)
All of us who have studied and trained ourselves to read health studies and findings see right away the problem here. The finding of “links” (direct or not) between two or three things is [almost] meaningless. To then make society-wide health or diet recommendations on this sort of weak evidence is not scientific.
As in both of the previous wars, we find that the War on Sugar, has at its core a simple and basic truth, with which most people would agree is true (or, more precisely, true enough). All sugars have high caloric values – they are loaded with calories, packed with chemical energy. [Simplification Warning – the following is actually far more complicated, but this will suffice for now.] In a very general sense, human bodies need to take in as much energy as they expend – they operate on an energy budget. If one expends more energy than one takes in, the body starts using itself as an energy/food source. It begins breaking down its stored fat and uses it for energy. If it runs out of fat stores, it begins to break down the fabric of the body itself – one is starving. On the other hand, if one takes in more energy – more calories – than one expends, then the body stores the extra energy by converting it to fat – its ready pantry of food storage – which can be used later if needed.
The current public health view is that all “excess body fat” is bad, bad, bad – a view that ignores the incontrovertible evidence that so-called overweight people live the longest compared to so-called normal weight and obese people– a fact named The Obesity Paradox.
It is well established that the morbidly obese – those with body mass indexes exceeding 35 or so – are prone to a bevy of health problems which include diabetes and cardiovascular problems associated with high blood pressure. It is not yet entirely clear what type of comorbidity exists between obesity and the related health problems – the choices being: direct causation, associated risk factors, heterogeneity, independence – but the general view is that obesity is either a direct cause or a very high risk factor and thus, if there were less obesity, there would be fewer cases of diabetes and heart disease, a win for individual health, public health and a savings in health care costs.
Thus, the current prominent public health view that eating sugar leads to weight gain which can lead to overweight which can then, if the trend continues, lead to obesity which is a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease – therefore: Eating excess sugar must stop.
The basic truth is that people who are concerned about unwanted weight gain, who are dangerously overweight or who have problems related to the body’s sugar-processing functions, should consider reducing the overall calorie intake – with sugars, particularly added sugars, being the easiest calories to identify and reduce.
If this were The Public Health Message About Sugar all would be well – there would be no controversy and no need of a science war. This true and accurate health message has apparently – see the rising tide of obesity – failed to convince, or failed to help, those to whom it is rightly addressed. The “chain-of-evidence” indicting dietary sugar as the [or even a] cause of diabetes or of high blood pressure or of obesity and related heart disease involves way too many “can lead to”s – the evidence itself is weak.
It is because the evidence is so weak that anti-sugar forces, which include the FDA (plus the usual cadre of health food and health fad advocacy groups), must rely on exaggerated framing of the evidence in order to justify their policy recommendations.
In a nutshell: The claimed basis for the War on Sugar is that sugars – particularly added sugars, a phrase used to avoid indicting fruits, fruit juices, sweet vegetables and milk – are “empty calories” that when ingested in excess can lead to weight gain which can then lead to diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.
[ It might be well to point out, as an aside, that when I was in hospital following a heart attack, the nice nurse, on orders from my doctor, plugged a tube into my arm that fed me normal saline solution (salt water) laden with dextrose/glucose (sugar) – those vilified “empty calories” – to sustain my life while I was unable to eat other foods. ]
On the same advice page from the National Institutes of Health, the conclusion is given as:
“In the long run, if you want to lose weight, you need to establish a healthy lifestyle that contains unprocessed foods, moderate calories, and more exercise,” Rother says. [Dr. Kristina Rother, an NIH pediatrician and expert on sweeteners]….
“The key to good health is eating a well-balanced diet with a variety of foods and getting plenty of physical activity. Focus on nutrition-rich whole foods without added sugars.” [emphasis mine – kh]
The majority of this conclusion is scientific and based on good research that returns useful information to nutritionists who have translated it into good clinical advice. The emphasized words and phrases are advocacy and are only very vaguely based on science at all.
There is no evidence, given a well-rounded diet, that “unprocessed” foods are more healthful than processed foods or that well-rounded diets should focus on “whole foods” (a marketing term, not a scientific term) and foods that are free of added sugars.
By the way, the science expressly states, contrary to common belief, that sugar consumption, even excess sugar consumption, does not cause diabetes. (WebMD, supplier of the video making this point, is apparently so sure of the opposite opinion that they named the video file “kahn-eating-sugar-cause-diabetes”.]
Back to Earth: None of these facts should be taken to mean that I, or anyone else, would not suffer health consequences if I ate nothing but ice cream, sugared donuts, honey-sweetened smoothies, drank liter-after-liter of full-sugar soft drinks or chug-a-lugged can-after-can of sugar-laden, over-caffeinated energy drinks alternated with Snickers and Mars bars. That, my kind friends, does not a well-rounded diet make. As with all things, the poison is in the dose, and sugars, as with every other type of food, probably have some natural limit.
[voice-over] AND NOW FOR A LOOK AT THE HEADLINES:
The War on Sugar and How We Can Win It — 05/20/2015 — Jose Aristimuno at HuffPo Blog
“If every candy bar and soda across the country carried a warning label just like a pack of cigarettes does, then our country would start to see our sugar consumption go down, just as we have been able to see it happen within the Tobacco industry.”
Eating too much added sugar increases the risk of dying with heart disease — February 06, 2014 –Julie Corliss, Executive Editor, Harvard Heart Letter
“Nutritionists frown on added sugar for two reasons. One is its well-known links to weight gain and cavities. The other is that sugar delivers “empty calories” — calories unaccompanied by fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Too much added sugar can crowd healthier foods from a person’s diet.”
AND BOOK TITLES:
Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat by David Gillespie
Suicide by Sugar by Dr. Nancy Appleton
Sugar Nation: The Hidden Truth Behind America’s Deadliest Habit and the Simple Way to Beat It by Jeff O’Connell
The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program by Kathleen DesMaisons
The Real Truth About Sugar: Dr. Robert Lustig’s “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” by Samantha Quinn
Sweet Pete: A story about a bunny who ate too much sugar (a children’s book) by Maria Alony and Heidi Rodis
Sugars and Flours: How They Make us Crazy, Sick and Fat, and What to do About It by Joan Ifland
[ Disclosure: I have read all the articles linked, plus approximately 100 others, as well as dozens of journal articles on the sugar issue, but have only read one of the books: Sweet Pete: A story about a bunny…. ]
“Sugar is poison” (Dr. Lustig and others), “sugar is killing or will kill us”, “sugar is like tobacco”, “sugar makes us crazy”, “sugar is addictive (like cocaine or heroin)”.
These are not the messages of calm, deliberative nutritional science. They are wild and unfounded exaggerations, unlikely extrapolations, symptoms of “public health epidemiology” and the inevitable propagandists’ tool, “sugar is the first step on the slippery slope to morbid obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and eventual death from heart disease.”
Who, you may rightly ask, is on the side of rationality in this controversy? Very few, and far between.
In this War, we see industry forces whose profits depend in part on high-sugar content foods and drinks funding research in hopes of clarifying the science. Regardless of the findings, the strength of the science, and the thoroughness of the methods, industry science is discredited and discounted.
There are a few voices that occasionally fight back against the exaggerators – write articles pointing out that sugar is not poison, for instance, Ross Pomeroy and David Katz among them. Those who are too outspoken are accused of working for Big Sugar.
The War on Sugar is intertwined with the Obesity Wars, the Soda Wars and HFCS Wars (a sub-set of the War on Sugar).
But we see some common features with the two previously discussed Wars: there is polarization among scientists and the general public, there is resistance to those changes in public policy being insisted on by those speaking for Science, when evidence is weak or only associational, proponents of policy change have exaggerated risks and inflated expected benefits of proposed policy changes to make their messages more powerful (but less true), the general public may pay lip service to the messages (many say they are avoiding sweets) but does not change its behavior (sales of sugar laden StarBigBucks coffee continue to soar, so-called energy drinks – contents: sugars and caffeine — have grabbed a huge bite of the canned drinks market, US candy sales increased from 6.8 billion dollars in 2009 to 8 billion dollars in 2014).
As of 2015, the combined billions of dollars of research expended on the sugar question have allowed us to reach this conclusion:
“Conclusion: There are epidemiological data, plausible mechanisms and clinical data from diet intervention studies that provide strong support for a direct causal/contributory role of sugar in the epidemics of metabolic disease, and for an indirect causal/contributory role mediated by sugar consumption promoting body weight and fat gain. Yet, these are still controversial topics.” Kimber L. Stanhope (2016) Sugar consumption, metabolic disease and obesity: The state of the controversy, Critical Reviews in Clinical Laboratory Sciences, 53:1,52-67 DOI: 10.3109/10408363.2015.1084990
Medical/Nutritional science has made the long, long loop back to where it stood 40 years ago: sugar, representing calories, may cause or contribute to ‘metabolic disease’, meaning 3-out-of-5 of obesity, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting plasma glucose, high serum triglycerides, and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels. [NB: Metabolic syndrome is associated with the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes.] and may indirectly cause or contribute to “promoting body weight and fat gain”.
Overeating, over-consumption of calories beyond your energy expenditure may cause you to gain weight and, if you do become too heavy, too fat, it can adversely affect your health. This we already knew.
The policy proposals that the general public must be somehow forced to reduce their intake of sugars, through FDA nutritional advice, pressure on the food industry to reduce added sugars, through outright propaganda aimed at the public, and through attacks-by-regulation (so-called soda taxes) on the sugared-drinks industry are all based on the premise that if the public consumed less sugar they would be less fat and more healthy – yet another “one substance solution” which is almost certain to be only a part of the problem that is as yet only vaguely understood. Policies to enforce the premise as a society-wide solution to obesity or metabolic syndrome or diabetes are most likely to fail because they do not solve the right problem and the general public will not act on such weak evidence of potential harms. The general public recognizes the “advocate that exaggerates” as an untrustworthy source of information and discounts all his advice, rejecting the good along with the bad.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
I have personal experience with added calories – if I drink highly-sugared beverages and eat primarily restaurant food – which I did for months at a time when traveling for business, staying in hotels, in the 1990s – I put on 10-15 pounds of extra weight. I knew it would happen, but one pays the price of doing business. On return home, to home-cooked meals and more choices, I readily dropped the extra weight. The cycle was repeated several times. I am now, as I have habitually been, a perfectly normal-weighted middle-age-shaped man, with a current BMI of 24. I have a sweet tooth and childishly enjoy a bit of candy or a dish of ice cream occasionally. I don’t have any stake in the War On Sugar, with the exception of my concern for the extent of the harm that these modern scientific controversies do to the reputation of science.
