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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

This is ridiculous. Sugars are fundamental bio-molecules and are essential for life.

Yes, we know that over-eating causes diabetes and obesity. And this study says that foods high in sugar pose the greatest threat. But seriously, are we going to start to say that sugar is toxic in the same way that cigarettes are toxic? We can manage the dangers of sugar toxicity pretty easily by exercising. The damage done by smoking... not so much.

This reminds me of a pet peeve that my grad advisor had. In our area it was common to see signs that said something to the effect of "No dumping of chemicals". He loved to point out that water was a chemical.

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I think the point that is left out by the article, but emphasized by Robert Lustig (Dr. mentioned in the article) is that sugar, in nature, is almost always accompanied by large quantities of fiber, which prevent it from being absorbed too quickly.

Sugar isn't toxic, but refined sugar, or sugar that has been separated from the fiber it sits with (fruit juice) is indirectly toxic. Dr. Lustig's research has demonstrated this, and he has some very detailed lectures on the subject. He isn't some quack: he is a leading researcher in both understanding AND TREATING pediatric Type II Diabetes, which is a newly occurring disease.

When I drink a beer, I understand that the alcohol I love so much in it is essentially a toxin, that in low enough quantities won't hurt me. I also know that regualr, periodic consumption of it will negatively effect my health. Oddly enough, Lustig's research has shown that fructose, in quantities which are completely normal for someone who has just consumed a moderate amount of refined sugar or fruit juice, has a very similar effect on the liver to alcohol. Not completely identical, but similar. I suggest you watch the video.

I have a 6 year old son and a second child on the way. The only fruit juice he gets to have is extremely diluted with water. This isn't me overreacting as an ignoramus. I've looked at the data, evaluated the research, and found it extremely compelling. Ever use a juicer? Think about how many oranges it takes to make an 8 oz. glass. (It takes several, and if you tried to eat that many, you would be full halfway through due to the fiber.) Refined sugar is just juiced sugar cane with extra chemical preparation.

Oranges are good for you. Orange juice is bad for you. I know it screams out BS, but I assure you, look at the science. You will, as I was, be shocked. How the hell can this stuff I've been eating all my life be THIS bad for me, without me knowing it.

Moderate alcohol consumption actually increases longevity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_alcohol. So regular periodic consumption of a reasonable amount of alcohol is actually helping you.

I read an article just recently that argues that the reasonable amount may be much lower than many people think.

http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/how-much-alc...

But there is little variation in one respect. The optimal amount of alcohol is somewhere around 5 and 7 g/d, which translates into about the following every day: half a can of beer, half a glass of wine, or half a “shot” of spirit.

I made juice this morning: 2 oranges, 2 kiwi, and 1 grapefruit. Made two cups of juice for my wife and me. I don't know about the science of sugar, but eating 1 orange, 1 kiwi, and half a grapefruit doesn't seem excessive to me.

If you ate the fruit it would be much better for you. Instead you are basically taking something healthy overall, extracting the candy part out, and throwing away the parts that are best for you.

Well, atleast he's getting some vitamins and minerals.

Eating fruit is better than drinking fresh fruit juice, which is better than drinking Mountain Dew.

If hewere drinking the fruit juice in place of Mountain Dew it might be better, but I doubt he was chugging Mountain Dew for breakfast before he started drinking fruit juice.

The problem is that people think fruit juice is healthy and nutritious, and they aren't aware they should limit consumption.

We started drinking juice to replace cereal in the morning and to increase our vegetable intake. This morning, I just happened to only use fruit.

I'd bet that eating the fruit & vegetables would be better. But at this point, neither my wife or I will be eating kale or celery for breakfast. Juicing helps us at least some vegetables in our diet. Baby steps.

But if you ate that fruit you'd be full, and thus less likely to eat other stuff.

And that one cup of juice could be swigged down easily. You can see how some people would just pour another glass? (Especially if they think undiluted juice is healthy?)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+oranges%2C+2+kiwis%2C...

56 grams of sugar total

Total sugar/serving:

28 grams

Total sugar/serving of a 12 oz. Coca Cola:

36 grams

Would you think that drinking more than 2/3's of a can of Coca Cola every morning would be healthy, if you were to add a bunch of vitamin C and whatever nutrients are present in Kiwi/Grapefruit to go along with it?

