
New research suggests that propionate raises the risk for diabetes and obesity - mhkool
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/04/could-a-popular-food-ingredient-raise-the-risk-for-diabetes-and-obesity/
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beat
This reminds me of Michael Pollan's comments about "magic ingredients", and
our tendency to find some ingredient that either makes food magically healthy
or magically unhealthy - see omega-3 for a positive example, or anything
called a "toxin" for a negative example. Magic ingredients can then be added
to or removed from factory-made foods in the interest of marketing.

Propionate isn't the proximate cause of widespread diabetes. A diet consisting
primarily of refined sugar and white flour is the proximate cause.

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tjansen
According to Wikipedia, it was banned in Germany in 1988
([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propions%C3%A4ure](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propions%C3%A4ure)).
In 1998 is became legal again because of EU regulation. If it was really a
major contributor to diabetes and obesity, there should have been a drop in
diabetes cases between 1988 and 1998.

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ChrisRR
For those avoiding clickbait, the ingredient in question is propionate

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chias
Thank you for this.

Tongue-in-cheek answer to the headline is "Obviously yes, in fact you might be
startled to learn that _many_ popular food ingredients raise the risk for
diabetes and obesity. Sugar is one example." :P

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chias
FWIW at time of this comment, the title was:

Could a popular food ingredient raise the risk for diabetes and obesity?

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personjerry
I was expecting sugar to be the answer

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taneq
Well, that or HFCS.

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beat
HFCS is sugar for insulin purposes.

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taneq
I thought it was metabolised differently and/or used in greater
concentrations, making it generally "badder". It's hard to find useful info
because it's been seized upon by woo vendors but a quick search turned up
these links:

* [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/) Huge and I haven't finished digesting it yet (hah) but seems to think overall that HFCS is equivalent to sucrose which would support your statement

* [https://www.webmd.com/heart/metabolic-syndrome/news/20090421...](https://www.webmd.com/heart/metabolic-syndrome/news/20090421/fresh-take-on-fructose-vs-glucose) suggests that fructose is worse than sucrose for promoting insulin dependence and other risk factors in obese people

* [https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/86/4/895/4649668](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/86/4/895/4649668) suggests a range of differences in how they're metabolised which I guess could go either way

All up it sounds like there might be some differences but it's not as much as
I thought.

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beat
Yeah, there's some differences due to different types of sugars, but for "bad
for you" purposes, they're all basically alike. It's like blowing up a
building with plastique instead of dynamite. Sure, plastique is technically
worse, but the building is getting blown up either way.

A lot of this boils down to marketing, as Michael Pollan describes so well.
HFCS is a "science word" (and worse, a science/corporate word - there's
nothing attractive-sounding about "high fructose corn syrup"), and a great
deal of food woo comes from culturally anti-corporate feelings rather than any
strong reasoning about biology. Don't eat the science words, they'll give you
the autism cancer!

It's especially absurd because HFCS is seen as an evil "agribusiness" product,
yet somehow cane sugar is not, even though sugarcane is a far nastier business
in many ways. Say what you will about corn, but at least it doesn't have a
long history of slavery tied to it.

And food manufacturers, sensitive to these abstract feelings, latch on to
"real sugar" as opposed to evil HFCS, and encourage a belief that "real sugar"
is "natural", while HFCS is "artificial" \- a science word, full of science
cancer.

We live in a soup of marketing and nonsense. It's very hard to not be affected
by omnipresent marketing campaigns that are carefully designed to manipulate
our feelings rather than our reason.