I will be glad to answer your questions about the War on Sugar – I have been following it for at least 15 years.
I realize that many readers here will want to move on immediately to discuss the parallel problems in the Climate Wars. I ask that you please try to restrain yourselves – we’ll get to that later on in the series.
I am still open to suggestions on which of the current Science Wars to cover in this series, I am aware of a half dozen or more. I have more-or-less promised to cover the Ozone Wars dealing with the so-called hole in the ozone layer.
The last essay in the series will be an attempt to layout a coherent pattern of modern science wars and maybe suggest ways that the different science fields themselves can break these patterns and return their specific area of science back to the standards and practices that should exist in all scientific endeavors.
Thank you for reading here.
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As a Type 2 Diabetic, I get it. All too aware of this disease.
The mainstream medical opinion is all wrong about type 2 diabetes, confusing cause and effect. There is a growing group of researchers and doctors who now understand that… drumroll please… insulin causes insulin resistance.
You can get started here: https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/
Thank you for this link.
From a recent article there regarding a study on ketogenic low-sugar, low-carb diet: “The award winning science journalist Gary Taubes believes that obesity is essentially a disease of too much insulin – hyperinsulinemia. Since refined carbohydrates stimulate insulin more than fat or protein, reducing said carbs will result in greater fat loss.” Further on, “Over the 4 week KD [ketogenic low-carb, low-sugar diet], yes there was fat loss. There was an initial period of greater weight loss which all agree may be some diuresis. We can also agree that insulin levels were brought down by the KD. Secondly, using measures of EE [energy expenditure] there was an increase in calories burnt. Those are all facts, not opinions, derived straight from the study.” https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/heres-5-kevin-hall-go-buy-clue/
Unfortunately, the author of the study spun it around to fit the politically correct narrative. Similar to how the climate change evidence is spun.
Atkins diet works to lose weight because it reduces carbs from the equation – like sugar, white flour (cheap bread), soda pop. This should be a no-brainer. It’s not meant to be “high-protein”, this is a confusion. (Atkins didn’t die of a heart attack, as the urban myth that is circulated by anti-Atkins people. He slipped and hit his head.)
The kidneys can’t handle too much protein. This is why an Atkins diet should include plenty of fat, which aids in protein digestion. Fatty meats, not lean meats, are then recommended, such as maybe eggs, avocados, cream, lobster and butter, steak with bone broth based steak sauce, for example. Bacon should not be lean but fatty, if one eats bacon (I love bacon on occasion and use it with other food combinations).
The Atkins program removes all carbs at first and slowly reintroduces them, especially vegetables. It works to lose weight.
The “new” Atkins mentality is to avoid saturated fat like the plague, more politically correct spin. The heart’s two favorite foods are stearic and palmitic acids, both saturated fats found in meats, goose fat, coconut oil, palm oil and others, according to Dr. Mary Enig, who was a lipid researcher and co-author of Nourishing Traditions and also Know Your Fats.
So saute those veggies in traditional fats like the French and use duck or goose fat and butter. I use coconut oil, butter and avocado oil commonly to saute veggies and cook in bone broth. A couple teaspoons of some kind of healthy fat is about all that is needed, I find. I then add fermented fresh-ground grain batter to make gravy, then add some cream, an egg and then dash of curry. Delicious, warming, satisfying and no meat at all.
Grains should be sprouted, soaked or fermented to make them more digestible and remove anti-nutrients like phytates. One egg per day satisfies most of the protein needs, unless you work out or do a lot of physical labor. One 3oz piece of pasture-raised liver will provide lots of vitamins. Combine with grilled onions, goat cheese, avocado and favorite veggies, topped with favorite low-sugar sauce like hot sauce or dash of spicy mustard for a delicious nutrient dense low-carb meal.
The point is that fat can replace refined sugar in a low-carb diet more so than protein. Fat provides satiety, reduces sugar cravings. We love fat. A little goes a long way. So why do we feel guilty eating it? It’s been shunned for years and the idea, like “global warming”, is forced upon us by a corrupt scientific system that is based mostly on profits, in my opinion. Fear of natural fat leads to more carbs in the diet and also tends to encourage use of highly processed oils like Canola and other cheap vegetable oils. Polyunsaturated fats are more likely to go rancid and cause heart lesions than natural saturated fats.
In the end, regarding the article, I don’t believe in a war on sugar or banning soda pop. That’s the AGW way to do things. But educating people on the facts of the matter might be helpful for people to change their dietary habits toward a more nutrient dense way of eating that will reduce collective national healthcare costs into the billions of dollars, I believe. I have learned much from the Weston A. Price Foundation and Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary Enig. It has changed my life and saved my health, I feel.
Note: I meant to say “foods such as maybe eggs…” I’m pretty sure eggs and avocados aren’t meats. 🙂
What it comes down to is the ethics of lying to the general public in the pursuit of a “worthy cause”. My personal opinion is that lying is ultimately stupid, but often successful in the short term. There is, of course, the cynical statement by an economist that in the long term we are all dead.
(1) “Health” is the new secular morality. S/he who can mortify their flesh the most impressively, giving up all pleasures and the no-no of the moment, wins virtue-signaling points.
(2) “Calories in, calories out” is a piece of simplistic late 19th-century reasoning that has been debunked thoroughly many times. All calories are not created equal. Carbohydrates cause the secretion of insulin, which governs the storage of fat. You can eat fat until you go blind without gaining an ounce, as long as no carbohydrates (including sugar) are in the picture. This has been known since the time of Banting.
(3) Always follow the money. The point is a “sin tax” on something people want badly, but do not NEED.
Let’s face it, if they taxed kale, nobody’d ever eat the stuff. Come to think of it, nobody ever did anyway until it became a virtue-signaling fad.
(4) As per a recent article posted here, ALL the major “diseases of civilization” are in decline, particularly among the advantaged classes, and a little extra girth in middle age is not adverse. “BMI” is an arbitrary construct with no scientific validity (it was invented by an astronomer with an interest in averages, not health) and the designation of “3 out of 5” of us as “too fat” is an arbitrary social construct as well.
(5) There IS no “crisis” in public health, except that too much crap is being done, too expensively, to the “worried well” with no problems, while the lowest socio-economic quintile is allowed to fall through the cracks (since unprofitable to treat) with their ill health being blamed on their own “bad behavior.”
Many thanks for this article!
reply to Goldrider ==> Thank you, and thanks for reading (as you know, some omit that step before commenting 😉
Eating fat requires the release of insulin—every food does. Insulin is what allows the glucose into the cells. Fat digests to glucose—all food does as the glucose is what the cells use. There is a tendency to tell diabetics now that fat and protein “don’t count’ but they do. Both can raise blood sugar. If fat did not require insulin, diabetes could just eat fats and not die.
It is interesting that the primary function of insulin is to break down food into glucose for the cells and now we believe it’s wrong and evil to have insulin do just that. The current thinking is everyone should live like diabetics did before the discovery of insulin, avoiding all carbs. Insulin should never be used? Is there a limited quantity? I’m serious here—it makes no sense to me and never has. Non-diabetics produce insulin and are told to pretend like they don’t. Why?
I agree that we have over medicalized things, but you’re making overly simplistic declarations about insulin and sugar.
Good post, except for this bit:
“(2) “Calories in, calories out” is a piece of simplistic late 19th-century reasoning that has been debunked thoroughly many times. All calories are not created equal. Carbohydrates cause the secretion of insulin, which governs the storage of fat. You can eat fat until you go blind without gaining an ounce, as long as no carbohydrates (including sugar) are in the picture. This has been known since the time of Banting.”
First off, it’s interesting that you would dismiss calories in/calories out as being simplistic and outdated, while ending the paragraph with a concept that is simplistic and outdated. Relying on the casual observations of a 19th century layman like Banting doesn’t tell an informed scientific story. A careful look at Banting’s diet finds, along with lower carbs, lower calories. He didn’t compare his low carb diet with other attempts at calorie reduction. We can’t attribute outcomes to one of multiple variables until we control those other variables.
I did the same thing the first time I had to lose weight: I went low carb and lost 60 pounds. I attributed my success to my carb reduction. I went on to put half that weight back on. What to do now? I had no interest in going back to low carb, because after my initial excitement with success, it wasn’t a sort of diet that I could live with long-term. I was destined for the stereotypical dietary yo-yo. I then tried intermittent fasting. SUCCESS! So I attributed it to the metabolic mythology that some IFers claim. I eventually had the epiphany of reality: it’s calories in/calories out. My low carb diet worked because I reduced my calories. I received my needed nutrition with less food and fewer calories. And let’s face it: when you go low carb like I did, there ain’t shit left to eat between meals. One can only snack on so much beef jerky. Intermittent fasting worked because my overall calorie intake was down.
I now eat whatever I want. I make homemade desserts and eat them every day. Pie, pudding, cake . . . every day. If I run out of dessert, I’ll go out for ice cream. I just happen to keep my overall calories in check via the amounts that I eat along with vigorous, daily exercise. I weigh the same now that I did 35 years ago and I’ve maintained this weight easily and comfortably. It’s about finding a diet/lifestyle that we can live with in the longterm, and that involves something more than the relatively short-term excitement of dietary fads. Are my observations just more casual anecdotes? Could be. But they’re backed by the best of studies that actually control for every calorie of their participants.
Just to clarify ==> Ditzkrieg (above) is replying to Goldrider’s comment here. not something in the main essay by me.
The problem with much of the research is that it is nearly impossible to conduct unbiased research given the difficulty of controlling food intake for humans. Different types of food have different effects on the human metabokism and that varies from human to human.
