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Comment by richcollins | Hacker News Reader

There are hunter gatherers (hadza, ache, pygmies) that eat substantial amounts of honey without becoming overweight.

The health threat is not from being overweight. Obese people can be healthy.

The health threat from fructose is liver damage, and all the knock-on results of a sick liver, what they call Fatty Liver Disease, Metabolic Disorder, or lately Processed Food Disease. It differs little from the cirrhosis alcoholics get.

> Obese people can be healthy.

No, they truly cannot be, at least relative to the equivalent non-obese state. (I assume, of course, a sane definition for the term "obese").

I realize this has somehow (bizarrely) become a controversial issue in the US of late but the mountain of scientific evidence is incredibly clear on this point.

The majority of obese people have other health problems. But, not all. For many, another health problem caused the obesity; they would happily give up both, but do not get the choice. For some, eating little enough to actually lose weight would make them sick.

It is overwhelmingly worse to have metabolic disorder without obesity than to have obesity without metabolic disorder. Many, many non-obese Americans have metabolic disorder. A smaller number are obese without metabolic disorder.

The fact that different, sometimes worse, alternatives exist has no bearing on the factual accuracy of what I said. Obesity is without a doubt unhealthy relative to the equivalent non-obese state. It is a significant risk factor for, and in many cases a direct cause of, an astounding number of other disorders.

While there are plenty of illnesses that obesity can help bring on or worsen, not everybody who is obese suffers from any of them. In the absence of such an illness, an obese person may be as healthy and live as long as, any in their cohort.

As a matter of public health, attention is much better directed to metabolic syndrome and circulatory disease, which are more responsive to interventions. Obesity draws attention because it is easily visible, and because people have attached a moral stigma to it. Blinkered public policy has led to there being overwhelmingly more obese people than the natural rate; fix policy, and the rate would return to its normal level.

If you don't get it, it's in their names – they spend their time hunting and gathering, not sitting around watching TV or on a computer. The extra nutrient absorption may benefit them in that case, as opposed to in a more sedentary/modern lifestyle.

That's not even remotely proven, so please don't present it as fact when it's not.

And your snark of "if you don't get it" is absolutely uncalled for here on HN. It's not appropriate.

> That's not even remotely proven

What is not proven? That people gain weight when they consume more calories than they burn? That hunter/gatherers burn more calories than people sitting at a desk most of the day? That extra nutrient absorption might help active people?

> burn more calories than

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

“average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size”

That's an interesting study, thanks!

I'm skeptical that honey consumption among hunter gatherers would come close to matching a diet with processed foods and hidden sugar, let alone the non-so-hidden sugar. Do you have a source?

(1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/food-matters/honey-make...

(2) https://www.angelesinstitute.edu/thenightingale/daily-sugar-...

By (1), 20% of a 2000 cal diet (assumption) would be 400 cal, or 100g sugar. By (2), average US sugar intake is 71.14g/day

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