Hacker News Reader

Comment by serverholic | Hacker News Reader

There are lots of examples that support your argument.

For example, there are hunter-gatherer tribes living today that consume a significant amount of sugar (up to 60% of their calories) and don't have the same problems with obesity, diabetes, etc.

I'm no expert but it seems that the human body doesn't handle bodyfat very well. Perhaps all of this negativity around sugar can be explained by the fact that sugar is calorie-dense and calorie-dense foods tend to make people fat. Especially in the hyper-palatable forms we have in America.

View on HN

>> there are hunter-gatherer tribes living today that consume a significant amount of sugar (up to 60% of their calories) and don't have the same problems with obesity, diabetes,

The reason they don't have those issues is they are constantly burning calories and in constant motion. H/G is not an easy life and those tribes (both men and women) put in a ton of manual labor. In college I remember one film where a tribe in Papua New Guinea were shown climbing a 15ft tall palm tree. All three males they showed were totally shredded. Six pack, lean upper bodies, biceps and legs were all cut.

I would imagine the sugar gets burned up pretty quickly and it not only a source of calories but a primary source of energy - which is needed for how they live.

That supports my claim. If they burn off the calories then they wont get fat and therefore avoid metabolic issues.

My whole point is that the bodyfat is causing the issues. If sugar was the root cause then we should be seeing diabetes, etc. in these hunter-gatherer tribes.

Yeah, I should've been more clear that I was supporting what you were saying and agree with your point.

Gotcha. My bad.

Really, hunter-gatherer tribes eat 60% of their calories in refined sugars? Or are you conflating any form of sugar (specifically in fruit) and refined sugars such as in soft drinks?

No I'm talking about honey or plain white sugar depending on the tribe.

I forgot their names but there are 3 main tribes that I remember being studied. Two of them ate significant amounts of honey and a third traded for refined white sugar.

Got it, I think this may be one that you were referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadza_people

>Honey represents a substantial portion of the Hadza diet (~10-20% of calories)

As a followup here's a paper on the various tribes. Sorry I don't have a download link to the full PDF: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24746602/

In that paper they also reference the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo. Specifically: "The Mbuti of the Congo forests eat large amounts of honey. According to Ichikawa (1981), honey is their favorite food. At times, during the rainy season up to 80% of the calories in their diet come from honey."

I wonder, though, what happens if you investigate the important variables - "up to", "during the rainy season," - maybe the human body can tolerate this for short periods of time, but not 24/7; and pygmies makes me think lower growth hormone / IGF-1, so the impact of the sugar may not be near as bad

Other tribes consistently eat as much or more sugar than westerners on average. So I'm not sure if what you're saying can explain the difference.

Yep that's one of them. They eat roughly the same amount on average as UK citizens but don't have the metabolic issues.

There is another tribe that will eat up to 60% of their calories from honey depending on the availability of food.

Another tribe trades with first-world countries for white sugar.

> Perhaps all of this negativity around sugar can be explained by the fact that sugar is calorie-dense and calorie-dense foods tend to make people fat.

Sugar is less calorie dense than fat, and this kind of naive reductionist CICO thinking would tend to support the war on fat that preceded recognition of the problems associated with sugar.

It’s true that humans are not well adapted to deal with persistent surplus, but sugary persistent surplus seems to be a particular problem.

> Sugar is less calorie dense than fat

Yes. I never said that it wasn't.

> naive reductionist CICO thinking

CICO is how the body works. If you absorb more calories than you burn you will gain weight. It also doesn't matter the source of the calories. We have metabolic ward studies that tell us that.

> sugary persistent surplus seems to be a particular problem

I agree. In fact one of the prevailing theories of diabetes is that fat molecules enter the cell and get in the way of insulin absorption. In other words, insulin resistance.

Yeah, this has been my general takeaway: calorie-counting and things like intermittent fasting are much more important than reading ingredient labels (for people who don’t have allergies and diet-related health issues like diabetes).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com