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Posted by aldarion 3 days ago

Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)(www.ucsf.edu)
790 points | 491 commentspage 3
bell-cot 3 days ago|
Maybe I read too much history - but hasn't Big Sugar been known for "nothing that a slave trader wouldn't do" ethics for the past 300+ years?
qsera 3 days ago||
It is beyond me how anyone can expect any business (especially public traded) to have any ethics whatsoever.
Balinares 3 days ago|||
In strong democracies, regulations provide the incentive.
qsera 3 days ago||
..and you think those work?
admash 3 days ago|||
Of course they do, if enforced. The number of eight year-olds working in factories is substantially lower than it used to be due to regulations. *in modern democracies
qsera 2 days ago||
>if enforced..

There lies the problem...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528718

jethro_tell 3 days ago|||
If you do regulate. We currently have full regulatory capture in most industries and regulators that are doing their jobs are either hamstrung or the laws are so far behind the industries that they can’t or won’t work.

The key to proper regulation is to keep money and influence from pooling at the top, making it difficult for any single person to buy enough influence.

As it is, we have a dozen monopolies that should be broken up that are making a small section of the population so rich they are essentially above laws.

But, proper regulation can exist if people want it, and more specifically in the case of the USA, legislators want it. Unfortunately, Dems actively prevent it, and republicans are ripping it down, so the rest of us are kinda fucked.

qsera 3 days ago||
Regulations can work if bypassing the regulation in question does not open up a market that is large enough to keep paying off the regulators.

For example, if there is only one regulator for a country, the companies can pay millions to get it eased up for them, because they can make billions from it.

But if there one regulator for each state, they equation will change and it might not be profitable to pay millions to a regulator of the state, because they cannot make enough profit from selling in the state to justify it.

That is the only way to make it work. Rules don't work forever. Incentives do.

hinkley 3 days ago||||
We literally had a circular slave trade of slaves->sugar cane->rum->slaves
jacobthesnakob 3 days ago|||
They’re out there. I find it more productive to search for and financially support such businesses, rather than adopt the doomer pessimistic anticapitalism take.

For example I just bought a Concept2 RowErg rowing machine. They sell literally every piece and part on their website so it’s end user repairable. The metrics integrate with a ton of apps, so you’re not locked into their app/ecosystem and there’s no subscription. It’s the polar opposite of Peloton and Hydrox.

Unfortunately a lot of these honest businesses are one generation away from potentially selling out everything the founders built, but I’ll continue doing my best to keep them around while they exist.

qsera 3 days ago||
>I find it more productive to search for and financially support such businesses, rather than adopt the doomer pessimistic anticapitalism take...

But sadly, many order of magnitude more people would like to just make more money when invest. Which is why..

>Unfortunately a lot of these honest businesses are one generation away from potentially selling out everything the founders built,

> rather than adopt the doomer pessimistic anticapitalism take...

Capitalism does not imply public trading. Capitalism can work even when companies re-invest parts of their profits.

Oh no, that would be too slow. We want Speeeed...even if that means a quick descent into certain doom.

jacobthesnakob 3 days ago||
>many order of magnitude more people would like to just make more money when invest

Blame them (the consumers) then. This is like that silly Reddit/Twitter stat about 10% of companies creating 90% of global emissions… which the companies are doing in the process of making the shiny cell phones and laptops all the consumerists lambasting them are posting from, plus all the plastic crap they buy every day from Amazon.

The consumers are the ones demanding unchecked expansion of their consumption. As long as that demand exists, companies will find a way to fill it, whether they’re doing so in America or other countries. Privately held entities can’t allocate capital fast enough to keep up with the consumerists.

qsera 3 days ago||
cant blame the consumers who are brainwashed by the ads that uses every weakness in human nature to create phantom needs, making up artificial demand for things..
lostlogin 13 hours ago||
Most countries ban direct to consumer drug advertising.

America is one of few places that doesn’t.

umanwizard 2 days ago|||
Well, it's true that in the 17th century, sugar and rum production involved one of the most heinous forms of slavery ever to exist. What's not clear is that this necessarily has anything to do with the present; after all, slaves were emancipated a long time ago.

I think this is an instance of "large corporations in the 20th and 21st century have been intrinsically amoral" rather than "the sugar industry is intrinsically particularly evil (and has been since the 1600s)".

vintermann 3 days ago||
Sure, but do you trust Big Butcher?
Avshalom 3 days ago|||
And of course big sugar is these days just big corn which is happy selling to CAFOs.
rhyperior 3 days ago||||
Not when so much meat has sugar added to it.
goalieca 3 days ago||
Sugar makes an excellent spice, not a primary ingredient. It's really useful for grilling for instance.
bell-cot 3 days ago|||
Based on the history of the past 1-ish century, I trust Big Meat & Dairy to have less capability for and competence at evil than Big Sugar. Because otherwise we'd have been hearing far more "Fat is Fine, Carbs are Crap" messages.
triceratops 3 days ago|||
> I trust Big Meat & Dairy to have less capability for and competence at evil

Why? You've never heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag?

wang_li 3 days ago||||
Well, there are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, but no essential carbs.
zdragnar 3 days ago||||
Well, there's the whole atkins and keto fads...
Avshalom 3 days ago||
And Atkins really started picking up in the 90s which was

https://web.archive.org/web/20120629041358/http://www.ers.us...

