Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48499195

by notlukesky • 7 years ago

239 232 7 years ago

umvi2• 7 years ago

How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).

knolax• 7 years ago

Didn't we try that with prohibition?

jmondi• 7 years ago

Um, prohibition is the complete ban of all alcohol. umvi is proposing the ban of alcohol related advertising. One is completely different than the other.

mfatica• 7 years ago

Banning advertising of something is a bit different than banning the thing itself

jhrmnn2• 7 years ago

The Scandinavian countries show that if you do not prohibit completely, but just make people jump through some hoops to get it and/or make it very expensive, it sort of works.

ex3ndr• 7 years ago

It is banned in Russia, zero effect.

darkpuma6• 7 years ago

That it doesn't work in Russia is far from proof that it couldn't work elsewhere.

Edit: Prohibition on advertising is not prohibition on alcohol. I reject the relevance of this suggested equivalency. There is no risk of organized crime getting supercharged by a prohibition on alcohol advertisements.

swsieber2• 7 years ago

Then it should be fine to ban it, right?

dpq• 7 years ago

I distinctly recall these (and much more restrictive) measures having been tried in the U.S. almost exactly 100 years ago, to a very modest success. Sugar seems to be an easier target, because there are sweeteners like aspartame. Alcohol almost by definition doesn't have a healthy replacement.

maddyboo• 7 years ago

Cannabis.

Alex39172• 7 years ago

For most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever.

Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.

dyarosla• 7 years ago

Source re:addictiveness?

umvi2• 7 years ago

I think you are underestimating the costs of alcohol on society by reducing it to "just" a death count. I won't deny that sugar consumption is a public health crisis.

But on the other hand, consuming sugar mainly only harms yourself. People that consume sugar (usually) don't go kill innocent people or tear apart their family or cause all sorts of permanent physical and mental issues in children.

gist4• 7 years ago

Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year

Important to point out that the negative health impact of any 'vice' (and you can consider sugar a vice given this discussion) go way beyond just 'death'. There are so many negative impacts that are significant vs. just 'how many people die'. For example health care costs and related health problems (which result in economic impact as well as costs for everyone).

llamathrowaway2• 7 years ago

Is there any reliable source to back up the claim that sugar is more addictive than alcohol?

I am suspicious about this claim because there are plenty of people and families ruined directly as a result of alcoholism. I don’t think sugar addiction is causing nearly as much trouble as alcoholism, despite being a more widely consumed and easily available substance.

bunderbunder4• 7 years ago

If you're referring to the CDC figure, then I doubt you're making an apples-to-apples comparison. That figure's based on the deaths that are easily attributable to serious alcohol over-consumption, like cirrhosis or car wrecks. It doesn't include things like increased cancer or heart disease risk.

Whereas the oft-quoted figures for smoking and sugar are pretty much all about things like increased cancer or heart disease risk.

I'm not sure what the numbers would be like if you _did_ include those diseases in the alcohol death figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up somewhere between smoking and sugar.

istjohn• 7 years ago

The local university research hospital emergency room is busiest by far on Friday and Saturday nights due to alcohol-related incidents.

NIDA puts the overall US national cost of tobacco use at $300 billion and of alcohol use at $249 billion.

It's impossible to become physically dependent on sugar, whereas an alcoholic can die if they quit cold turkey.

intrasight• 7 years ago

I'm fine with alcohol sales. I'm not fine with alcohol in advertising nor in television shows.

buboard4• 7 years ago

If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse.

You can still eat less sugary stuff in general (which is what most people do). Changing your taste is not addiction, it's a reasonable shift in preferences.

only kills 80k or so Americans per year

Society may care more about alcohol addiction because it tends to affect people other than the alcohol consumer.

V-22• 7 years ago

Not to mention there are social limitations to alcohol consumption. Eg. you wouldn't normally drink whisky on the bus or at work (unless you happen to be a character from "Mad Men"), but there aren't many times nor places where eating a chocolate bar is frowned upon.

elorant2• 7 years ago

Thanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.

jsty• 7 years ago

Would limiting alcohol advertising really have that dramatic an effect on the 'good' wine market? I can't recall the last time I bought a decent bottle of wine because it was advertised.

fuzz4lyfe• 7 years ago

A small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied.

Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.

moroleth3• 7 years ago

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop socializing the easy way.

eternalny1• 7 years ago

significantly harder to get addicted to

Are you sure about that? It has negatively affected millions of people in the US.

"A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this month finds that the rate of alcohol use disorder, or what's colloquially known as “alcoholism,” rose by a shocking 49 percent in the first decade of the 2000s."

