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The Sugar Conspiracy (how bad nutrition science made us fatter and unhealthier)

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Briefly touched on earlier, but what's the take on diet soda? I remember seeing people mention that it's close to the same level as water (aside from the acid's effect on your teeth of course). That seems too crazy to be true right?

Diet soda, in theory, shouldn't do a damn thing. It contains no calories.

I mean, it's not a health food, but I've yet to see a compelling argument against drinking it (obviously in addition to copious water).
 

MTE

Member
Sugar's fucking evil.

I've been low carbing on and off for a while now, and just the effect that sugar has on my appetite is ridiculous. Eating sugar begets eating sugar. When just low-carbing, I have no trouble with craving or bingeing. But one slip and a "cheat meal" makes it so much harder.
It returns that want to eat without actual hunger.

The faster we can return the fat to processed foods, and remove the sugar, the better all society will be.

Oh, and as a long-time vegetable hater, throw any vegetables (and ideally some mushrooms) in a pan with enough butter (Like, many spoonfuls) and you've got yourself a delicious meal.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
What about fish like cod, Salmon, or haddock? Shrimp is generally pricey everywhere.
Shrimps are cheap in the Atlantic provinces apparently, but yeah, salmon (and trout) is morbidly expensive at my local grocery stores. Even cod and sole is not that cheap unless it's on sale.
 
Sugar's fucking evil.

I've been low carbing on and off for a while now, and just the effect that sugar has on my appetite is ridiculous. Eating sugar begets eating sugar. When just low-carbing, I have no trouble with craving or bingeing. But one slip and a "cheat meal" makes it so much harder.
It returns that want to eat without actual hunger.

The faster we can return the fat to processed foods, and remove the sugar, the better all society will be.

Oh, and as a long-time vegetable hater, throw any vegetables (and ideally some mushrooms) in a pan with enough butter (Like, many spoonfuls) and you've got yourself a delicious meal.

Yeah, it's utterly insane to me how quickly my body goes from "I'll just not eat that high carb food" to "CONSUME ALL THINGS" if I have even a fairly small amount of sugar.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I'm sorry, but carbs aren't the enemy. There's a good way of getting them (vegetables, whole grain, seeds & nuts) and a bad way of getting them (juice, white bread, plain sugar). Avoiding all carbs "like the plague" is dumb. At that point what, you're just eating meat & fat? That's far more unhealthy than a vegetable-carb-heavy diet.


Not all margarines are bad.

Living up to your tag, I see.

Although I do agree that veggies (leafy ones particular), seeds, and nuts can be the best carbs to consume.

What about juice with no sugar, or sweetened with Stevia or Splenda? Even nutricionists recommend them

Juice with no sugar? So, water?

Don't listen to people who call themselves "nutritionists." It's a pretty meaningless title, at least in the U.S.
 

Respect

Member
Sugar aka The white devil

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But seriously, I stopped drinking pretty much everything else except water now for about 5 years. Sometimes have milk with a protein shake after a workout, but that is about it now. Have felt much better ever since making the switch.
 

Shaneus

Member
Try cracking eggs into a 6-12 hole muffin tin and baking them in the oven. There are a bunch of great recipes for these "muffin" eggs. You can add in chopped up peppers, jalapenos, spinach, etc.
Oh, I need to start doing this. Sounds like they'd be a great way to bring food into work and not have to resort to eating crap.

But I didn't realise (like some of the other posters mentioned) that carbs on their own aren't a horrible thing per se, it's just when those carbs are provided by sugar. Almost sounds like sugar should be used as sparingly as MSG.

I'm posting a lot, but I feel this as well. I thank keto for making me feel full when I never could before.

I was insatiable before I did this. Now I rarely get hungry and more or less eat on a schedule because I need to eat.
I need to get back into keto. Stupid hard to do now I'm not single :/
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Diet soda, in theory, shouldn't do a damn thing. It contains no calories.

I mean, it's not a health food, but I've yet to see a compelling argument against drinking it (obviously in addition to copious water).
It could potentially change things like the insulin response to sweet foods and effect a person's fat composition as a secondary effect. Scientists aren't really sure of the details yet but the tea leaves are pointing in that direction.
 
