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Comment by joemazerino | Hacker News Reader

White pill. Glad we as humans are beginning to dive into the endocrinal system. Hormones are the next big battle for overall health in our society.

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Here’s a black pill. Ctrl+F “sugar”. No matches. Seems to me that overconsumption of sugar would have much stronger effect on diabetes and obesity at a minimum than those chemicals ever could unless you bathe in them.

Sugar is dangerous but it doesn't have permanent affects in the body. Metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance can be reversed with fasting, diets and exercise. Sugar is digested, stored and released.

Hormonal disruption, especially in youth, is a lifetime issue. A young person with less hormones in their puberty will never be able to make enough to match our ancestors.

Diabetes seems to qualify as “permanently affecting the body”. As does morbid obesity.

I'm not envious of my ancestors hormones personally

There have been studies showing that even controlling for diet and exercise, Americans are gaining weight each decade. It's gotta be something other than just sugar.

1. Lack of stimulating activities (e.g. socializing, sport, culture, community events, etc.) leading to over-consumption of food to fill the void

2. Car-centric culture leading to lack of walking

3. Food that has been nutritionally stripped either via processing, engineering, lack of supply, financial incentive, or other causes leading to food that is not filling unless consumed in excess

4. Stress and cultural artifacts

Golly gee.

Half the medical studies are known to not be reproducible, so there’s that. I don’t see how you’d control for something people have a hard time even noticing, let alone accurately estimating.

That largely isn't a controversial opinion. "Less sugar" is basically standard medical advice.

It's not a conspiracy you don't see loads of research on it. It's already been done. It's bad for us. We know it.

It might be standard, but the entire food industry in the US is built on endocrine disruption caused by sugar, and something needs to be done about that, urgently or we will have $10T/yr in healthcare spending 20 years from now, instead of $4T/yr. All these discussions about sometimes tenuous links to this and that are akin to discussing the quality of cigarette paper when almost the entire population is addicted to smoking.

And yet…somehow some other issue always manages to capture the lion’s share of worry. Sugar gets a pass all the time.

Yes you acknowledge it’s bad. How long before you throw birthday cakes out the window?

This kind of makes me wonder who funds the studies, actually. Could be that it’s the sugar lobby. :-)

Porque no los dos?

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