

Is Sugar Really Toxic? - to_jon
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/07/15/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/

======
hristov
This article shows how the fructose industry is defending itself. Mostly by
confusing the issue.

The thing about fructose is that it is not by itself poisonous. The problem
only comes about for refined fructose, such as that found in cane sugar and
HFCS. In those cases, fructose overwhelms the liver and gets processed by
wrong pathways which result in all kinds of problems. But if you eat fructose
in the form of fruits and vegetables, your body has to take a while to break
the fructose out of the fruit and vegetable cells. Thus, your liver only gets
a steady trickle of fructose instead of a flood of it. As a result, the liver
can process the fructose correctly. Furthermore, if you eat fructose with
fiber, molecules from the fiber help the liver process more fructose
correctly.

Knowing this, it is not difficult to construct an experiment that shows that
fructose is not harmful. All you have to do is feed your subjects the correct
form of fructose (i.e., fruits and vegetables). The experiment where subjects
ate large numbers of apples and were perfectly ok was quite telling.

The other defense of the sugar industry is that it is not the sugar, it is the
overeating. However, refined sugar causes the overeating. One of the results
of processing fructose the wrong way is that the liver does not produce the
hormones that are supposed to inform the brain that you are full. Thus,
refined fructose causes overeating of sugar and anything else you happen to be
eating with your sugar. Personally I know I eat much more fries if I eat them
with ketchup and I will eat much more steak if I eat it with steak sauce.

The fat people and diabetics are being blamed for eating too much and lacking
willpower. They may be partially to blame, but it is very hard to make the
correct decision when your brain's own sensory mechanisms are being hijacked
and tricked. It is very hard to stop eating when you are constantly hungry.
But if you cut down on the sugar you will not be constantly hungry, and then
you may find that you do not even need that much will power to cut down on
your calories.

~~~
iopq
[http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-
ab...](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-
fructose-alarmism/)

~~~
jacques_chester
No, you don't understand. It's a _conspiracy_. Big Sugar. Cooked up in a lab,
they probably cut it with cocaine and old vinyl records played backwards.

It can't possibly be something simple and emergent like "HFCS is cheap" and
"people like sweet things".

------
pvnick
Everytime a nutrition-related article gets posted, people always submit
stories regarding their own personal unscientific weight-loss successes. Most
of the time I don't even think they've read the article.

That being said, I found the article interesting, but, as a biochem major,
fairly unsurprising. Fructose and glucose are fundamental elements of our
body's metabolism, and metabolism is a fundamental element to life. It's what
gives your cells energy to do every single thing they do. That sucrose, a
compound made up of a single fructose molecule bonded to a glucose molecule,
is not detrimental to your health given reasonable consumption reaches "duh"
levels of obviousness. Same is true of high fructose corn syrup, which
actually just contains 55% fructose and 42% glucose, a negligible difference.
So it seems the only detriment to your health posed by HFCS over sucrose is
the anxiety you'll get by worrying about it.

Like someone else said "TL;DR: stop eating so much, fatty." In more practical
terms, eat reasonably and lift weights and you'll be fine.

Edit:

Here's some science for you:

Energy in = Energy out + Change in Body Stores (fat or muscle)

Where "energy" is measured in calories. Laws of thermodynamics ain't nothin'
to f with! [1]

[1] [http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-
balance...](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-
equation.html)

------
mullingitover
Sola dosis facit venenum.

I didn't pay attention to my weight for a couple years, ate a lot of sweets
and drank a lot of beer. Before I knew it I'd gained 30 pounds, and had a
minor freakout. I decided to do three things--weigh myself every morning, stop
eating sugar except for from fruit, and stop drinking. I ended up shedding 30
pounds in 90 days, and have kept it off for a full year. I didn't exercise or
count calories in any way, in fact I probably upped my overall calorie
consumption but I replaced the sugars with more complex energy sources like
nuts. I'm not sure if it was cutting the alcohol, cutting the sugar, or both
that did the trick. However, I've been letting myself have some alcohol for
the past few months (wine, not beer) and haven't gained a pound since doing
so, so my gut tells me it was the sugar. I definitely feel a whole lot
healthier.

~~~
pvnick
>I ended up shedding 30 pounds in 90 days, and have kept it off for a full
year

>I probably upped my overall calorie consumption but I replaced the sugars
with more complex energy sources like nuts

Unless you started exercising, these two statements are incompatible with one
another (violates the first law of thermodynamics). What's more likely is you
felt "fuller" from eating healthy foods and therefore consumed less calories.

