Food companies ‘sweetened the world’ and increased the risk of disease

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/14/how-food-companies-sweetened-the-world-and-increased-the-risk-of-disease-acc

by YeGoblynQueenne • 3 years ago

270 232 3 years ago

theguardian.com

helph67• 3 years ago

Some here may be concerned enough to consider this article https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/a2471/suga...

The proteins in skin most prone to glycation are the same ones that make a youthful complexion so plump and springy—collagen and elastin. When those proteins hook up with renegade sugars, they become discolored, weak, and less supple; this shows up on the skin's surface as wrinkles, sagginess, and a loss of radiance.

SentinelLdnma• 3 years ago

I was not familiar with glycation. Thanks for this rabbit hole... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9867518/

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

Plenty of related discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728033

bettercallsalad• 3 years ago

Let’s not give FDA, NIH and other standard and quality control monitoring agencies pass while food conpanies did this. They also purposely pushed “fat is bad” while the whole diet chart with the carb/milk and dairy was plain misleading. And they knew they were lying, most of their propositions were pushed by one guys research. And of course big pharma always sponsored and benefited these types of research.

api3• 3 years ago

When I see populist cranks getting traction in the culture and in politics, I find myself being as angry at the establishment for this as I am at the cranks or perhaps even more.

I feel like our main establishment entities like the FDA, NIH, major universities, pharma companies, etc. still aren't willing to take any responsibility for why people don't trust them anymore.

Cranks are filling the vacuum, but the cranks didn't create the vacuum.

simple-thoughts• 3 years ago

It’s always funny to me when I see institutions publish reports in the credibility crisis, because their solution is always to do more media operations. But the lack of trust comes from the behavior of these institutions and their use of the media to cover up their mistakes in the first place!

gsatic• 3 years ago

Broadcast transmissions have always been regulated world over, not cuz the Regulators are great or act fast or are trusted, but cuz the Cost to Mass Broadcast, whatever shit occurs to a 3 inch chimp brain, is much greater than 0.

The cost to multiply has always been the real barrier to prevent cancer from spreading faster than the immune system can react.

Whether it is setting up a printing press and distributing newspapers/books or radio/tv station, movie studio broadcasts, it used to cost a lot. Even with chat/email/phone/sms there is a high cost. The email list of everyone on the planet is easy to assemble these days. But try emailing everyone on the list every few minutes.

The whole story breaks down when Youtube/Facebook/TikTok made Cost to Broadcast 0 for everyone.

ourmandave2• 3 years ago

Cranks are filling the vacuum, but the cranks didn't create the vacuum.

lol, really? The former president (still lying about the 2020 election), Fox News (paid near $1B settlement for lying), and the Republican party repeatedly saying all the Federal institutions can't be trusted because they're run by the Deep State or crooked liberals.

Which cranks didn't create the distrust again?

mihaaly• 3 years ago

You cannot regulate away everything that may be harmful or unhealthy (also has personal variations).

Perhaps putting the efforts into education, teaching what is what and more importantly why? And who wants to influence/manipulate you for their own benefit while causing you harm?

I ate lots of sugar as a child slowly steered away by good advice, avoiding it by the time became young adult and since (decades).

Informed self reliance is much more reliable than relying on a regulatory 'father figure'.

omginternets10• 3 years ago

They’re now “vegetizing” the world with “plant-based” (read: highly processed) products and lab-grown meats (ditto).

The sooner we realize that food industry are engaged in capitalism and not public health, nor ecology, the better. What the food industry pushes is best read through the lens of patentable intellectual property and market disruption in an economic sector with razor-thin margins. I would encourage all conscientious people not to be their useful idiots.

armatav2• 3 years ago

This is true - everything along the lines of plant based food has an underlying capital cost transformation driving it, not a cultural or environmental basis.

That’s why they need to convince/mandate people to eat it; it tastes worse and is worse for you.

ben_w4• 3 years ago

Judging by the responses of surprised enthusiasm I get from meat eaters when I cook vegetarian for them: if it tastes worse, that's the chef's fault rather than the plants'.

jjtheblunt3• 3 years ago

Wouldn't eating a salad of all vegetables be "plant-based"? Are you saying they use that phrase misleadingly too?

tester13894059• 3 years ago

I think that's the misunderstanding here. Things like Beyond Meat aren't really any better for you than real meat. It's just another push from the capital class to co-opt the medical profession's message that we should all be eating less meat. The ingredients, textured vegetable protein and highly processed lentils, have had almost all of the really healthy stuff removed from them and they serve only as a substrate for particular flavors that mimic meat.

