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Comment by TylerLives | Hacker News Reader

Eating a lot of anything can be harmful, but at this point it's widely accepted that eating sugar isn't more likely to cause diabetes. See this article if you wish to know more https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml

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> For example, fruits have many advantages over grains, besides the difference between sugar and starch. Bread and pasta consumption are strongly associated with the occurrence of diabetes, fruit consumption has a strong inverse association.

Is this true? Where are the sources?

At the bottom. But quite frankly you can get whatever result you like out of nutritional approaches by picking sources. I mean that's how they do meta-analysis studies. Pick an answer, fit the sources to it and publish. Then get picked up by some idiotic media on a slow news day and the next thing you have is a diet fad.

Eat anything that is actually food, in moderation.

Not trying to be contrarian here, but this statement goes against everything I've read. Happy to learn something new, but this source is sketchy at best - do you have any additional sources of more merit?

Not sure what constitutes merit to you, but here is American Diabetes Association saying it's a myth that diabetes is caused by eating sugar - http://main.diabetes.org/ws/ADM/MRC_ADM_2018_Myths.pdf

Thanks, this is good. I wasn't trying to discredit, the site just seemed unprofessional and gave me a vibe.

I am curious, like the other poster, how it says eating sugar isn't necessarily a cause but sugary drinks are. I wonder if that's due to their use of fructose?

It could be because of other lifestyle choices or predispositions which correlate with drinking sugary drinks. It could also be because those drinks don't have potassium or other nutrients which are present in fruits.

That's a weird pamphlet. It goes on to say sugary soda increases risk because it's calorie and carbohydrate high.

I get that "cause" is too strong, genetic predisposition is a huge factor, etc.

But can we really expect that an 1800 calorie/day diet of sugar cubes is no more likely to cause insulin insensitivity than 1800 calories of non-sugary/starchy food?

Comparing things in isolation like that is not very useful because you need other nutrients too. If a person ate 1800 calories from milk, orange juice and some amount of white sugar, honey etc. I don't think they would be more likely to develop insulin insensitivity. Sugar shouldn't be eaten alone. I'm not sure if this is true, but Ray Peat here claims that potassium has a similar role to insulin, so eating fruits and milk won't negatively affect your blood sugar as much - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYAihAkCaw8

Certainly. Lots of ways to blunt sugar's effects on blood-sugar by eating it with something else. And this can be specific to individuals. Apples don't impact me much at all, but do for other people.

My contrived sugar-cube-diet is dumb. I only mean, if insulin resistance is a problem you want to avoid, don't demand your body produce tons of insulin all the time to counter consuming things that spike blood-sugar.

I'm only weirded out by the specific "Type 2 diabetes is not caused by sugar, but by genetics and lifestyle factors." when the "lifestyle factors" listed in the pamphlet include diets high in sugar.

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