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Comment by skohan | Hacker News Reader

Yes exactly. Sugar should probably be placed in the same category as alcohol in terms of health consideration. It's fine to enjoy in moderation, but fundamentally toxic. Less acutely toxic than alcohol, but more strongly habit-forming.

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Sugar is not fundamentally toxic. This is a very poor conclusion to draw, and even more so when, as someone else suggested, expanding this to all carbs.

Glucose is used in IV drips, and in emergency conditions, providing someone with glucose and electrolytes can prevent them from passing out.

When people say sugar they are generally referring to sucrose. When they say that sugar is toxic, it's not because it's broken down into glucose, it's because it is also broken down into fructose.

The metabolism of fructose is somewhat analogous to that of ethanol.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649103/

> The metabolism of fructose is somewhat analogous to that of ethanol.

Does that mean it's toxic?

Of course not, because that study analyzes concentrates and not natural source of fructose. Eating the equivalent amount of fructose used in those studies in fruit will never get you similar effects to ethanol. These studies are interesting but vacuous.

I would go ahead and throw all carbs in there with the level of inactivity among most of the population.

No, because there are plenty of healthy carbs, especially in moderation.

There is no healthy sugar by comparison.

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