Insofar as it isn't recognizably an ingredient that is picked from a field and marketed as a plant or animal part, it's part of what's causing all of us to be really unhealthy in the US.

anigbrowl6• 3 years ago

That's disingenuous. The problem is not plants per se (which are great and tasty), but the use of plants as input to industrial food production. I don't mean the industrial logistics of harvesting, storing, and distribution, but the industrial/chemical processing of feed stuffs for separation, purification, and recombination of foods that are miles away from anything resembling normal cooking.

I make an omelette for breakfast every day which involves a bunch of preparation, mixing and cooking, but when eating it's easy to identify the ingredients - this is a piece of pork, that's a radish, that's a piece of garlic etc. The closest thing to food product is some ground-up red pepper and other herbs that are there to modulate the flavor, but don't make up the main substance of the dish.

I've thought about buying some of these meat substitute products a few times, but for one thing they're quite expensive and for another when I look at the ingredients I can't easily conceive of what went into the product or how. I know vegetarian and vegan food can be delicious and nutritious thanks to friends who are great cooks, but again when I eat their cooking I can easily identify what I'm putting in my mouth.

omginternets10• 3 years ago

I’m trying very hard to interpret this in a charitable way and coming up dry. You’re clearly not stupid, judging from your comment history, so what exactly are you playing at?

I don’t believe for one second that you cannot distinguish between salad and things like Huel.

adam_arthur• 3 years ago

Regulation through voluntary goodwill never works in aggregate. Blaming actors rather than regulators will always be futile in the end as players in a system will almost always trend towards self interest in the long run, as has been proven time and time again

Of course many would argue there's no need to regulate at all, and that's a fair position to hold too.

There's nothing inherently wrong with providing products that offer a tradeoff between health and enjoyment. As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs

mahmoudhossam2• 3 years ago

Regulatory capture prevents regulators from doing their jobs, and I'm not sure any amount of regulator blaming will change that.

Naming and shaming companies, however, can make them change their strategy.

wilg• 3 years ago

I’m not so sure. Placing the blame at regulators would encourage people to vote for politicians that will regulate more effectively. That’s a direct link, versus hoping corporate shame trickles through to regulation.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

In a competitive system is it selfishness or survival?

bloppe• 3 years ago

Clearly people are choosing sugary products. The only thing that would be inappropriate for food companies to do would be to lie about the health effects of that sugar. This article seems to imply they're lying (or at least misleading) quite a bit.

fbdab1032• 3 years ago

Don't forget <s>bribing</s> funding researchers to say fat was worse than sugar [0]

Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.

[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

srgpqt• 3 years ago

It’s not much of a choice when most available food products are all sugar laced, and the healthier alternatives are typically much more expensive.

s1artibartfast7• 3 years ago

Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works. Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens.

The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value.

Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

asdfasgasdgasdg3• 3 years ago

The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value.

It doesn't seem that absurd to me. If the government banned the production and import of potato chips, you could still make them at home, but people would probably make a lot less of them. Unlike drugs, food is not conveniently hidden and the value is too low per unit volume to justify illicit production. Therefore food which is banned generally will not be produced at scale.

If the government did set out to materially improve the dietary habits of the citizenry, it would definitely be possible. It would be politically infeasible and possibly tyranny, but it would be very doable.

NegativeK• 3 years ago

I'm not going to pretend that regulators are perfect, but I simply can't agree that food safety regulation hasn't improved our quality of life compared to 100 years ago. That's just one of many, many ways that industry, regulators, and consumers interact.

And I know the overall topic is about dietary choices, but I'm responding to your blanket anti-regulation statement.

echelon• 3 years ago

Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works. Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.

It's all of this, all at once, millions of times over.

We're an ant colony solving a problem we don't really grok as individuals.

It's even bigger than just these choices. Sugar subsidies. You know what else sugar is used for? Ethanol. Fuel. Transportation. Trade. National defense. You name it, these decisions are intertwined at scale.

If some negative externality grows to great, the system will rebalance. It does so almost thermodynamically.

paulryanrogers3• 3 years ago

It's precisely because people have so many choices and possible vendors that regulation is more needed, not less. We can't all be experts in everything. And we all have different levels of self control.

Some producers are becoming so large they can afford to bribe the scientists and regulators. Smaller players are struggling to compete without resorting to adding sugars themselves.

For all these reasons we collectively develop laws and regulations to keep things within some reasonable limits. Considering the obesity epidemic, despite few wanting to be obese, I think tightening the reigns a bit is warranted.

thrashh• 3 years ago

I don’t know why everyone thinks these things are so black and white.

For example, corn subsidies inevitably lowers the price of sugar, which means — on a micro level - some food engineer might replace some fat with sugar to reduce costs but keep appeal - which, in a macro level, encourages higher sugar content in processed foods.

It can be argued that subsidies are for national security by ensuring there will always be US farmers in case some country cuts imports to us.