>> Ever use a juicer? Think about how many oranges it takes to make an 8 oz. glass. (It takes several, and if you tried to eat that many, you would be full halfway through due to the fiber.)

I was replying to that quote of yours, meaning that it doesn't take an excessive amount of fruit to make 8 oz. of juice.

I admitted that I don't know about the science of sugar, but I have a hard time believing that fresh fruit juice is equivalent to Coca Cola with some vitamins added in.

The juice thing is a bit more complex, because it depends on the type and form of the juice and what you do or eat along with it. I find that clear apple, grape and pineapple juice is not ideal, but very pulpy orange juice or very cloudy apple juice is fine, especially combined with exercise or the right meal as long as it's in proportions of how much of said fruit you would normally consume.

> I find that ...

I'd love know more, where did you find this out?

Personal anecdotal experience. I've been having sugar metabolism issues which was diagnosed when I was quite young, basically reactive hypoglycemia after ingesting refined sugar. I was put on a controlled sugar free diet for a couple of years, then ignored it for much of my teens, and then sortof veered back onto it over the years. I was allowed fruit juices as a kid but was warned against consuming too many grapes. The main thing it seems to affect with me is an increased inattentiveness, and my ability to fall asleep at night. So I cut out sugar during my working day, and since I work on the computer I can determine how much I switch away from tasks (without realising I have drifted off, until later). I also cut it out in the evenings, since most days it makes it hard for me to fall asleep, similar to other forms of stimulation (e.g. suspenseful movies etc.) that keeps my mind racing. I also have a slightly increased heart rate. I have found what fruits and combinations work, or rather which ones doesn't work for me (e.g. if it's after 2am and I'm still awake after having a very relaxed evening). This is kind of in line with the findings from Langseth and Dowd and also Girardi on attention and sugar.

I have generally had no problem with orange juice (regardless of how clear it is), but clear pineapple and grape not.

My issues with it is not directly related to the toxicity theory, but I do think what throws my insulin response out of whack is probably the types of sugar that can be considered more on the toxic side.

I'm also pretty fond of aspartame and saccarin. There's the very vague and rather unproven risk of cancer on the one hand (which also doesn't run in my family), or the clear risk of diabetes (runs in my family) on the other hand.

No matter how pulpy the orange juice is, if you are drinking it in any kind of remotely large quantity (> 4 oz) you are taking in a ton of fructose that is not bound to fiber. Bound to fiber != mixed in a solution with fiber. The juicing is nothing more than breaking down the fibrous tissue of the fruit to release the bound up liquids. Its not about the amount of fructose, it's about the amount of fructose absorbed per unit of time. Juicing makes the fructose able to be rapidly absorbed.

Orange juice has an advantage of its flavonoids. I didn't really think it made much difference until another health nut pointed me to the studies. It does behave differently than other juices.

I was a low-carb zealot until I started learning about endotoxin (I also had some random health issues on low carb like severely low blood pressure) and I started drinking orange juice again.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20067961 is just one study, there are others. I try to accompany my meals with some flavonoid-rich food or beverage. My biomarkers have not shown any indication that I am heading towards diabetes and are identical to those I had on a low-carb diet.

I'd like to thank you for bringing some sanity into this thread, and (hopefully) provoking some of the commenters here into doing some further reading.

The kind of thought process that causes someone to go "Fructose is a sugar, fructose is in fruit, article says sugar is bad, therefore article says fruit is bad!!11one" is quite frustrating to watch. The levels of uninformed snark in this thread is quite depressing, and is one of the main reasons I usually prefer not to see non-technical discussions on HN.

(Not that I know any better, but I recognise my lack of knowledge and attempt to address it before spouting forth opinions.)

I agree with your general sentiment, but one thing you said bears correction:

>We can manage the dangers of sugar toxicity pretty easily by exercising.

No, not really. Our bodies run on glucose yet our diets are rife with fructose which must be converted by our livers into a usable form. The metabolic pathway responsible for this conversion is a bottleneck and has nothing to do with how much exercise we get.

Thank you. It's frustrating how much ignorance there is related to the blind "a calorie is a calorie" and "calories in = calories out = health" lunacy.