~~~
philwelch
The laws of thermodynamics do not preclude your body from ingesting something
that has calories and shitting it out without actually doing anything with the
calories. Your shit would just have more calories left in it, kind of like how
a poorly made car might leak gasoline everywhere.

~~~
pvnick
Your statement is only marginally correct, but mostly misleading to the point
of being practically wrong. Depending on what you eat, your body absorbs
80%-97% of calories according to the following (simplified) equation:

Energy in = Energy out + Change in Body Stores [1]

Where "change in body stores" is, for all intents and purposes, either muscle
or fat. So while going from eating 3000 calories of pure butter to eating 3000
calories of straight fibrous vegetables will show a modest difference in
caloric retention, I guarantee you that's not the case here.

[1] [http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-
balance...](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-
equation.html)

~~~
philwelch
The point is, don't gloss over things by making dumb statements like "it's
impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics". The laws of thermodynamics
don't preclude engines that either leak fuel or are fantastically inefficient
in converting them to any particular form whether it be locomotion,
electricity, or adipose tissue. If your point is that the human body is
fantastically efficient at producing fat in ways that don't really vary, then
prove _that_ point.

~~~
pvnick
Please don't insult me like that without at least reading the article I
posted, which directly supports the statement "it's impossible because of the
laws of thermodynamics"

~~~
philwelch
I'm not insulting you. The law of conservation of energy is insufficient to
support your claim because your claim relies more on the particulars of human
physiology than on the basic physics. If it were all down to physics, then my
car would get fat when I put fuel in the gas tank and didn't drive it. But
even though my car and my body are both governed by the same laws of physics,
the details are different.

------
greghinch
The article takes the long winded approach to point out the rational argument
about how to combat obesity that's been obvious all along: moderation. Laying
the blame on sugar in general is a panacea; the problem more has to do with
how efficiently sugar delivery has been engineered. Processed foods have made
it so that you can eat a relatively small quantity of matter and get a huge
amount of sugar (and fat).

Want to get healthy and lose weight? Cut the processed foods. If it comes in a
box, don't buy it. If there are ingredients you have trouble pronouncing,
don't buy it. Your body has evolved to know when you've had enough food
(slowing down your eating will help too). But those foods that are designed in
a lab have sugar and other "bad" stuff in disproportionately high amounts, so
by the time you've eaten enough to feel full, you've eaten _way_ too much.

TL;DR: stop eating so much, fatty

~~~
sillysaurus
_Cut the processed foods. If it comes in a box, don 't buy it. If there are
ingredients you have trouble pronouncing, don't buy it._

I've reduced my diet to the following: apples, canned pineapple, pork steaks,
canned corn, and tap water.

The advantage is that none of those contain anything artificial (except the
tap water). The disadvantage is that probably no one else would be content
eating only those things. But I've been forcing myself, because the
alternative is empirically worse.

It's likely I'm just fooling myself. But even still, it's a huge stress relief
to not feel bad about we eat.

~~~
lukifer
Corn is very starchy and low-nutrient. I'd suggest swapping them with
something green, like canned peas.

Still, I applaud your approach. I've been on paleo for about a year, lost a
bunch of weight, and for a while I was basically eating the same 12 foods on a
loop (eggs, bacon, coffee, lamb, shrimp, fish, broccoli, spinach, carrots,
raspberries, dark chocolate, almonds).

~~~
sillysaurus
It's almost impossible to find canned peas without added sugar, sadly.

Thanks for the list of paleo-safe foods!

------
wmil
This line...

> Considering that our cells depend on sugar for energy,

Is dishonest. In general parlance "sugar" refers to sucrose. Sucrose is a
glucose bonded to a fructose.

Our bodies need glucose to live.

However they do not need fructose.

~~~
nicholas73
I've even heard a university nutritionist make the claim that sugar is just
glucose. Some days I feel stupid; others, I feel other people are more stupid.

