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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

How about between butter and sugar? Which is worse?

Butter is not bad it came from the time where liver function and metabolism was not as well understood, the worst thing you can have is insulin resistance which both high carb and high protein diets can cause as they both revolve around glucose.

I would highly recommend to avoid any diet which is less than 30-40% in calories from fat.

That said the worst thing you can have is high fat and high carb since the insulin would cause your body to store all the fat and turn the extra sugar into more fat.

> I would highly recommend to avoid any diet which is less than 30-40% in calories from fat.

Our GI tract is very similar to that of primates. I think it is best to eat like they do: HCLF.

> That said the worst thing you can have is high fat and high carb

100% agree.

> the insulin would cause your body to store all the fat and turn the extra sugar into more fat.

Nope. The extra glucose with spike in your blood (as the fay blocks your insulin on the cells), glucose is only converted to fat a tiny bit.

Our GI track is simmilar to some other primates primarily chimps but very different from others say Gorillas.

Gorillas nearly only eat leaves while chips are omnivores that hunt even monkeys and even practice cannibalism.

Glucose will turn into triglycerides and be stored into fat but more importantly what insulin does is instruct your fat cells to store energy.

Sugar is currently very bad for you. It's really bad for your liver though I can remember a time when it was thought that fatty food was hard on the liver and that sugar wasn't.

I'd avoid both. But if I have to pick one to eat 4 tblsp from every day, I pick sugar hands down.

I think that's a bad comparison. Intuitively this might feel less healthy because you are consuming more than twice as many calories with the butter. Double check your intuition on this one. People on high fat diets tend to eat less volume as compared to those on high carb diets for a good reason. Fat is more than twice as calorie dense as compared to sugar.

1 cup of sugar = 201 g. 1 cup of Butter = 227 grams. 201/227 = a given volume of sugar is about 89% as heavy as the same volume of butter.

1 gram of sugar contains 4 calories. 1 gram of butter is about 7.2 calories (a gram of fat is 9 calories and butter is roughly 85% fat + milk solids and water). 4/7.2 = a gram of sugar contains about 56% as many calories as a gram of butter.

4 tbps of sugar = 50 grams = 200 calories

4 tbps of butter = 56.8 grams = 408 calories

Good point. Yet still I rather take 6 spoons of sugar than 3 spoons of butter.

But that's HCLF me :)

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