It's not very logical until you learn the science behind it:

If I want less of something (fat) on my body, I eat less of it, right? But I actually have to keep my fat consumption the same and eat less carbs.

You can probably increase your fat consumption, eat less carb, and still lose weight. Shoot for less than 50 grams or carbs a day.

I was thinking more in terms of glycogen and lipid getting burned up during exercise. Whatever glucose you can't use gets converted in one way or another. I'm sure there are nuances, and it's been a while since I had to be able to recite the TCA pathway, but isn't fructose converted to glycogen? So, can't it be burned for energy like anything else? It's one of the metabolites for the TCA cycle, right?

Not to mention, this article (and this thread) are all playing fast and loose with all sorts of scientific terminology... :)

> We can manage the dangers of sugar toxicity pretty easily by exercising.

The assertion being made is that that's not true:

"The study controlled for poverty, urbanization, aging, obesity and physical activity"

(emphasis added)

>Sugars are fundamental bio-molecules and are essential for life.

That's not necessarily true. Humans do not need sugars from external sources to survive.

>“The amount of sugar needed by the body is zero as the body can produce and absorb sugar from consumption of other daily food supplements.

http://www.theborneopost.com/2010/01/10/human-body-can-survi...

Also see:

http://www.theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower-he...

The no-sugar diets are unsurprisingly popular these days in one of their many forms: Atkins diet, paleo, keto, primal, etc: I personally tried Keto for 6 months and lost 30 kilos and plateaued at a normal weight. I felt great and had lots of energy.

I would actually opine that consuming more sugars than, say, a couple pieces of fruit or a loaf of bread every day, is quite toxic.

It's only relatively late in human evolution we obtained access to lots of sugar.

Again, this is not just some blind data cherry-pick, "zucchini-eaters live longer". Robert Lustig has written and spoked extensively about his hypothesis for why fructose is toxic for the human liver and metabolism[1]. It's a controversial idea, but IMO he has made a compelling argument and is now gathering data which supports the hypothesis.

If you want to argue against the hypothesis, please do.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.htm...

You fail reading forever.

It's not sugarS. He didn't talk about sugar>S<. Nobody is claiming that the entire family of sugar>>>>>>>S<<<<<< is toxic. The title is "SUGAR is toxic" (see, no sugar>>S<<. It's not sugarS. He isn't talking about a class of molecules.)

SUGAR - a.k.a. sucrose, saccharose, one part glucose and one part fructose, either bound in a single molecule or alone in what's called HFCS. Extracted. Alone by itself or mixed in a liquid. IS TOXIC.

THAT sugar.

NOT sugarS.

No, if you read the article, the Methods section says "sugars". They don't have data for just sucrose.

In science, "sugar" is a class of molecules, of which sucrose is one. One thing I'm trying to point out the difference between common language uses of scientific terms.

The other is the sheer ludicrous nature of the statement "sugar is toxic" (meaning sucrose). No, it isn't. Too much sugar in your diet can lead to health problems, but you will not die from eating sugar.

In sufficient quantities, even water is toxic to some degree (and I'm not even talking about drowning).

So, why don't you tone it down a little.

If sugar causes diabetes and people die of diabetes, doesn't that mean that the amount of sugar that is commonly consumed is toxic?

By the logic you've laid out, cigarettes aren't toxic. Smoking them can cause a variety of diseases that kill you.

Water isn't toxic, yet drinking too much water can cause your blood to become so diluted that you can die (water intoxication/hyponatremia). And yet water is essential for life.

Consuming sugar (in some form, not necessarily sucrose) is also essential for life. It's what your brain runs on. So to call it toxic is quite a stretch.

I'm not criticizing the research. I haven't read the paper and I probably won't - it's not my field. But I am criticizing the overly broad generalities in the NYT article.

Consuming any amount of any form of pure sugar will spike your blood glucose. If it's a small enough amount, the spike will be small enough that it won't do you harm, but the human body evolved to handle gradual rises in blood glucose, like complex carbohydrates cause, not spikes. Comparing that to water is a stretch.

Commonly consumed amounts of water don't make you ill. Commonly consumed amounts of sugar do make you ill.

Is it an exaggeration to call trans fats toxic? Your body can use them to run, but if you eat them, you'll get sick.

