
The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health - kevbin
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin?CMP=share_btn_tw
======
127001brewer
This is a duplicate from four (4) days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941)

~~~
LyndsySimon
Thank God. I was questioning both my sanity and the freshness of my browser's
cache.

------
donutdan4114
As someone who has shifted to a sugar-free, high-fat lifestyle (keto diet), I
can attest to the fact that sugar really is the ultimate evil in terms of
health and nutrition.

I've lost about 100lbs in 2.5 years... The only thing that I really changed
was doing a Keto diet. I've learned a lot about nutrition along the way, and
it's amazing how bad nutrition info was when I was growing up..

Common Misconceptions I hear/see ALL THE TIME:

1) Fruit Juice is healthy. It's not. It is sugar-water.

2) A calorie is a calorie... No. Your body does not process all foods the
same. A thousand calories of broccoli will effect your body VERY differently
than a thousand calories of soda. Yes the energy-intake might be the same, but
the resulting effects are very different.

3) Fats are bad. They are not. Your body uses fats for all sorts of processes,
and most importantly, your body understands and can use fats.

4) Sugar is part of a healthy diet. Nope, sugar is not necessary in our diets
at all.

5) Salt is bad. In moderation, salt and other electrolytes are actually needed
by our bodies (unlike sugar).

6) Lack of exercise is the reason people get fat. No... Most people would have
to run 10 miles per day to burn off the garbage they would eat in the morning
(think of a young adult having an innocent bowl of cereal and OJ for
breakfast). "People aren't obese because they eat too much and are lazy.
People are lazy and eat too much because they are fat." Sugar and insulin and
the whole endocrine system play a huge roll in how people feel physically and
mentally eating sugary foods.

So many more misconceptions out there... It's hard to find good info when you
have Big Sugar, Big Food, and Big Beverage shoving bad information down the
masses throats.

~~~
donutdan4114
If anyone has any questions about starting a keto diet (high-fat, mid-protein,
low-carb), feel free to ask. :)

Cannot recommend it enough. It simply just works..

~~~
Someone1234
How expensive is it? I mean literally. A lot of these alternative diets seem
to work but be far more expensive than eating crap, unless all you eat are
veggies (which few like).

~~~
ethanbond
I found that low-carb diets are way cheaper. There are two factors behind this
(in my experience):

1) You eat _way, way, way, way_ less food. I was intensely into keto at
probably peak-appetite years (16 - 19 years old) and have since been
maintaining a much lower basal carb intake (now 21 years old). A complete
dinner used to be large pasta dishes with sausage, garlic bread, a few glasses
of milk (I used to be a fanatic), etc., but in keto I'm totally satiated after
two small salmon filets. Homefries, toast and a loaded three-egg omelet is
actually _less_ satiating for me than two fried eggs with some pepper, and I
feel like crap after the former.

I do have a hard time with vegetables because I don't shop often enough for
them not to go to waste, but I'll usually handle that with a salad for lunch.

2) In the event that you really do need to eat _very_ cheaply (Ramen level
cheap), you can do that too. I've had periods where I'd rely on string cheese,
peanut butter, and eggs almost exclusively. Not proud of it, but better than
boxes of pasta IMO.

If you put up with the initial withdrawals from sugar, "keto flu," you'll find
that you'll eat less food and feel better.

~~~
tzs
> I do have a hard time with vegetables because I don't shop often enough for
> them not to go to waste, but I'll usually handle that with a salad for
> lunch.

Have you tried frozen vegetables? Some of the "steam in bag" kind that are
meant for the microwave actually come out quite tasty and are very convenient.

~~~
tptacek
IQF produce is usually better than the mediocre, long-haul-shipped produce at
the grocery store. The vegetables that don't flash-freeze well are usually
hard to find frozen anyways.

~~~
ahh
I love frozen veggies (especially peas). I do wish there were better options
for leafy greens, though: I don't care for spinach (specifically), and I
assume kale / arugala / mustard / etc don't freeze well because I never see
them. Sometimes you really want some bulk for a stir fry or the like!

------
rdtsc
Just the other day was in a store saw a package of candy -- basically pure
sugar + artificial food coloring. Big giant label on the front -- "Fat Free!".
It is true. But somewhat misleading as to what it implies -- "this is healthy,
no fats here, eat this".

And also "2.5 servings per package", while most people would it eat it a
single serving I imagine, but hey, they calorie counts look more reasonable,
so they just divided whatever calories they had, by whatever they thought is
acceptable to print on the nutritional label and they got some value for
serving size.