But as for heightened sugar problem, you can’t exactly blame the company, food engineer, industry, farmers, Congress or consumers directly. No one intended this side effect — it just kinda happened.

It’s like it’s a complex problem and there’s 1000 angles and you just have to look at these micro-issues individually. You can’t just say “regulate it” or “consumers should be responsible.”

CyberDildonics• 3 years ago

You don't think food companies can control what goes into their food? If that were true how are they able to label food with the grams of sugar it has and how is liquor able to have exactly the alcohol labeled? I can't believe someone would actually argue this.

Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works.

It literally worked for tobacco

vel0city• 3 years ago

Imagine how many lives could be saved if we eliminated the privatization of food and had all food distributed by government nutritionists.

Sounds like a nightmare to me though, even though theoretically one massively reduce diabetes, heart disease, obesity, etc. with such a system.

rqtwteye• 3 years ago

I would be ok with your opinion if we made advertising for food illegal. As it is now, we have a massive onslaught of marketing for unhealthy foods that's designed to exploit every weakness of the human psyche. It's a massive imbalance.

8note• 3 years ago

You're the one making up the idea - that's not an idea people have.

Regulators and middle managers provide me with limited options for each of those thousand choices, and I, without having to think much, can pick one of them safely.

For each of my choices, various regulators and managers have all gotten many says already.

Some bureaucrat does manage my diet, and your diet too, but they don't micromanage it, and nobody is saying they should micromanage it

It's perfectly feasible for regulators to identify when companies are adding sugars - look at the recipe, inspect the factory, put things in bomb calorimeters. Thats not at all absurd, and there's already standards maintained for basically everything, including foods like peanut butter (see: https://youtu.be/esQyYGezS7c )

If it was absurd, it would be impossible to do food safety regulation, like ensuring that food doesn't contain toxins or heavy metals

goodbyesf• 3 years ago

Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.

In an ideal world that would be the case. But in an era of mass media, consumers really aren't making the choice. The choice is being made for them by ads.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens.

Pretty much everything a supermarket, restaurant, etc sells is regulated by the government. Whether you like it or not, government is involved in our diets.

Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

A geniunely independent bureacrat? Maybe. On the other hand, do you want a world where corporations with their ads control your diet? It's a complex question.

petra• 3 years ago

I would like to live in a world, with very little tempting foods when i walk around.

I would like to live in a world where me and maybe a person i trust, could together limit of the foods i can buy, and than program that into my credit card.

I would like to live in a world, where instead of scienticts and engineersand businessmen working on optimizing the addictiveness of food, which isn't a good social goal, would work on optimizing the long term happiness derived from food.

And sure, while I would lose some freedom and fun in this process, given the role food plays in mood and health, over the long term i would likely be happier, much happier.

jmilloy• 3 years ago

Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

Absolutely. My direct personal life and the world around me would be better if there were less sugar available (especially for children and teens, as with alcohol and tobacco for example), it were more expensive, and/or it were better labeled.

patmorgan233• 3 years ago

Sometimes there are too many bad choices for consumers to shift through and having a regulator eliminate, discourage or label them is a good thing actually.

Yes I do want a bureaucrat back by the best nutritional science available to nudge the market to provide me with better, healthier options.

The danger is, of course, that the agency gets captured by the AG industry. Such as the old "food pyramid" that suggested a quarter of your diet should be straight carbs. Or the "fat free" movement that was really just replacing fats with sugars.

wredue• 3 years ago

As opposed to the world where corporations manage it, and they stuff everything with sugar?

It sucks that this is the dichotomy, but yes, absolutely, a bureaucrat will probably end up getting better food to you than corporate interests.

alkibiades2• 3 years ago

the same govt that made the flawed food pyramid should regulate food lol

dennis_jeeves12• 3 years ago

Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

The (very unfortunate) answer is 'yes'. The people who say 'no' are in the minority.

Madmallard• 3 years ago

There needs to be more strict management of the capacity for humans to screw other humans over.

Thomas Hobbes talks about this a good amount in The Leviathan

seanmcdirmid• 3 years ago

As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs

I'm OK as long as consumers rather than society are expected to bear the longer term costs. There is nothing worse than hearing "legalize hard drugs!" followed by "let's sink billions of dollars into treatment for those poor drug addicts!"

timst4• 3 years ago

As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation.

Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.

