Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Would be interesting to see sugar linked to cancer too. Alcohol already has been (with a much stronger link than aspartame).

View on HN

Sugar being a readily metabolized energy source is almost undoubtedly a cancer source because increase in energy results in increase in cellular production one way or another, which leads to higher risk of mutated cancerous cells, period. Hence the link of obesity to cancer as well.

The fact is that anything that increases the amount of you or the rate of you over time over the bare minimum needed for survival is an increased cancer risk... there are other causes like exposure to radiation that actually damage cells and so on as well.

Ultimately the question isn't if there's a link to cancer, it's how much something is increasing your risk of cancer relative to the alternatives. I suspect artificial sweeteners are in general for most less risk than consuming vast amounts of sugar, gaining lots of weight, becoming inactive, and increasing their cancer risk that way but who knows. Obviously if you ommit everything but consume the bare minimum sugar you need for survival you'll have a lower risk... good luck with that in modern society and diets

Diet drink consumption gone up, but doesnt seem to have made a dent in the obesity crisis.

Your point is only valid if it actually lowers sugar and other carbs intake. Which isn't the case for most people.

Next to that. With diet drinks people drink more since they feel like they can get a way with, some do with sugar variants as well, but seems like more people binge drink diet versions which could lead to higher exposure relatively.

The has been processing sugar for millennia, these chemicals are pretty new.

Most people drinking diet soda aren't limiting other carbs... and we've had about half a century of people thinking that "low fat" diets are the solution and snacking on low-fat, but high carb foods.

More people need to stop consuming garbage that wouldn't have been considered food 250+ years ago.

Eating fruit and honey alone for anything “sweet” has worked great for me. Never get any cravings for anything else. It seems to me like these things truly are the carb sources we are “meant” to eat.

Worth noting, that fruit would generally only be available a few weeks out of the year, and natural varieties not nearly as sweet as what's in the stores. Honey was also in much more limited supply. We consume a multiple of fructose and glucose of what would have been consumed just a couple hundred years ago.

Highly dependent on where your ancestors have lived, but in my case they’ve probably got along with meat and potatoes since no fruit really grows here. Maybe my body is somehow less prepared to handle fructose than someone with roots in south-east Asia, but I digress.

Fructose often in concert with Glucose is generally less readily metabolized (only by the liver) and can have the same/similar negative effects of heavy alcohol consumption on the body.

Pretty sure it's been conclusively shown that sugar overconsumption does cause cancer, but i think its more because of metabolic issues than directly causing a certain cell type to become cancerous.

Yeah, I looked as well and couldn't find anything, limiting the search to this last weel pulled up this very thread, with all the dietary disinformation and active bad actors call me skeptical until at least google has a result.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com