That is very true, especially the variability between individuals. This is why biology is a science (looks at generalities) while medicine (including diet) is an art, the application of a science to a particular case.
I admit i didn’t “dig in” regarding sugar.
But it reminded me of a local scare the EDF tried to raise about atrazine in our local water.
To make a long story short, they took one sample at one tap. The results were above the EPA Maximum Contaminate Level. They raised the ALARM!
In the alarm they reported chronic effected as if they were acute. It gets worse.
They neglected to report that the MCL was based on an annual running average, not a single sample or spike. The MCL here was never exceeded. They just made it seem like it was.
They also neglected to mention that if a person drank water with atrazine at the MCL everyday then after 70 years or so they’d have a 1% increased probability of developing some form of cancer.
(I don’t remember if they’d have to drink 5 or 50 gallons of water a day. But I think you get the point.) Whatever the issue, some seek a headline to inflate their point, however dull it may be.
What was going on around there at the time? Here, they pulled the same thing with a barely over the limit zinc reading, at only one wellhead – when they were pushing to get the Central Arizona Project water approved down here.
It worked. And I’m pretty sure that more health damage was caused by the crud flushed out of the ancient distribution system when the chemistry was radically changed than would have been in a millennium of drinking from that one well that was out of compliance.
Are you sure it was zinc? Zinc is hardly toxic at all – certainly it ties with bismuth the least toxic of the heavy metals. People buy zinc pills to help offset the effects of the common cold (didn’t work for me though). Calamine (zinc carbonate) lotion is helpful for treating skin irritations, and zinc-rich ointments are used to treat diaper rash in babies. IMHO, a bit of zinc in your water is probably a good thing.
It was around the mid-90’s. I was relatively new to the area. But I do know this. The city government hadn’t gone “Green” yet. They actually fought back with facts. (I miss those days.)
PS It think it may have been the EWG (Environmental Working Group) and CA (Citizens Action) rather than the EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) in the forefront.
The difference between statistical significance and clinical significance is lost on naive and ignored by those with agenda.
reply to guidoLaMoto ==> A very important distinction. See my piece on MCID.
This also involves the major dispute about linear or threshold effects. EPA always assumes linear, all biological evidence suggests there are thresholds below which there are no discernable effects for most exposures. Radiation exposure, many chemical exposures, and second hand smoke exposure all involve this fundamental ‘war’ about significance. The linear model says the EPA is never done. The threshold model says there comes a point when they are done. The institutional bias toward bureaucratic preservation is self evident.
Reply to ristvan ==> All true — there is the additional factor of “runaway epidemiology” — in which massive databases of questionable accuracy are mined for links and associations with problems. The resulting links reported are generally such tiny differences that causation is certainly lacking — yet the links are treated as if they were something that must be dealt with clinically. (Some links may be proper subjects for further study.)
Also
Also, look up horned is, for which there is considerable empirical evidence. Sometimes you gotta prime the defensive pump.
Dang autocorrect – hormesis.
Also, look up hormesis, for which there is considerable empirical evidence. Sometimes you gotta prime the defensive pump.
Great post, Kip. Thanks. As a “sugar daddy” I have always felt guilty of eating and enjoying sweet goodies with the certain belief that it would catch up with me in the end but so far, so good I have retained normal weight and shape yet my craving for sugar continues to be indulged.
It helps enormously with my climate scepticism.
There has been a close parallel between the “diet wars” and the “climate wars” for years. The common denominator is advocacy masquerading as “science.”
Ideally your carbs should provide high nutritional density and low glycemic load. Sugar (and most grains) are opposite that with sugar being the worst as it has almost zero nutritional density and a high glycemic load. At the opposite end of the spectrum you have green leafy stuff. The highest nutrient density and a GL so low they had to estimate it.
Dr Sears has been explaining it with his Zone Diet series for a long time. Check it out. It does not exclude you from ever having sugar or wine/beer. You try to limit the unfavourable carbs to 1/4 of you meal’s carb content. Keep in mind one can of pop has a full meal’s worth of carbs in it. It is very dense and easy to overdo.
Interestingly the research at Harvard Medical School on GL shows that ordinary table sugar has a lower GL than most grains. Most table sugar is a mix of glucose & fructose so the fructose gets absorbed much slower. Grains are mostly glucose molecules held together with a weak oxygen bond. When that hits the stomach the bond breaks easily releasing all the glucose.
Another interesting fact about GL is that it is the soluble fibre which slows the absorption into the blood stream and only oats & barley have any significant quantity of that. And not oatmeal, we are talking whole or steel cut oats.
If your diet has a high GL then your glucose levels spike after a meal and your body releases insulin to bring it back down. If you have a low GL meal the glucose goes into the bloodstream slowly and evenly over time.
Good health to all of you.
I applaud TRM for his calm response to this article, I’m not feeling so charitable but I’ll try to keep it cool.
First off, I hope everyone understands that nutritional research is as bad or worse than CAGW research and has been that way ever since Ancel Keys took us down the road of demonizing fat back in the 1950s. I always equate Keys to Michael Mann, same bad studies and same domineering personality, both of which set back research in their associated fields for decades.
Second, if there’s one thing you should understand about nutrition and health is that people who say a calorie is a calorie regardless of the source don’t know what they don’t know. The idea that you can lose weight by eating less and exercising more seems logical on the surface but it’s dead wrong. Fat storage is dominated by the hormone insulin (any biochem textbook will tell you this). High blood sugar provokes your pancreas to increase insulin production and that excess blood sugar is turned into fatty acids and stored away by insulin. If you eat foods that your body metabolizes into glucose at every meal then you will have high insulin levels all day, which not only stores fat but also keeps it locked away, preventing you from using your stored body fat for fuel. Your body responds by making you hungry. People with chronically high insulin levels may be eating a lot but could be starving at the cellular level. Show me an obese person and I will show you a person with either a damaged thyroid or more likely severe insulin resistance. Starving yourself or exercising for hours every day rarely works in the long run because the underlying issue, high insulin levels, aren’t corrected and any attempt to lose weight these ways will result in severe hunger or a retarded metabolism, both of which will lead to yo-yoing body weight. Most of you have probably dieted like this – I bet you were able to drop some weight but then you plateaued and the weight came back, with interest. Get the insulin down with a low carb diet and the weight falls off.
Now if you believe that the source of your calories doesn’t matter when it comes to body fat, that a calorie is a calorie, then I would like to direct you to Ancel Key’s own study on the subject – The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. I’ll skip to the result – it was discovered that creating a similar calorie deficit in a number of individuals led to different amounts of weight loss. If a calorie is a calorie and a 3500 calorie deficit would lead to 1 pound of fat lost, why did all these people have disimilar results. Since Zoe Harcombe did an excellent post on this study I’ll link to it if you’re interested (and I hope you are) rather than write more about it.
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2009/12/the-minnesota-starvation-experiment/
I appreciate the effort Kip puts into these articles but in this case I’m having a lot of trouble swallowing what he’s saying. and quoting Web MD isn’t making it any easier. Sugar is hazardous and not simply because it’s empty calories.
I agree completely Bob with your post about dietary sugars and insulin. Nowhere in Kip’s essay did he mention insulin. It is far too complex to discuss insulin signaling pathways and Insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) intersections with those intra-cellular biochemical pathways. Much is not known about mechanisms of insulin signaling on diverse tissues. But what is clear is insulin and insulin-like factors that signal in insulin pathways shorten your life.
Message for all here:
Chronic. Insulin. Signaling. Shortens. Your. Life. Period.
And dietary sugars force your pancreas to secrete copious amounts of insulin to control glucose levels in the blood.
Hi B. Johnston,- A randomized 6 month study of BMI 28-40 BMI classified adults on low carbohydrate, low fat & a control diet (44% carb: 38% fat: 18% protein) found in each assigned diet category insulin resistant (“IR”) individuals & insulin sensitive (“IS”) people. The low carb & the low fat diets both had robust protein (25% & 22 % respectively) so there was no significant cataboling of muscle for protein to confound data.
The duration was long enough for original glycogen stores use, palpability adjustment, some gut bacteria adaptation & authors explain how oral glucose tolerance test was used to categorize who was relatively more “IR” or more “IS. The low-carb diet ratio used possibly will not satisfy some definition of “very” low-carb & the “ketogenic” diet is obviously not what was studied.
Weight lost by the “IR” on low fat (57% carb:21% fat) = 7.4 kg +/-6 kg vs . those “IR” on low carbohydrate (22%carb:53%fat) wt. loss = 9.6 kg +/-6.6 kg. Study authors stated that after 6 months if one is insulin resistant the low fat vs. low carbohydrate diet was not notably significant in terms of weight loss; but there were significant “secondary outcomes” (which adherents & students of low-carb generally use as markers).
Weight loss by the “IS” on low fat = 10.4 kg +/-7.8 kg vs . those “IS” on low carbohydrate wt. loss = 8.6kg. +/-5.6 kg. The observation that Minn. Starvation Exp. participants (& our contemporaries trying to lose weight) having dissimilar weight loss may be related to who was insulin resistant (IR) & who insulin sensitive (IS). Above data from (2015) “Weight loss on low-fat vs. low-carbohydrate diets by insulin resistance status among overweight adults and adults with obesity:a randomized pilot trial”.
Amen, Bob. Most people can’t get over their early training that insulin is required “to get glucose into cells.” It’s real physiologic function is to stimulate lipogenesis and inhibit lipolysis. (The kidney is the only organ that requires insulin for proper metabolism.)
BTW- diabetes (a term really not much more specific than “infection” as a diagnosis) is a classic example of the interaction of Nature & Nurture. To show elevated BS levels, one must first have the appropriate genotype(s) and then be exposed to excess dietary carbs. Excess carbs do not “:cause” diabetes by themselves. In treating diabetes, no pharmaceutical intervention will be effective unless an appropriate curtailment of dietary carbs is followed.
I agree heartily on Web MD. I once contacted the editor to protest about a dangerous oversimplification regarding ways of reliably neutralizing parasites in seafood, and got the bum’s rush.