Buttons840• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm letting my own existential dread and depression into the policy debate, but I've often made short-sighted decisions because there's not much else to live for and little hope for the long-term in general. Why drink water instead of soda if you'll never be able to retire? Perhaps we should look for a political solution to this problem first. Anyone else ever felt this way, or am I just depressed?

tayo422• 3 years ago

eating like crap isnt going to help your depression besides a quick feeling of happiness/dopamin from sugar

omniglottal• 3 years ago

"As long as consumers are aware" is important, yet insufficient. Those consumers must also have alternative options available in the market. Competition isn't just on price, but on features. Consumers, aware, are pissed, but if a boycott means they starve, an agro company can just wait for the next season of insulin consumers.

koonsolo2• 3 years ago

It depends on your countries health system of course. If that one is sponsored by the government, it's only fair to tax the shit out of unhealthy food.

alkibiades2• 3 years ago

exhibit a of why we don’t want socialized medicine. because it justifies this exact thought process

tayo422• 3 years ago

Seems like a headline that's going to get people riled up, while its discussing misleading and lies in marketing of food towards uneducated people in developing parts of India.

tough country to deal with problems in, idk how you reach everyone to educate them.

grecy3• 3 years ago

There is a really, really easy way to avoid all of this.

In the supermarket, only buy things that have one ingredient. Only eat and drink things that have one ingredient.

As Michael Pollan says: "Eat FOOD, mostly greens, not too much."

andersrs• 3 years ago

Even fruit/vegetables have become sweeter over the decades with selective breeding.

notyourwork2• 3 years ago

That’s the least of societies concerns. Corn syrup and sugar infused everything is a massive problem.

shlant• 3 years ago

no they haven't[1][2]. Please stop perpetuating this myth

1. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1149968041964396545

2. https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

flangola7• 3 years ago

Not many things have only one ingredient.

notyourwork2• 3 years ago

Depends on how you shop. If you buy premade food, you’re right. If you buy ingredients and prepare yourself, you’re less right. It’s a scale.

chihuahua• 3 years ago

You can have pasta, or sauce (crushed tomatoes), but not both. No salt, no garlic, no onions, no olive oil. One ingredient.

grecy3• 3 years ago

Literally everything I buy and eat/drink has one ingredient.

Every single vegetable. Every single fruit. Water (I get it from the tap), rice, pasta, noodles. Meat. Eggs. Fish.

avitous• 3 years ago

The point is that ideally all food processing occurs in your own kitchen. Of course the food you end up eating will be comprised of multiple ingredients; by only buying food ingredients that are in their original unprocessed form, and combining them yourself in constructing a meal, you have full control over the ingredients you are consuming.

omginternets10• 3 years ago

Bulllshit.

Steak, chicken breast, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, turkey thighs, spinach, corn on the cob, some organic peanut butters, flour, salt, zucchini, eggplant, pork chops, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, vinegar, olive oil, bok choi, broccoli, asparagus, beef liver, canned tuna fish (are we really going to split hairs over the salt brine?), ground beef, garlic, onion, shallots, spring onion, iceberg lettuce, watermelon, peaches, bananas, apples, eggs, mahi mahi, chives, cod, romaine, gem lettuce, kale, walnuts, almonds, leek, etc.

Even if you don’t apply common sense to this heuristic and include milk, cheese, bread, good quality bacon, etc., there is a veritable cornucopia of strictly single-ingredient foods available.

But yeah, you’re gonna have to buy ingredients and cook actual meals to be healthy. No way around it, I’m afraid…

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

So you don't know how to cook and prepare food? Get a book about it. If you read English, and especially if you are American, you might as well get Joy of Cooking.

jmugan• 3 years ago

I agree on the approach, and I try my best, but it isn't easily. You almost have to make food preparation a hobby.

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

Not necessarily. I used to spend a lot more time cooking but nowadays it doesn't consume much time. Having the right equipment is the most important thing. It starts with a sharp knife. Then a good array of pots and pans, utensils. All can be acquired second hand for peanuts. You can get rid of your microwave. Save some space in your kitchen. You won't need that any more.

The problem is, back in the day people learnt the skills to prepare food out of necessity. Now you have to want to do it. I suggest a good book on a favourite cuisine. Convince yourself that what you cook at home is nicer than the shit you can buy in shops and you won't want it any more. Don't forget to give your own food a chance and put just as much salt in it as they do, though. I see this mistake a lot. People think prepared/processed food is nicer just because it has more salt. Use salt.

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

Yes to only buying stuff with one ingredient. With a few exceptions like fresh bread which is made traditionally. Don't know about only eating stuff with one ingredient, though. Not sure how you'd ever eat onions and garlic, for example. Maybe you meant only eat/drink stuff made with those ingredients?

braza• 3 years ago

A bit of of insight here: in a lot of places the availability of sweetened food it’s not only higher than no processed food but it’s cheaper. For less privileged folks it’s quite hard to dodge high carb + high sugar foods.

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

Interesting tragedy of the commons.

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

Not really. Excess sugar consumption has a direct negative impact on the consumer. The only commons here is health care.

omginternets10• 3 years ago

Sounds like a tragedy of the commons …

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

The Commons here is the 'market for healthy food'.

