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I won’t defend Robert Lustvigs position entirely. It’s rather extreme. But I think you need to watch his stuff before trying to criticise it. Glucose is the body’s primary energy source. Yes. But not fructose. (And sucrose, which is what’s commonly referred to as sugar, breaks down to fructose and glucose as you may know). His argument is that fructose is processed by the liver. Hence the idea that it is a kind of toxin (not a “poison” if I understand the terms correctly). Everything can kill you with a certain dose. But some substances are not safe - and will damage your body - with any dose. Alcohol is definitely one of those. Fructose? Maybe. I don’t know enough about biology to tell if Lustvig is wrong or not. I’m on the skeptical side still

Our close primate relatives seem to eat a lot of fruit. It’s a traditional part of the diet of any human society where it’s available. The idea that fructose is a toxin dangerous at any dosage doesn’t seem remotely plausible.

First, our primate relatives can easily eat a lot of meat and prefer meat if given. They do not have a lot of meat available in wild, but can occasionally eat it in the wild too. When they have meat available, they eat brains (fat) first: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chimpanze...

Second, they ferment fruit because fruit is always slightly poisonous (fructose).

Third, after being close to our primate relatives for some time, our ancestors spent a lot of time hunting, which is not a trait of monkeys we know. They eat more varied meat diet than any predator known, did that for a long time, much longer than (now) we eat crops.

Fourth, we have much higher normal percentage of fat in our body. For men, the normal fat percentage range is from 18% to 22%. Our primate relatives have much less normal fat, for most primates it is less than 9%. Our primate relatives sport bodybuilder's or high performance athlete's fat range just living their life.

As with alcohol, fructose is not a toxin in small doses, because liver can handle it (especially when it is fermented into lactic acid). But it is a toxin in doses we usually experience now. Look for "non-alcoholic fat liver syndrome".

In medicine they say the dose makes the poison.

But in general it's a far more complicated causality chain. When weight gain leads to insulin resistance then sugar is poison. We have lifestyles that maximize both a lack of physical labor and an excess of high sugar foods.

And evolution proves your point as the main difference between our "close relatives" is that our gut is better at digesting richer food (aka meat), which gives us a smaller and more efficient digestive system which freed resources for our big powerful brain.

Lustvig is a crackpot.

https://anthonycolpo.com/sweet-stupidity-part-2-the-bitter-t...

His understanding of what happens to fructose in the liver is fundamentally incorrect.

> Hence the idea that it is a kind of toxin (not a “poison” if I understand the terms correctly)

The way I understand it, poison is an umbrella term that includes toxins, venoms, and chemicals. Its definition is basically "is harmful to living beings", while the other three are specific types/sources of harmful.

Edit: Ended up looking it up, looks like I got poison and toxin backwards. Toxin is the umbrella term.

Sugar isn't poison. Blood-sugar spikes are poison. It's not a big deal to chug a bottle of Gatorade in the middle of a basketball game, your body uses that energy right away.

It is a big deal to chug a bottle of Gatorade while lounging in front of some screen when your body has nothing useful to do with all that sugar.

Simple carbohydrates such as pasta and potatoes break down quickly and can also cause one's blood-sugar to spike.

White pasta has one of the best insulin indexes of common foods. They're complex, not simple. Common misconception.

True. Over time, I noticed less undesirable weight fluctuation and even weight loss when eating pasta. Also, it felt like a light meal.

The trick is to not eat pasta with bread. Many people forget about the bread that they commonly combine with pasta and then blame the bloating and weight gain on the pasta that they had.

I'd imagine that cutting out red sauce, which commonly has added sucrose, would be better still.

Pasta is unique in that it seems to be beneficial, in terms of glycemic load, when eaten on its own. But combining it with other foods, but especially bread, may render it more taxing than other foods.

Which is a common trait of food combinations.

And wine to circle back to our topic at hand.

But simple pasta and fish dishes appear quite often in the "blue zones" around the globe. Something I should do a better job of eating more of.

Yes and: As you know, sucrose is composed of glucose (good) and fructose (bad). As I understand it, fruit has fiber which protects the body from fructose (blocks metabolism), and we still benefit from the glucose.

I still add sugar and honey and other sweets to my drink and food. Cuz I'm a fiend. But I do now try very hard to avoid straight fructose.

Is there ever a benefit to adding refined sugar to anything, though? We know there's a benefit to eating fruit and vegetables or arguably to eating dairy, and these foods contain sugar, but when would you want to add more of it? Or is it like alcohol in that it's mostly useful for enjoyment?

Long bouts of exercise like a marathon or the Tour de France or medical conditions like diabetes are the only exceptions I can think of where you'd want to instantly flood yourself with glucose.

> Is there ever a benefit to adding refined sugar to anything, though?

1) this claim is much weaker than "Sugar is the worst substance for public health ever. It's literally poison."

2) and it can be a good idea if otherwise someone would suffer from caloric deficit dangerous to health and eating more food is not viable (yes, this situation is unusual)

Sugar is the worst substance for public health ever. It's literally poison.

Its hyperbole meant to convey a sense of how bad sugar (particularly added sugars) is to the health of the population. Sugar is in everything (more hyperbole!) in the U.S. America by and large is addicted to sugar and it’s very bad for us. Everything is over sweetened. Can’t even buy bacon without sugar added in some form or other.

Hyperbole usually leads to a lot of unnecessary discussion where people tell you that it's an exaggeration and so on. A good old meta-discussion to eventually conclude that their stance on a topic was pretty similar after all.

Or you could move on, knowing perfectly well what they were saying...without being a putz.