I wasn’t aware of some of the information in your comment, and appreciate it, but I’ve noted some other glaring defects in the Original Post:
1. the characterization of “almost all” anti-sugar advocates as raving paranoiacs:
“In the War on Sugar, we find almost exclusively a large monolithic body of science and health researchers, ‘science popularizers’ and government agencies…[who] assert that there is a conspiracy called Big Sugar (which includes all food producers and anyone else not aligned with their view).”
2. The invocation of the BMI, one of the bluntest tools in the medical bag, and unscientific pontification “it is well established that”:
“It is well established that the morbidly obese – those with body mass indexes exceeding 35 or so – are prone to a bevy of health problems which include diabetes and cardiovascular problems associated with high blood pressure. ….”
(full disclosure – my own fat density measured recently at 8% by the gold standard imaging technique, and yet have a BMI in the low 30s)
3. And the failure to clarify the most puzzling aspect of the sugar indictment – that “natural” sugars are OK, only the processed ones are a danger to human health. It’s obvious to me that brown and black bears manage to get very, very fat by gorging themselves on berry sugars in the Fall, and manage that without ever consuming processed sugars. So I would deduce that a human being consuming the same quantity of fruit would get just as fat.
And why don’t the bears suffer from diabetes and cardio-vascular disease?
As for other scientific “wars” deserving to be pacified – I would suggest the War on Radon. It is based on an unscientific assumption by the EPA, the WHO, and Health Canada, among others, that the toxicity of Radon daughters is linear, and totally ignores the concept of hormesis, well known and accepted (sometimes very belatedly) in the case of other trace elements in our environment, such a selenium.
I have not been able to get access to the original studies, but have read that experiments with lab mice in the 1950’s demonstrated that those that had all Radon removed from their food, water, and air lived only 66% as long as the control group.
It has also been reported in the mass media that people suffering from serious osteoarthritic pain reported being relieved of their pain for several months after spending a few hours in decommissioned Radon mines. I’ve not been able to get access to any of the scientific reports on that either. But have seen video documentaries suggesting that such visits have been commercially organized and regularly scheduled in the past.
This Dr. Sears? https://www.brainchildmag.com/2015/06/why-i-hate-dr-sears/
No, that’s Dr. William Sears, a respected pediatrician (regardless of the opinion of the author of the linked article). The Zone diet is Dr. Barry Sears.
No this one:
http://www.drsears.com
“If your diet has a high GL then your glucose levels spike after a meal and your body releases insulin to bring it back down.” Uh, that is the function of the pancreas and insulin. It’s an argument that basically says if you use anything too much, it fails. I fail to see how a normal bodily function doing what it is supposed to do causes the failure of the organ. Eating low sugar means the pancreas can fall asleep and fail to wake up by your logic. If you don’t use, lose it?
Are you then blaming baby boomers for their joint replacements because they were too active and they deserve to destroy their body for abusing it? Extreme athletes should be outlawed? Where do we draw the line? Is there any consideration of individuals or are we all just an average?
There’s a fine line at which use becomes abuse. How much sugar? No one knows. Thanks to all this sugar demonization, we have pediatricians telling 5-year-olds they can’t eat sugar or they’ll get diabetes and have to take shots. Years were spent teaching people diabetes, type 1 specifically, was NOT due to sugar intake. Now the blame game is back and 5 year olds are mocked as being responsible for their auto-immune disease because they were evil and ate sugar. It’s a punishment from God, or nature, or whatever. This is not helpful.
There are skinny, type 2 diabetics who ate healthy food. There are very obese people who never develop diabetes. Cause is always 100%, so the sugar is NOT the only cause. There are multiple factors, all those not including sugar are simply dismissed.
“There’s a fine line at which use becomes abuse. How much sugar? No one knows.”
Actually it’s pretty easy to tell. Get some testing done, even a basic lipid test and blood pressure check will tell you. The thing I look at the most are the 5 factors that make up a condition called Metabolic Syndrome. If you have three of the following five risk factors you have Metabolic Syndrome. A low carb diet is shown over and over to reduce all of these risk factors w/o the use of drugs. And personally I’d be concerned if I had even one of these risk factors.
1. Abdominal/visceral fat – Are your pants tight? Do you have a belly? This is bad fat. It’s not necessarily a cause of heart disease and other maladies, it’s simply a marker.
2. High blood pressure
3. High triglycerides – This is normally classified as anything over 150 mg/dl but personally I’d say anything over 100 mg/dl is concerning.
4. Low HDL – If you’re a guy anything under 40 mg/dl is concerning. For women anything under 50 mg/dl is the cutoff.
5. High fasting blood sugar – Doctors say anything over 100 (I say anything over 85). Now I take exception with this one because it can take a decade or more for insulin resistance (what they’re trying to measure with this test) to show up in an abnormal fasting blood sugar reading. Much better to look at fasting insulin levels or better still to take an oral glucose tolerance test with an insulin assay to really see what’s going on. A simple fasting blood sugar test is going to give you the best case reading (insulin has all night to drive those sugar levels down) and that’s not really informative.
Just these 5 risk factors will give you a very good idea of your overall health as Metabolic Syndrome is highly associated with every chronic disease man suffers from today. And taking drugs to lower these markers isn’t actually helpful, treating a marker doesn’t treat the underlying cause. An example of why it’s dumb to treat risk factors would be to look at gray hair. People with gray hair are at higher risk of death. Do we give hair dye to these folks? That’s the thought process when someone is given a Metformin or beta blockers or statins. It’s an assumption that the marker is the actual cause. They’re most likely not. You want risk factors to be normalized not by drugs but by lifestyle changes like diet and exercise (weight lifting is terrific). And it’s been shown time and again that a low carb diet and/or intermittent fasting are both great ways to get these risk factors headed in the right direction naturally. A low fat/high carb diet generally worsens them.
Metabolic syndrome is a group of so-called risk factors. It is not a disease and can be modified by anyone who wants to include anything one wants. In other words, it’s a made up thing to scare more people.
Of course it’s associated with every with every known chronic disease humans have—so is having blood, but that doesn’t make it the cause. It is amazing how we have been taught that correlation IS causality. It sells so very, very well. Also, it shows us that science has reverted to the witch doctor and gypsy wagon levels where people still buy that magic tonic and think the vapors are caused by being female. It terrifies me how dead science is and how alive magic and superstition are.
Metabolic syndrome is a group of so-called risk factors. It is not a disease…
Am I the only one who hates it when someone paraphrases exactly what you said but makes it seem like they’re the one coming up with the idea?
Of course it’s associated with every with every known chronic disease humans have—so is having blood, but that doesn’t make it the cause…
Is reading for comprehension difficult for you? I never said it was the cause, in fact, I went out of my way to make sure nobody would mistake a risk factor for a cause.
You asked the question (which I think you assumed was rhetorical but it’s not) as to how much sugar is too much and I responded with how people can know, by checking to see if they have the Metabolic Syndrome. Get over it.
There ARE going to be repercussions for “extreme atheletes.” Even moderate ones. It’s filling orthopedic wards all over the US and UK, and doctors are calling it “Boomeritis.” We Boomers are the first generation to attempt retaining significant athletic performance post-college age. As a result, we are accumulating a set of joints, tendons and ligaments that look no different from the age-related degeneration afflicting the field full of retired race and showjumping horses I take care of every day. Why would we be different?
“Extreme” athletics, including fad gym workouts like CrossFit and ToughMudder, not to mention running marathons etc., will ultimately be found to be aging people’s musculoskeletal frame prematurely–not unlike the NFL or NBA stars whose careers have a short shelf life.
Eliminate our culture’s mortal terror of aging and putting on weight, and who in their right mind would want to do these things anyway? Frankly, extreme exercise makes you feel like shit!
Bob Johnston: You called it a “condition”. I did not interpret that as “a group of risk factors strung together”. You stated you’d be concerned if you had even one of these factors. That pretty much screams out “very serious condition”. A huge percentage of the public has at least one of the conditions and many have more. Some have it not because of what they eat but due to other factors such as diabetes, genetics, other chronic illnesses. There’s the question of what “high” is, since medical science keeps dropping the numbers lower and lower. So more and more people fall into the category. That’s not science, so far as I can tell.
You responded with an hypothesis that lacks much evidence. Many experts debate this “metabolic syndrome”. So yes, you answered, and no, I’m not buying the answer.
Goldrider: I agree to a point. I have heard the blame placed on the Boomers and it may be true. I don’t know. However, I agree that the terror of aging and putting on weight are very bad. There’s a reason you are supposed to slow down with age. You break more easily.
I don’t care what you do to your bodies. Just don’t make me pay for it. That way I won’t be blaming anyone, because I simply won’t care.
Reply to those on this comment thread ==> Here we see the polarization in Nutrition Science — which this essay is about. I write about the War On Sugar — the Sugar Wars — which is a mere subset of the greater, endless, Nutrition Wars — a Very Hot Button Topic.
The essay is not, however, about the relative nutritional merits of sugar consumption — it is about the fact that it is a Modern Scientific Controversy (MSC)– well demonstrated by the discussion on this thread — not only controversial, but like other MSCs, emotional for those involved.
I did warn that the simple facts were simplified. But the public health view and the reality presented are accurate.
To: gringojay July 20, 2016 at 12:26 am
The zone diet has been tested in a hospital setting where all food was accounted for. It worked. It is not a low carb diet as it has 40% of the calories from carbs (30% from fat & 30% from protein). The whole idea is low glycemic load carbs, low fat protein and mono-unsaturated fats for your food sources.
It is all about controlling inflammation and controlling insulin.
Hi TRM, – I have read the ZONE diet early publications & seen some later studies citing it. If you find it ideal for certain reasons fine, I don’t think this sugar thread is suitable for me to make comments about specific diets – others here might wish to say some things regarding ZONE diet if you ask general readership. Since you addressed me I am responding to let you know I have seen your specific comment & am not ignoring what you wrote.
Thanks and I understand your point. I realize the article is about sugar but therein lies part of the diversionary tactic used by a lot of “science”. It isn’t just sugar that has a high glycemic load and low nutrient density. Lots of carbs share those properties. Until the debate is redefined it goes in circles much like the climate change debate.
