Comment by valenterry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by valenterry | Hacker News Reader

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From your own linked study:

> It is important to not single out sugars as the enemy to be avoided at all costs. Sugars are a naturally-occurring, integral component of many unprocessed foods.

> A positive correlation between sugar consumption and obesity is only apparent when sugar is overconsumed, which is the topic of this review. It is worth recapitulating that obesity is a multifactorial disease. This review focuses on the association between sugar consumption trends and obesity prevalence. However, for a holistic understanding of the causes of obesity, we must also take into account such factors as physical activity, economic status, and consumption of other macronutrients, i.e. fat, and micronutrients, among others.

Yeah, I don't think we will come to an agreement here.

Seems you really want to do something against obesity and you are ready to accept quite a lot of collateral damage by punishing people with extra tax who don't need to be protected/helped at all.

I on the other hand believe that the sugar itself is a minor problem, the bigger problem is the lack of physical activity and micro-nutritients. There is some overlap here, because added sugar has zero good micro-nutritients, but I personally believe that low-carb is great not because of the lack of carbs but because it's easier to get your body satisfied with everything besides calories when eating ingredients rich in fat and protein than those rich in carbs - but even here there are exceptions (such as pumpkin).

But that's my personal assessment and as your study says, we don't know enough yet how much impact the different factors really have, so no one really knows. However, increasing bureaucracy based on not well understood concepts is probably a fairly bad idea.

Oh, one more thing:

> It's about taxing the biggest contributor that is adding lots of excess calories into your diet

Sorry that doesn't make any sense. If I ate 2500 calories today and 500 of them were "excess" (because daily I burn only 2000), then which of the 2500 are now your so-called "excess calories"?

> Seems you really want to do something against obesity and you are ready to accept quite a lot of collateral damage by punishing people with extra tax who don't need to be protected/helped at all.

Actually, quite the opposite. People who don't consume foods with lots of added sugar are already healthier and wouldn't end up paying a lot more for their food. The people who are consuming lots of added sugar are contributing to the growing problem of chronic diabetes. Right now we are all being punished with higher health insurance premiums and reduced benefits, because more and more people are having to go on insulin, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, metformin, etc. You know how you reduce health care costs and help people? You prevent disease from starting in the first place, but that means instituting programs and incentives that actually change people's behavior. If you have a sugar tax whose funds go into programs to encourage healthy eating, working out, etc., then that is a net win for society, since over time less and less people will develop type 2 diabetes and other illnesses caused by obesity. This is not a new concept and has been successful before. Most notably in the form of cigarette taxes. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/)

> I on the other hand believe that the sugar itself is a minor problem, the bigger problem is the lack of physical activity and micro-nutritients.(sic)

Increasing physical activity and micro-nutrients are great goals, but do not play a large part in the obesity epidemic. The over-consumption of high caloric food is the root cause. It takes a lot of time to lose weight through physical activity. Run 30 minutes on treadmill and maybe you will lose 300 calories? That probably won't even offset half of many people's lunch calories. Again, the majority of calories are lost through just breathing out. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-ySWyID9o) It's a much easier and more effective strategy to reduce the amount of calories coming in. That's why intermittent fasting has become so popular.

> But that's my personal assessment and as your study says, we don't know enough yet how much impact the different factors really have, so no one really knows. However, increasing bureaucracy based on not well understood concepts is probably a fairly bad idea.

Just because we don't fully understand the role of all the biochemical processes involved in insulin resistance, obesity, etc. doesn't mean we don't understand the broader causes and the changes that should be made to diets to improve health outcomes. Your argument is similar to saying just because we don't understand all the mechanisms that cause the earth to heat up we shouldn't try and reduce CO2 emissions. It's nonsensical.

> Sorry that doesn't make any sense. If I ate 2500 calories today and 500 of them were "excess" (because daily I burn only 2000), then which of the 2500 are now your so-called "excess calories"?

Sure, it does. As you yourself stated "added sugar has zero good micro-nutrients", by definition these are excess calories that you don't need. If we need to reduce people's consumption of calories then the first to go should be the ones that aren't providing any benefit.

> Actually, quite the opposite. People who don't consume foods with lots of added sugar are already healthier and wouldn't end up paying a lot more for their food.

Not "the opposite". Exactly as I said: a lot of people would end up paying more, for no health benefit.

> Increasing physical activity and micro-nutrients are great goals, but do not play a large part in the obesity epidemic.

That is merely your own opinion, but you seem to think that this is a fact. If you are so sure, I'm sure you have some good sources for that? I mean, the first study you linked actually doesn't speak in your favor.

> Sure, it does. As you yourself stated "added sugar has zero good micro-nutrients", by definition these are excess calories that you don't need.

Wait what? That's not how "excess" is commonly defined. Here's how this term is usually used:

> When you eat more calories than you need, your body stores the extra calories as body fat. Even a fat-free food can have a lot of calories. Excess calories in any form can be stored as body fat. (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/4182-fat-and-...)

or

> “Excess calories per day” is simply an arbitrary measure over an arbitrary unit of time to better calculate and plan your diet and calorie deficit/surplus (depending on your goals). (https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/27/how-long-does-...)

So this term is used simply for surplus calories. Sure, sugars can be surplus calories, but if I eat 2500kcal of protein in a day and my body only burns 2000kcal, then 500 of these are excess calories. But I could have left out 500 of any of these 2500kcal to avoid excess calories. So my point still stands.

> Not "the opposite". Exactly as I said: a lot of people would end up paying more, for no health benefit.

No, what happens is this money eventually flows back in terms of lower healthcare costs overall.

> That is merely your own opinion, but you seem to think that this is a fact. If you are so sure, I'm sure you have some good sources for that? I mean, the first study you linked actually doesn't speak in your favor.

It actually did. Unfortunately, you can only lead a horse to water.

> So this term is used simply for surplus calories. Sure, sugars can be surplus calories, but if I eat 2500kcal of protein in a day and my body only burns 2000kcal, then 500 of these are excess calories. But I could have left out 500 of any of these 2500kcal to avoid excess calories. So my point still stands.

I'm glad we agree sugar can be considered surplus calories. The point is when we are trying to reduce people's overall number of calories from their diet we could eliminate any calories, but we should try and eliminate the ones that don't provide any benefit and in fact have negative consequences first.

> No, what happens is this money eventually flows back in terms of lower healthcare costs overall.

Only if that really happens - just because obesity goes down doesn't mean that we experience cost savings. People might just live longer then and get other sicknesses instead, require more pension etc - who knows how it plays out. Can you backup your claim?

And even then, there might be better solutions that lower the healthcore costs as much or more, without imposing a partially unfair tax.

> It actually did. Unfortunately, you can only lead a horse to water.

Lol, I already quoted the relevant parts from your study and you just ignored it.

> The point is when we are trying to reduce people's overall number of calories from their diet we could eliminate any calories, but we should try and eliminate the ones that don't provide any benefit and in fact have negative consequences first.

As I already said, that is your personal opinion and I believe different. I suspect physical activity, micro-nutritions (where sugar is part of, but really only part) and also gut-bacteria and stress-levels are major factors. Sugar is probably not the easiest thing to realistically fix and introduces a lot of collateral damage if you generally tax sugars.

But I know you believe different for some reason and I think a discussion is pointless. I would be interested to see a study (and a quote from there) that really says "sugars are the (main) cause and here is why", but I doubt you can show my something, because it most likely just doesn't exist.

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