John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar (2014) | Hacker News Reader

John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar (2014)

telegraph.co.uk

51 pointsfasteo14 comments

I think it's not just sugar. We want to single out a single culprit, but it's a multi-faceted problem. We are adapted to digest glucose and fructose, it could trace toxins in the process of making it, it could be a combination of lifestyle plus tons of fructose, it could be the disrupted circadian rhythm - nobody really knows. For sure, we've never had so much vegetable fat. According to Ray Peat, more than a gram of polyunsaturated fat is toxic and cancer-causing. According to a few of his followers, the desaturation of cardiolipin in mitochondria leads to instability and mitochondrial dysfunction, which is now recognized as the cause of many chronic diseases. I read that the iron overload, which replaces manganese with iron in the mitochondria is another possible culprit. Honestly, I have the gut feeling glucose is totally fine - even in large quantities. And Ray Peat thinks the same.

with millions at stake, the truth is difficult to discern. When it's billions, you'll never find it.

truth eventually was found with regard to tobacco and lead, sugar is just around the corner.

Ah yes, a career ended in part thanks to a vindictive propaganda campaign by Ancel Keys. He of the very carefully cherry picked 7 countries study "proving" fat was the culprit.

It's a shame Yudkin didn't live long enough to see his reputation mostly restored.

Also a reminder that the Telegraph was once a half decent paper.

> A campaign that calls for sugar to be treated as a toxin, like alcohol and tobacco, and for sugar-laden foods to be taxed, labelled with health warnings and banned for anyone under 18.

So, we're, like gunna ban fruits?

Seriously, it's kind of crazy to have the immediate response to "the mainstream consensus was totally wrong" to be "let's use the force of the law to enforce the new consensus!" A little bit of humility is called for, I think. By all means improve the official recommendations, but let people make their own decisions about what they put in their bodies.

Tangentially, I've become convinced that the actual #1 worst ingredient we're eating is too much vegetable oil:

https://www.breaknutrition.com/omega-6-fatty-acids-alternati...

>Seriously, it's kind of crazy to have the immediate response to "the mainstream consensus was totally wrong" to be "let's use the force of the law to enforce the new consensus!" A little bit of humility is called for, I think. By all means improve the official recommendations, but let people make their own decisions about what they put in their bodies.

Well said. There is a much bigger lesson than "it turns out sugar is bad." It's: "we don't know as much as we think we know so we should stop being so overconfident."

To be fair, we were the ones that selectively bred fruits (and vegetables!) to be so sugar-rich that zoos can't even feed them to some of their animals that traditionally only eat fruit.

If this guy is correct, this would be no different than if we found some other toxic substance in our fruit. The point is that it's toxic and it's bad for us, and decisions would need to be made to account for that.

>but let people make their own decisions about what they put in their bodies.

Again, if this guy is correct, how would this be any different than tobacco? We don't let young people decide to put tobacco or booze in their bodies because science has shown they're not old enough to make that decision well.

* To be fair, we were the ones that selectively bred fruits (and vegetables!) to be so sugar-rich that zoos can't even feed them to some of their animals that traditionally only eat fruit.*

I've never heard of this. Got a source?

https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high...

Much appreciated.

Yeah, the selectively-bred fruit is a very interesting point.

> let people make their own decisions about what they put in their bodies

why not let people make their decisions about what they put in other people's bodies then? if they do damage - they suffer consequences, so it all should be fine right?

There's not very many things that people put in other people's bodies, but I'm all for most of those things. ;-)

i mostly meant bullets, knives and baseball bats.

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