Soft drink consumption and increased risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease | Hacker News Reader

Soft drink consumption and increased risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

sciencedirect.com

26 pointslawgimenez14 comments

Could it be because HFCS, like Sucrose is about half Fructose and that Fructose is only metabolized by the liver... Not to mention the damage Fructose causes, similar to glycation but without anything resembling reliable testing. So basically everything bad about alcohol for the body but without the negative reinforcement of a headache after.

Similar for fruit juice. In nature, people weren't drinking fruit smoothies by the liter year round either.

When I was a kid, my grandmothers had these tiny 1/2 cup glasses for "fruit juice" which was a serving.. and you should "only have one serving a couple times a week." That's just not what people do today.

It’s fructose. Europe has NAFLD and practically no HFCS products. Unfortunately many are also heavy drinkers there so the NAFLD gets masked.

I suppose I don't think too much about the type of sugars in my fruits. We're approaching the end of my fruit picking season but yesterday I probably ate ~3-5 pears worth of scraps/discards while processing a bunch for pear sauce. During huckleberry season my picking for the winter is limited by the amount I eat since each bush obviously must be sampled for flavor.

> Could it be because HFCS, like Sucrose is about half Fructose and that Fructose is only metabolized by the liver

The study “defined” soft drinks “as the intake of carbonated drinks such as cola or other flavors,” and excluded “diet/zero calories” soft drinks. (Frustratingly, they don’t mention if unflavored soda counted.)

So unclear from these data, from what I can tell.

Yup. Known at least 11 years ago.

https://youtu.be/ceFyF9px20Y

We still live in the shadow of the Temperance movement, where alcohol was demonized and liver disease became its symbol. But modern science shows that sugary drinks, even fruit juice, can cause the same liver issues once blamed solely on alcohol.

Maybe the real takeaway isn’t “avoid alcohol,” but “understand what harms the liver.” We’ve moralized one source of damage while ignoring others.

This is not really modern science.

It has been known for millennia that overfeeding geese with sweet fruits is how you make "foie gras" (which is why in the Romance languages the name for liver comes from figs, replacing the original Indo-European name, which was still used in Classic Latin).

There is no surprise that the same thing happens in humans.

The liver must process all the fructose from sugar and all the alcohol that are ingested. Excessive amounts of either of them will overload the liver capacity of processing them, which also varies between humans.

> in the Romance languages the name for liver comes from figs, replacing the original Indo-European name, which was still used in Classic Latin

Liver comes “from Proto-Germanic librn” [1]. Meanwhile, “the Ancient Greek and Latin words for liver (hepar and iecur) always referred to ‘liver’ directly” [2]. (“The original PIE word would have sounded something like yoqur or yequr.”) None of which sounds like the Latin ficus for fig. (EDIT: Oh, that’s the point.)

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/liver

[2] https://www.journal-of-hepatology.eu/article/S0168-8278(24)0...

The Romance languages did not inherit the Latin word "iecur", which is cognate with the Greek "hepar", both being inherited from PIE.

Portuguese: figado

Spanish: higado

Catalan: fetge

French: foie

Italian: fegato

Romanian: ficat

all being derived from Late Latin "ficatum", which comes from "ficus", Latin for "fig".

Oooh, I see what you mean. Thank you—super interesting.

Strange that the PIE word made it to Greek and Latin but not German.

What a weird spin to defend alcohol

Thanks :) It is weird

80% of people with NAFLD have normal enzyme markers and 92% have no cirrhosis at all.

> 80% of people with NAFLD have normal enzyme markers and 92% have no cirrhosis at all

Source?

The article says “liver enzyme concentrations, such as alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) have been used as a proxy for NAFLD at the population level. Although not all people with elevated liver enzyme levels have or will progress to NAFLD, these clinical measures are broadly recognized as appropriate to identify and monitor those who are potentially at risk.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com