Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

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No offense but you literally just ignored everything I wrote and restated the original argument, which I see all the time, which is "medical professionals don't understand diet and don't recommend the right thing," which is, frankly, bullshit.

Let me repeat: There are zero (0) medical professionals advocating for a high sugar diet. The "high carb" part of the recommended diet is meant to come from vegetables and whole grains (which contain a fair amount of fiber).

There isn't any evidence I'm aware of showing people eating a calorically balanced, low fat, high carb, low sugar, moderate fiber, micronutritionally balanced diet and having diabetes. I understand that's more complex that saying "low fat/high carb" but again, there aren't doctors out there recommending cutting out fats and subsisting on sugar. So yes, it's a complete and total straw man, but when you only consider large macronutrient groups and ignore the rest of nutrition it's easy to see why that seems ignorable.

> "there aren't doctors out there recommending cutting out fats and subsisting on sugar"

That's true as far as it goes, but the internal fight inside the medical research community was whether it was fat or sugar that was the culprit in a host of physical problems. Fat won in a slam dunk, even though it turns out to be wrong. Doctors are largely not researchers, and they are taught what was the conventional wisdom. There is no suggestion of malice, just bad (or at least overturned, but it was actually bad in this case) research that has been promulgated in the medical community. A lot of doctors think fat is bad and pay less attention to sugar.

The Guardian recently wrote about this: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-con...

So, it's not bullshit to say a lot of doctors don't understand the nutrition.

OK, later! :)

You don't think you risk making a similar mistake by simplifying a complex bunch of interconnected stuff into "fat = okay, but sugar = really evil"?

> That's true as far as it goes, but the internal fight inside the medical research community was whether it was fat or sugar that was the culprit in a host of physical problems. Fat won in a slam dunk, even though it turns out to be wrong.

The idea that you can isolate it down to fat vs. carbs is "not even wrong." It doesn't ask the right questions, and ignores many other confounding factors. I don't really want to keep restating this point.

There are healthy high fat diets. There are healthy low fat diets.

If you want to talk about bullshit, how about ignoring evidence and resorting to ad-hominum attacks?

I was not ignoring your argument but rather pointing out that there is data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America.

Now, what is a straw-man is to put forth a theoretical/never seen in reality diet and claim that no one has ever gotten fat eating it. Sorry, but an extrapolation from a population of zero to 350 million is a bit much for me.

I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue. So, you can blame fat people for not listening to their doctors, doctors for not checking the research or food companies for bastardizing what doctors actually recommended to sell low fat/high sugar food and label it "healthy." But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.

Sorry but I made zero ad-hominem attacks in my post.

> data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America

No there isn't because no doctor advocates that without the other nuances I provided in my post. I still feel like you are ignoring my posts, because my last post was literally entirely devoted to addressing this nuance. The simple fact is that there is not a large group of people eating according to the medical communities recommendations who are obese. The rise of obesity in America is people largely ignoring medical recommendations. Yes, low fat was in fad for a while, but there is plenty of evidence that a low fat diet can be healthy, and that a high fat diet can be healthy, so, as I've repeatedly said, it depends.

> I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue.

100%

> But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.

When you radically simplify their advice, sure. When you actually follow what is recommended, no not really.

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