This is sort of off the topic, but I've been mulling it over for a while

How we metabolize what we eat into energy (and everything else) depends on thousands of enzymes, which tend to differ in small ways (substitution of similar peptides) to large ways (deactivation through mutation). All of these effect how the enzymes fold, and even a small change in an enzyme could slightly effect the equilibrium of the reactions the enzymes catalyze.

So, just looking at energy production, we have two general paths for energy - from fat and from carbs. Obviously all those variations of enzymes could have an effect on how well each path work, so there is potential for some very unique combinations leading to individual preference.

And that is just the direct genetic component, ignoring epigenetics. It makes perfect sense that either path (exclusive and inclusive either) could be healthy on an individual level.

That makes me question the value of large population studies for nutrition or even a lot of medicine for guiding individual health care.
 

Sesha

Member
Well, that's not the first question.

In that case eggs could be an option. Try to avoid margarine and use olive oil,penaut butter or even nuts derivates.

I am surprised by the posts here, I though that, with the current "fitness movement" people would already know that just calories doesn't matter.

Sorry. I'm not too good with starting a discussion properly these days.

The margarine I use is mostly rapeseed oil. I'm not sure if there even is peanut butter around here, and if there is, one that's lactose free.

Well, I never quite got to the fitness part, more like the "try to exercise and eat somewhat healthy" and it stayed that way for years. I guess I'm just horribly lacking in anything but basic dietary knowledge.
 

Shaneus

Member
So without opining on the otherwise health value of these, in terms of conveniency/snacky food you have things like:
-pepperoni slices
-pork rinds
-string cheese/cracker barrel slices
-some beef jerky (you really have to check the label though -- this is one of the most unnecessarily sugared snack types)
You just reminded me, I used to love the shit out of pork rinds with sour cream... they'd be too dry otherwise. And pepperoni "chips" (overcooked pepperoni) was always fucking delicious too. I'm getting flashbacks from my low-carbing and am loving it!

And home (or butcher) made beef jerky is delicious and always travels well. Can be damned expensive though :(

Nuts.

The answer here is nuts.

Almonds, yes? Moreso than anything else. Macadamias were good too, from memory.

Edit:
Yes, nuts too. Super healthy generally. I kind have a tricky relationship with nuts though because they do have some carbs, and it's really easy to eat a lot of them. So I try to stay away if just for self-control reasons. Almonds and macadamia nuts are particularly good for low carbers though.
Hah, beaten. Turns out I've retained more about low carbing than I suspected.

Well you can get "protein style" at In 'n Out and a lot of the trendier burger places too now, so that helps. Sauces (including In 'n Out) are usually a no-go though because of the sugar content. As far as bread, I don't do this anymore but I used to take American cheese slices and put them in the microwave for 30-60s. They puff into almost these giant crackers you can use as bread.
Oooh, noted. I only hope it's the same for Australian cheese slices, which may be different to American ones (but I don't think so).
 
You just reminded me, I used to love the shit out of pork rinds with sour cream... they'd be too dry otherwise. And pepperoni "chips" (overcooked pepperoni) was always fucking delicious too. I'm getting flashbacks from my low-carbing and am loving it!

And home (or butcher) made beef jerky is delicious and always travels well. Can be damned expensive though :(



Almonds, yes? Moreso than anything else. Macadamias were good too, from memory.

Edit:
Hah, beaten. Turns out I've retained more about low carbing than I suspected.

You ever do pork rind breading? Crushed pork rinds + parmesan cheese coating chicken, porkchops, eggplant...

Works pretty well. I've had good chicken and eggplant parmesan with it.
 

Kenstar

Member
People overeat because they are fat, it's not the other way around.

People become obeset because they eat more than their body needs, those needs can vary and be hard to pin down occasionally but that's it. When's the last time you saw an obese person in one of the holocaust prisoncamp photos?

