A Former Dentist Uncovering Sugar's Rotten Secrets | Hacker News Reader

A Former Dentist Uncovering Sugar's Rotten Secrets

psmag.com

35 pointsbreitling7 comments

> If sugar industry efforts skewed research about sugar’s harmful health effects, then national and international guidelines about sugar consumption are, in fact, based on flawed science.

Ancel Keys' holy-war against saturated fat was based on flawed science.

> Until recently, federal organizations such as the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration had never officially recommended caps on the amount of sugar a person should eat, even though caps for nutrients such as fat and sodium have existed for more than 20 years.

In the last year or two, research papers have been published that acquit saturated fat and sodium of the charges against them. But there's so much inertia in the propaganda campaigns that it might be another generation before 'the experts' figure out how to give good advice.

> “because profit-maximizing behavior leads [big corporations] to be out pushing products which end up causing disease.”

This point is nicely-stated, but is not pointed at the best targets offered by the food industry.

edit: Key's -> Keys'

Thanks for the summary.

It is very important to distinguish between fructose and glucose sugars. Fructose is actually much more poisonous then glucose is. It seems metabolized mostly like alcohol. Now, with the high fructose corn syrup everywhere, makes the situation not better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

EDIT: fructose is not so problematic if it's still embedded in fibers like in fruit. Bacteria then eat most of it, before it is absorbed.

Yeah, the language mix-up is making it hard to tell people. We "know" that the brain eats sugar and that sugar is a simple form of energy. Unfortunately this applies to glucose specifically, not to any sugar-class molecule and not to the white crystalline powder called table sugar. Glucose is ok for you. Practically every tissue in your body can use it right away. Fructose is, as you said, metabolised in the liver, and is practically toxic. Table sugar and HFCS are both 50-50 fructose-glucose and biologically equivalent.

Table sugar is sucrose, which is a molecular combination of fructose and glucose.

HFCS is, as I understand it, just a bunch of fructose and glucose mixed together.

Does that make them biologically equivalent? I've always been curious about that. I recall reading a claim that the body's need to split the sucrose molecule makes it lower impact than if it were pre-split.

Many producers' batches of HFCS used to be contaminated with mercury [1]. Thanks to the efforts of a lone FDA whistleblower, industry no longer uses mercury to make this substance. But high fructose corn syrup may still be contaminated with starch - chains of glucose - thereby giving HFCS a much higher calorie count than is on the label.

Sugar is fine if your liver is healthy. It keeps me from wasting away.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...

> Sugar causes cavity

This is bit of smoke screen and obscures the real problem. Sugar alters metabolism, and in larger quantities is practically poisonous.

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