One in eight American adults.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

iliaznk• 7 years ago

Alcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to – the 1st part of your sentence seems to contradict the 2nd: nowadays people can't think of getting together and not drinking and that's to me exactly because they got addicted to socializing under alcohol so much they can't socialize normally without it.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

Alcohol dependency has a genetic component. The promotion and ingraining into the culture is the big problem.

runarberg• 7 years ago

It’s banned in Iceland. The big breweries simply offer a low alcohol with the same branding and advertise those. Poor tourists end up being the only ones buying them, not knowing they are low alcohol, as they are allowed to sell the low alcohol beers in the grocery stores while regular beer can only be sold at the state run liqueur stores.

V-22• 7 years ago

Vodka companies in Poland were even more inventive. One of them started a yacht rental enterprise (or something along these lines), and proudly advertised "łódka Bols". "Łódka" meaning a boat, and coincidentally rhyming with "wódka" (or vodka).

Another opened a horse holiday farm, whose abbreviation - "WTK", following the brand's well recognizable name - happens to sound pretty much like "wódka" :)

jithesh• 7 years ago

Alcohol consumption is by choice by adults, where as sugar consumption is not - children's food are mostly sugary items today in the market. They get addicted by the time they are teenagers, and for many of them (30% or above of all the kids), due to resulting obesity, rest of their lives are spent fixing/fighting it - depression and health issues.

buboard4• 7 years ago

Alcoholism is like 50% genetic.

Mizza• 7 years ago

I like this idea.

Another thing we can do is to demand an FDA-approval process for recreational drugs! Dr. David Nutt has been developing a safer alcohol alternative, Alcarelle [1], but is having trouble finding a foothold in the marketplace as we have no process for safe-substance certification!

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alco...

Creationer• 7 years ago

I've lived in countries with extremely liberal alcohol laws: low taxes, liberal advertising, 24/7 availability, drinking allowed on the street.

I've lived in others where Alcohol advertising is banned, availability is limited to Government-run stores at certain times, and the taxes are very high.

Binge drinking and general abuse seemed to be much higher in the latter. Particularly people seemed to get drunk before leaving the house, or used drugs, since both were cheaper than buying alcohol at a venue.

If anything is going to be restricted in the form of tax or advertising, hard spirits should bear the brunt instead of beer and wine. It might also make sense to loosen up taxes at licensed venues, which are controlled environments with trained bartenders and security.

amanaplanacanal3• 7 years ago

I don't think you can draw a cause and effect relationship here. Just as important are social attitudes towards alcohol.

paulcarroty• 7 years ago

And sitting without physical activity too, please, it's much more dangerous.

teamski2• 7 years ago

Exercise is important especially for your brain but bad nutrition has a much higher impact than no exercise.

buzzerbetrayed• 7 years ago

Out of curiosity, how did you become so knowledgeable about nutrition? This comment, and your other (now deleted) comment make it seem like you are really confident that you know more than everyone else.

My biggest complaint about learning about nutrition is that everyone says opposing things, and it is really difficult for me to know what is right and what is snake oil.

Any tips on learning the “right” way to be healthy?

darkpuma6• 7 years ago

That's simply not going to happen because there is no "second hand sugar" scenario. Even alcohol, which is incredibly destructive to third parties by any measure (domestic abuse, drunk driving, etc), hasn't successfully been publicly vilified to the same extent as smoking.

mantas2• 7 years ago

Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar".

Some people being addicted to sugar makes food makers add sugar where it's not needed or increase it's quantity a lot. So you have harder time limiting your sugar input.

darkpuma6• 7 years ago

"Sugar addict in next plane seat in long haul flight is definitely "second hand sugar".

What? How? They can as much sugar as they like, none of it is getting into me. No airline has ever force-fed me sugar.

philwelch2• 7 years ago

It was, back in the 1920's.

wincy• 7 years ago

And that worked out.

zanny2• 7 years ago

It was a moral panic though, rather than a reflection on the legitimate bodily harm of consumption. The prohibitionists were not arguing to save alcoholics livers, they were arguing to ban perceived unchristian behavior.

will_brown2• 7 years ago

Well there are children, not exactly “2nd hand sugar” but it’s a good faith arguement...alcohol and tobacco are age regulated whereas sugar isn’t.

The incidences of both fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes in children is pretty alarming, and just saying that and focusing on the number of incidents is alarming rather than the fact a single child has either of those diseases, whereas the first medical cases of either only occurred in the 80’s. I don’t think the first case of childhood type 2 was even diagnosed in the UK until the 90’s. Now we have 1.25 million kids in the US with the disease whereas 100% of all cases could have been prevented through diet.

s33n• 7 years ago

Is there much difference between sugar and refined carbs like white bread?

lisper2• 7 years ago

Yes. Complex carbs are chains of glucose. Sugar has fructose which is much worse for you than glucose (assuming you are not diabetic of course).