TRM July 19, 2016 at 9:14 pm
Interestingly the research at Harvard Medical School on GL shows that ordinary table sugar has a lower GL than most grains. Most table sugar is a mix of glucose & fructose so the fructose gets absorbed much slower.
Table sugar is not a ‘mixture of glucose and fructose’ it is sucrose, a disaccharide, which is a chemical compound which when hydrolyzed forms a molecule each of glucose and fructose. In the body that hydrolysis is controlled by enzymes with inhibition by glucose.
Thank you for the correction of my misunderstanding. I found it very funny that table sugar had a lower GL than most grains (oats & barley being the only ones lower). The finer points of the sucrose–>glucose+fructose I obviously missed.
Thanks again. I learn a lot on this site. I like that.
You’re welcome.
Note re: WebMD ==> Some readers obviously did not look at the linked video hosted by WebMD, which features C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., President and Director of the Joslin Diabetes Center, explaining in simple English the relationship between diabetes and sugar as :
“Eating a lot of sugar definitely does not cause diabetes, if you don’t eat so much sugar that you gain weight. ”
Some degree of distain for WebMD is appropriate, as is a lot like Wikipedia, in that it can be an easy entry level source of information, but great caution is needed — it is a mixed bag of solid medical information and advice sprinkled throughout with utter new age nonsense. One has to check the sources quoted on WebMD — as in this case. Dr. Kahn is a well-respected diabetes expert.
I could have linked to any one of a dozen or more pages from the CDC or NIH — providing the same information — but I like the simple language of this little video.
The obesity problem really went into high gear when the FDA went on it reduce fat and protein kick. They created a food chart that favored of carbohydrates and that change to the food chart in the seventies caused obesity really ramped up. The educated morons failed to recognise that all carbohydrates have to enter the blood stream as sugars and the body can only do two things with sugar once it hit the blood stream, that is burn it or store it and the body needs to store sugar fast and it the sugar is converted to fat and is stored as fat. Fats and proteins do not have that problem. They can reside in the blood stream for a lot longer not causing any problems.
Wasn’t the 70’s about when people stopped moving and sat in front of their TVs?
That’s a popular misconception. TV and video games are responsible for all this flab, right? Dunno about your ancestors, but mine were not toiling in the fields behind a plow all day, nor were they chasing down gazelles. The men sat in their office chairs doing something grueling like accounting, and the women sat around the parlor chatting and knitting. They all ate whatever they damn pleased, and a surprising number of them lived to be 95 to 100 in an age when the “official” life expectancy was 49. Got the family tree to prove it!
Furthermore, NEVER has it been said that sitting down studying, reading important books, day-trading, or writing the Great American Novel are “bad for your health!” I guess there’s “sitting,” and there’s SITTING.
Once again, it’s an attempt to regulate people’s behavior via the secular morality of “health,” which allows
the elites to put on their Spandex and go Spinning to virtue-signal. That’s about it. There’s no “there” there. 😉
Goldrider: Yes, I think there is sitting and then there is SITTING. There’s also genetics. I am not in any way discounting that. My ancestors were picking cotton as children and worked in very physical occupations much of their lives. My mother gained weight when she decided to just sit in front of the TV in a tiny apartment rather than keep her house and stay active. My father never gained an ounce. He was active in every job he had from laying bricks to security guard. My grandfather was a bricklayer. So, my ancestors were obviously not doing the same as yours.
There is no need for spandex and spinning—that is indeed showing off. However, there’s walking, gardening, hiking, etc that involve activity. I personally find no reason to go to a gym, jog, etc. There are plenty of ways to burn calories around the house. Going to the gym does keep you from munching on food, though. 🙂
I remember that time – people reduced fat consumption to a level that remained above recommendations and maintained their increase of calorie intake. Average per capita daily calorie intake from meat, eggs and nuts decreased from 512 in 1994 to 506 in 1997, calories from dairy had a very slight reversal in 1996-1997 from their steady increase, and calories from added fats and oils decreased from 453 in 1993 to 426 in 1998. The intake of total calories merely had a slowdown during this time from their steady increase, with a 1-year slight interruption from 1994-1995.
Then the second and greater wave of the low carb fad arrived. Daily calories from flour and cereals decreased in 1999-2000 to 2004 and calories from added sugars and sweeteners decreased from1999 to 2003. Meanwhile, calories from meat, eggs, nuts and dairy increased and largely peaked in 2004, while calories from added fats and oils increased and since then largely did not turn back, and total calorie intake increased to its peak in 2002-2004 (3 of 4 years that exceed 2600 per capita) and only slightly decreased since at levels that continued being excessive.
During and after all of these times, waistlines expanded.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/Food_Availabily_Per_Capita_Data_System/LossAdjusted_Food_Availability/calories.xls
I read once somewhere (can’t remember where) that the FDA emphasizing grains & carbs was basically a coordinated effort with the Dept of Ag to help farmers / increase demand for grain.
Grain farmers enjoyed the low-carb fad because grains went through feathered and 4-footed middlemen.
I have weighed 195 lbs at 6′ for 30 years. I have found a direct correllation to physical activity, metabolism maintenance, and weight/fat, general level of shape for the age.
We dance around the root issue for the most part when it comes to health. The older we get the less active we become in todays world, let alone the younger folks, sedate, pixelated world.
It’s the math eventually.
Just sayin…..
Listen to your own body. We are all different. Some can eat no fat, some can eat no lean, some can eat no srarch, some can eat no sugar. Celebrate diversity.
Yes. I, for one, was born under the Sign of the D⊚nut. D⊚nuts are part of a well-rounded individual’s diet.
I had a surgeon business colleague a decade ago who swore potato chips were by themselves a well rounded diet. Carbs, protein, fats, and salt. Thats what he ate for lunch every day. Me, tunafish salad and lettuce on whole wheat was the usual carry in order.
Should'”t that be “a VERY rounded individuals’s diet”?
Absolutely. My husband is always being asked how he can eat so much and not gain weight. I have a very high metabolism and could eat all day and not gain. Both of us are very active. He eats when he’s hungary, I eat when my insulin says I will eat. I have relatives that gain weight by eating one donut (not really, but you ge the idea). Everyone is different. Some swear by protein, some by carbs, etc. We have forgotten how to eat by the signals our bodies give us and instead eat while watching TV, eat socially, eat for comfort, etc. Food is no longer fuel, it’s a fight, a social event, a temptation, etc. All this “science” just makes things worse.
Exactly, Realty check! Sounds like you have the metabolism of a Thoroughbred. I hand those guys bucketfuls of grain twice a day, and it’s still hard work to keep their ribs covered. On the other hand, the draft horse and pony breeds keep on wizzled-up crab grass alone, and get too fat on it! One handful of grain could put some of them into metabolic shock. WE ARE NOT ALL WIRED THE SAME. Not that the oxymoron known as “public health” can figure that out, of course . . .
Gymnosperm
I assume srarch was supposed to be starch, but the first time I saw it I read it as Sriracha.
^¿^
Changing disease definitions: Implications on disease prevalence.
Eff Clin Pract , 1999;Vol. 2: 76-85
This paper describes how the so-called metabolic disease risk factors were re-defined in the late 1990’s resulting in a diagnosis of illness of around 50% of the US population – with no clinical symptoms.
Steven Woloshin (the lead author) has continued his work and a later book is reviewed here:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/overdiagnosis/
Take away the definitions of a disease based on “normal” levels of a continuous physiological character (blood pressure, cholesterol etc.) and there is no such thing as metabolic disease and nothing for the anti fat/salt/sugar people to scare you into buying their products.
Reply to Rob Potter ==> Thanks for the link — this ties in with the modern practice of “disease mongering” by drug manufacturers, doctors, health practitioners, and health faddists. .
I used to think the idea of disease mongering was sort of a conspiracy theory idea. Then, going to the bathroom too often, dry eyes and other very questionable things were declared to be diseases. Now, I see the reality of the situation.
Yes I am irritated by the crusade against sugar.
Common table sugar = sucrose = disaccharide of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose.
Glucose and fructose have always been fundamental to human nutrition and make up plant carbohydrate and fruit and honey sugars.
> Glucose and fructose have always been fundamental to human nutrition and make up plant carbohydrate
Oh. There’s fructose in potato? Are you sure?
I did not say potatoes have fructose (they only have around 0.2g/100g)
I did say that half of the sucrose (table sugar) molecule is fructose.
And fructose is found in honey, tree and vine fruits, flowers, berries, and most root vegetables.
So it has always been a natural part of the diet of humans and most animals.
If you are saying that plant carbohydrates cannot have fructose molecules, you are wrong.
A fructan is a polymer of fructose molecules.
Fructans occur in foods such as agave, artichokes, asparagus, leeks, garlic, onions (including spring onions), yacón, jícama, and wheat.
Yes. All plants have fructose, just not always a lot of it. On of the big problems in storing potatoes is the fact that at cold temperatures the the fructose accumulates and turns brown when fried (referred to as “cold-temperature sweetening”) and is a big problem in the chip industry.
But not HFCs, invented by the Japenese, along with statins, maybe it’s their revenge! Western diets have moved to a high carb diet through continued bad national guidance re as was said Ancel Keys and sat.fat wars. The parallel between the the establishment stance on global warming, and CVD is obvious. Without the internet and blogs such as this there would hardly be a debate. However type 2 diabetes and obesity has risen with national guidance and use of HFCS. Fructose is processed by the liver only and HFCS has given rise to non alcoholic fatty liver in children. Not sure if that’s natural!
Not a good article.
But you shouldn’t demonise sucrose and fructose just because some people eat too much of them.
The war against sucrose is often just too simplistic and extreme.
Type II diabetes and “obesity” have mostly risen because committees from medical advocacy groups, dare I say “trade guilds,” in collusion with pharmaceutical companies, have by fiat been cranking the working definition of “normal” lower and lower, every decade or so. To the extent that sooner or later by their definitions, EVERY ONE OF US will AGE into “diabetes,” “high blood pressure” etc. Nowhere is it usually mentioned that Nature designed these numbers to increase incrementally as we age–maybe for a damn good reason, like preventing the dementia which is now so much more prevalent.