------
jdkuepper
A great read on this same topic: [http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/is-sugar-
toxic](http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/is-sugar-toxic)

"What I find frustrating about this debate is that most people yelling and
screaming don’t fully define the terms, perhaps because they don’t appreciate
them (forgivable) or because they are trying to mislead others
(unforgiveable). The wrong question is being asked. “Is sugar toxic?” is a
silly question. Why? Because it lacks context. Is water toxic? Is oxygen
toxic? These are equally silly questions, I hope you’ll appreciate. Both
oxygen and water are essential for life (sugar, by the way, is not). But both
oxygen and water are toxic – yes, lethal – at high enough doses."

------
grannyg00se
"Enzymes in the intestine split sucrose into fructose and glucose within
seconds, so as far as the human body is concerned sucrose and high-fructose
corn syrup are equivalent."

I'm not an expert by any means, but from what I recall that point is still
widely contested.

------
nicholas73
Yes sugar is toxic because of the metabolic by-products of fructose, which is
similar to the by-products of alcohol. Both are known to make freshmen put on
weight.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

------
FrankenPC
"—a nutrition scientist at Archer Daniels Midland, a major food processing
corporation—"

 _Facepalm_

~~~
derleth
And you have nothing to say about the content, then?

~~~
donaldc
His comment says more about the content of the article than most of the other
comments. An article about sugar funded by ADM is not an objective source of
information, due to the very large conflict of interest.

~~~
derleth
Whether it's right or wrong is independent of where it comes from.

------
nmerouze
I am amazed by the number of people here claiming sugar is bad. I've been
eating fruits, fruit juices, milk and sodas as the main part of my diet for a
few months now. I've lost weight and I feel really really good (I was in a low
carb diet before and always craving carbs and feeling awful).

I've been like you in the past. But instead believing in Lustig and others,
I've kept reading scientific studies and the work of Ray Peat is much more
consistent.

------
patrickg_zill
I have found that reduced-carb and reduced-sugar diets are the best way to
lose weight. I have been on "6 small servings with lots of lean protein and
yogurt" and on keto-style diets (lots of animal fats, butter, and, almost 0
carbs). Both have resulted in significant loss of weight. I find that the
keto-style diet gives me a very even energy throughout the day (probably
because the body is slowly burning fat and there are no insulin spikes).

------
jacques_chester
Net caloric balance is still the best long term predictor of average body
mass, regardless of dietary macronutrient composition.

[http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-
loss.htm...](http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.html)

In turn, obesity is a strong predictor of many diseases, regardless of other
factors.

In individual cases unobservable "noise" can affect the rate of gain or loss
vs the estimated rate given by subtracting an estimate (calories gleaned from
an activities database) from another estimate (calories written on the side of
the food packet).

But when you look at population BMI vs population calorie intake, it looks
suspiciously like a perfect correlation:

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/calories-
st...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/calories-still-
matter.html)

Which is what we would expect from a basic acceptance of freshman physics.
Energy and matter are conserved. No exceptions.

Singling out fructose as some kind of super-baddy doesn't work, for the simple
reason that the population BMI-calories correlation appears in countries
outside the USA. Only the USA has corn politics and only the USA has HFCS in
the food supply in any abundance. Yet the rest of the developed world is
getting fat on the same trajectory as the USA has.

~~~
hristov
The problem with refined fructose is that it contributes to you eating more
because the liver cannot process it properly and does not send the "i am full"
signals to the brain. Thus, it is in fact the reason why people have higher
net caloric intake.

US style food is being exported all over the world. Sodas are sold all over
the world. Obesity around the world is generally correlated to the level at
which US style food culture is adopted.

~~~
Fargren
Fortunately, in most of the world sodas use sugar instead of syrup. So it's
not as bad as it could be.

~~~
throwit1979
Except it takes about 5 seconds for sucrase in your small intestine to
hydrolyze sugar into exactly the same substances present in HFCS. So it
doesn't matter. At all.

~~~
pyre
Most HFCS in use today is a mixture of 45% glucose / 55% fructose. Sucrose is
1 glucose molecule and 1 fructose molecule bonded together. If fructose is
really the 'bad' thing here, then HFCS has more of it.

~~~
donaldc
It can be even worse than that. Studies have found some HFCS to contain as
much as 65% fructose.

------
wnevets
is sugar toxic? Maybe, maybe not. I dont know.

What I do know is a diet low in sugar reduces cravings by a lot. Its a lot
easier to lose weight when you don't feel hungry all the time.