Mirioron8• 7 years ago

But they do contain the same amount of calories per gram, so obesity is unaffected.

mantas2• 7 years ago

Some difference - definitely. Does it count as "much"? Depends on your definition of "much". Glycemic index is interesting starting point to look into this.

Not all white bread is identical either. Sugar content may vary a lot from brand to brand. Glycemic index too.

conceptme2• 7 years ago

No the body will convert all sugars / carbs the same. The only difference is how fast it will get in your blood.

jvanderbot• 7 years ago

And thats the problem. Insulin spikes are bad for you.

will_brown2• 7 years ago

Not all sugar is actually processed by the body the same though.

Fructose gets processed in the liver whereas glucose goes into the blood stream triggering insulin response.

Other very fine points are glycemic index, for example a low glycemic index food breakdown to glucose, bypassing the liver, but is absorbed into the bloodstream relatively slowly for glucose and minimizes the insulin spike/response promoting more stable blood sugar levels.

rorykoehler4• 7 years ago

That's only half the story. Simplest sugars (monosacchrides like fructose) get absorbed almost instantly in your stomach/instentine while more complex sugars/carbs (disacchrides and starches) get finally broken down and absorbed further down your intestine. This can have a dramatic impact on your biome.

esailija2• 7 years ago

Sugar is 50% glucose 50% fructose while white bread is only long chains of glucose, unless sugar was added to it too (only a thing in the US AFAIK).

kyriakos2• 7 years ago

Sugar is needed for yeast to raise the dough. It's common everywhere not in the US alone. I'm in Europe and most bread has sugar added during preparation. Small amounts but still sugar.

JamesBarney• 7 years ago

Fiber content, caloric density, and palatability.

scythe2• 7 years ago

In my amateur opinion, yes. The principal difference is pleasure: sugar and other sweet things are more pleasurable to eat than bland foods like white bread.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4224

This is important because eating when you're not hungry is a huge risk factor for obesity. It's not rewarding or fun to eat bland foods when you're not hungry, but it is still fun to eat candy when you're not hungry. This can be particularly problematic when sugary foods become a form of hedonic substitution or a coping strategy in bored or depressed individuals. Additionally, there are some studies which suggest that the tongue may become desensitized to sweetness when habitually eating sugary foods, potentially motivating individuals to choose sweeter foods at meal times:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ejn.13149

White bread isn't good for you, but it lacks these effects.

rib3ye• 7 years ago

While we're on the topic of telling people how to live, why don't we keep the sugar and simply start exercising?

rootusrootus2• 7 years ago

You can't outrun the spoon.

teamski2• 7 years ago

haha deleted

ddorian43• 7 years ago

So you're on keto ?

cuddlecake• 7 years ago

I think keto is even lower on carbs. At most 20-30g per day (only nuts and vegetables, basically).

But, obviously, like 99% of people, the parent poster lacks the willpower to do that. wink wink

haolez• 7 years ago

And what happened to you afterwards? :)

Toine• 7 years ago

How do you feel now ? 10% better? 50%? 200%?

fizwhiz• 7 years ago

2nd half of your comment is redundant.

haunter• 7 years ago

Social media is the new smoking not sugar

buboard4• 7 years ago

Hacker news is my new smoking

jmull• 7 years ago

FYI: This article is referring to requiring sugary products to use plain packaging:

...suggested sweets, snacks and sugary drinks should be wrapped in plain packaging to make them less appealing, given the excess consumption of the sweet stuff

(I think some of the responses here are assuming the question is about treating sugar like smoking in other respects.)

Mirioron8• 7 years ago

I think people are afraid of a slippery slope. Legislation is almost always done in a slippery slope manner - at first you limit things a little and wait until people accept it. After a while you limit some more, then some more and then some more.

You can do whatever you want with sugar, but it's not going to solve the obesity problem. Not only are carbs one of the few macro nutrients we can digest, they're also in pretty much everything.

anchpop• 7 years ago

What do you think will solve the obesity problem? People weren't obese like they are now 100 years ago. Something must have changed

nikkwong• 7 years ago

I don't know about this. For example in many countries around the world cigarettes are now put in unattractive packages but not banned outright.

To get very meta, the argument that regulation is a slippery slope, is itself a slippery slope. As in, I think the fear that government is going to continually encroach upon our freedoms until we live in a police state is misguided. This is the argument that big industry uses to exploit workers, cheat on taxes, spew their externalities over the environment, etc etc.