At the end of the day, this is little more than a pharmaceutical quest for immortality, which has been going on since the days of alchemists. The more things change . . . but we can CHOOSE not to participate!
Glucose and fructose have always been fundamental to human nutrition and make up plant carbohydrate and fruit and honey sugars.
Glucose – yes.
Fructose – wrong.
As Lustig points out, every cell in the body can use glucose as is.
And if there’s no glucose eaten, the body creates it ( neoglucogenesis ).
Fructose? No – a very complicated trail of reactions takes place that predispose the creation of fat and fatty liver disease. And the body does not create fructose.
It’s true that there is some amount of fructose in fruits and vegetables. But the things we call fruits and vegetables today are not what we ate through evolution. Before agriculture, our exposure to fructose was not very much and not very frequent. Here’s what fruits and vegetables used to look like in the wild.
Compared to a liter of Coke? No wonder we’re sick.
Turbulent Eddie is making an excellent point that I hope people at least give a thought to. In it’s natural state, before selective breeding to make it larger and sweeter, fruit was available only for a short time during summer and never in the quantities you can get today. Nowadays you can have any fruit you want at any time of year. As a kid I remember not having access to a lot of fruit in the winter because it was out of season, now we get it from around the world and it’s always available.
Fructose kind of flies under the radar for a lot of folks because it doesn’t raise blood sugar and people think that fruit is natural and therefore can’t hurt you. This is probably not the case. A molecule of fructose found in an apple is the exact same molecule found in HFCS or white sugar, no difference.
What I wonder about is that if fructose is okay for us to eat, why does the body metabolize it in the liver where all the other toxins are disposed of? Why didn’t we evolve a pathway whereby fructose is metabolized as easily as protein and fat? I suspect that fructose is viewed as a toxin by your body so I don’t each much of it nowadays.
Reply to Turbulent Eddie ==> Lustig is one of the major voices responsible for the War on Sugar — his views are very radical and way out on the edge. They do not align well with the actual experimental findings. Read the latest journal article giving a whole topic review..
It is extreme polarized advocates like Lustig that cause Modern Scientific Controversies that damage the reputation of science in general and , in this case, prevent the general public from coming to a rational understanding of nutritional issues.
You didn’t even distinguish between fructose and glucose in the posting,
so it doesn’t sound as if you even watched Lustig.
How bad is fructose?
Fructose differs in several ways from glucose:
Glucose stimulates insulin release from the isolated pancreas, but fructose does not.
Fructose cannot enter most cells, because they lack glut-5, whereas glucose is transported…
…once inside the liver cell, fructose can … provide glycerol, the backbone for triacylglycerol.
In one study, the consumption of high-fructose meals reduced 24-h plasma insulin and leptin concentrations and increased postprandial fasting triacylglycerols in women, but it did not suppress circulating ghrelin, a major appetite-stimulating hormone (4).
Fructose is metabolized, primarily in the liver, by phosphorylation on the 1-position, a process that bypasses the rate-limiting phosphofructokinase step (4). Hepatic metabolism of fructose thus favors lipogenesis, and it is not surprising that several studies have found changes in circulating lipids when subjects eat high-fructose diets (4).
In the study conducted by Aeberli et al (1), dietary factors, especially fructose, were examined in relation to body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, plasma lipid profile, and LDL particle size in 74 Swiss schoolchildren who were 6–14 y old. In that study, plasma triacylglycerols were higher, HDL-cholesterol concentrations were lower, and lipoprotein (LDL) particle size was smaller in the overweight children than in the normal-weight children. Fatter children had smaller LDL particle size, and, even after control for adiposity, dietary fructose intake was the only dietary factor related to LDL particle size.
In this study, it was the free fructose, and not sucrose, that was related to the effect of LDL particle size. Studies in rodents, dogs, and nonhuman primates eating diets high in fructose or sucrose consistently show hyperlipidemia (4).
The current report by Aeberli et al suggests that the higher intake of fructose by school-age children may have detrimental effects on their future risk of cardiovascular disease by reducing LDL particle size. It is interesting that this study did not find a relation of dietary fructose with triacylglycerols but did find a relation with the more concerning lipid particle, LDL cholesterol. Another recent report has proposed a hypothesis relating fructose intake to the long-known relation between uric acid and heart disease (3). The ADP formed from ATP after phosphorylation of fructose on the 1-position can be further metabolized to uric acid. The metabolism of fructose in the liver drives the production of uric acid, which utilizes nitric oxide, a key modulator of vascular function (3). The studies by Aeberli et al and Nakagawa et al suggest that the relation of fructose to health needs reevaluation.
Reply to Turbulent Eddie ==> The issue of LDL particle size is discussed in the review paper linked at the end of the main essay. [ link ].
“Lustig is one of the major voices responsible for the War on Sugar — his views are very radical and way out on the edge. They do not align well with the actual experimental findings. Read the latest journal article giving a whole topic review.”
Replace the name Lustig with Eschenbach. Still excited about how experimental findings don’t align with his “radical views”?
I read the abstract of the study you cited above and it was actually a real nothingburger. They say “There are plausible mechanisms and research evidence that supports the suggestion that consumption of excess sugar promotes the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2DM) both directly and indirectly” and that there are also studies that may not support this idea. Without going through and looking in detail at each and every study cited in the review (something that would take months or years to do critically) why are you so quick to write off Lustig as a crank? Simply because his views are thought to be “extreme”? Because his views don’t fall into a consensus? Why is it so easy to accept that warmist climate science is awful and that claims of a consensus view can still be nonsense but not believe the same thing may be occurring in nutrition?
Reply to Bob Johnston ==> It is not that Lustig’s views are outside the consensus — it is that he is one of the Great Exaggerators of the War on Sugar. He is not content with the actual facts about sugar — he stretches the clinical and research evidence to the point of breaking and beyond — naming sugar a “poison” and popularizing this view through YouTubes, speeches, and popular nutrition advice books. He is a campaigner — which is his right, of course. That he inflates evidence, deflates counter-evidence, name-calls, pushes conspiracy theories (Big Sugar) — all the behaviors that give Nutritional Science a bad name — is why I label him an “extreme polarized advocate…. that cause[s] Modern Scientific Controversies that damage the reputation of science in general and , in this case, prevent the general public from coming to a rational understanding of nutritional issues.”
It is not that Lustig’s views are outside the consensus — it is that he is one of the Great Exaggerators of the War on Sugar.
Kip, this is not what you said. Your words were Lustig is one of the major voices responsible for the War on Sugar — his views are very radical and way out on the edge. They do not align well with the actual experimental findings. Read the latest journal article giving a whole topic review., you’re literally saying that his words are not backed up by research and then you reference a review that says his point of view is “plausible”. What am I missing?
I think you’ve made up your mind and have no interest in changing it, regardless of what the data may or may not say.
There is much written about this topic and carbohydrates generally. I have read some interesting research papers.
I am no doctor but I have seen some excellent presentations that show the metabolic processes around food and a number of things strike me as important. Excess sugar suppresses leptin, the hormone that suppresses hunger. Second, reducing sugar and carbohydrates intake does lead to a weight loss ( depending on how much you shovel into your pie hole) and a reduction of many of the nasties like insulin resistance, high BP, blood lipids and cholesterols. I have many friends who have had remarkable turnarounds from weight problems, elevated BP and diabetes by simply reducing the sugar/carb intake a lot. I am not interested in a debate because everyone needs to choose their own medical adviser and everyone is different. I just thought it was interesting that reducing a “non essential?” food intake could result in better health outcomes for so many people I know personally. I lost 15kg’s easily by just cutting out the crap. BTW, fat is fine and tastes great. The low fat foods are full of extra sugar, so I avoid them. I also avoid McFrankenstein and the other sugar loaded take aways. For what it’s worth.
Wow, what a load to the third power of BS. The above mess that is discussed confuses several different effects.
If you eat too much fat (lipids), you store fat. If you eat too much sugar or carbohydrates, you make and store fat. If you eat too much protein, you convert half of the amino acids to carbon skeletons, make sugar and then fat. We are designed to take excess food and store the excess as fat.
Now, regarding diet, we were never meant to have high levels of glucose in our diet. Carbohydrates were a small part of our diet that was normally only available in late summer and early fall until the advent of agriculture, which made the excess productivity allow carbohydrates to be available year-round.
Until then, we were more like bears. We lived on animals until Fall when we would pork up on sweet berries and fruits, storing the excess calories as fat. We are designed to convert excess calories to fat, just like bears.
This propensity to convert excess calories to fat, even at the time scale of each meal, is what makes the current 50-year American diet such a burden. We are constantly telling our bodies to make fat, literally with every meal.
The same carbohydrate heavy American diet also introduces high concentrations of glucose into the blood stream after every meal. This high concentration causes osmotic problems in the lining of our arteries, causes the surface cell layers to swell and allow lipoproteins from the circulation to move to behind the surface cells, which then irritates the cells in the area—this is the definition of atherosclerosis.
Why are the lipoproteins able to enter into the small holes in the luminal cells of these arteries? It is because the low cholesterol diet that Americans have been taught to ingest makes for small lipoproteins bodies to be produces by our livers. These small lipoproteins can enter into the small holes created by the glucose-induced swelling of the arterial lining.
This is a two-way attack on our arteries. If you ate a normal or high cholesterol diet, your lipoproteins would be larger and not able to invade and irritate the lining of the arteries. And, if you ate a low carbohydrate diet, there would not be holes through which small lipoproteins could pass.
It has been shown that males with high cholesterol levels live the longest. As human males are the weakest half of the species biochemically, it makes sense that cholesterol is actually a beneficial chemical and not the demonized nutrient that we have been worrying about. Cholesterol, in one of its several positive roles, makes for large lipoproteins that do not hurt us but do their job delivering their contents.
Think about it. Historically, primitive humans mainly ate meat and fat, eating carbohydrates only during the late Summer and Fall while bulking up for Winter, just like bears. We have not evolved much since then.
