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Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that the question "Is sugar toxic?" is inherently meaningless. Bandying the word around like this in a publication like the NYT dilutes public understanding of the issue.

Scientifically responsible journalists would have chosen an accurate term to discuss the issue rather than shooting for maximum emotional impact.

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The thesis of the article is pretty obvious: Sugar is toxic in the amounts found in a typical western diet.

Hmmmm. You're right. That is pretty obvious. I feel kinda silly now.

I tend to be on a bit of a hair trigger over the use of words like toxic by nutritionists, because so often they turn out to be graduates of degree mills, pedalling patent medicines via press release reprinting churnalists.

This guy seems to check out however, even if he is a bit absolutist.

Technically, you don't even need a degree in anything relevant to nutrition to call yourself a nutritionist. Dietitian on the other hand comes with more accreditation. For that reason, dietitians often refer to themselves as dietitians rather than nutritionists because it's more distinguished. I err towards suspicion when someone refers to himself/herself as simply a "nutritionist".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionist

That's cool; I actually appreciated your insight in the top comment. It is meaningless to say sugar is toxic or not toxic. The important question is at what level does it become toxic, which is almost certainly less than what we consume now but surely greater than zero (I hope so anyway -- zero strikes me as both impractical and not very tasty).

The thesis being true or not is beside the point - yes, America eats too much sugar. Probably. But the problem about articles like this, and other campaigns to curb "bad eating habits" (like New York City's vendetta against salt and soda) is that it promotes a negative attitude towards food and eating, which feeds the cycle of abuse towards food and towards self esteem, instead of going deeper into the root of the problem itself. Any recovering food addict will tell you that the first thing you learn in rehab is to relearn your attitude towards food. What if, on the subway, people read signs that said "Eat well! Eat what you want! Thumbs Up!" instead of "You're going to die of diabetes if you don't stop eating sugar in toxic amounts"? Of course, that's an over reductive analogy - but my point is that it's not the American Diet that needs change, it is the American Attitude Towards Food that is desperately dysfunctional.

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