~~~
criddell
When organic foods got super popular, I knew more than one person that thought
organic cookies were healthy.

> whatever they thought is acceptable to print on the nutritional label

I'm not certain, but I think that's regulated.

------
arviewer
> In 1972, a British scientist sounded the alarm that sugar – and not fat –
> was the greatest danger to our health. But his findings were ridiculed and
> his reputation ruined. How did the world’s top nutrition scientists get it
> so wrong for so long?

First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted
as being self-evident.

~~~
jerf
Fourth, it is claimed that it was understood this way all along and everybody
always knew it.

------
notLustig
I'm seeing two major factual problems with many of the comments here.

1\. In terms of determining how much weight you are going to lose/gain. A
calorie is a calorie. Calories in/calories out is the secret sauce to every
successful weight loss diet, even keto. That is a simple fact, backed by all
of the truly solid nutritional research in modern science.

2\. If we are talking about lean body mass, body fat percentage goals, healthy
eating habits or disease prevention, then we should have a talk about sugar.
It is certainly a variable that deserves attention. However, it is not the
devil...

Fat is not the devil... Meat is not the devil... Carbs are not the devil...
etc.

If you don't believe me, if some pop science book has convinced you that sugar
is the worst thing in the world, I ask that you look into the work of Alan
Aragon. A good place to start would be the following article:

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

~~~
SebKba
Regarding #1... I'm pretty sure that to digest 100kcal worth of chicken breast
requires more energy for the body to do, compared to digesting 100kcal worth
of Coke/sugar. It also has a different impact on your insulin levels.

Living on a 3000kcal McDonalds diet will give you a different body shape
compared to living on a 3000kcal diet of home cooked, organic meals.

No?

~~~
notLustig
For #1: the point of #1 is that body shape and insulin levels are not being
considered. That point specifically only matters for weight gain/weight loss.
In regards to differing energy expenditure for digestion for one food vs
another, I would guess that that is a level of detail the average person would
not spend their time investigating.

For McD's vs home cookin, calories in/calories out still holds to be true. So,
if your exercise levels are the same, then you will end up weighing
approximately the same after both diets. However, lean body mass, body fat
percentage, your overall health and the effect McD's has on any diseases you
are fighting/trying to prevent will likely be different based on the quality
of your diet and it's macronutrient distribution.

------
meesles
This story always remind me of this interesting study done on rats, where they
found sugar more tantalizing than cocaine or heroine.[0] Take it with a grain
of salt (or sugar, if you prefer), since sugar has some nutritional value, but
this is a little terrifying. Look at the obese, particularly in the USA, and
look at these massive buckets of soda they drink, breads stuffed with 20+grams
of sugar, sweets which are literally nothing except colored sugar. The public
desperately needs some education, just like how trans-fats were scared out of
us 10-20 years ago.

[0] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-
pr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-preferred-
su_b_712254.html)

~~~
busterarm
Cane is a hell of a drug.

------
tinkerrr
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941)

399 points | 4 days ago | 350 comments

------
framioco
I lost a bunch of weight doing Low Carb High Fat, but later on switched to a
vegan diet (of High Carb, Low Fat) for ethical reasons. I've been keeping the
weight off with the High Carb diet and I'm actually eating more than before.
Please note that high carb does not mean highly processed food. I eat mostly
whole foods, little processing or refining, but ultimately it is treated as
'sugar' for the body: rice, potatoes, bread, etc. I also took blood analysis
after LCHF and some months after the HCLF, and pretty much all indicators
either stayed the same or improved. Colesterol levels were way high during the
High Fat phase, and are now back to normal levels.