The article unhelpfully uses the term "sugar" broadly when a more specific term would be clearer, using a few specific terms only in passing. Then mentions the causality problem by claiming it's also impossible to "prove" climate change or that smoking causes cancer (???). It says in one place that fructose is the problem, but concludes that "sugar" is toxic.

I feel bad for the authors of this study.

Actually yeah, just like a cigarette here and there is not the same in effect as smoking a pack a day, some fructose and other sugars here and there are probably not going to hurt you, but there are noticeable long term effects of constantly having too much sugar.

Further comparison: sugars and nicotine both trigger dopamine cycles that can turn into mental dependence on higher doses, feeding the negative affects even more.

Finally, I can't wait to see all the backpedalling from food companies about how the healthy staple foods they load up with sugar (e.g. whole wheat bread) are actually and 'obviously' just meant to be treats. 'the added sugar should be a give away, its right there in the small print on the back of the label, under the "this is super healthy" label'.

The backpedalling needs to come from the federal government. After all, they have been promoting the idea of the food pyramid and "a calorie is a calorie" for decades. The food companies are definitely influenced by what the federal government says is healthy and what they convince people is healthy.

Sugars may not be "toxic" per se but dietary intake of sugar or carbohydrate is certainly not essential for human life. Your liver will create glucose when needed and your brain will happily burn ketone bodies when it isn't available. You can easily survive on a diet of mostly animal fat.

I'm seeing this as yet another attempt by people to justify their own poor health. Clearly it cannot possibly be their portions that are to blame, but rather society, big bones, genetics, and now the food itself being "toxic". Anything to avoid reality.

Fructose is not the problem. Too much fructose is the problem. I think it is no coincidence that the sensational spin the news has put on this story also happens to be a spin that makes their readers feel better about themselves.

I'm seeing this as yet another attempt by people to justify their own poor health. Clearly it cannot possibly be their portions that are to blame, but rather society, big bones, genetics, and now the food itself being "toxic". Anything to avoid reality.

This paragraph demonstrates a widely held, thinly veiled contempt for those with a less fortunate metabolism. This contempt is disgusting, because it is willfully ignorant of all the scientific research that indicates there is a lot more than mere willpower that determines a person's behavior, including eating habits.

As with any religiously held position of superiority, people will continue to justify this contempt with all manner of carefully worded excuses for their desire to feel better than those fat people over there. When does it end?

I think it is no coincidence that the sensational spin the news has put on this story also happens to be a spin that makes their readers feel better about themselves.

What point are you trying to make? That the news should be trying to make people hate themselves more than they already do? Good grief! This research isn't about justifying behavior, it's about identifying the chemical processes driving various metabolic phenomena so they can be controlled and corrected!

You know what about this reseasrch would make an obese reader feel better about himself or herself? It's the fact that, finally, someone has identified a specific mechanism that is causing their problems! It's the hope that comes from having a direction of attack that's more effective than self deprivation.

I never said that eating less was easy. I am not sure how you read that from what I wrote.

> What point are you trying to make? That the news should be trying to make people hate themselves more than they already do?

No, my point is that the news should not be trying to make people hate themselves less. Editorializing with peoples feelings in mind may be good business sense, but nevertheless I find it contemptible.

> This research isn't about justifying behavior

I like the research. The research is great. My issue is with the editorializing.

> those fat people over there

It sounds like you are making an assumption about me that is rather false.

> > those fat people over there

> It sounds like you are making an assumption about me that is rather false.

Given your original post about "people trying to justify their poor health" and "big bones", I'd say that assumption is pretty accurate.

Fat people are not "those people over there" to me. I am in that group. Actually no, I am not "fat". I am 15 pounds over the line between overweight and obese; I am a "fucking lardass".

The fact is that many fat people come up with all sorts of justifications and excuses to try to make themselves feel better. If you honestly have not noticed this tendency, take a look at the "fat/body acceptance" social movement. It is a real phenomenon, not imagined.

Right, so all of the conventional wisdom that you're putting out (portion control, willpower, "fucking lardass", etc.) has essentially been shown to be wrong. Homeostasis is a bitch.