And I'm 70 pounds more than I used to weigh, I got here by not caring about what I ate, I lost 30 by starting to care again, and I gained back by ceasing to give a fuck. I currently give a fuck once more and am down 15 pounds.

It takes 7000 cal. to make one pound of fat, if your body decides to store all the cal you eat in fat then you have none left for actual bodily functions. What you eat will make it easier or harder to lose weight, but how much you eat will actually determine weight change. assuming your BMR is 2000cal a day, you will feel hungry all day long on a 1500 cal a day diet of coke alone, but you will not gain weight like you would eating 2500 cal of healthy food a day.
 
It could potentially change things like the insulin response to sweet foods and effect a person's fat composition as a secondary effect. Scientists aren't really sure of the details yet but the tea leaves are pointing in that direction.

Nonsense. Cherry picking for the loss.

The sugar industry loves this misinformation, because your average american these days thinks cane sugar is safer than artificial sweetener.
 

Shaneus

Member
You ever do pork rind breading? Crushed pork rinds + parmesan cheese coating chicken, porkchops, eggplant...

Works pretty well. I've had good chicken and eggplant parmesan with it.
Oh jesus, that's a great idea. You could probably make a great chicken schnitzel/parma (sub the tomato with salami/pepperoni instead). I assume you mean the Kraft powdery "parmesan" and not grated?
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
People become obeset because they eat more than their body needs, those needs can vary and be hard to pin down occasionally but that's it. When's the last time you saw an obese person in one of the holocaust prisoncamp photos?

And I'm 70 pounds more than I used to weigh, I got here by not caring about what I ate, I lost 30 by starting to care again, and I gained back by ceasing to give a fuck. I currently give a fuck once more and am down 15 pounds.

It takes 7000 cal. to make one pound of fat, if your body decides to store all the cal you eat in fat then you have none left for actual bodily functions. What you eat will make it easier or harder to lose weight, but how much you eat will actually determine weight change. assuming your BMR is 2000cal a day, you will feel hungry all day long on a 1500 cal a day diet of coke alone, but you will not gain weight like you would eating 2500 cal of healthy food a day.

Bunch of nonsense, man. You should really stop it with all that.

"7,000 calories to make a pound of fat" is just garbage in text form.

And what you on about with the holocaust stuff? No one is saying that people in starvation situations are going to get fat--just that poor people are more likely to eat the kind of garbage that makes you fat.
 
Juice with no sugar? So, water?

Don't listen to people who call themselves "nutritionists." It's a pretty meaningless title, at least in the U.S.

i mean no added sugar

juice is just grinded fruit right?

and nutricionists here are MD with an speciality so I trust them a bit
 
It takes 7000 cal. to make one pound of fat, if your body decides to store all the cal you eat in fat then you have none left for actual bodily functions. What you eat will make it easier or harder to lose weight, but how much you eat will actually determine weight change. assuming your BMR is 2000cal a day, you will feel hungry all day long on a 1500 cal a day diet of coke alone, but you will not gain weight like you would eating 2500 cal of healthy food a day.

It's 3500kcal in a lb of fat (actually making a lb of fat takes more than that, it's a complicated process).

Also, trying to get 1500kcal a day from diet coke would literally kill you.
 

DjRalford

Member
It's 3500kcal in a lb of fat (actually making a lb of fat takes more than that, it's a complicated process).

Also, trying to get 1500kcal a day from diet coke would literally kill you.

Yeah,. that's what, over 3,000 cans of diet cola, you would need to drink a can every 29 seconds all day for 24hrs
 

Scrooged

Totally wronger about Nintendo's business decisions.
i mean no added sugar

juice is just grinded fruit right?

and nutricionists here are MD with an speciality so I trust them a bit

Sugar is sugar, for the most part. You should limit the total amount from all sources. Too many people have the misconception that they can eat a ton of fruit and that it's healthy. It's not that simple.
 

DjRalford

Member
You can become obese and diabetic from drinking nothing but 100% pure juice.

True, 1L of freshly squeezed orange juice contains about 500 calories, that's about 16 oranges.

