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Comment by throw10920 | Hacker News Reader

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/3017620422003/nutell...

The "Nutrient levels for 100 g" section seems a little whacky.

Red circle: 30.9 g Fat in high quantity

Red circle: 10.6 g Saturated fat in high quantity

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with consuming fat, especially saturated fats - they're completely different from carbohydrates and sugars, which you don't want to be consuming large quantities of.

Aside from the whacky qualitative assessment of nutritional value, the quantitative information seems to be very useful. Imagine being able to query their API and filter out foods with vegetable oils or high-fructose corn syrup...

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The funny thing is, carbs get blamed for the problems caused by saturated fat (lsuch as impaired insulin sensitivity, just see how bad the insulin sensitivity of those doing keto gets which should be impossible if carbs were to blame). Of course not all carbs are created equal, but if you stick with whole foods, you cannot go wrong.

I see this argument all the time, and while it is not wrong, for most people I think it is bad advice in the context of carbs because people don't understand it properly and even if they do, it is basically impossible to get truly wholegrain carb foods from standard markets/supermarkets in the west. Most people think pasta is healthy when its clearly highly refined white flour and not much else. Then there's bread; If you go looking for wholemeal bread, almost all of it will claim "wholemeal" on the packaging, but then if you read the ingredients, they only use a token amount of wholemeal flour, making up the rest with standard white flour. Some researchers even think that modern grinding techniques grind too finely and raise the GL of the flour, so even if you choose wholemeal flour, the way that it is processed can cause it to be not much better than pain white flour. To be clear about what I am arguing here, these things are "bad" when they cause large spikes in BGL and therefore insulin and I consider this a reasonable proxy for the "badness" of carbs. especially when they make up a large part of a meal portion. I also recognise that you're talking about whole foods in general, not just carbs, but I'm in 100% agreement with you for whole foods in general.

While I personally agree with you, this sort of thing is closer to a political position than a fact. There’s plenty of people who will push a low fat, plant and carb-based diet as evidence-based even today.

Except there are well-researched and medically-accepted facts about fats. So, while somebody may decide to push a diet which contradicts those facts, it doesn't turn the facts into political positions. It does, however, mean that the person pushing the contradictory diet is pushing a political agenda. And in fact, the primary (and only) instigators of anti-fat ideology were the sugar industry[1] and some political bad actors, which turned out to be lobby-funded medical quackery directly resulting in disease and death for tens of millions of people.

Facts matter. Let's not mislabel or dismiss them just because they're not convenient for everyone.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...

That’s the trendy opinion for now. This seems to be cyclical.

Around the same time as the link you cited: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/saturated-fat-is-...

This article delves into specific categories within “saturated fat” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/well/eat/is-the-saturated...

Two years later: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.h...

A few years after that: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/well/eat/low-carb-diet-he...

Citing the NYT isn’t really helpful since you can find basically every diet fad/trend in their pages.

Personal experience tells me that sugar and refined carbs make it harder to maintain a healthy weight, and that’s enough for me. But that’s not a “facts matter” frame. An anti-fat/pro-carb person could list out a whole book worth of facts leading in exactly the wrong direction: https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Diet-Groundbreaking-Permanent...

Facts do matter, but in the case of nutrition, facts are a dime a dozen and we clearly have not as a society arrived at a final answer.

P.S. the sugar lobby explanation is uncompelling because all other industries also have lobbyists; I would think the beef and pork lobbyists would not be doing their job if they let you think that saturated fat is unhealthy.

> That’s the trendy opinion for now. This seems to be cyclical. Citing the NYT isn’t really helpful since you can find basically every diet fad/trend in their pages.

I didn't cite the NYT as information about dietary facts. I cited a famous NYT article which unveiled the details of a massively concerted effort by bad actors to invent fake research and then force it onto an entire country as medical fact. The article doesn't make any claims about diets, but instead enumerates the actions of pro-sugar conspirators. So you've concocted this entire argument around something neither I nor the article said.

