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Comment by iSnow | Hacker News Reader

>The proposed changes have been strongly opposed by the food industry as unscientific. The Sugar Association, a trade group, said the F.D.A. was “making assertions that lack adequate scientific evidence,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association criticized the standards the agency used to establish the daily value as being “inadequate.”

That's the tobacco industry smoke-screening evidence about the dangers of smoking all over again.

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But also sounds like, for example, producers of vaccines arguing against that one study that vaccines cause autism. Just because they have an ulterior motive in defending their product doesn't mean they're wrong.

Every medical researcher argues that vaccines don't cause Autism. There is literally no study published in any serious peer reviewed journal that suggests otherwise.

You mean, except that one study which started it...

It's crazy to start freaking out over something just because of one small study, especially if it's something that didn't seem to have any observable negative effects until then.

But vaccine producers can also point to a long list of independent studies to underline their arguments. Probably there are also some studies that fail to find any correlation between high sugar intake in kids and negative health signals.

But I doubt those are very many or very thorough studies.

By the same token, there are lots of skinny people who consume sugar with no ill effects. There isn't money to be made off of them since they aren't paying for obesity related medical services or supporting the dieting industry. Medical research isn't done on healthy people because it doesn't pull in the big grant money nor do they buy pharmaceuticals. The media doesn't report on them because there isn't anything sensational about normal people doing normal things. There is a huge confirmation bias against all sorts of "bad" foods because the people who are unaffected by them are systematically ignored.

Vaccines are a bad example.

Andrew Wakefield received money from lawyers preparing a MMR lawsuit without disclosing the fact. His research was shown to be false in multiple followup studies, he was shown to have falsified data, he lost his medical license, and The Lancet formally retracted Wakefield's 1998 paper. He also had a paper retracted by the The American Journal of Gastroenterology.

The other issue was the reporting on the study.

The obesity epidemic is clearly the new tobacco epidemic, but the health effects are worse, and unhealthy food is harder to avoid than smoking ever was. You can't abstain from eating like you can smoking, and ask any addict how hard it is to stay clean when everyone around you isn't.

Plus at least tobacco was attractive though right guys? /s

https://36.media.tumblr.com/a31b0a77b878143a5f3b3904c2a012d9...

Not to mention just how wrong the name "Grocery Manufacturers Association" sounds.

Throw in that two of the world's largest corporations are little more than glorified sugar pushers - Coke and Pepsi - and you have a replay of the 90's tobacco scene. Just Coke and Pepsi together represent a sugar ecosystem worth perhaps half a trillion dollars globally (their market caps + companies directly dependent on them + retail).

The upside is, those companies are slowly dying. Coke's sales the last three years:

$48 billion > $46.8b > $45.8b

We can add trash like McDonald's into this, their last three years of sales:

$27.5 billion > $28.1b > $27.4b

These types of companies will continue to bleed sales and struggle in the next decade as consumers seek alternatives.

Alternatives like Diet Coke? But don't hesitate to put your money where your mouth is and buy Coke put options.

I recently cut out sugar and also quit diet drinks. I've heard that aspartame can have sugar-like effects, particularly triggering food cravings. I used to drink two, three sometimes more 7-11 style Big Gulps every day. Cutting them out has made a difference in my subjective quality of life but it's hard to describe.

A Big Gulp is 40 oz; I'd imagine cutting out 120 oz daily of anything would have a notable impact on your overall state.

For comparison, the most current recommendation I could find was for 64 oz of water a day -- about half of your prior soda intake.

I only drank diet drinks. 0 calories but lots of aspartame.

Are your teeth ruined?

No. I haven't had a cavity in at least ten years.

>consumers seek alternatives

>Buy put coke options

What if coke is able to change their business and provide those healthy alternatives?

A big what if, admittedly, since the dopamine hit provided by sugar is what drives excess consumption of the product. But never say never.

Then I guess Coke won't "continue to bleed sales and struggle" as the parent suggested?

Note that Coke ALREADY provides "healthy alternatives" (they sell bottled water if that's your thing). And also note that the parent has no idea what part of Coke's product line the dip in sales was caused by, whether it's an industry-wide phenomenon or not, etc. etc.

That's because the parent is just some armchair financial analyst spouting nonsense.

> What if coke is able to change their business and provide those healthy alternatives?

That was the implication of the post, yes, hence the mention of sugar-free drinks they already produce.

I just watched a documentary [0] about sugar last weekend and they also compared it extensively to the tobacco industry. The sugar industry is just trying to spread enough FUD ("doctors agree, smoking is good!") so that while none of them can definitely prove that sugar is harmless, they can at least make sure that there isn't a common consensus on the issue which prevents further action.

Oh, and the "adequate scientific evidence" that they are looking for is something absurd like a study where you would give kids sugar and follow their daily lives for 40 years and then see if it has negatively impacted their health. We don't even have that strong scientific evidence against tobacco to date.

[0] http://sugarcoateddoc.com/

No it isn't. It's the proposed changes being unscientific. It really hard to explain how sugar could be the culprit when its consumption didn't increase.

Edit: I would just add that the name makes the result even more suspect, he seems to be the only person pushing this fructose hypothesis. I wouldn't take the results seriously until it's replicated by somebody with no connection to him.

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