What we should really aim for is a democracy in which well-minded and level headed politicians work to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Perverse incentives aside, I think if that were really the goal, you'd get some level of regulatory balance that was neither too loose nor too restrictive.

kyriakos2• 7 years ago

Start by moving sugary products away from children. Also banning shops selling sweets near the cashier.

_bxg13• 7 years ago

It'd be much harder than cigarettes to define and enforce, and more prone to loopholes. What's a "sugary food"? Grams of sugar? They'd just sell fun-sized. Percentage mass? That could impact fruit. Added sugar? What is "non-added sugar"? Specific product categories like soda and candy? They'd just walk the line with things like "sweetened sparkling water".

I support the idea in principle, and I hope they figure out a way to define it, but it'll be hard.

prepend• 7 years ago

Foods with added sugar should be an easy starting point.

_bxg13• 7 years ago

If they can come up with a way to measure that that can't be gamed

zanny2• 7 years ago

If I eat a strawberry thats non-added sugar. If I sprinkle sugar on the strawberry, thats added sugar.

It would be pretty easy to deduce the distinction between added and not sugars - if you put a sugar in your food and list it in the ingredients it has added sugar. If the thing as its grown has sugar then its not an added sugar.

If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything.

_bxg13• 7 years ago

And what about a pasta that ends up with some sugars from the process of being made? What's the difference between "natural pasta" and "sugar added pasta"?

If that leads to the GMO modification of crops even further to produce more sugars thats a lot less harmful than the status quo adding of corn syrup / cane sugar / etc to everything.

Extremely disagree.

arcticfox• 7 years ago

What about high-fructose corn syrup soda? You could just say it's a corn-based drink with no 'added sugar'.

novok• 7 years ago

Any dish that is a prepared composite will quickly get into gray areas.

“I didn’t add sugar, i just put this highly sweet blended fruit in the dish!”

jacobr1• 7 years ago

This is probably the right way to think about it at an individual level. Eating berries and fruits in season is probably quite healthy and corn-syrup added processed food unhealthy. But we've already seen how companies obfuscate. For example "Nitrates" have been demonized. So know you'll see "natural" or "healthy" food making using of "celery extract," which is really just "natural nitrates."

Mirioron8• 7 years ago

So natural juice is okay, but water with sugar added to it is labeled as harmful? Yet the former is just as bad for you as the latter.

nitwit005• 7 years ago

It's less clear than you might think. Food producers have already adjusted to parents rejecting high sugar products by producing foods that are similar, but use fruit or fruit juice as the sweetener. They often advertise that there is no added sugar.

tomjen33• 7 years ago

Any items which contains more than 1g sugar per 100 gram, and contains any amount of product that has been process or mixed with something else not found in nature (so no on apples, yes on apple juice, yes on anything that has added sugar).

gregmac• 7 years ago

I started eating keto over a year ago, and found that I totally lost my appetite for sugary and other carb-based foods, so have just kept it up.

One thing that was eye opening to me was from paying close attention to food labels. I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options. What surprised me was how basically they just substitute fat for sugar. Ceasar dressing normal has 1g carbs and 4g fat per Tbsp (45 cal), but low calorie is 4g carbs and 1.5g fat per Tbsp (30 cal). This adds up, and I think I was actually eating a pretty unhealthy balance of macronutrients (fat/protein/carbs) while thinking I was eating healthy, despite my BMI slowly creeping up over a decade to being middle of "overweight" (I'm now in the middle of "normal" range, just from changing my diet).

Well I think treating sugar like smoking is far too extreme, I do think the demonization of fat along with the addition of excess sugar to "healthy" food options is a terrible combination, and that needs to end.

richk4492• 7 years ago

I used to try to mostly eat "healthy", so I'd tend to buy the "low calorie" options.

It amazes me how many people make this mistake.

solveit2• 7 years ago

I mean, the industry only spends hundreds of millions pushing this impression, so...

TazeTSchnitzel2• 7 years ago

I think the demonisation of fat might be partly a linguistic problem. “fat” is a derogatory term for someone who is overweight, but it also happens to describe an important component of food, so the (incorrect) connection forms itself: eating fat = getting fat. This isn't the case in all languages, though I don't know if that actually has meant Germany or wherever cares less about fat content.

StavrosK• 7 years ago

Maybe we should call it "lipids"? Not sure if that's the same.

chronial• 7 years ago

Fun fact: German shares that linguistic property with English. But I agree with your point.

JMTQp8lwXL5• 7 years ago

There seems to be two major camps when it comes to weight loss: this confused thinking of lowering fats to lose weight (as you mention), and conversely, CICO (calories-in, calories-out).