Oh hey right after beef CAFOs started dominating the industry.

DetectDefect 3 days ago||||
Surely you jest as the animal agriculture industry is many times larger than any "big sugar" boogeyman.
bell-cot 3 days ago||
"Bigger = Badder" is quick & easy heuristic, but not a particularly accurate one.
DetectDefect 3 days ago||
It is when it comes to slaughtering 80 billion sentient animals each year.
vintermann 3 days ago|||
I feel like I hear that a lot.
__0x01 3 days ago||
My understanding was that atherosclerotic plaques are comprised of cholesterol or fatty deposits [1] and that these can lead to CVD.

The fat mechanism I understand, but what is the mechanism for sugar in CVD?

[1] https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/cholesterol/about-cho...

ericmcer 3 days ago||
CVD requires a bunch of events to happen in sequence, I always felt like it was a combination of risk factors + luck that make a heart attack or aneurysm happen.

1. High blood pressure damages walls of arteries and veins

2. LDL Cholesterol gets into the damaged walls

3. LDL gets oxidized

4. White blood cells engulf oxidized LDL and form plaques

5. Hardened plaques chill, they are bad but not deadly, if a plaque breaks off you are probably dead.

Sugar is gonna contributes to 1 - 3, especially 3 it seems way more guilty of than fat. The one big thing that opened my eyes was that most of the LDL you get is going to be produced by your own liver. Regulating how the liver produces it is going to have a bigger impact than directly eating less/more of it.

It is kind of a luck thing though, you could eat like shit and never have all the events occur just due to dumb luck, or you could be a fit 45 year old and for whatever reason you get a plaque that breaks off and you aneurysm and die.

heisenbit 3 days ago||
And the liver produces triglycerides from fructose which is half of sugar.
tsimionescu 3 days ago|||
Consuming cholesterol doesn't normally change the level of cholesterol in your bloodstream - it simply leads to your body producing less cholesterol. Unless you're consuming gigantic amounts, or have some problems with your cholesterol regulation, dietary cholesterol is completely safe. It's only if your blood work shows elevated cholesterol levels that you need to start paying attention to cholesterol intake. This is in fact very similar to what happens to blood sugar levels, in fact.
giacomoforte 3 days ago|||
Pretty much every health authority will tell you that high blood sugar damages blood vessels, thereby enabling the formation of said plagues.
loeg 3 days ago|||
Healthy adults consuming some dietary sugar doesn't cause persistent high blood sugar, though. That's diabetes.
Alex2037 3 days ago||
it's not just sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Grouping

all simple carbs are the devil, but we can't possibly feed billions of people actually healthy food - organic vegetables, nuts, and animal products, so come drink your corn syrup.

loeg 3 days ago||
The sugar industry (topic of this article) can only be blamed for sugar, though -- not all high-GI foods.

And you can replace "sugar" in what I said earlier with "high-GI foods" and it doesn't change a thing. Persistent high blood sugar is diabetes; it isn't dietary.

Alex2037 3 days ago||
>Persistent high blood sugar is diabetes; it isn't dietary.

how is it not dietary if consuming most carbs spikes your blood sugar for hours, which, with three meals + snacks + starbucks slurry, means elevated blood sugar 20+ hours a day?

rzmmm 2 days ago||
It doesn't happen in non-diabetic people. It's different in type 2 diabetics who will see large swings in blood fat and glucose after meals.
__0x01 3 days ago|||
Please can you provide a source for the above?
aldarion 3 days ago|||
Sugar causes inflammation, and inflammation damages arteries. It is this damage that then leads to accumulation of fatty deposits, as damaged arteries basically lose the protective layer (think of equivalent to a non-stick coating). But that doesn't mean dietary fat is what actually caused the plaque.
hinkley 3 days ago||
Poor dental health also contributes and nothing pushes poor dental healthy like a high sugar diet.
gowld 2 days ago||
Anoy other greybeards remember this one?

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all...

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

By Gary Taubes July 7, 2002

p0w3n3d 2 days ago||
Sugar got into all the meal we have, and because it is so addictive, we went for it. Fatty meals are more healthy, especially for me, but will get you sick in no time, unless you eat healthy fats (olive oil, olives especially). The trans fats are carcinogenic
mediumsmart 2 days ago||
So most of these fat people today are a result of the low fat doctrine forged in the 70’s?
diggyhole 2 days ago||
Many such cases.
aldarion 2 days ago||
Yes.
indubioprorubik 3 days ago||
Should make flour from it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266716032...
slicktux 3 days ago||
I feel like the same thing is happening now… processed foods have less sodium and I feel are more sugary. I don’t live a sedentary lifestyle…I need salt for hydration and muscle contraction. I find the new nutrition guidelines for sodium lacking.
xthe 3 days ago||
The 2016 JAMA paper illustrates how funding sources can shape research focus, reinforcing the value of transparency and multiple lines of evidence in nutrition research.
FlyingBears 2 days ago||
I avoid sugar pretty thoroughly, but my cholesterol is high because I can't walk past a breakfast sandwich. This an n=1 observation.
begueradj 3 days ago|
>Sugar Papers Reveal Industry Role in Shifting National Heart Disease Focus to Saturated Fat

But sugar-sweetened foods contain saturated fat ... so ?

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