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Comment by oil25 | Hacker News Reader

This undue exaggeration about sugar lobby influence has been thoroughly debunked - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/747

Aside, it is really a shame how reductionist the popular view of nutrition is that we come to scapegoating "fat" or "sugar". T. Colin Campbell says it well:

This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure. Reductionist experimentation is valuable for understanding nutrient structure and function, but it too often encourages endless speculation and confusion caused by highly subjective, personal preferences as to which factor to favor in research and to offer to the market.

https://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious-faulty-foolish-discu...

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You read the article or the abstract? I read the abstract. It doesn't (to me) actually rebut all and any conspiracy theories it rebuts some and says people went too far. It doesn't say there was no industry shilling or industry funded science distortion.

What do you think it says?

I'm not a believer in a single grand sugar conspiracy. I am a believer in industry lobbying distortions in science funding. It's common for any industry with downside risks to consider funding science which suits their message.

Why do you think we have an issue across science about non publication of negative results and hiding datasets?

> there is a serious danger in interpreting the inevitable twists and turns of research and policy as the product of malevolent playbooks and historical derailments.

Neither malevolence nor conspiracy need be invoked to fear sugar lobby influence. A simple confluence of strong incentives and ambiguity in nutrition science is sufficient. It's entirely possible for sugar lobbyists to believe their products are safe and wholesome and channel funding to scientists and institutions that believe the same.

All we need to be concerned is

1. A finding that a powerful and concentrated industry is providing massive funding to research and regulatory bodies at all levels.

2. A recognition that their motivated reasoning is at least as powerful as our own.

No mustache twirling villains need apply.

Nutrition is so much more nuanced than any of us really know. Everytime I think i know something, I learn more details and learn that there's even more to it.

Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon or from 16 hours of fasting. But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda?

In any case, it's good that people are starting to think about these things, the pros and cons. Hopefully, people can learn why it's good/bad and thus enable them to make better decisions the next time they need something sweet.

On a related note, I heard Dr. Berg say, sugar craving are a sign that your body is not getting enough potassium. Evolutionarily that would make sense, since fruits are higher in potassium than almost anything else except vegetables.

> "Sure, Sugar can be acceptable if you use it responsibly. You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon or from 16 hours of fasting."

Of __all__ the soda consumed what percentage would you image falls into this loop hole?

The reality is, sugar (and carbs) for many people are not consumed responsibly. And give the degree of irresponsibility, 99.9% of these people aren't running a marathon or fasting for 16 hours.

OO I'll guess... I'll say... 0.0015%.... .. .. that also might be generous...… and that no one who has just completed a marathon or 1/2 or any portion _wants_ to drink anything other than water or maybe the saltiest flavor of Gatorade or powerade that exists... seriously after a lot of physical exertion I'd far rather see a deer salt lick and a bucket of water than an infinite vending machine of anything...

>You can even safely consume a Soda if you're in a glycogen depleted state such as after a marathon

You “could” but that will also not help, and actually hurt, with the natural inflammation from running. If you ran the marathon in ketosis, you really wouldn’t be in a “glycogen depleted State” - even though that’s what ketosis generally is - because your body and brain are primarily running on ketones and internally producing all the minimal glucose the body/brain actually require.

In either case after a marathon your muscles will be catabolic, so protein is good, and of course water/electrolytes. But really it should be telling your example of using sugar responsibly is after running a marathon.

> But, do you really wanna waste you're precious calorie/sugar alotment for the day on a soda?

No, but 1 can (maybe 100-160 calories), isn’t close to most people’s daily calorie burn.

Sure it might push you over the limit, all other things being equal, and it doesn’t do you much good (aside from the water content), but it’s not going to kill you.

My dad used to tell me this story of how when he was in his 20s he had a can of drink and he was looking away at something and as he looked back at the can to take another sip he just saw a bee crawling inside the can.

Never say never.

Was he deathly allergic to bee stings?

I’m curious, does that assessment include the difference between glucose and fructose?

My mental model was more that pure glucose is rather safe (given healthy insuline response) while fructose should be avoided even after a 16h fast.

The Science rebuttal raises an interesting philosophical question - if evidence about industry influence is not slam-dunk, as it asserts SRF's influence here was not[1] - then to what extent is it appropriate that meta-conversations about nutrition science invoke external "machinations" to strengthen scientific shifts? For example, if, say >95% of the shift from "bad fat" to "bad sugar" was driven by improved scientific methodology (which the Science article seems to suggest), it seems like a risk of disproportionately highlighting the remaining negligible influence may artificially support the new status quo.

[1] "As we have also shown, the sugar industry approached Hegsted only after learning of the results of his dairy industry–backed study suggesting that fat and not sugar was a factor in heart disease. “There was no, ‘We’ll get money from them and make the results come out this way,’” recalled Lown, who worked in the department. “It didn’t happen that way,” he said."

This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure.

I don't think you can compare fat and sugar. Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years and one that's been common for at best a couple hundred years. The association of high sugar diets with diabetes is pretty strong, as an example of potential harm. The complete elimination of refined sugar from one's diet is fairly practical.

Fat, broadly has been part of the human diet since before the evolution of modern humans. It's something that can't really eliminated and certainly shouldn't be.

So, this "no reductionism" argument is fairly crude itself, reductionist-even, actually.

> Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years

This sounds frankly absurd to me. Sucrose- the normal white sugar- simply breaks down into glucose and fructose; all three sugars- sucrose, glucose and fructose- are found in all fruits in 8-15% proportion on weight (much more for dried fruit, of course). They have always been part of our diet, even before we started hunting animals. It's not because you see it as a white powder it's right to assume it's a new ingredient in our diet. It's not.

More than "reductionist" I'd call it naive. It's the same mental short circuit that's behind the usual "this one weird trick" and "doctors hate her": the idea, or dream, that we can find a single culprit- and therefore a single solution- for all our problems. One time it's fat you shouldn't eat, then it switches to sugars, then you should eat proteins, etc.

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