In Western diets, it is all too easy to binge on processed carbs. For people struggling to manage weight, that is usually the main issue. Diets such as Keto or Paleo tend to restrict processed foods which make it hard or nearly impossible to consume processed carbs.

Restrictions from these diets naturally lead to CICO. The body only cares to consume so much whole foods -- you can eat a very large quantity of vegetables before hitting an equivalent amount of calories from processed foods (like potato chips, etc). These diets are essentially an "easy" framework (easy conceptually, challenging in practice for some due to cravings) for following CICO and reducing calories.

marton78• 7 years ago

German is a bad example, "fett" means "fat" in both senses of the word. But still, people don't care so much about nutrition in general over here.

jniedrauer4• 7 years ago

I think it should be made clear that we simply don't know enough about keto yet to call it "healthy." More healthy than sugar over-consumption? Almost certainly. I will say that it allowed me to cut to under 10% bodyfat with almost no effort, so for that I think it is a valuable tool.

But I also found that I was not making progress in my athletic hobbies until I stopped eating keto. My progress visibly accelerated after I stopped. So I hesitate to recommend it as anything other than a short term body recomposition tool. Fat may not be evil, but carbs aren't either.

1123581321• 7 years ago

What kind of diet did you switch to when you moved away from keto?

nindalf• 7 years ago

I can echo this. I'm on keto right now and I have no trouble for most of the day. What troubles me is strenuous activity. I can still do it, but I take longer to recover. If I'm lifting, I rest twice as long between sets. I went for a run today that shouldn't normally give me trouble but I was knackered by the uphill stretches.

I don't mind much. I feel healthy, I'm losing weight and my mind feels focused the entire day.

JMTQp8lwXL5• 7 years ago

After some back-and-forth, I've found that Keto is best for short periods of time, e.g., 1-3 month periods. Physical activity can feel quite strenuous, especially when you first start Keto, and your body isn't adapted to using fat as a fuel source.

It's an incredibly effective tool to help you re-imagine the composition of your diet. For example, after my first time doing Keto, I seriously considered which carb sources I wanted to re-introduce to my diet.

On one end, you have short-chained carbs (sugars), and on the other end, complex carbs. You also have processed foods (which have fortified micronutrients), and whole foods (naturally occurring micronutrients). I now stick to whole foods with complex carbs. You'll get more fiber this way, and complex carbs are a slower-burning food source that keep you feeling fuller, longer. I've re-introduced carbohydrates from things like beans, quinoa, and the occasional potato.

Like anything, Keto is a tool. It should not be considered a silver bullet since we don't know the long-term health consequences of long periods of Ketogenesis.

wickoff• 7 years ago

I've been trying out carnivore diet for a couple of months. I went from years of yo-yo dieting and pathological binge eating to effortlessly losing 10% of my bodyweight. I think my psychology got rewired somehow, I don't know how else to explain such a drastic change in behavior.

travv0• 7 years ago

I just finished a month of carnivore and have stopped doing it, as my life had become a living hell from my frequent and urgent trips to the bathroom. Other than that, it was good for my waistline.

retiredcoder4• 7 years ago

That happens a lot, specially in places selling healthy snacks.

I used to work for one of them at certain point and the secret sauce was mostly using tons sugar and/or salt to increase sales. Unless one puts a lot of effort (which can be quite expensive when running a business), healthy food doesn’t sell well.

mtoddsmith• 7 years ago

Sugars affect your gut biome which in turn affect the hormones your body produces which affect your insulin, cravings and hunger.

kovrik• 7 years ago

My wife and I are doing IF (OMAD - One Meal A Day). And obviously don't eat junk food, sugar etc.

For me the biggest surprise was how little food we actually need. I remember myself few years ago eating a breakfast in the morning, then coffee with a muffin or donut first thing at work, then huge lunch, then another snack, then huge dinner at home (of course! just came from work - need to treat myself) and then maybe another snack before going to bed. Can't even imagine how many calories and sugars we were consuming each day. We were literally overeating every single day.

Now we eat only once a day, avoid junk food and sugars, feel awesome, look and feel much better. And it works for us even with quite intensive hiking trips and with gym/exercises.

scythe2• 7 years ago

I think a smaller but still effective first step would be to label sugary products as such. Many people may be unaware of the number of things they consume which are more than 50% refined sugar by dry weight. A great deal of "fruit" products fall in to this category.

nv-vn4• 7 years ago

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body?