Your NYT links consist of a letter to the editor, an online Q&A column, one article which specifically discuss how unsaturated fats are good and saturated fats aren't actually bad in moderation, and one article which discusses the business optics of marketing fat/sugar usage from the perspective of an ice cream company. None of what you presented shows inconsistency, and it certainly doesn't qualify as evidence that NYT is bandwagoning or waffling.

> Personal experience tells me that sugar and refined carbs make it harder to maintain a healthy weight, and that’s enough for me. But that’s not a “facts matter” frame. An anti-fat/pro-carb person could list out a whole book worth of facts leading in exactly the wrong direction

Writing a book of personal interpretations and opinions is not the same thing as practicing scientific research. You're declaring that the very existence of detractors from corroborated research magically turns all of those widely-accepted conclusions into "dime a dozen" opinions. If that were how things worked, the very concept of factual information would cease to have any meaning.

If it is settled science, I would hope you could find and share authoritative evidence that it is. What I’ve seen over the years (and I’m not that old) is that the mainstream “consensus” changes every 10-15 years, and that many landmark/foundational studies eventually turn out to be industry-funded/manipulated (sometimes decades later) or products of misconduct/incompetence (e.g. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/20/17464906/me...)

I’ve read the book I linked, and every single claim is backed up by research, and many of the cited studies are high quality meta reviews. That doesn’t mean the conclusions are good, just that there is a very deep pool of contradictory findings to pull from.

I’m with you that some level of fat intake is healthy and that sugar/starch are suspect, but I just think it is dishonest or misleading to say it is “fact” or settled science given the uncertainty and ongoing changing nature of the scientific findings.

P.S. the NYT was years late to the party on the shocking sugar revelations; https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/10/sugar-indust...

> If it is settled science, I would hope you could find and share authoritative evidence that it is. What I’ve seen over the years (and I’m not that old) is that the mainstream “consensus” changes every 10-15 years

The nature of science is that consensus adjusts to data. But unless something is a very new field of research, there typically aren't major shifts in consensus. The scientific process is more akin to incrementally washing away layers of misunderstanding. Within the context of cholesterol and heart disease, we've been washing for over 100 years[1], and the consensus on that connection has been unwavering since the 1950s.

Research in the late 1950s actually hinted at trans fats being the culprit, but then came the aforementioned period of anti-fat political manipulation, so it wasn't until the early 1990s when new studies built on the 1950s research and solidified scientific consensus. That consensus eventually led to federal policy changes and the banning of trans fats, which has since resulted[2] in an estimated ~4.5% reduction in heart disease mortality and an ~8.9% reduction in stroke mortality.

Since those studies in the 1990s, consensus hasn't changed and is quite simple[3] to understand. LDL greatly increases risk for heart disease and stroke. HDL absorbs LDL on its way to the liver, lowering LDL levels. Trans fats contain only LDL and are thereby inherently harmful and deadly. Saturated fats contain more LDL than HDL, but their ultimate effect on the total HDL ratio and mortality is negligible. Unsaturated fats contain only HDL, making them inherently healthy presuming an appropriate level of consumption.

Those are all facts. There is no current research refuting any of it, meaning we are at a stable point in scientific consensus on the subject.

> I’m with you that some level of fat intake is healthy and that sugar/starch are suspect, but I just think it is dishonest or misleading to say it is “fact” or settled science given the uncertainty and ongoing changing nature of the scientific findings.

Again, you're eliminating the possibility for the concept of factual information to exist. Science is always ongoing, but that doesn't mean we don't have any established consensus.

A very long time ago, the extent of our chemistry knowledge was that water made things wet and we must consume it in order to continue living. These days we understand thousands of concepts related to physics and chemistry, nearly all of which have scientific consensus. But if someone today started adamantly claiming that pure water is acidic, that wouldn't make our current understanding uncertain or any less factual. All it would mean is that someone ignored the established consensus and expressed a personal opinion. It doesn't qualify as science and doesn't have any legitimate bearing on practice or policy.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108295/

[2] https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/31898/MWP_2014_1...