------
gilgoomesh
Betteridge's Law of Headlines at work.

> any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no."

The article directly answers the headline in the negative.

> our cells depend on sugar for energy

The rest of the article is more intelligent but it's undermined by the link-
baiting headline.

------
13lur
The ironic part about the hour and a half talk "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" is
that all the people who it could help the most all have sugar-induced ADD and
won't be able to sit through it to understand it...

Anyways I hope this recent bump from HN allows Dr. Lustig to make the talk-
show rounds again.

------
wissler
Fructose (as in HFCS) goes through the same metabolic pathway as alcohol, so
it's important to differentiate between fructose and glucose.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

------
amerika_blog
I really hope not. I love sugar. It's also the only stimulant I can mete out
in small doses that will keep me going without obliterating my concentration,
as caffeine tends to do (disclaimer: I haven't tried cocaine).

~~~
aethertap
I read about some research* regarding ego depletion and its relationship to
blood glucose levels that was pretty interesting. Basically, they did a study
with two groups of people. Both were asked to do some challenging problems
requiring concentration, then both were given lemonade. One group's lemonade
was sweetened with glucose, and the other with some artificial sweetener. The
two groups were then asked to do more challenging problems. I can't recall the
actual numbers, but the group that had glucose in their lemonade did
significantly better on the second round than the other group, and the two
groups were about the same on the first round.

The implication was that the brain uses glucose in its operation, and requires
a certain level of glucose to function at full capacity. At least one cause of
the brain fog we get after a full day's focused work is that we're low on
fuel, which happens to be easy to fix. Unfortunately, it has other effects too
that we might not want so much. I've been meaning to experiment on myself a
bit with some glucose tabs after a long day of code, but haven't gotten around
to it yet.

(*) I think that was in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" but I'm not certain now, too
many similar books in between.

~~~
sparkie
This test is flawed, as it doesn't have a "neutral group" \- a group that had
neither sugar nor artificial sweetener. How can they conclude that the sugar
made people do better, rather than the artificial sweetener making people do
worse?

~~~
aethertap
Agreed, at least from my brief description, which was a summary of a summary
out of a book. I'd say it's more likely that it's my own retelling that's
flawed, though I haven't read the actual study. They also didn't have a group
which was given the same number of calories from a different source (as far as
I know) so it's possible that eating a chunk of meat would have the same
effect. What I thought was interesting actually was that they were able to
demonstrate beneficial effects from intake of calories directly on brain
function.

As I wrote that, I did remember a bit of evidence that the glucose was
actually beneficial - namely that they measured performance on the problems
over time. At the end of the first set, both groups were showing approximately
equal degraded performance. Upon resuming on the second set, the group given
glucose was back up to nearly the starting level of proficiency, while the
group given no glucose was at the same level they stopped at on the first
group.

------
rfnslyr
Man. Sugar is the worst. Take it from me. I moved to the city the moment I
turned 18, I didn't know much about cooking. Back in the 'burbs you'd be lucky
to live within 10km of a grocery store. Downtown however, totally different
story. I went NUTS with sweets and pizza.

I gained over 100 lbs in just under half a year. I was eating around 10k
calories a day.

I then stuck to only these foods and have only been eating this the past
couple years:

chicken

lean beef

kale + other greens

various fruit

cheese

That's it. No seasoning, nothing. I'm so much happier now. Better sleeps,
better mood, better everything. My mood and days fluctuated like crazy when I
didn't keep track of my diet.

I'd love to hear some opinions on the following talk from fellow HNers:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

~~~
greenyoda
The link mentioned above is Robert Lustig MD's talk entitled "Sugar: The
Bitter Truth". I found it very interesting and quite convincing, but beware
that it's long (1.5 hrs) and you have to be willing to sit through a lot of
biochemistry, since he goes through a bunch of cellular metabolic pathways in
gory detail. If you don't care about the biochemistry, the parts about how
everything we "know" about nutrition is based on shaky ground (e.g., the FDA's
food pyramid, "fat in the diet is bad", etc.) is well worth watching, as is
the history of how the amount of sugar in the U.S. diet has been dramatically
increasing (e.g., the steady increase in the serving size of Coca Cola since
1915).

~~~
stevep98
This is a great video. I watch it once in a while when I need to cut down on
my ice cream.