As a kid my parents didn't care too much about what I ate. I regularly had sweets of any kind as a kid. I certainly have no addiction to sugar because of that. I probably drink soda less than once a month and have cake/ice cream/chocolate/candy at about the same frequency. Meanwhile, people I grew up with who were never allowed sugar seem much more addicted to it, eating sweets with every meal or as a snack. Earlier this week I heard someone at work talking about how their child has never eaten any kind of sweets before and personally this just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

cataphract2• 7 years ago

I don't think it's so much denying people what to do with their bodies, as much countering all the ways they were being manipulated into overconsumption.

The market and social forces, left unchecked, have resulted in a bleak situation: for instance, I've noticed that the frozen goods aisle in most urban supermarkets has slowly become dominated by ice creams and other deserts, pizzas and french fries, together frequently making up > 3/4 of the area, the rest being frozen vegetables, fish and meat.

I think this trend needs to be countered because I don't believe most people made the conscious choice "I'm mostly eating crap now".

jniedrauer4• 7 years ago

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body?

Would the conversation be different if this were about ads for opioids targeted at children?

nv-vn4• 7 years ago

Yes. The fiction that sugar is somehow equivalent to hard drugs has continuously been pedaled without any basis in reality. Opioids have measurable and easily observable psychoactive effects and cause physical dependence. They limit one's ability to function as a normal human if consumed on a regular basis and an overdose of opioids can result in instant death. Even if you claim that eating sugar is "as addictive as cocaine" as the catch phrase goes, sugar lacks the power to cause you to nod off for hours, wake up with withdrawal symptoms like diarrhea/vomiting/flu-like symptoms, and kill you on the spot from an accidental overdose. Sugar also isn't regularly consumed in ways that destroy your arteries or nasal cavity. And when is the last time you've seen somebody crash a car because they were inebriated from eating too much sugar? The comparison between the two is complete non-sense and I believe that you can see just as clear as me why that is the case.

JMTQp8lwXL5• 7 years ago

The problem with this approach is, the vast majority of people pick the default option when presented with it (e.g., states that, by default, mark you as an organ donor have proportionally more organ donors).

Public policy has real, measurable implications. We don't need to treat sugar like smoking or alcohol, but when you find a way to move people away from it as their "default" setting, you will find, in aggregate huge savings in health care expenses and better outcomes (a sizable amount of health care spending is due to preventable conditions, like Type II diabetes).

I agree, in principle, people can still consume sugar, if they want. The occasional slice of birthday cake is not the problem with sugar. It's the consumption of a 2-liter of soda, multiple times per week, that's the problem (regular consumption). But we need to make it easier for people to avoid processed, simple carbohydrates.

One possible solution is increasing the ubiquity and ease-of-access to whole foods. Eating healthy needs to have the convenience of going to a fast food restaurant -- they're everywhere, they're cheap, and it's fast. We desperately need this as a society. Consider it more as a preventative, or we can pay for it on the other end (higher health care costs).

nv-vn4• 7 years ago

I do agree with you that access to cheap/convenient healthy foods is certainly lacking. This is definitely a problem I think we can and should tackle. I think giving people more choices is a great thing and I would happily support this. The "default" also makes a lot of sense here. Really at the end of the day what I'm skeptical of is trying to force people's hands into cutting sugar out of their diet.

JumpCrisscross• 7 years ago

How about we just let people choose what to do with their body?

Healthcare costs are a communal burden. With that shared responsibility to pay comes a shared responsibility to supervise.

Children, moreover, have always been seen as at least partly communally parented. Their sugar consumption is thus of public concern.

nv-vn4• 7 years ago

There is at least some evidence that the root cause of sugar addiction is limiting sugar consumption [1], and this definitely reflects my childhood experience. Blindly taking a position of taking sugar away from children could actually cause an increase in sugar addiction in the long-term.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-016-1229-6

impatient_bacon2• 7 years ago

God I hope so. I grew up obese and am now about halfway through undoing the damage using a ketogenic diet. I really do think sugar sweetened drinks should be banned for sale to children under 18, as that causes the most damage.

Mirioron8• 7 years ago

So, they're only allowed water? Because you're also banning juice and milk with they ban.

impatient_bacon2• 7 years ago

Parents can buy whatever they want for their kids, I said nothing about banning consumption. Milk would be fine, however most juices and chocolate milk are pretty bad for you.

manmal• 7 years ago

That would be a good thing. Milk consumption greatly reduces iron absorption (and health benefits are iffy to say the least), and fruit is better eaten than drank. Our digestive system is built on the idea of chewing food (through vagus nerve stimulation).

jammygit• 7 years ago

“Sweetened” in the verb form, as in added sugar I think s/he meant

JMTQp8lwXL5• 7 years ago

I feel fortunate to genuine enjoy sugar-free carbonated beverages (from plain carbonated water to the varieties with mild flavorings, e.g., La Croix). So many people can't appreciate the subtleties of these beverages because their high-sugar diets.

