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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

If only BigSugar could have a day in court like BigTobacco. Sugar addiction is the next big social health care type of thing I'd like to see recognized. Yes, opiates are bad right now, but I don't think anyone would have ever denied it out side of the people making/selling. Great majority people do not even recognize sugar as a problem.

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no one is getting stage 4 lung cancer from sugar. Or having their jaw removed due to mouth cancer . Or hooked up to one of those oxygen machines due to irreversible lung damage. Sure, there are risks with obesity, not not as lethal or causal as with tobacco products. Fats are also a major contributor too, like steak.

It’s addictive and leads to obesity. Obesity is a leading cause of cancer.

There doesn’t seem to be any relationship between dietary fat and cancer.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12566141/

There is a huge relationship between obesity and cancer.

You disregard diabetes rather lightly there. Diabetes can result in amputations, blindness, heart attacks, strokes and other fun things.

Sure there are other food choices that lead to obesity, but sugar is certainly high on the list.

One thing in common though is that telling a smoker to "just quit" is about the same as telling someone who likes sugar to "just stop". Personally I'm working to "reduce my intake", slowly but surely.

Edit:but for sure there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar and that a Huge difference between the two.

> there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar

Which makes this a truly personal choice.

“Smoking is a choice, don’t ban it” always irks me because it’s a choice smokers make for themselves and everyone else in a 30m radius around them from forcing others to breathe in their polluted air.

> there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar

But there absolutely is such a thing as a "food desert"

    an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.

particularly within the USofA, places where lack of finnacial resources across communities, lack of affordable public transport, and lack of shopping options essentially doom large groups of people to low grade high sugar foods.

Good governments that are orientated toward the well being of their citizens population tend to enact limits on sugar in food, improve transport, subsidize good food etc.

Often with the evil socialist goal of better health, improved job options via transport, reduced universal health costs, and more taxpayers ..

I still see this idea brought up but it feels like the tide has turned against the idea of "food deserts" with a lot of studies undermining it, and worth looking into if you're interested.

The raw data still appears to suport the notion:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-environment-atla...

and the various initiatives started to address the issue haven't yet had time to make significant changes in enough of the areas worst off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/29/us-food-...

It's a good start, with a way to go:

> On Sept. 28, the White House is hosted a conference on hunger, nutrition and health — the second conference of its kind in five decades — and introduced a 40-page national strategy as a roadmap toward the goal of ending hunger and increasing healthy eating by 2030.

https://journalistsresource.org/home/food-insecurity-health/

> Edit:but for sure there's no such thing as second-hand-sugar and that a Huge difference between the two.

Obesity can cause epigenetic changes that are passed down to offspring.

True, and a person's diet choices can absolutely impact others. From a parents choice of what to feed their children to a school's selling out of all health for cheap corporate shit meals, even down to a road trip participants insistence on specific eating location. We are not always perfectly in control of our eating choices. Sure in a perfect world we'd all have the time and space and money to carry our own food but as someone who grew up with crohns' disease I think people strongly underestimate how make situations reduce eating choice to only cheap, bad, sugar filled processed foods. Every pizza or ice cream party (of which my school had many), every birthday, every sleep over, every time my brother cried about wanting to eat out. Forcing yourself to eat natural healthy food in America often involves the choice to not eat.

Consumption of sugar increases rates of cancer and all-cause mortality. This study[1] found that only 5g/day increases in sugar consumption raised rates of cancer.

> Or having their jaw removed due to mouth cancer . Or hooked up to one of those oxygen machines due to irreversible lung damage.

There are plenty of people who lost extremities and/or their sight due to diabetes. They'll be hooked up to insulin pumps, or they'll need regular insulin injections or they'll die. Others can get cancer, as well. Some might need machines just to move around, or will need serious surgeries to keep themselves from eating to death.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026156142...

Fat is such a complex topic it would be hard to spend enough time refuting the last statement. But, in short it depends on what kind of fat (body fat? (if you're in a catabolic state, you will be "eating" your own fat; and this too has different types, depending on what your diet was!),trans,polyunsaturated,saturated,mono), how active you are, how much you consume, whether you're in ketosis/adapted, as well as a host of genetic factors,which determine your lipase production. Mostly agree on the "like steak" part, though that too would take a long time to, umm, break down.

It's really tough to become obese by eating steak, even if it has a high fat content. You just can't physically stuff yourself with that much meat. Carbohydrates, especially simple sugars, are absolutely the main culprit behind the obesity epidemic.

There may be other problems with certain fats. In particular there is growing evidence that highly processed seed oils are problematic, although that hasn't been definitively proven yet.

For 20 years we’ve been eating fewer carbs and getting fatter (on average)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0OuoFyJtZuI/VkofY-qgeOI/AAAAAAAAbb...

I don't think your data is accurate. Where did that chart come from? And not all carbs are created equal. From an obesity perspective, 100 kcal of sugar in soda pop appears to be far worse than the same amount of sugar in fruit.

https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab270

Mostly likely here: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...

It would be interesting to see massive warnings about sugar related illnesses on packaging.

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