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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Who said anything about soft drinks? They're putting artificial sweeteners in "unsweetened" sauces and condiments these days. They're getting about as hard to escape as sugar was in the "fats bad" era.

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This to me seems less of a problem where I come from, Italy. It's true that most Italians indulge in sugar when drinking coffee (which it's a terrible practice, we should instead push for better specialty-grade coffee that doesn't need sugar). At the same time what Americans call "condiments" it's basically just olive oil, some salt and pepper for 95% of our dishes. A traditional mediterranean diet, made primarily of grains, legumes and vegetables with some occasional meat and fish is what me and most of my friends' families would have for dinner. Of course, there's the ice cream, the cakes, the BBQ with friends, etc. But I'm just thinking about the normal daily diet here. And the standard seems pretty healthy, with most sugars coming from seasonal fruit.

> unsweetened

Unsweetened generally still means it. The weasel words I usually see are "no added sugar". The ingredients will then list juice concentrates, stevia, or monkfruit.

Good point. I say, have the regular stuff (w/sugar) but just go easy with it.

The thing that's crazy is that even the "regular" items sometimes have artificial sweeteners now. You basically cannot assume any product category, with any labeling, with not have it. You have to check the ingredient list yourself (and make sure you're familiar with all the names these things go under).

At this point my main strategy is to minimize number of ingredients (e.g., two ingredient peanut butter) because otherwise it's just too easy to miss something getting slipped in there. It's insane.

>You basically cannot assume any product category

Picked up a loaf of bread on sale the other day and, because it wasn't the brand I normally get, I scanned the ingredients. Surprised to find that it contained sucralose.

It wasn't listed as "lite" or similar. Just "regular" bread. With sucralose.

Does the place you shop not sell fresh bread? In European supermarkets that’s the norm. Anything branded (i.e. shelf stable and sold in a plastic bag) is to be treated with suspicion.

Supermarkets in the U.S. will frequently have a bakery, but they tend to sell other baked goods, such as cakes, pastries, etc. Whatever bread they do sell is generally more "specialty", like baguettes or sourdough. If you're looking for "standard" loaved bread, that's generally relegated to the shelf stable type, of which there is a substantial selection.

Some of the shelf stable stuff is better than others WRT ingredients, and it's possible to make relatively decent selections. The cheaper stuff tends to be more awash in garbage ingredients.

OTOH, it's also not necessarily the case that the in-store bakery stuff is free of garbage ingredients, to include artificial flavors, etc.

I hope one of the ingredients in your pb is salt

Maybe 10:1 ratio of water:isotonic drink is an acceptable idea.

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