The first entity that adds extra sugar to their food to gain mind share inevitably causes the rest of the competitors to all add more sugar, bringing them back to parity while also destroying 'the market for healthy food'.

This race towards everyone being worse off because of economic incentives not to be left behind is a tragedy of the commons in the market sense.

noduerme3• 3 years ago

I read the Guardian's top articles every morning, and then listen to either BBC, NYT or a Vox podcast and a couple of never-Trump "center right" podcasts on economics and foreign policy. Once in awhile I'll read something on a Murdoch-owned property.

Of all of these, I find the Guardian to be the most viscerally alarming and the most consistently hysterical on every subject. Every Guardian article about a pollutant, about the climate , or about any judicial decision thay goes against what they believe is given the same treatment of elevating it to the level of apocalyptic clickbait and then doubling down with four paragraphs of boilerplate about how it disproportionately affects marginalized communities. I've stopped reading the last four paragraphs, because they're always the same regardless of the subject matter... this saves me some time in the morning.

I used to think it was only the crazy far right who preyed on people's fears... but now it's just alarmist clickbait left right and center. I just got done being extremely annoyed with John Podhoretz on a podcast claiming that aspartame can't cause cancer because he needs to imbibe it and because other artificial sweeteners were prematurely vilified and banned, which is a reductionist, reactionary, emotional and stupid argument. Personally, I still believe saccharine causes cancer, I've always assumed aspartame did, and I never eat or drink anything with artificial sweeteners. But I'm so sick of the hyperbolic screeching on both sides of every single fucking thing from gas stoves to coke baggies in the white house to abortion rights to Disney and Target and Bud Light to how climate change will kill us all to PFAS in my dental floss to how nuclear war or AI Holocaust is imminent... I just wish they would all shut up. Stop. Just stop finding new things to for me to fucking worry about. Go away.

BenFranklin1006• 3 years ago

The Guardian is regarded as a joke. About a third of their of their journalist/editors are nincompoops who sole function is to throw read meat to the rabid Left. I still donate $50/yr to the Guardian because about 5% of their reporting provides a useful counter perspective.

noduerme3• 3 years ago

Absolutely agree they are a useful counter perspective... that's why I read them daily. I just wish they would dial down the rhetorical hysteria in whatever attempt it is to counterbalance the hysteria on the other side.

[edit] I'm also of a time where the concept of 'throwing red meat to the left' raises serious cognitive dissonance for me, because prior to Twitter, or at least through the 90s and 00s, red meat style feasting and crowing behavior was exclusively for the right. For awhile it seemed almost axiomatic to me that the left didn't need to resort to fear mongering or hyperbole in communicating their points, because objective truth and logic was on their side. I don't think that was just my own blind bias; it was a major selling point of the left to rid these issues of religious-type appeals to emption, and drill into facts in a way that made the opposition look hypocritical at best or mendacious at worst. By adopting the hysterical and emotive tactics of the right, I feel that the Guardian, et. al, have ceded the high ground.

rsync• 3 years ago

"Sweetened the World" is a good phrase and fits well the situation.

One of the very best examples is sugar added to applesauce.

It's particularly nefarious because many consumers may be attempting to avoid sugary food and provide healthy foods for children ... only to unknowingly buy, essentially, candy.

parineum• 3 years ago

Applesauce isn't avoiding sugary or unhealthy food. It already is, essentially, candy before adding more sugar. An apple and a snickers bar have similar sugar content. Fruit is "healthy" because of the fiber and the way it's processed by your body in the whole fruit form. It is, however, very sugary.

Really, fruits should be viewed very much like candy.

ramblenode• 3 years ago

Fruits are nothing like candy, and it's sad that diet science has gone so backwards as to make this type of statement seem reasonable--that all of diet can be boiled down to carbs, fiber, protein, and fat.

A fruit is a complex matrix of sugars, fiber, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals which undergo a type of metabolism that our bodies are principally adapted for and which allows us to assimilate the various components at a relatively optimal rate and quantity, with many self-limiting reactions along the way.

Candy is highly distilled; impacts the GI tract, liver, and pancreas fast and hard; has no nutritional value outside of calories; and is generally a food that the human body has no biological intelligence for assimilating.

Contrast that to fruit, which is the oldest source of nutrition for hominids. We like sweet things and have color vision because fruit has been such a valuable source of nutrition.

_gfwu• 3 years ago

Also sugar in fucking BREAD!!! Turkey is the worst offender i've come across here so far but the US is on a shameful close second.

esperent2• 3 years ago

Every single country in Asia would like a word.

beebmam• 3 years ago

Sugar is normal for starting yeasts. It's a small amount.

nazgul17• 3 years ago

Rephrasing some of the comments below, if you are looking to avoid the effects of a candy or a soft drink, you should avoid fruit juice - eat the whole fruit instead, that's actually healthy. Blending fruit makes the entire sugar content immediately available to your digestive system, causing a spike in the glycemic index (aka the level of sugar in your blood), which has unhealthy consequences.