Think how quickly you can guzzle 1L of fresh orange.

Now think how long it would take to eat 16 oranges.
 

Shaneus

Member
I lost 150 lb (68 kg) in about 8 months on keto. Take that life change and multiply it by 7.

It's one of the reason I am passionate about this.
Jesus christ. I lost about 10-15kg or so in about two months I think with only the change in diet but fell of the wagon over time. Now I have a partner I'm hoping that it'll make it easier to stick to once we start it (she's a raw food nut, so it should help somewhat). Doubt I'll be able to get back into keto but will hopefully get to a point where I can consistently do 50-70g of carbs a day.

But well done to you though, that's an incredible change! How long ago was it?
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
For the most part yes, 62.5ml of freshly squeezed orange juice will contain less than 0.25g of fibre.

1 Orange, which would give 62.5ml of juice, contains 2.9g

And of course nobody is drinking just 62.5 ml of juice. More like 350ml or more per serving, which would be about 5 or 6 oranges worth. Not a lot of people eating 5 or 6 oranges in one sitting.
 

Shaneus

Member
Sugar's fucking evil.

I've been low carbing on and off for a while now, and just the effect that sugar has on my appetite is ridiculous. Eating sugar begets eating sugar. When just low-carbing, I have no trouble with craving or bingeing. But one slip and a "cheat meal" makes it so much harder.
It returns that want to eat without actual hunger.

The faster we can return the fat to processed foods, and remove the sugar, the better all society will be.
Oh god, so much this. Getting back on the no-sugar/low carb bandwagon is so damned hard, but I think if you're able to restrict your "cheat" meals etc. to things that aren't normally considered that bad (like a roast with vegetables, or a pub meal) rather than getting KFC or McD's then maybe it's easier to stick to low carb after them.

I always cheated the bad way though, and... well... here I am, far from low carb :(
 
Oh jesus, that's a great idea. You could probably make a great chicken schnitzel/parma (sub the tomato with salami/pepperoni instead). I assume you mean the Kraft powdery "parmesan" and not grated?

Yeah. I actually have a fairly low carb tomato sauce (really no sugar added, and I know my serving) I use with them or spaghetti squash.

I also make eggplant lasagna with the breaded slices.
 
I don't drink soda much or ever in the past but I've become a fan of these mountain dew Kickstart drinks for the afternoon when I want some kind of sweet snack or thing. They are 60 calories which is almost entirely from sugar.

I think that if I stay away from other sugary stuff throughout the day and in my meals I think I should be fine and it satisfies my craving for something sweet.

In the morning I like a black coffee but in the afternoon a hot coffee isn't as appealing.

It's got around 19g sugar in a can. Wish they had a diet version.
 
I picked up a big can labelled "pure coconut water" from a vending machine. It was listed on the can in big letters as "98% young coconut water".

The damn thing had 40 grams of sugar in it !!
 

Hari Seldon

Member
The problem with nutrition (and also other fields like health and education research) is the absolute inadequate standard of proof required to be published. If study after study with alleged 99.9% confidence intervals contradict each other, the MATH says that these guys are not doing their science correctly.
 
Jesus christ. I lost about 10-15kg or so in about two months I think with only the change in diet but fell of the wagon over time. Now I have a partner I'm hoping that it'll make it easier to stick to once we start it (she's a raw food nut, so it should help somewhat). Doubt I'll be able to get back into keto but will hopefully get to a point where I can consistently do 50-70g of carbs a day.

But well done to you though, that's an incredible change! How long ago was it?

About the end of August 2014 was when I started. A friend told me about the diet so I spent a long time planning and cleared my house of any carbs before I started. I ate hamburgers, steaks, chicken thighs, eggs, broccoli, spinach, and mushrooms almost exclusively for a couple months, with some cheese and berry snacks and strictly water to drink (lots of it at that). I tried to eat simply as well - no seasonings aside from salt and pepper. I broke my food cravings for the first time in my life and finally stopped feeling like I was starving all the time.

Went from 380s to 230s, and I've stayed here for a while. I'm a big guy anyway, so I want to get into the 210s and will be happy with that.
 