Charitable interpretation by listener is indeed an important part of productive conversation. But charitable, I.e. Not intentionally or accidentally disingenuous statement by the speaker is also an important part. "You should know what I meant" rarely leads to good outcomes, not the least because typically any 4 people will have 5 Completely different but equally confident interpretations on what was so obviously meant :-)

Anyhoo. Yes sugar can be good and sugar can be bad. "It's literally poison and worst thing ever" does not productively move the needle of the conversation, almost regardless of interpretation.

Leaving aside the hyperbole and going back to the question from before, when is dietary sugar advantageous, and is adding extra refined sugar ever beneficial? To my understanding sugar is present in foods that are good for other reasons, but the sugar itself is only useful in niche situations when you need blood glucose fast, and there's almost never a health reason to add more.

This is in contrast to carbs in general, and to protein and fat, where some level of each is useful in the diet and provides a reduction in mortality and CVD risk.

> Leaving aside the hyperbole and going back to the question from before, when is dietary sugar advantageous, and is adding extra refined sugar ever beneficial?

As far as I know, it could be useful in case of huge need for calories.

Which basically never happens with modern lifestyle. But I guess may apply to firefighters working for several days or soldier lugging around piles of equipment.

But unlikely to apply to anyone reading HN. Unless they climb Mount Everest for fun, or volunteer as firefighters or are unlike enough to end in a war zone.

I know people who believe precisely that "sugar is a poison". The poster who wrote this could have been agreeing with them, or could have been using hyperbole. Who knows?

> Its hyperbole

If you need to rely on hyperbole/lies/propaganda then I am going to assume that you have no case.

Everyone speaks in hyperbole occasionally. One doesn’t need to rely on it but has its uses. It’s sometimes used to convey the strength of a belief. For instance, “I’m so mad at you I could kill you.”. It has other uses. That you appear to be unaware of how hyperbole is often times used and that it is a normal part of communication suggests that you are not really ready to participate in discussions.

Main benefit is that it sells more, whatever has the most sugar added might come out on top in a/b testing.

Yes, there's a benefit. Sugar is beneficial in moderation. On the subject, see biochemist Ray Peat's writing.

Glucose in blood is one of the sources of energy, not the sugar itself. Is it primary source of energy? I don't think so, because of successful application of ketogenic diets.

A person weighting 100kg should have less than 10 (ten) grams of sugar in a blood. This is less than 40 calories circulating in the blood of this 100kg person. The same person should have less than 10 (ten) grams of ketones in the blood and it is equivalent to less than 90 calories cirrculating.

Ketones are much more efficient energy source, they are twice as energy-dense. Glucose use needs a quarter of energy stored in the glucose, while fat (ketones) need only 3 (three) percents. Glucose needs insulin, fat (ketones) does not.

Glucose (which is not even table sugar!) is not a main source of energy in the body.

I also think that "variety" is a fad, just like other "extremes" you mentioned.

I wrote a good reply, then closed the tab on it. Just watch the video and decide for yourself. The culprit is fructose (a toxin almost as strong as ethanol, only consumable by the liver), the energy source it glucose and sugar is half parts each of them. The guy explains it down to very metabolismic reactions.

People love their absolutes. Makes it easy to understand complex topics by breaking them down into "rules of thumb", and in the case of "sugar is poison" has double-reinforcement via a emotional element.

eating sugar is not a requirement for survival. You can eat zero carbs and survive just fine. Not so for fats/proteins.

As someone who has a couple of decades of zero sugar fasting, strict paleo, and ultra low calorie dieting under his belt, this isn't true. There's nothing just fine about what happens when muscle glycogen depletes after several days of true zero carb dieting.

Even strictly cutting out starch becomes problematic after some time, though my experience is also that humans will get unique health benefits from doing that for stretches. Which avoids the trouble of all-in zero carb.

The guy in the video doesn't advocate for zero carb, just to clarify. Traditional diets in native populations worldwide are all varied and very different, some don't eat carbs and yet they are healthy. Probably something to do with their lifestyle also.

> This kind of attitude is absurd and counterproductive.

If you go in a supermarket in EU almost every food product contains sugar.

Why does a peas can has to contain sugar ?

Because peas contain sugar.

Do you mean the naturally occurring sugars (shown in the macronutrient label) or added sugars in the ingredient list?

If it's in the ingredients list, it is added. There's also a macronutrients table in every packaged article.

There is exactly one common brand of mayo that has no added sugar. One.

And there's no way to buy sugar-free versions of many other kinds of food, from fried tomatoes sauce, sausages, etc. that were traditionally made without sugar for centuries.

It's a plague.

If you go in a supermarket in EU almost every food product contains sugar.

That just means that the item contains sugars. It doesn't mean that we've added sugars to it. A fresh apple has sugar. A fresh tomato has sugar. Many if not most fruits and vegetables do. It shouldn't be a surprise that the canned/frozen varieties have a bit of sugar on the label.

If the label contains sugar, it was added and not inclusive of other whole ingredients. You can buy canned apples (ingredients :apples) and canned apples (ingredients :water, sugar, apples). Guess which costs more.

Why would you buy canned apples without sugar or vinegar as conservatives in the first place?

The pure apple in a can can't last for long.

I hate to be the pedant, but I think you meant preservatives. I kept imagining Mitt Romney in a tub with sliced apples and it was unnerving to say the least

Sorry didn't mean to make your imagination run wild :/

In many European languages preservative is the word for condom.

The nutrition label will tell you if it contains sugar even though none was added.

If the ingredient list contains sugar, it was added.

peas are mainly starch which are long chains of sugar.

I dont know if you particular peas have added sugar.

Living things contain protein (arrays of amino acids and sugars), lipids (fats), and carbohydrates (sugars). Much of this converts to glucose by digestion or combustion (which is how they measure calorie content and such).