I am actually not sure if a candy has enough sugar to cause a spike in an adult, but I imagine the threshold would be lower in a child. Not to mention, children don't understand the meaning of addiction: they just want (more) candies and you had better oblige or else!

paulpauper• 3 years ago

first it was cigarettes that were bad, understandably enough, so graphic warnings labels were put on the packages. and now with cigarettes having been conquered , time for warnings on vaping and sugary dinks ,too. maybe people just want bad stuff?

stakhanov4• 3 years ago

I used to live in Britain in 2005-2012. And, while the British "nanny state" had gotten on my nerves even back then, I was truly shocked when I returned for a short vacation this year.

I made a point of seeking out various sweet treats I remembered from back in the day that I can't buy where I live now, and discovered they all taste like shit now, having replaced sugar with artificial sweeteners. I went to a pub and ordered "a coke", and the bartender gave me something that vaguely looked like coke. I took a sip and discovered that it tasted like shit. I said "This is not coke. What is this?" He replied "This is Pepsi Max". "Well, Pepsi Max was not what I ordered!" -- I'm assuming that all of this is related to the sugar tax they introduced in the mean time [1].

When they discover the health implication of artifical sweeteners (many of them are already known, but I'm sure we will discover more and more as time goes by) Britain will probably be the country worst hit, and they will have their government to thank for it.

I think it's high time that we start acknowledging that people want access to some kind of a quick/easy/cheap source of gratification, and the nanny state can't just wage war on all of them: There's a tax now on alcohol, on tobacco, and on sugar.

But sugar is the odd one out in this listing, because there's no such thing as "passive consumption" of sugar (like there is on tobacco), and people "high on sugar" don't endanger others (as is sometimes the case with alcohol). The normal rationale when governments limit peoples freedoms is that they limit some people's freedoms, if that serves as a means to preserve other people's freedoms. But with sugar, I just don't see the harm that accrues to anyone except the person consuming the sugar, and so, a government trying to limit people's freedoms to enjoy sugar, is precisely crossing a line that no government of any free people should ever cross.

Also, by taxing alcohol, tobacco, and sugar, you've now weirdly "levelled the playing field". While sugar is clearly the "least bad" of the three, you now no longer have a tax incentive to prefer a Coke Classic to a beer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#United_Kingdo...

chillacy• 3 years ago

Hmm to what extent is there harm done to others in the form of increased future healthcare expenses if this is the UK we’re talking about?

stakhanov4• 3 years ago

If you are going to permit "increased healthcare cost to a taxpayer-funded health system" as a line of reasoning, then you allow for a lot of absurd outcomes, like the government could forbid risky sports. This is not an "appeal to extremes" or a strawman argument, it's actually a valid reductio ad absurdum.

Opponents of public health care in the U.S. use precisely this as an argument: They say, if we're going to have taxpayer-funded health care, it gives the government a reason to start regulating aspects of our lives which we don't want any government to regulate.

There are only two ways out of that that I can see: The first is to agree with them and say: If we want to be a free people, we can't have taxpayer-funded healthcare.

The second (which I personally subscribe to), is to say that there's some kind of a "bar" that has to be met, and that "increased healthcare costs to the taxpayer" doesn't meet the bar of how much your freedoms need to be impeded by my actions, before it starts to justify government taking away my freedoms.

Guvante3• 3 years ago

Why are you ignoring other changes in ingredients in your story?

Tons of well liked foods got bought out by mega corporations who then penny pinched the ingredient list to the point that while visually similar the taste was no where near as good.

And this is coming from the US one of the sugar capitals.

You also talk about taxes as being the same without acknowledging the quantity of tax. Certainly the 20p/liter sugar tax on soda isn't "leveling the playing field" compared to 16.5% of the retail price plus £5.89 on a packet of 20 tax on cigarettes...

stakhanov4• 3 years ago

You also talk about taxes as being the same without acknowledging the quantity of tax.

I used Wikipedia [1] as a source for the sugar tax and this [2] as a source for alcohol.

According to that, its 18p per litre for a sugary drink above 8g per 100ml (like the Coke Classic I used for the example), and 19p per litre for a beer between 2.8 and 7.5 % ABV. Let's call the one penny a rounding error. Cigarettes can't really be compared, because you can't compare apples to apples quantity-wise.

Why are you ignoring other changes in ingredients in your story?

Because I don't have savant-level memory and don't remember the entire ingredients list of treats I liked 10 years ago, and the reduced sugar levels were the thing that jumped out at me.