The problem with nutrition (and also other fields like health and education research) is the absolute inadequate standard of proof required to be published. If study after study with alleged 99.9% confidence intervals contradict each other, the MATH says that these guys are not doing their science correctly.

I guess what I wondered in my post was even if statistics necessarily applies to this in a useful way.

If people have fundamentally different reactions and their reactions are a highly spread normal, uniform or pseudo-bimodal distribution, then you really mislead a lot of people by taking the average and making recommendation off of it.

Even if the spread is normal and not highly spread the large numbers in the population mean there are still a very large number of people with extreme reactions getting badly wrong advice.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Nonsense. Cherry picking for the loss.

The sugar industry loves this misinformation, because your average american these days thinks cane sugar is safer than artificial sweetener.
I'm not saying sugar is better. I'm saying that there is conflicting evidence about their effects, and we need proper long term, controlled human studies to fully understand how non-nutritiative sweeteners affect the body. Otherwise we're just jumping to conclusions based on intuition and limited information. Which would be a little ironic here.
 

Oppo

Member
I just wish more companies made low carb/sugar convenience foods. I'm not going to start cooking like some kind of Alfred Pennyworth. Let me buy high fat, high protein, low carb processed foods I can just shove in my face. I don't need to eat perfectly; I just want to avoid the really bad stuff that shouldn't be in my food. Salt is fine. Artificial sweetener is fine. Chemicals are fine. I don't need grass-fed beef or organic vegetables. Just remove the sugar so I can make healthier choices without having to become le chef de cuisine who cooks his own food like some kind of manual-transmission-preferring, copper-pan-owning, vegetables-are-delicious-you-just-have-to-cook-them-right-claiming, cricket-watching, collared-shirt-sporting, book-reading, glasses-wearing, sex-having hipster.

Quest bars.
 
I'm not saying sugar is better. I'm saying that there is conflicting evidence about their effects, and we need proper long term, controlled human studies to fully understand how non-nutritiative sweeteners affect the body. Otherwise we're just jumping to conclusions based on intuition and limited information. Which would be a little ironic here.

Artificial sweeteners are the most studied substances known to man.
 

Famassu

Member
Living up to your tag, I see.
Studies have shown that regions with vegetable-heavy or even (nigh) vegetable-exclusive diets have extremely healthy people (places where meat isn't all that common an ingredient in the dinner table). They don't have people with diabetes, heart disease or all that many other diet/over-consumption related diseases. This demonization of all sources of carbs is dumb, especially if it leads to the stupidly overt glorification & over consumption of meat, which is not only unhealthy, but destructive to Earth altogether.
 

Aske

Member
I'm not saying sugar is better. I'm saying that there is conflicting evidence about their effects, and we need proper long term, controlled human studies to fully understand how non-nutritiative sweeteners affect the body. Otherwise we're just jumping to conclusions based on intuition and limited information. Which would be a little ironic here.

General consensus amongst European scientists is that artificial sweeteners are safe, and so far the question of insulin response and the correlation with weight gain hold little water. Most people who want to be healthy stay away from diet soda because "chemicals", and they certainly shouldn't be considered as healthy, safe, or beneficial as water; but I've seen no compelling evidence to suggest that they're unhealthy yet. And I've looked, because I enjoy a diet soda and find it satisfies my cravings for sugar.

Not to say you're wrong by any means, but I think too many people want to lump diet soda in with evil processed food, and this has led to massive ignorance and misinformation amongst the general public who believe "natural" sugar is better for them than "man-made" aspartame, etc. Sugar is definitely poison. Artificial sweeteners may possibly have certain unpleasant effects similar to sugar, but they are absolutely guaranteed to be safer and less unhealthy than sugar. In my opinion, that's an important message that needs to be spread.
 
So I cut out soda three months ago for sugar reasons. Haven't lost much weight but do feel better.

What about complex carbs like rice, potatoes and whole grains are those bad carbs? I thought the fiber helped with the sugar being digested compared to white bread and simple carbs.
 
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