We should be eating mostly animal protein (complete protein) and animal fat. That’s actually all we need, with the addition of a few fruits for vitamins C and K and maybe E. Where in here are the carbohydrates? Only for gaining weight.
People love their starches, but if they are stretched their carbohydrate intake out into small doses, the arteries will not see the damaging glucose concentrations. Balanced with healthy or even high cholesterol intake, the arteries will be healthy and unimpaired. Two eggs a day is an absolutely normal, if not low cholesterol intake.
A nod to the Mediterranean diet. When this diet was first described by the main originator of the American diet high in carbohydrate, Anzel Keyes, he described an island who population that had a very healthy population with very low heart disease and they were mainly eating grains and vegetables. However, the investigator neglected to note that this was right after the 2nd world war and the Nazis had stolen all of their livestock. As soon as they could replace their livestock, the residents of the island went back to a high meat and animal fat diet. There is no such thing as a Mediterranean diet.
Higley7 – How about some sources and links? Thank you
Higley7 you are on Watts Up With That using reasoning that would make any Global Warming Alarmist proud. On the fire department that I worked on for 25 years the “Atkins Diet” was king as soon as it became a fad. So I heard what you are spouting over 15 years ago and high protein diets are still the rage. It has now been long enough for those who are old enough and observant to gauge the effect of this ongoing fad on our long time friends and acquaintances.
The sad truth is that I don’t know even one person who went on a high protein diet who kept the weight off long term and I know many who had severe health issues after they swallowed your line of reasoning and stopped eating a balanced diet. Some actually became so unhealthy they had to retire and a couple actually are now dead.
Most went from overweight to obese and yet they persist in the madness, because they love any excuse to eat massive quantities of delicious fatty meats. The person who was my driver on the ladder truck I was in charge of went from 300 to 450 pounds and was forced to go to fire communications where he continues to gain weight to this day. He is great guy and very intelligent. He still says word for word what you do about how are bodies are more suited to eat meat and why. Does observational data mean anything to you?
If you eat too much fat (lipids), you store fat. If you eat too much sugar or carbohydrates, you make and store fat. If you eat too much protein, you convert half of the amino acids to carbon skeletons, make sugar and then fat.
It’s not so simple.
First, we should decide what we’re concerned about here.
People are concerned about fat, but what kind?
Subcutaneous fat looks horrible in a speedo, but is evidently not that bad for you.
Visceral fat is metabolically different and more harmful.
Fat in our muscle cells, and even worse, our organ cells, is not visible but deadliest of all,
because they’re implicated in diabetes, which is probably more important than fat.
Also, is the NET of calories taken up versus expended that matters, not what you eat.
If you ate 110% of your required calories in fiber, you might actually lose weight because you wouldn’t actually take up the full calorie load, plus the fact that it takes energy to break down the fiber.
If you ate 110% of your required calories in Coke, you would gain weight because glucose and fructose are taken up so quickly, not much is lost, and glucose needs almost zero digestion.
Fats and proteins are similarly endothermic, requiring the use of calories to digest ( exercise in a meal ).
And, while exercise can be healthy, it turns out that by far most of the calories we burn are from resting rate.
And so does eating less over a long term!
http://www.eattoperform.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/neat_graph.png
We are designed to take excess food and store the excess as fat.
Yes!
And this is key – the reason we’re designed to store fat is because
we evolved to go without food for extended periods of time.
When they cut up Ootzie the ice man, they found goat and deer.
And while he ate well before his death, it seems likely there were days, perhaps many days, when he wouldn’t kill anything for dinner. ( maybe he ate some grass or leaves or something ).
So, if we want to go paleo, meat and veggies are OK.
But what we also need to eat more of is… nothing.
Fast one day a week.
How is it possible to write an entire article about “The War on Sugar”, and not mention insulin?
For a thoroughly informative book on the subject, see “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes.
My thought exactly. And then bear in mind that grains produce a higher insulin spike than sugar does.
Reply to Krischel ==> Because this essay is about the WAR not the details. If you want to read about sugar metabolism there are entire libraries of science on it — and in the War on Sugar — there are lots and lots of opinions and booksellers get rich on the proceeds of books on the latest fad ideas.
Pick the one you like and fight fight fight for the right!
What about ‘economic interest’ in unhealthy systems and the role of research?
Excess food production US:
US daily calorie intake per capita*: 3770
Needed daily intake** 2200
Excess calories (3770 – 2200) 1570
Excess food production 1570 : (1% of 2200) = 71,36%
Conclusion: there is a strong incentive to keep production on the same or higher level even if ‘health’ requires a lower level.
Opinion: This will influence ‘research’, especially when universities and other institutes for their research [partly] are dependent on business funding.
* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2722815/Daily-calorie-intake-countries-world-revealed-surprise-U-S-tops-list-3-770.html
** men 2400 calories daily, women 2000 calories
So you’ve never heard of exports. Hardly clever surely?
Tim Hammond, the above numbers are about calorie INTAKE of US citizens. It is not about national production.
Besides that, when you look at the graph in the link above you will see that the US is not alone in ‘consuming more than 2200 calories a day’. Just some countries are mentioned.
“Obesity Paradox” is not holding up as valid. Analysis of just under 4 million never smoking non-chronic diseased individuals ( when 1st entered studies) who then did not die within 5 years were tracked for ~14 years has been culled from 239 studies. Just under 2 million subjects in those studies were excluded from cross-referencing in attempt to keep confounding cases from the analysis.
The analysis did not attempt to parse causation. Of those 3,951,455 people 385,879 passed away & the survivorship sweet spot was 20-25 BMI. The data indicated that if merely overweight (not obese) there was just a statistical 7% greater association with mortality; I am aware of limitations to BMI & accept it’s use to correlate across so many different studies. (2016, July issue) journal Lancet, “Global BMI Mortality Collaboration.Body-mass index and all-cause mortality: individual participant data meta-analysis of 239 prospective studies in four continents”.
Meta analysis? At best meta analysis brings in all the problems of simple analysis like publication bias and poor methodology, and at worst it adds a layer of new problems, like selection bias and trawling for significance
We know that at least 70% of published research is flawed, faked or just wrong. A meta-analysis can easily pick just the studies that suit the researchers, and thus all the studies inlcuded could be falwed, faked or wrong.
Hi T.Hammond, – The cited report tried to at least get rid of a good proportion of the confounders & then report the statistical trend for those that seemed to be worth considering. There were actually ~ 10,600,000 individuals in all those studies they tried to sort through in an attempt to resolve, as best possible, the kind of issues you bring up here.
The BMI was used as a correlation to “premature” risk of dying in the approximate 40% of the original subjects that made it through the best filter the raw data supposedly had. By the way, outside the sweet spot BMI the increase of ~7% premature mortality risk (for lack of a better brief term) was for 25-27.5 BMI, went next to~ 20% “risk” until 30 BMI, then up to ~45% greater risk until 35 BMI & so on upward non-linear with greater obesity.
Allow me to repeat my understanding that BMI is not an absolutely perfect metric & add that I am aware genetics vary. Furthermore, the terminology of “premature risk of death” is not easy to work with on a personal basis; dying a few days/weeks/months than statistically probable is hard to place a value on (at least by me).
If you wish to say the “obesity paradox” has not been seriously challenged by the cited study then it seems to me you have some reasons which uphold the obesity paradox theory (no matter what I have tried to summarize) , or have determined where/how this study is definatively flawed in more specific terms than it used BMI data from many protocols. The report qualifies that the “risk” factor is least applicable for women, followed by men & greatest when the BMI of the young is followed (where long term tracking data was available); with cardiovascular disease being the commonest factor showing relevance & then respiratory disease (note: this is not saying obesity is the cause of those diseases).
Reply to gringojay ==> Do you have a link to that study?
Hi Kip H.,- study title is that last long quotation marked run on sentence found at end of my original comment above; just out last week 13 July 2016 in journal Lancet. Sorry to admit I haven’t learned to make a blue lettered link on my tablet; it already seems to have gotten some notice on-line & a few of the charts show up.
Reply to GringoJay ==> The link to the study is here: with a follow-on link available there to the whole paper in .pdf offered free.
Note that the study was specifically undertaken to try to disprove the Obesity Paradox — beginning with the initial design.
Even given that, the bottom line of this meta-study is that effect size for BMI 25-27.5 (overweight) is 1.07 — vanishingly small — read clearly here — not clinically significant in any way, given at a level of precision that is absolutely impossible to validate in a meta-analysis.
Again Kip H., – the theory name is not “overweight paradox” & you can see cited study for 30 BMI the “risk” is not like the 27.5 BMI (which I too pointed out is minor). While on subject want to give my understanding of why (beyond genetics) many obese are definitely not prematurely dying. Unfortunately my memory of exact data & publication title is deficient.
A modern geriatric northern european (Denmark?) population that was still living in their communities (not nursing home) who were overweight & obese led research team to conclude why
being obese did not automatically lead to premature death (after adjusting for confounding health issues) & in some played out better than “ideal” BMI individuals . The insight was that since obesity increased intestine permiability to lipopolysaccharide (LPS, lipid+polysaccharide) from bacteria membranes the constant challenge (antigen) to the obese persons’ immune system kept the immne system working.
It might be described as being an apparent dis-function (permiable gut) being also a functional impetus to “use it” (immunological function) instead if “lose it” (ability to sustain immunological activity); & longevity is associated more with exceptional immune systems than any specific diet composition. As you’d expect this did not play out as well for the morbid obese (very high BMI).
The obesity paradox. Wealth radiates I’m attractive:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-browser&biw=360&bih=264&ei=yA2PV8PlCuGL6AT1v5PoAQ&q=venus+of+willendorf&oq=venus&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.1.2.0i67j0i20j0i67l2j0i20.3997.6492.0.8666.8.8.1.2.2.0.387.1208.0j2j2j1.5.0….0…1c.1.64.mobile-gws-serp..1.7.1143.3..35i39j0i3.dxRUuymBOeo
__________________________
That attractive woman, she has never ending supply of wealthy food: obviously no man wants to see her face – locks down to her nose.