How much research do you expect someone to do, to throw out a quick opinion on something? If you're going to set the bar that high, and are then going to attack an argument on the grounds of "not enough research" without even presenting a counter-argument, you're not really creating an atmosphere that's very conducive to friendly conversation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#United_Kingdo... [2] https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco

kibwen2• 3 years ago

When they discover the health implication of artifical sweeteners

No matter how bad any artificial sweetener may be found to be in the future, it won't be any worse than having consumed an analogous quantity of sugar. By all means, avoid the choice entirely and just drink water, but if you must choose between one or the other, the artificial sweetener will be the healthier choice in the long run, and it won't even be close.

CrampusDestrus3• 3 years ago

The psychological aspect is the biggest one. Even using artificial sweeteners that might have no effect on the body, you are still accustoming people to a completely skewed level of sweetness in foods. Someone who drinks Coke Zero every day might not get diabetes, but will sure crave more sweets outside the beverage itself and will probably get its sugar from somewhere else.

Cwizard• 3 years ago

Why is there something in Coke Zero that makes you crave sweets more?

bigfudge2• 3 years ago

Because it tastes sweet which changes your palette to prefer sweeter things generally. Some of these will likely contain sugar. So you’ll eat more sugar than if you drank water.

CrampusDestrus3• 3 years ago

Because your palate gets saturated by sweet and as such many things that have a low sugar content are not appealing to you anymore. For example, when I was younger I was the only one in the family who drank soft drinks. Every time my mother made an apple pie it almost tasted sour to my mouth even though the rest of the family found it very sweet and pleasant. Wouldn't you know it, when I stopped with the sweet soft drinks my palate adjusted and I could finally enjoy my mother's low sugar pie

IIsi50MHz2• 3 years ago

Contrary n=1 anecdata:

When I experience aspartame, the host product tastes "wrong", and if I consume more than a wee bit, my stomach gets a bit upset. So, let me ignore that sweetener…

When I use most artificial sweeteners, at first they can seem enjoyable and freeing. A 50:50 blend of Stevia-in-the-Raw and Splenda can seem more like real sugar to me. But with repeated frequent use (say, daily in a mug of tea), I gradually come to feel not an anticipation of something good and satisfying but an expectation of doing something 'empty'. Sweetness in general becomes increasingly distasteful.

Perhaps the distaste is due to lack of metabolic reward. However, after a few days of not wanting sweetness, a little bit of real sugar can reset me to enjoying sugary things. Takes longer to again enjoy an artificial sweetener.

CrampusDestrus3• 3 years ago

That's not really the same thing, you simply dislike the taste of artificial sweeteners. I dislike Stevia too, I can drink a cup of coffee with it once a day, but if I eat two subsequent things sweetened with stevia I feel like throwing up. Aspartame on the other hand tastes pretty much ok in soft drinks, dunno about other foods.

j-bos2• 3 years ago

Anecdote of 3: I agree, I gave up soda for a couple months and my sense of sweet changed massively. Years drinking soda like water, dipping bread in coke, and supersizing at McD's, all gone because now soda simply tastes much too sweet. Seems like there's some sort of sensory dulling involved.

etelsv• 3 years ago

dipping bread in coke? Is this a thing. I've never heard of it before

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

Years ago, I started seriously disliking soda because it was far, far too sweet for me. I don't know if soda got sweeter or my taste became more averse to sweet. Since I have a terrible sweet tooth and eat too much candy[1], I suspect the former.

In any case, I stopped drinking soda entirely because it was too unpleasant. Then I discovered how easy it is to make my own and started doing that. That way, I can make it to my preferred sweetness level.

[1] I realize that soda is literally candy, but it's too sweet for me anyway. I've never understood why it's different than, say, a hard candy that is 98% sugar.

platyp• 3 years ago

A nutritionist I spoke to said that if you have to consume sugar, it's better to eat it than drink it since eating can at least make you feel full (esp. if the sugar comes in the form of something like a pastry which has extra non-sugar carbs contributing to your fullness).

craig1f• 3 years ago

When my wife and I went to Italy on our honeymoon, and subsequently decided to use carbonated water as a way of dropping our coke addictions, the next few months felt like I was a drug fiend breaking an addiction.

Vegetables tasted so good. Vanilla added to our Starbucks coffee started to taste awful. It felt like a world of taste opening up. Food started to satisfy so much more. It was easier to identify when I was full and avoid overeating.

The sugar industry has so evil and has done so much damage to this country and to the world.

marpstar• 3 years ago

In my experience, it's the residual sugar (in everything that comes in a box/wrapper/bag) that keeps this "sweetness sensitivity" high.

