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Comment by dinfinity | Hacker News Reader

Nope, still bullshit. The world does not consist of Americans. For billions of people it is very very easy to get their body into a low blood glucose state. No 'super heavy physical activity' required.

Don't get me wrong: In most of those cases eating something else would be better, but that does not make sugar 'bad in general'. Nutrition discourse does not benefit from such bad and misleading vilifications and simplifications. It causes people to think in 'silver bullets' and distrust science and government when that silver bullet turns out not to work.

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> In most of those cases eating something else would be better

Ok, let’s say “worse than other foods” then, if you dislike the word “bad”.

I don't "dislike the word bad". It simply does not apply here and is semantically different from "worse than". One is relative and the other (subjectively) absolute.

Getting hit on the foot with a sledgehammer is bad for you. But it's better than getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer. Using "better than" here does not make the former good for you, however.

That's how language works. It is important to be precise, for earlier mentioned reasons.

So we agree there is no contradiction, it can be “bad“ and “worse than” at the same time.

My point was, I do not see a contradiction between the two, hence I do not understand why you are stating is cannot be “bad”.

"Not as goods" and "bad" are two different things.

White meat is not as good as an egg. It "bad" too by this logic.

I think what I mean by "bad" is that removing sugar (or at least food with added sugar) is like a low-hanging fruit on the road to a better diet.

White bread is not too far away from sugar, like alcohol, actually. Replacing white bread with something full grain would also be something "good" for your diet – although in some places it's really hard to find full grain bread that doesn't taste like parchment, so maybe a not-so-low-hanging fruit ;)

Finally, I think I am compounding the refined sugar and the sugar lobby itself, who has been pushing for decades that what is bad for health is fat, whereas study after study proved otherwise.

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