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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

it is false to say in the context of general advice for people without regard to where they stand diet and healthwise that a piece of candy a day won't cause them diabetes.

If all people took that non-fact to heart and started eating a piece of candy a day that they weren't eating before, without changing the rest of their diet, then we would have more people with diabetes and other health conditions, all without moving any goalposts.

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This is also true for apples, but if you said "eating an apple every day for 3 years will likely bring other health effects (primarily, obesity and diabetes) that will ruin that person's life before the lack of access to medical care gets them" you would probably be mocked. You're not going to get fat from one piece of chocolate a day unless you're already on the edge, and if you're on the edge then it doesn't matter very much that chocolate is what took you over it.

No we wouldn't. If these hypothetical people are that close to the edge where 10 grams of sugar and 70 calories would do this, they'd develop the diseases anyway. So the number would be the same.

If someone is eating exactly enough calories to covere TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and is thus at maintenance, given that 70 calories given in the most efficient form (carbohydrate) would mean little energy lost to processing, and 1 gram of fat is 9 calories, that's 7.7 grams of fat added every day. In 3 months, that's ~700 grams of fat added. 1 year, ~2.8 kilos. In 5 years, over 14 kilos.

That rough calculation won't be highly accurate for a number of reasons, but you could halve it and it still is very bad, thus it goes to show how easily fat can accumulate once maintenance calories are breached. Take care of the pennies and the pounds add up. Same goes for calories.

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