I've done strict keto off and on for 10+ years and drank Diet Coke like it was going off the market. When I cut out carbs (we're talking < 30g per day), it becomes obvious that it's real sugar that triggers the cravings for me. Never did a diet soda make me crave a candy bar. Instead, it was generally something like a bite of a real hamburger bun, or a couple french fries.

It's really hard to isolate the effects of things like artificial sweeteners when "real" sugar is absolutely everywhere.

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

Something I still don't see generally acknowledged by society is that obesity, type 2 diabetes etc are all symptoms of one thing: food addiction.

Food addiction is real and just as harmful as other addictions like smoking and alcohol. But for some reason we still laugh about it like it doesn't exist. We even welcome with open arms new products that will try to make us addicted.

Next time you see a fat person, frame it as food addiction. You think they want to exist as a useless, grotesque blob? You think they don't know they have an embarrassing body and their oversized clothes don't really hide it? You think they are happy feeling uncomfortable and incapable all the time? They know it's the food, but they can't stop.

Next time you go out, start mentally replacing junk food with cigarettes. Replace the "golden arches" with Benson and Hedges. That waft of carefully engineered and pumped out Subway smell with cigarette smoke. The advertising, the vending machines, all of it. Then ask yourself why people are obese. It's an addiction with no escape.

tsuujin3• 3 years ago

Food addiction is for sure one reason for obesity, but the last few decades or so of research has really challenged the “you’re fat because of personal accountability” assertion.

The single best read out there on the topic, for the layman like myself, is probably this series of articles: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p.... It does a really good job of laying out all the contradictory information out there in a normal-human readable format while referencing studies to keep it real.

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

You're completely missing my point. It is not down to personal accountability. It is due to certain sectors of our society leveraging the strong addictive potential of food.

Imagine confronting a recovering alcoholic with a glass of beer. Not just offering it but tempting him, wafting it in front of his nose, holding it up to the light to show the bubbles. And then saying "well it's your fault for drinking it" when he can't resist any longer.

We're all susceptible to addiction. Some more than others, of course. When it comes to food we're all descended from animals that evolved with food scarcity. We didn't evolve with refined sugars. What we're seeing in obesity figures is simply the susceptibility of people and ability to cope with their addictions. More than a quarter of all people are obese in France, a country once thought to be the prime example of healthy eating. And, guess what? McDonalds is very popular in France. Maybe it wasn't their genetics, maybe it was just the lack of McDonalds?

constantcrying• 3 years ago

The problem with food addiction is that while you can not drink anhalcohol or not smoke, not eating is simply not an option. For addiction the risk is always that using it once, means falling back into old habits.

You have to partake in your addiction and food producers are doing their best to give you the most gratifying foods.

globular-toast9• 3 years ago

Yeah, in my experience it is definitely easier to completely abstain from something than it is to limit yourself. I think this is why things like intermittent fasting and low-carb/keto diets seem to work. They involve some element of complete abstinence, ie. no food at all at certain times or no carbs at all.

However, it's not like everyone has to occasionally consume McDonalds. You can (and should) completely abstain from that. You can also completely abstain from buying any ready made food at all (as wisely suggested in other comments in this discussion).

The problem is you can't avoid the advertising and seeing the junk in the supermarkets when you go. I find that I don't have to exercise any moderation at home, but I do have to at the supermarket. We could all abstain from the advertising if we as a society choose to.

okwhateverdude• 3 years ago

It's an addiction with no escape

There is hope through sheer willpower and lifestyle changes. Similar to stopping smoking. And it isn't easy. It is simple to do (CICO), however. I used to be 130kg. Now I'm sitting around 85kg (and would be better around 80kg), but the addiction never really goes away. I am forever aware of my calorie intake and expenditure. It's so easy to eat out of boredom and to eat more than I should. I have to police my behavior and preempt it. Can't eat junk food if you never buy any. But even then each one of those choices takes mental effort and will power to the point where to help ensure I continue fighting my addiction I've had to completely rethink my view point on food and purposefully try not to enjoy it. Food is not a reward. It is not a treat. It is fuel that I need to be active. And once I've had enough fuel for my current activity level, I don't need any more.

Not everyone can do this kind of introspection, lifestyle modification. It is a continual struggle where I've had to optimize my life around knowing just how much mental effort I'm capable of to manage my addiction. And western society doesn't make it any easier where you are shamed and called grotesque blobs for making poor choices in a system geared toward exploiting your weaknesses for profit. The most insidious aspect is that unlike smoking tobacco, you can't simply quit food. You need it to survive. Food should be regulated much like gambling is regulated or smoking for that matter. Otherwise, the sociopaths in our society will prey on people that literally can't help themselves.

dennis_jeeves12• 3 years ago

That's a great summary of things the way they are.

Food companies ‘sweetened the world’ and increased the risk of disease

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