------
dmritard96
I am most likely wrong or oversimplifying, but my understanding was that
ultimately whatever macromolecules you are consuming, lipids, proteins, or
carbohydrates all only get absorbed into the blood stream as glucose (putting
on hold random nutrients like iron, vitamin XYZ etc etc).

If that's the case, doesn't it not matter what the originating molecules are
as long as you avoid fast highs and lows in blood glucose levels since that is
the main danger presented by sugars (fastest to be broken down)?

~~~
cpplinuxdude
I'm sorry for being the one breaking it to you, but I think you may,
unfortunately, be wrong. :)

~~~
dmritard96
care to elaborate? open to being wrong, but also want to see who says so and
why

~~~
dualogy
> _my understanding was that ultimately whatever macromolecules you are
> consuming, lipids, proteins, or carbohydrates all only get absorbed into the
> blood stream as glucose_

Amino acids, glucose and fatty acids are all ancient molecular structures
known to all cellular life and thus can and do circulate in our blood at all
times. If everything got converted into glucose during digestion, that would
mean we could live entirely off candy fortified with vitamins and minerals,
and produce all essential fatty acids and all essential amino acids from the
glucose. Not so.

PROTEINS provide amino acids, basic building blocks for near everything
organic about our body (or all cellular life-forms really), not just muscles
but hormones neurons etc etc. The body _may_ convert protein into glucose but
this laborious process occurs to any significant degree mostly under a
prolonged lo-fat-lo-carb-hi-protein regimen or plain starvation conditions (ie
post-fasting, not just normal fasting with plenty of fat reserves left, which
is simply ketosis, hence protein-sparing and fat+ketone-burning). If so, this
doesn't occur in the digestive tract, since glucose production (or provision
from glycogen) is the job of the liver.

LIPIDS aren't and cannot be converted to glucose in the digestive tract, or we
wouldn't store body fat to begin with and also have essential fatty acids
circulating at all times now, would we? BUT 2 triglycerides CAN donate their
glycerol backbones for the production of 1 glucose molecule, and I believe
this is constantly happening in ketosis when glycogen is depleted. Again,
glucose production/provisioning is a liver job, not a digestive tract job.

CARBohydrates of most any kind ARE converted to glucose in the digestive
tract. Exceptions: fiber travels on to the colon for excretion or to be
fermented by bacterial action (into I believe short-chain fatty acids and B/K
vitamins) and fructose is "metabolized" into triglycerides by the liver. Since
the blood needs a certain glucose level at all times (around 5g-ish),
circulating glucose in excess is immediately shuttled into first: any cells
that are receptive to the concurrent insulin signaling, second: glycogen
storage (liver and muscles), third as a last resort converted into body fat.

------
jedberg
To everyone saying a Keto diet is great, a word of caution. Going Keto gave me
kidney stones.

I asked my mom, who's had both children and kidney stones, which pain was
worse, and she said the pain was about the same, but at least with childbirth
you get a few months warning -- stones just show up and give you excruciating
pain.

So it's great y'all are loosing weight (I did too!) but just be careful and
drink _a lot_ of water if you do it.

~~~
Shengbo
Wouldn't adopting a balanced diet that's reasonably low in carbs plus some
exercise achieve the desired effect but without fucking shit up in the
process?

I can't imagine going from a sedentary, high-carb, overweight lifestyle to a
radical diet(be it keto or whatever else the person chooses) is easy on the
body.

Did you get any lab tests done before and after starting the diet? If you did,
how did the results compare?

~~~
jedberg
> Did you get any lab tests done before and after starting the diet? If you
> did, how did the results compare?

Only my normal annual blood test. Cholesterol was down after the diet,
everything else was pretty much unchanged. We never caught the stone for
analysis, but the diet was pinned as the most likely cause. To be fair, I
don't have enough data to say it was the diet for certain, only correlations
that people who go on Keto have a higher incidence of stones than those who
don't.

~~~
Shengbo
I see, thanks. It'd be interesting to have people take a lab test right before
going on a keto diet and then repeating it at fixed intervals to see how it
affects the results.