I forget what exactly caused me to switch, but I realized in college that buying soda with a meal made it significantly more expensive (e.g., $7.50 meal was now $9.50). Tight on money, it's a quick way to squeeze an extra meal or two. Still wanted something more than water, so I tried the soda machine's carbonated soda water tab. Now, it's my go-to! (Sidenote: a good number of restaurants do not have soda water tabs on their machines. I find it to be a slight annoyance).

Folks that only enjoy sweetened carbonated beverages, I think, can't even imagine enjoyed unsweetened carbonated. But it is totally possible to eventually reach that state.

randyrand• 7 years ago

No need to punish everyone for the problems of a few. If you were to ban it, it would make sense to only ban it for those that cannot be responsible with sugary drinks.

kazinator4• 7 years ago

I'm not harmed if I'm sitting next to a someone who is consuming sugar.

What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.

rootusrootus2• 7 years ago

That could get exciting. Think of all the factors we could base health insurance on. Risky outdoor activities? Higher premiums. Biking to work? Higher premiums.

Alternatively, we could work to help everyone become healthier, and then use as large a risk pool as possible to leverage the benefits of insurance.

humanrebar2• 7 years ago

The problem with "we can work to help" is that "we" will at times be helping even if another "we" doesn't see it as particularly helpful.

I have a problem with the presumption of unrelenting competence, good faith, and humaneness in a bureaucratic organization despite the inevitable pressure from various political factions and lobbying groups.

kazinator4• 7 years ago

Shrug; I'm honestly just grasping at a straw there to form a plausible hypothesis of how someone else's sugar consumption affects me in the way that cigarette smoke does. Since I have to pay taxes and forced public health insurance premiums (that are based on my income rather than claim history or health), that's what it must be. Anything unhealthful indulged by a large segment of the population is increasing that burden.

beatgammit3• 7 years ago

Well, life insurance does that. I recall having someone over to check my health and they had me fill out a form detailing the types of activities I do (it even covered skydiving).

Since I'm healthy, I got a fantastic rate.

However, nothing like that happened for my health insurance. The closest I have is a program that helps pay for my gym membership if I go regularly. The really silly thing is that I'm not able to go regularly because I ride my bike a lot, yet I am likely more healthy because of that than many of the people who go to the gym regularly.

Honestly, I would totally be down with a voluntary system like that for things like obesity, smoking, etc. If I present a lower risk to the insurance company, shouldn't I be rewarded with lower rates? If that were the case, I think more people would make real changes to their lives instead of fiddling with fad diets, pedometers, and gym memberships. Saving $20/month on a gym membership or getting a free Fitbit is less motivating than saving $100/month for being healthy.

humanrebar2• 7 years ago

This is closest to where I am on this issue, but I do worry that government-set premiums will be affected by lobbying more than anything else.

lm28469• 7 years ago

What we should have is health insurance premiums based on risk factors such as obesity, even in public systems.

Next thing we know we're all constantly monitored for every single health metrics and pay more for every one that is slightly off.

"Bacon every morning ? Well sorry sir but that'll be $30 more per year. Oh and you drive to work instead of cycling, that's another $60. Our tracking system tells us that you were sitting more than 7 hours per day on average for the last month so we'll have to charge you $0.55 per seated hours for the next 6 months. You should also think about your monthly running goal, you only have 3 days left and 36km to go."

We could also stop insuring people when they start getting unhealthy. Imagine the profit !! /s

What we should do is better educate people about health and stop trying to get them addicted as much and as early as we can.

kazinator4• 7 years ago

To avoid these complexities, insurance companies use past claims history as an estimate of future claims and hence premiums.

Of course, that apply very well for one-time items like life insurance.

ricardobeat2• 7 years ago

You’ll get your premium raised for high glucose or cholesterol levels in the Netherlands. Prices are regulated though, and you can’t be denied insurance.

sureaboutthis• 7 years ago

I have a feeling most of the addiction came from the food and drink industry. Perhaps the amount of sugar contained in the industry provided foods should be restricted to some sane amount and not a quantity to induce you to eat it. This way, the home cook can control their sugar intake and the home cook cannot produce the number of available goods one eats by just picking it off the shelf at a store.

