Sugar Rush: The progress of a disease over thirty years | Hacker News Reader

Sugar Rush: The progress of a disease over thirty years

economist.com

46 pointsnopinsight25 comments

I was pleasantly surprised to see this called "Sugar Rush"- making it appear to be common sense to keep your blood sugar levels low if you have diabetes. Yet the ADA (American Diabetes Association) tells everyone to eat low-fat (high-carb) diets.

I'm always suspicious of "percent change" data that isn't supplemented with absolute values. If there was a big change for the worse, does that mean they used to be good and are now normal or that they used to be normal and are now bad? And is the value high enough to even make the change meaningful? You have the same problem with any other change. It just seems to raise more questions than it answers.

You can get some raw data from Wolfram Alpha:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=United+States%2C+United...

Always surprised to see how diabetes coverage in the popular press blurs the difference between Type I ("juvenile") and Type II ("adult onset").

I totally agree, but I think calling Type 1 "juvenile" is misleading as well. My wife developed Type 1 when she was in her twenties.

Similarly, it's become possible for children to become Type II diabetics, which coincides with a massive increase in obesity (probably both caused by a root cause).

Would just like to quickly comment here and say that the prevalence of corn based additives in nearly all american foods is a major, if not the main culprit in this problem. The many corn aliases disguise themselves, so that people who avoid "high fructose corn syrup", find themselves consuming not glucose but a corn derivative none the less:

Ascorbic acid derived from glucose

Crystalline fructose

Dextrin or Dextrose

Ethyl maltol

Fumaric or Lactic acid

Glucose

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)

Malt, Maltodextrin, Maltose or Maltol

Mannitol

Polydextrose

Polysorbates

Potassium gluconate

Propylene glycol monostearate

Tocopherol

Xanthan gum

And of course all these ingredients are used in abundance because they are cheap, and of course all these corn derivatives are cheap because of corn subsidies, and of course there are subsidies because of the massive amount of corn lobbyists and such.

These findings lead me to further believe something I have long suspected...Since 1980, the Women of Canada have not abided by the rules of halfsies. Stop eating my skittles, ladies. :(

In all seriousness, why do you think there's a noticeable difference between Canadian men and women according to this data? I mean from the looks of it most, countries Mens numbers were higher.

Or Canadian men were eating way more than their fair share of Skittles in 1980 -- their rates of diabetes are still higher than women's.

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/health53a-eng.htm

I would guess that Canadian men have had problems with diabetes for a long time (>30yrs) and women are now starting to catch up. But I think you'd need more numbers than are in that map to get any real answers.

And as a sidenote, if you look at e.g., Africa, you can see women's rates are going up faster in many countries, and in fact globally:

"Across the world the rate of diabetes rose by 18% for men and by 23% for women"

I mean from a straightforward point of view you can understand the rise on a worldly basis just because of the progression of women's rights around the globe--but when you look at Canada what's changed since the late 70's to the point where women are taking in increased sugars?

A lot has changed Canada since the late 1970s, which is why I say you'd need more information than just that little map or even stats of the kind I got off statscan. You could probably come up with a half-dozen stories why that fit the map data, but that wouldn't mean they were right.

Oh and really great discussion tangent, mitcheme, it's funny (the skittle bits) but also really interesting stuff. Thanks a bunch.

It would be interesting to see if smoking among the French, particularly French women, coincided with a drop in rates of diabetes.

I'm pretty sure smoking rates dropped in France too. It's just that they were always pretty high. So no global correlation there.

The difference between North America and Western Europe is quite striking. Is that really mostly due to HFCS?

Almost certainly due to lower obesity rates, rather than the negligible difference between normal sugar and HFCS.

Fructose is much more damaging than glucose. So HFCS is much more damaging than regular sugar (glucose-fructose). And more importantly, the widespread use of HFCS is a major concern. It's too cheap, it's too legal, and it's a toxin. There's absolutely no use for it in our bodies.

Yes, obesity is the problem. HFCS can be blamed as a significant contributor to the obesity issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Agreed on fructose being the more damaging component. However, sucrose (regular table sugar) is one glucose and one fructose, so 50% fructose. HFCS, however, is typically 55% fructose, and I believe used in about the same quantity. So not that different. The real issue is simply amount consumed, and not what form it was in.

HFCS and regular sugar have a very similar proportion of glucose:fructose.

The kind of HFCS used in soft drinks is 55% fructose and 42% glucose, while sucrose (sugar) is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. The kind of HFCS used in baked products is 42% fructose and 53% glucose.

The problem with HFCS is not its biological impact. It's the economic impact. By heavily subsidizing corn, we have made sugar (via HFCS) incredibly cheap, which makes it easy to use as an additive.

There's a wide difference in overall sugar intake between the US and countries in Europe.

US: 152 lbs. per capita UK: 80 lbs. per capita Canada: 117 lbs. per capita Russia: 112 lbs. per capita France: 79 lbs. per capita

You can play around with these numbers at Wolfram Alpha:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sugar+consumption+per+c...

Lets hear it for High Fructose Corn Syrup!

What's going on in Spain?

I guess a lot of people is abandoning traditional "mediterranean diet", but not to adopt something healthier.

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