To be clear – ‘wealth’ in that context refers to the neolithic agrarian revolution:
wheat stapled to the skies. == sugar
Kip, I would love to see a comprehensive analysis of the science behind Ozone hole theory, with real historical context.
Ever since “discovered” in the discarded data of the Toms satellite, the instant unprecendentness has bothered me.
Reply to charles the moderator ==> The Ozone Wars are in the queue.
http://www.google.at/search?site=&source=hp&ei=BxWPV57fCsWRgAbswYrACQ&q=babies+sugar+deteriorated+teeth+dentists+&oq=babies+sugar+deteriorated+teeth+dentists+&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.12…2906.61573.0.62880.40.36.2.8.8.0.1023.9110.0j28j2j2j6-1j3.36.0….0…1c.1.64.mobile-gws-hp..0.25.4648.3..0j41j0i3j46i3j0i10j0i22i30j0i8i13i10i30j33i21.cM5APtuKEuM
https://www.google.at/search?ei=ThePV6KaPIvAgAaR8a_IDw&q=juvenile+diabetes&oq=juvenile+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.1.1.0i20j0i67l3j0.3315.21250.0.24558.17.13.5.3.3.0.882.3092.0j3j5j1j6-1.10.0….0…1c.1j4.64.mobile-gws-serp..2.15.2655.3..35i39j0i3j0i10i3.2rj6oT-tPOE
“The policy proposals that the general public must be somehow forced to reduce their intake of sugars, through FDA [(in the US) Food and Drug Administration} nutritional advice, pressure on the food industry to reduce added sugars, through outright propaganda aimed at the public, and through attacks-by-regulation (so-called soda taxes) on the sugared-drinks industry are all based on the premise that if the public consumed less sugar they would be less fat and more healthy …”.
===========================
Governments should first of all be reducing deficits by reducing expenditure — that’s obvious.
But given that taxation is inevitable it is preferable to tax expenditure rather than income e.g. ’sin taxes’, i.e. taxation of discretionary spending on products which may be harmful in excess as long as that tax is not just a spineless substitute for prohibition.
J S Mill (On Liberty chapter V): “… These considerations may seem at first sight to condemn the selection of stimulants as special subjects of taxation for purposes of revenue. But it must be remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is absolutely inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the State, therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some persons may be prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It is hence the duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare; and à fortiori, to select in preference those of which it deems the use, beyond a very moderate quantity, to be positively injurious. Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest amount of revenue (supposing that the State needs all the revenue which it yields) is not only admissible, but to be approved of …”.
Mill also approves government guidance, warnings, badgering etc. but not prohibition (which doesn’t work anyway).
In the case of cigarettes booze or general nutrition advice that especially applies in countries where individual health is largely insured by taxpayers.
I do not know what country you live in, so I will comment for the US.
” given that taxation is inevitable”
True. Taxes must be levied to pay for essential services which cannot be otherwise financed, such as an adequate defense.
“taxation should be indirect”
No. Taxes should be visible and as direct as possible. Nothing is hidden, especially not agendas, which are too easily hidden when the taxes are hidden.
“the duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare”
Doubly wrong. Taxes must be as broad based as possible. All people benefit from essential services (such as a strong defense), all should contribute and understand that everything costs money. Second, Govt. has no business deciding for us what is “positively injurious”, and even less business enforcing these opinions on the people. Using the full force and coercive power of the state through taxation to enforce social policy is the absolute death of individual liberty.
In the US, there are a lot of things that the Govt. simply has no right to do. This way of doing things had never been tried before, that’s why it was so revolutionary.
There is a GREAT deal of epidemiologic evidence pointing against this sugar war.
Also, against the fat war.
And, against the “obesity” war.
And at the alcohol war.
Across the globe, these dietary components are not the evil they are made out to be. They simply do not show up as predictors of mortality, and do not show up strongly as predictors of morbidity.
What does show up: inactivity.
Mostly inactivity.
Here is another hidden gem: make a list of the things that lead to constipation/slow-few bowel movements. Cheese/dairy, meat, incl red meat. Too little water, too little dietary fiber.
And another list: the things that lead to “regularity.” Plenty of water. Exercise, fruits and vegetables/fiber. Low meat, low dairy.
Now look at the associates of cancer.
Might cancer be a problem of too-slow or too few bowel movements?
I reviewed a paper once. They dismissed “regularity” as a cancer risk. I pulled up their 3 citations. Lousy/no defense of this claim. They dropped their statement that regularity was dismissed as a cancer risk. –they suffered from common knowledge. I look back at that paper every now and then. It has been cited a lot.
I thwarted the myth that there is no relation between regularity and avoiding cancer.
Outside of the “developed” world, especially in older investigations, being “overweight” imbues no, or little, increased risk for early mortality. Why not? Outside of the “developed” world, the poor/lower income are regularly physically active. Sweep, chop, walk, fold, carry, slice, pound…….put a pedometer and see if they are reaching their 10,000 steps per day. Yup. Now, what about our poor here in the developed world?
A great cause of our morbidity and mortality is wealth: we are so wealthy – so efficient and powerful at delivering tasty calories to the entire population, rich and poor, that the poor do not have to work so physically, and can enjoy diets of excessive pleasure once reserved for nobility. And, while many “poor” work at physically hard jobs, a lot do not; we are so wealthy that we can support them and they do not have to labor so hard.
If our health problem is wealth, then can it also, simultaneously, be poverty?
Was almost hoping this would end with a sarctag, Kip. Going into health discussions, quoting the obesity paradox. You dont need to be into medicine or dietary science to know that this so called “paradox” is more flawed than climate models.
Not only does people lose weight when theyre dying due to terminal illness, but “athletic” people, myself included are considered “overweight” by BMIs defintion.
This is not a scientific documentary, but theres one out called “The Sugar Film” about an healthy australian who adds 40 tsps of sugar to his diet in the form of smoothies/juices, stuff touted as healthy. And you can see how fast his body deteriorates.
Not sure any of your comment makes sense. A film? That’s your evidence? And dying people lose weight, so being “overweight” isn’t healthy? What?
The biggest and simplest studies show that people with BMIs that are classified as “overweight” live longer and are healthier longer. Sure, that research may be shown to be faulty, but not by a silly film.
The movie was not evidence for the obesity paradox being faulty, your own critical mind would be more than enough evidence that it’s faulty. Im not sure how my post was so hard to understand.
People with terminal diseases generally lose weight = More sick people with average-low BMI
People who work out, gain musclemass and less fat volume = Athetlic people have an BMI that put them in the overweight category.
“We know that at least 70% of published research is flawed, faked or just wrong. A meta-analysis can easily pick just the studies that suit the researchers, and thus all the studies inlcuded could be falwed, faked or wrong.”
I figured anything anyone posts as “evidence” in response to you has no chance of passing your scrutiny unscathed. Meaning you’ve made up your mind already.
Reply to wolfho ==> You seem to be under the impression that I am arguing something or other — I am not. I have clearly stated that I have no stake in the War on Sugar. This essay is about The War — not the participants or the details of the individual battles. It is one in a series of essays about Modern Scientific Controversies — Science Wars — persistent scientific contention.
The Fructose Battles and the Insulin Spikes battles are sub-sets of the War on Sugar — and your are right — very dear to the hearts of many of the combatants.
If I were writing a BOOK on the War on Sugar, I would dedicate a chapter to each of those topics, and discuss the sub-controversy involved with each.
As you may have already guessed, fructose is a post-hoc enemy in the War on Sugar — having failed to find smoking gun evidence that sugar is k-i-l-l-i-n-g us all, the anti-sugar forces have shifted slightly to the left and are trying again with fructose — hinking and dodging to avoid indicting “natural fructose” while vilifying refined fructose or HFCS.
Opinions vary wildly (and emotionally) on this subject — which is one of the symptoms of Modern Scientific Controversies. .
i have explained far above somewhere why the intricacies of insulin function in human physiology are beyond both the scope of this essay (which is about the War) and the educational level of the readers.
[ The reason you got push back on the movie is that it is simply a propaganda film, in all probability faked, and nothing in it can be accepted at face value. Such films poison the entire field of Nutritional Science by obviously exaggerating potential harms, violating the trust of the viewers to the point where they tend to reject the entire field of study. ]
Reply to wolfho ==> The film you refer to is “That Sugar Film” . It is a blatant piece of propaganda and is, I strongly suspect, as cocked-up as its predecessor “SuperSize Me”, which has been subsequently discredited.
Generally, propaganda “fake-umentaries” are not good sources of scientific information.
Why does everyone keep focusing on the movie, I never said it was scientific? It gives a basic jist of the different sugars, insulins function and the bodys response. It isnt a predecessor any more than any Space documentary is a predecessor to the first space documentary.
Why dont you mention fructose or insulin in your OP, Kip?
Why do you use arguments such as Obesity Paradox?
Reply to wolfho ==> See the reply to you just above a bit…got in out of order.
My understanding is that the ‘fat makes you fat’ meme is completely wrong. Excessive sugar consumption makes you fat. Reason is that the digestive system can only process fat slowly, whereas sugar needs virtually no processing, and therefore hits the bloodstream very quickly. If that surge of fuel cannot be used immediately, then it has to be stored as fat.
As a hillwalker I’ve learned not to eat sugary snacks in mid journey. What that does, is to give you a rush of energy lasting an hour or so, after which you ‘crash out’ and find it hard to continue. Eating a mix of carbs and fats keeps you going for the rest of the day.
Insulin does not respond to fat, protein to some extent. Insulin makes you fat. Fructose is processed by the liver it’s bad stuff. Table sugar is 45 per cent fructose. The body has no problem with sucrose.
Where on earth did you get your education/information?
I agree. The work of Canadian physician, Dr. Jason Fung shows that fatty liver due to excessive fructose consumption (fructose goes straight to the liver for metabolism) is the root of metabolic disease. He has excellent success reversing this condition by removing most carbs (especially sugar) and fasting. Give the poor body a break from constant insulin exposure!
And the mechanisms –
https://www.google.at/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-browser&q=burn+fat+sugar+insulin&gfe_rd=cr&ei=yCiPV8jVF-fR8gfQ9JvgAQ
– have a nice day!