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Comment by delusional | Hacker News Reader

> Sugar is the Cigarettes of our time, no doubt.

People have been saying this for the past 15-20 years, yet it keeps not being true. The difference is pretty obvious with just a little thought. Sugars are part of a balanced diet, it's perfectly healthy to consume some amount of sugars during a normal day. Cigarettes have NO health benefits, they only serve to kill you. Cutting out all cigarettes is a pretty minimal sacrifice compared to avoiding large swaths of foodstuffs.

Comparing the two only makes normal people rolls their eyes at you and ignore anything you have to say from your ivory tower.

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The saying can be improved dramatically by prepending one word: added.

There's absolutely NO health benefit to having any added sugar in food products.

Manufacturers know that it is harmful, they know that they are encouraging addiction, and they know that consumers are suffering as a result. And then there's the advertising, especially to children. Ninety percent of the breakfast aisles in most grocery stores should absolutely be illegal and people should be ashamed to be poisoning their children with products like these[1].

It's this combination of addiction, harmfulness, and advertising that are so similar to the cigarette industry.

[1]: https://www.metroparent.com/parenting/advice/kids-cereals-su...

> There's absolutely NO health benefit to having any added sugar in food products.

That's a better take, to be sure. I haven't done the research, but I feel confident in agreeing that there are no health benefits to added sugar. Much like there are no health benefits to smoking.

At that point it becomes too nuanced of a subject for the "our generations smoking" argument though. It makes no difference to my body if the fructose in my juice came from the apple that was juiced, or if it was added later on. It doesn't matter if the fructose I added to my chocolate cake came from orange juice or HFCS. So it becomes an argument of quantity, with the argument being that there's too must sugar in processed foodstuffs. And hey, I agree.

I think that's a fine argument to make, but it's miles away from the "any amount is bad, and if you do it, it says something bad about your character" that we've used against smoking.

How is it not true? Overeating / over-sugaring is at least close to smoking in its aggregate detrimental effects. So many health problems are caused by overweight.

If people feel this is a ridiculous comparison, they need to be corrected. The lowest common denominator does not dictate how I communicate.

You're giving away the differentiator right in your comment. You've never heard anyone talk about "oversmoking" because there's no such thing as "the right amount of smoking" (or rather, that amount is zero. No smoking is the _correct_ amount of smoking).

I agree that obesity is terrible. I even agree that the "oversugaring" is probably a large portion of the cause side of the obesity problem. I'm just pointing out that when you compare it to smoking, you sound full of yourself. I'm of normal weight but consume way too much sugar (I'm working on it). When you tell me that I'm as bad as smokers I don't hear someone telling me the hard truths. I hear someone erecting a pedestal they can put themselves on.

What is the right amount of sugar? What are the health benefits of sugar? Your body does not require it at all, it is strictly negative impact unless you're literally starving or trying to gain fat to avoid starvation.

You're making this weirdly personal. No one is saying you're a bad person for eating sugar or "as bad as" a smoker. There's no pedestal.

> What is the right amount of sugar? What are the health benefits of sugar?

I don't have to answer your questions and it's not like you'd care about my answers anyway. The guy I'm responding to said "over-sugaring" which implies there's an amount of sugar that's not too much. I would expect something like eating an apple would fall under his definition of "not too much" but I wouldn't know.

What's the point of the rhetorical questions? I feel like you're trying to "own" me in order to put me into some Ben Shapiro youtube clip. If you want to make an argument, just make it.

> No one is saying

That's an odd point to make for someone just entering the discussion. I'm telling you what impression it leaves on me. Just saying "well your impression is wrong" is not really an interesting observation. Communication is a two-way street where we collaboratively create the impression we want. If you want to leave a different impression, then communicate differently.

Jesus Christ you're touchy.

Agreed. For example our brain _depends_ on glucose for energy. Even if you go into ketosis, your body will still generate glucose to feed your brain (and possibly other organs?). Conversely, cigarettes offer nothing that your body depends on.

There's no doubt that too much sugar is a really bad thing, and that the average diet in USA (and other parts of the world) is way too heavy on sugars, but it's not something to be puritanical about. A little sugar in your diet is non-harmful for most people; it is a valuable nutrient.

> For example our brain _depends_ on glucose for energy.

Right, but you don't need to eat sugar. Your body is capable of manufacturing glucose as-is from fat or protein. If you have 0 grams of sugar in your diet it's not like your brain will starve.

> it is a valuable nutrient.

No it isn't. Your body does not require that you eat sugar and it does not benefit from it either.

> but you don't need to eat sugar

I made no such claim, agreed. It is definitely possible to survive and thrive without eating sugar.

> No it isn't

But it _is_ valuable, nutritionally speaking. Sugars have great value to our bodies, which is why we seek them. Sugars are an abundant source of calories and our ancestors who are honey, fruits, vegetables, roots and so on had a survival advantage over those who didn't access these foods.

Nowadays the game has changed, but sugars are still highly valuable to our bodies. It's why athletes still carb load and take gels etc when they're performing. You don't see Olympians taking olive oil or meat mid race.

> Sugars are part of a balanced diet

Citation needed. Only two things are necessary to live: protein and fat. Carbohydrates are decent fuel. Literal sugar (as added fructose/glucose to regular food for taste) isn't required for a diet to be called balanced or healthy any more than alcohol is (both are considered fuel for the metabolic system).

Thankfully the body is quite resilient and can work with reasonable amounts of sugar or alcohol in the diet, but to say it's part of a balanced diet is a bit of a stretch.

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