------
Fando
I think people here will appreciate the following information. To understand
fat production, I recommend everyone research the way a liver metabolizes
sugar, and its connection to fiber - it is most important. Long story short,
the liver metabolizes excess sugar into fat cells when there is not enough
fiber. Presence of fiber allows excess sugar to be broken down into waste
which leaves the body, avoiding production of fat cells. In essence, this is
why eating a bag of apples is healthy while eating just the sugar from the
same amount of apples is not. Consuming adequate amounts of fiber is key to
healthy sugar consumption. If you noticed, fat people tend to not eat much
fiber. The smaller the ratio of fiber to sugar the fatter you are. Simply
focusing on increasing fiber consumption leads to much better health because
you naturally begin to consume more vegetables and fruits which also have the
nutrients. Additionally, and this is perhaps the most understated health fact.
The importance of pH balance. The body depends and thrives when the
environment is alkaline, and dies when it's acidic. Although acidic foods are
also healthy, it's important to eat more alkaline foods than acidic. And the
pH is determine only after the body digests the food. This is why for example
lemons are actually one of the most alkaline foods. Especially when you're
sick, eating alkaline vs acidic foods is the best way to regain immune system
strength and health. _ Dr Lustig's video presentation about sugar/fiber/fat
metabolism:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)
_ List of alkaline & acidic foods:
[http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm](http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm)

------
shirro
It really is about a lack of balance between our activity and our food intake
and the types and quantity of food we consume.

As a society we have become too good at making cheap, easy to consume food
that supplies far more energy than most of us need. Sugar is one of the worst
culprits perhaps but it isn't the only one.

I have avoided most really sugary foods for years but with my age and activity
levels eating a lot of grain based foods has pretty much the same result.
Which isn't really surprising.

When I have the discipline to do it what really works for me is eating more
veggies. I am sure you can get fat on a vegetable heavy diet but you probably
have to work a lot harder at it.

------
jackfoxy
Robert Atkins published _Dr. Atkins ' Diet Revolution_ (possibly the ancestor
of all the modern low-carb diets) in 1972 and credited a 1958 article in _The
Journal of the American Medical Association_ by Alfred W. Pennington.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet)
So I don't think one lone researcher figured this out in 1972.

~~~
hcs
The article agrees that this is the case: the dangers of sugar _used_ to be
orthodoxy, but around the '70s is when sugar was de-emphasized in favor of fat
to such a degree that low-carb proponents were labelled cranks.

> When, in 1957, John Yudkin first floated his hypothesis that sugar was a
> hazard to public health, it was taken seriously, as was its proponent. By
> the time Yudkin retired, 14 years later, both theory and author had been
> marginalised and derided.

------
pkorzeniewski
Several years ago I was addicted to coca-cola, drinking daily even 2L - I
probably exceeded the daily recommended amount of sugar 4 or 5 times. Since
then I've drastically reduced sugar in my diet and luckily I never had a
problem with weight, but I wonder what'll be the long-term effects of intaking
so much sugar for such long time. The scary thing, now that I check the
ingredients of everything I buy, is how much sugar is there in the majority of
products, even in those advertised as "healthy".

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I had a roommate who was quite large and used to drink at least one 2L of cola
a day. He cut it out and went on a weight loss diet and vigorous exercise and
lost around 100 pounds. But I gotta think a huge part of that was just the
insane amount of excess calories in the pop.

Still admire the degree of dedication he put into his lifestyle change tho.

------
AndrewKemendo
The major thing I took away from both the article and the comments originally
submitted a few days ago is that nutrition science is too hard to create a
one-size fits all guideline to _what_ people should eat.

If we have to have a one-size fits all solution to nutrition however, my
anecdotal guess is that the answer shouldn't be what we should eat but how
much. Namely as long as people aren't over or under eating they should be
fine.

~~~
bosdev
Is that really true? Or is the evidence pretty much in that all people
shouldn't really be eating refined sugar?

~~~
stonemetal
If there is evidence I haven't seen any. Pretty much everything I have seen
suggests that A) You should meet your macro needs which are slightly different
for everyone, B) after that don't over eat, but what you eat doesn't really
matter.

From a weight loss perspective low sugar diets are good for psychological
reasons, not thermodynamic ones. Sugar tends to cause quick, but short lived
fullness, where fat and protein take longer to kick in but once they do they
are much longer lived.

------
sickbeard
The greatest danger is overeating our past our caloric limits. It's not sugar
or fat or whatever, it's calories. Lets stick to that.

