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Comment by ablyveiled | Hacker News Reader

Added sugar is not necessarily problematic, but consumption of anti-thyroid substances like high amounts of PUFA (especially seed oils), chlorine, bromine, fluoride (in absence of iodine) can make it so, by way of increasing energy supply which is not properly consumed. Industrial pollutants like PFAS and hexane byproducts also play a role.

There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" -- it's good for you! It's an obscenely easily digestible source of energy, whose products are used very easily by the cells. In the case of fructose, its consumption is relatively more insulin-friendly than the glucose-heavy starches. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose.

Seriously "addictive" sugary foods are psychologically problematic usually for other reasons. Pure cane sugar is not very addictive when consumed alone. Try it.

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I think this is an example of proportionality bias. There's a cognitive bias that big effects (obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc) must have big and complex causes.

In reality, sugar is just straight-up bad in anything resembling the quantities we eat it, and we should not. It's addictive because there's very little of it in nature and it's high energy density. Therefore it makes sense to seek out. In our synthetic world, we can make as much as we want and eat it whenever we want.

The reward system exhibits unconstrained positive feedback.

As a counter-example there are tons of things that 'feel good' but are destructive, like opioids and cigarettes. Things that are addictive aren't de facto good for you. In fact they're usually very bad for you because they overload your reward feedback network.

> It's addictive because there's very little of it in nature and it's high energy density

Fat has 2.25x times the energy per gram that sugar does.

It's very weird to quote someone's sentence while deliberately ignoring half of it.

Counterpoint: Try munching on some pure cane sugar. Observe that it is not very addictive at all.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. Plenty of people all over the world drink literal cane juice. [1]

Not to mention cane sugar is just sucrose, also called table sugar, and it's the same as beet sugar.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane_juice

'Sucrose' is made up of glucose and fructose. Fructose is what people are talking about when they are talking about harmful effects of 'sugar'.

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

It is not much different than high fructose corn syrup.

"Sucrose is composed of 50% glucose and 50% fructose, whereas the forms of HFCS used in most foods and beverages are typically composed of 55% fructose and 45% glucose "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/

Where are you getting the idea that fructose is the sugar people consider harmful? That's definitely not mentioned in your supporting link - yes, HFCS and sucrose are the exact same to within a rounding error - except that HFCS is pre-digested corn starch, while sucrose requires enzymatic decomposition before it can be utilized by your body - a rate-limiting step after consumption.

Fructose just the principal sugar in fruit, and is used by diabetics as a sweetener. It has to be enzymatically decomposed in the liver, and doesn't yield a large insulin spike. The only particular risk is of non-alocoholic fatty liver disease if you consume way too much of it.

The point I was making in my reply was exactly what you said - there's no real difference between sucrose and HFCS, while the parent was implying there was. So at least on that we agree.

there's no difference between HFCS and sucrose Where are you getting the idea that fructose is the sugar people consider harmful?

"Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin."

https://robertlustig.com/sugar-the-bitter-truth/

That's definitely not mentioned in your supporting link

My link was showing that table sugar and high fructose corn syrup are not very different from each other.

The only particular risk is of non-alocoholic fatty liver disease if you consume way too much of it.

Everyone is consuming way too much of it, that's the point.

> My link was showing that table sugar and high fructose corn syrup are not very different from each other.

That's what I was saying too! Violent agreement :)

> Everyone is consuming way too much of it, that's the point.

Agreed!

> There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive"

Sugar on its own isn't addictive and isn't a necessary nor sufficient ingredient for hyperpalatability. Foods can be hyperpalatable without sugar, and in fact most (~70%) hyperpalatable foods have their hyperpalatability driven by fat and sodium:

> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9672140/

> The availability of HPF in the US food sysltem has expanded substantially over the past 30 years. The current US food supply is highly saturated with HPF, which our findings indicate comprised almost 70 % of available foods as of 2018. The growing availability of HPF over time, particularly HPF high in fat and Na, may have resulted from the reformulation of existing food products in the food system to be hyper-palatable. Thus, expanding HPF availability may be one key contributor to the obesogenic food environment in the US. Given potential consequences for population health, policy-level action is needed to address the presence of HPF in the food system. Policy may focus on limiting the nutrient thresholds allowed in foods to be below HPF thresholds (e.g. foods should contain <25 % kcal from fat and <0·30 % g from Na).

Yes, this is what I put forward at the end.

Agreed entirely. Even more glycemic foods than sugar (which is only half glucose), are not a metabolic problem. I started eating pasta, white bread, and white rice and have been able to lose weight. People on this very forum will tell me that what I do is impossible, but I'm done taking the advice of bots and people who aren't fit. I am downright skinny now. Go ahead and downvote my post, after all HN is an echo chamber full of IYIs and shills, is it not?

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