Higher end restaurants that cook their own food won't be restricted this way either and that's a good thing because one goes to such places for food you don't normally get at home but fast food restaurants get most of their food from factory stores where sugar content can and should be restricted for the same reason grocery store food should--sweetening foods makes you want them more.

dfilppi• 7 years ago

No unless second hand sugar is a thing.

elil173• 7 years ago

Should we trust the government to decide what food is “healthy”? Absolutely not. Just look at how many times the “recommenced diet” has changed in the past few decades. There’s no reason to expect that the current evidence against sugar is more correct than previous (now debunked) evidence against fat.

What’s more, what’s healthy depends on who you are. People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily.

Instead of focusing on trying to figure out what is and isn’t good for you, we should focus on making sure people have access to foods we already know are healthy by eliminating urban food deserts.

DanBC2• 7 years ago

People with eating disorders, for example, need easy access to caloric foods, including sugary foods, to weight restore and eat healthily.

What is refeeding syndrome?

elil173• 7 years ago

In early treatment of extremely restrictive eating disorders, calorie consumption has to be increased slowly over the course of about a week to avoid electrolyte imbalances. That’s usually done under the supervision of a doctor. After someone’s later on in recovery, it isn’t a concern.

vbuwivbiu• 7 years ago

come on now sugar isn't healthy for anyone.

solveit2• 7 years ago

Citation very much needed.

tomjen33• 7 years ago

Eating disorders can be some of the most dangerous things you can suffer from (anorexia has a mortality of 30% if I remember correctly); however on a population scale the damage is dwafted buy the damage from obesity because so many more people are seriously fat.

elil173• 7 years ago

Right, so there needs to be solutions that work for everyone. That’s why I think food access is key (i.e. more grocery stores in low income neighborhoods). People who need more food can get it, and people who need healthier food will have access.

stillbourne• 7 years ago

What? No! Fucking hell. Speak to a nutritionist. You need carbs! They aren't bad when eaten in the correct amount and type. The body uses glycogen and glucose for energy, the problem isn't sugar, the problem is a lack of understanding by the public on the topics of exercise, food and health. I don't know about anyone else but all three school types (private, public, and charter) in America seem to neglect this type of information when teaching PE. We seem to treat PE as strictly a means to burn off excess energy for overactive adolescents instead of using this as an opportunity to understand the biological mechanisms involved in converting food to fuel. That is not to say that this information is not taught but it seems that its only ever taught as an extracurricular when a student picks up a sport such as football. Even then its almost treated like tribal knowledge passed down from the coach to the players.

All of this is further hampered by other factors as well such as the disappearing HomeEc curriculum, the general faddness of dieting in the press (this article being a good example) and a misconception on the behalf of the public on matters related to food consumption. There is almost a mysticism/dogma about how food works that seems to prevail over discourse related to nutrition these days. Furthermore, there is a return to quackery lately with things such as alkaline diets and such despite the fact that most of the foods that they suggest to eat, such as fruit, are often more acidic rather than basic. I blame this on MLMs trying to sell water to middle class retards too stupid to understand that they are being swindled. Sugar is not the Great Satan of food. It's simply people that are too ignorant to understand what they are eating will continue to make poor choices.

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

No, it's not. This is ridiculous.

Sugar is bad in large quantities, but there's no such thing as second hand sugar consumption, which is the main reason why anybody wanted to regulate smoking, since nobody wants to get lung cancer from working in a place where everyone else is doing something harmful.

What we need to do with regard to sugar is get people to have some got dang self control, which starts with proper education K-12 and decent menus for school lunches.

josteink2• 7 years ago

In my younger, smoking years, when the anti-smoking lobby grew stronger and managed to land more and more restrictions on smoking, to the degree that you almost felt like a leper...

I remember telling my anti-smoking, chocolate-eating friends “you know one day they will come for you too, right?”

That sure didn’t take long. Let’s see how they feel about it this time around.

ricardobeat2• 7 years ago

Did you not eat chocolate? Did all of your anti-smoking friends had the urge to eat chocolate during breaks or social events? That’s a very odd characterization.

Smoking is banned for under 18 already, and affects others around you, while chocolate does not (an I really saying this?). As seen in the article, sugar is a bigger issue for the 4-18 age range. I’m sure your friends feel absolutely fine.

josteink2• 7 years ago

Did you not eat chocolate?

No. I don’t eat chocolate, don’t drink soda and don’t have sugar in my coffee.

You may find that crazy, but what’s really crazy is having no vices at all.

Trying to ban them all is sure to make us all unhappy.

pfdietz• 7 years ago

Yet another application of Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

zzo38computer• 7 years ago

Smoking has second hand smoke, but I think sugar is internal to your body rather than all everywhere like smoking is. So, it is not same kind of thing and should not be treat like same kind of thing, due to that.

Is it time to treat sugar like smoking?

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