~~~
phil248
But that's not true since our bodies process different foods in different
ways. Marathon runners don't eat a bunch of steak fat before a run.

~~~
mason55
Overall bodyweight is controlled by calories in vs. calories out. The
different types of calories that you consume (fats vs. carbs vs. proteins)
control things like how the extra bodyweight is stored or burned off and the
signals your body gives as to whether or not you're hungry.

There are a few biological pathways that you can use to your advantage but
they're difficult and short-term. Your body has a very hard time storing
protein as fat but that just means it will store the extra calories from carbs
and fat as body fat.

These discussions about "CICO only" vs. "Obviously macros matter" are always
caused by people arguing two different things with each other.

~~~
csours
I think a lot of people talk past each other in these discussions. One problem
is that a lot of diet fads promise magic solutions, and then people get tired
of magic and revert back to CICO only. Any discussion that does not start with
CICO and clearly show which side of the CICO ledger is influenced, and by what
mechanism is doomed.

I think maybe if we discussed CI and CO separately it would help:

CI:

    
    
      Calories in are influenced by many things: eating habits, Macro content of food, access to good food, stress eating, satiety signals from blood sugar, leptin, ghrelin, etc.
    

CO:

    
    
      Calories out are influenced by basal metabolic rate, exercise, enviromental temperature, fat storage (calories that do not get used up), etc.
    

I would love to see a series of articles that clearly articulates the two main
headings, and then goes into each item underneath, in order of impact on
health overall and weight specifically

------
Kip9000
This type of demonising one over the other is not proper science. Sugar (in
various forms) carries the energy needed for the cells to operate well, brain
being the highest consumer. Balanced nutrients would be the best bet for
overall wellbeing.

------
jrcii
Dr. Lustig is known for his interesting and thorough, if somewhat
controversial, case against sugar
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

------
Lidador
My father died at 105 and was addicted to chocolate and ice-creams.

~~~
Shengbo
My grandfather died at a similar age and he's been a smoker for decades.
Doesn't make smoking any less harmful in my eyes.

------
marknutter
Maybe the greatest danger to our health is... eating too much of any one type
of thing? Alas, that doesn't grab headlines.

~~~
hcho
Indeed. Just that somethings are easier to eat in access than others.

------
ktRolster
This is not really a conspiracy. We've been hearing this for four decades at
least.

------
mtgx
So when can we have stevia into all of our food?

~~~
KingMob
Might be better to just curb the craving for sweetness. Study after study
shows no effect of diet sodas vs regular sodas.

While artificial sweeteners have a low glycemic index/load, they stimulate the
release of related hormones like insulin and GLP-1. And insulin, if you
recall, signals fat cells to suck up the energy and grow.

So if you drink a diet soda, it might have no calories itself, but it's more
likely to convince your body to turn more of your lunch into fat than
otherwise.

~~~
aaxe
No no no no no

God damn. This is a perfect example of how a little knowledge is dangerous.

1\. Artificial sweeteners do NOT cause insulin to be released. 2\. On that
note, insulin is a storage hormone. That is it. It is not a fat-hormone. You
know what's one of the few hormones that almost all bodybuilders take? Insulin
- because it makes their muscles grow.

You get fat because your intake of calories is excessive, regardless of
whether its done via carbs or fats.

~~~
KingMob
> This is a perfect example of how a little knowledge is dangerous.

So is your own comment.

1\. Aspartame doesn't release insulin, but it does provoke release of related
hormones. Other artificial sweeteners DO stimulate insulin release. See my
reply to my own comment for a quick sampling of relevant articles.

2\. Yes, insulin is a generalized storage hormone, but fat is always ready to
absorb, while muscle requires exercise to stimulate the absorption. Unless
you're exercising heavily (which isn't most of us), my general point stands.

------
jlebrech
there's nothing wrong with sugar other than how fast it spikes into your
bloodstream.