[3] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...

Link 3 you cited says that saturated fats should be consumed in moderation. You claim:

> There's nothing intrinsically wrong with consuming fat, especially saturated fats - they're completely different from carbohydrates and sugars, which you don't want to be consuming large quantities of.

The implication, when you say you shouldn’t eat large quantities of sugar+carbs, and that that is totally different from saturated fat, is that you should eat large quantities of saturated fat.

That is an opinion. I don’t contest the existence of facts, what I contest is the selective usage of facts to dress up your opinion as a fact. It is your opinion that high quantities of saturated fat are desirable, but most research I’ve seen says that the emphasis should be on Whole Foods and unsaturated fats, with some saturated fat tolerated to achieve that. This is actually supported by the research you cited later on.

The underlying science of cholesterol doesn’t seem to be seriously under question, but using that to say high quantities of saturated fat is healthy is fact skips many important steps and cheapens the meaning of “fact”.

> Link 3 you cited says that saturated fats should be consumed in moderation.

Nobody ever said that saturated fats should be consumed excessively. That would both fly in the face of logic and isn't true for any nutrient. So you're not actually arguing a point here.

> You claim

You just quoted a different HN user and claimed it was something I said, then concocted another argument around it. That's beyond ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself.

> The implication, when you say you shouldn’t eat large quantities of sugar+carbs, and that that is totally different from saturated fat, is that you should eat large quantities of saturated fat.

Even though I wasn't the one you quoted and you're arguing with nobody, you're still wrong about this. What you're saying is completely illogical. Saying that you shouldn't do one thing doesn't inherently imply that you should do another.

In reality, the original commenter was stating that you shouldn't eat large quantities of sugar and carbohydrates, and that it's not nearly as harmful to consume large quantities of saturated fat. They never stated that you should consume large quantities of saturated fat.

> It is your opinion that high quantities of saturated fat are desirable

Stop lying. I never said or implied anything about saturated fats being desirable. It's disgusting that you feel so comfortable lying about other people.

> but most research I’ve seen says that the emphasis should be on Whole Foods and unsaturated fats, with some saturated fat tolerated to achieve that.

That is the entire point of my last comment, so I can only presume you didn't actually read it at all. I literally said "Saturated fats contain more LDL than HDL, but their ultimate effect on the total HDL ratio and mortality is negligible. Unsaturated fats contain only HDL, making them inherently healthy presuming an appropriate level of consumption."

I linked the research and then described it to you. Now you're claiming that I said the opposite, and that your research (which you haven't provided) is somehow more correct. Do you not realize that we're on a forum where all of the previous commentary is public? It's clearly visible that I've said absolutely none of the things you just claimed.

Apologies, I missed the username change. I thought it was fair game given the context of the comment chain but missed that a different person made the original claim.

Most of what you’re writing about is sort of a silly basis for an argument though, by definition excess consumption of anything is bad. The issue is what counts as excess.

I don’t disagree on the findings. I repeated points of agreement not because I didn’t read your comment, but to highlight the shared understanding. I agree with your opinions on nutrition as shared, I just don’t think it’s right to claim that the specific underlying research is enough to support the overall nutrition guidance opinion as settled science or fact-based. I think there are plenty of ways to read the underlying research and still support a claim that individual specific components of a diet should be chosen to moderate saturated fat intake.

> I think there are plenty of ways to read the underlying research and still support a claim that individual specific components of a diet should be chosen to moderate saturated fat intake.

Yes, all of the ways. It's the only interpretation. It is literally what both the research and my comments state. You're still arguing against things that nobody said, while also redefining science and nutrition. I'm unsure of what you're trying to accomplish, but you're strictly making bad-faith arguments which don't reflect reality, and it's obnoxious.

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