Weight control is far more about maintaining healthy insulin and hormone levels - more sleep, less sugar, alcohol and carbs, some moderate exercise but not full-on jogging - than denying yourself food.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading "Good Calories, Bad Calories" - it goes into a lot of the scientific background, weight loss and overfeeding studies, etc.

Your body doesn't have permission to violate conservation of mass and energy. If you put yourself in a caloric deficit, you will lose weight, as I have been doing.

Is it easy? Fuck no. Do different bodies react in different ways? Of course. Is there nuance involved in making sure your body reacts optimally for weight loss? Of course Are most overweight people consuming gargantuan proportions of shit? You better fucking believe it.

If you live a sedentary lifestyle and consume many thousands of calories a day, fixing the problem isn't rocket science. Pretty fucking simple, and pretty fucking hard.

The fact that I am a fucking lardass is not conventional wisdom, nor has it essentially shown to be wrong. It is a simple fact. No idea what you were trying to get at there.

"If you put yourself in a caloric deficit, you will lose weight, as I have been doing."

It sounds like you think establishing a caloric deficit is as simple as forcing yourself to eat less and exercise more. Research says it isn't. Some diets result in a lowered desire to eat. Some diets result in an increased metabolism.

What you are saying is that some diets are better than others. I would never dream of disputing that, and I don't think I have been disputing that.

That's not precisely conservation of mass and energy. At least not in the conventional E=mc^2 sense.

I never said that eating less was easy. I am not sure how you read that from what I wrote.

That's just it. It is easy. It's absolutely, effortlessly, ridiculously freaking easy. If you're lucky enough to have my metabolism. I can buy basic, average quality food, eat to satiety, binge during the holidays, occasionally eat an entire bag of candy, and barely move the needle on the scale. It's not fair! But it's reality, and my luck with regard to metabolism is compensated for by other things about myself that are less fortunate.

While the arguments from conservation of matter and energy are obviously true, they are not the best guide to find actual success in eating. Human bodies are fantastically complex systems of systems. Human metabolism is a chemical system with an insane number of components. Conscious decision is only a very small part of that system, with the vast majority being controlled by autonomous chemical and neurological processes.

Attacking obesity by focusing on portion control and willpower seems rather like trying to control a PC by carefully fluctuating the voltage coming into its power supply.

So when news outlets start reporting on some part of the problem other than portion control, don't take it personally; take it as looking at the big picture.

> Too much fructose is the problem.

Or maybe the problem is that your portions could be small and still contain too much fructose. I remember watching a talk where speaker claimed it's not easy to find just some bread without added fructose at a grocery store nowadays (I think it was Dr. Lustig's presentation, actually).

I remember watching a talk where speaker claimed it's not easy to find just some bread without added fructose at a grocery store nowadays.

Solution: don't eat any bread.

I've been on the Paleo diet for a couple weeks and am loving it. I cook my own meals now, and whenever I get a sweet tooth I just pop open a can of pineapple chunks.

Bread was invented when agriculture was invented. But our body wasn't designed (by evolution) to process a diet of agriculture. It can process it, just like a car can run on corn starch, but it's probably not very good for the system.

I don't necessarily buy the evolution argument, the extent to which some human adults are lactose tolerant is a very recent evolutionary development which coincides approximately with the development or agriculture, but the conclusion is nevertheless sound. Stop eating bread, or at least so much of it.

People binge on bread these days, it is insane. It is no wonder that any amount of fructose in bread can be alarming when you look at how much is consumed.

I'm interested in counterpoints to the evolution argument. Not to prove myself right; just the opposite. I enjoy proving myself wrong, since it means I've probably learned something.

The logic is this: evolution is supreme. It's why our eyes see brightness logarithmically rather than linearly. In fact, every sensory input (sound, etc) except pain is logarithmic. Pain is linear. We see green more intensely than other colors because we've spent a long time hunting for prey that hides in green grass and green tree leaves. Evolution determines the very nature of our thinking patterns. It's why some people count "out loud" to themselves in their heads, whereas others count by "seeing" the numbers in their heads. Etc. There are at least thousands of examples of how evolution has forged our state of being.

Evolution determines so much of our nature that in comparison we have very little control over aspects of ourselves. One thing we do control is input to our bodies. We can control whether we watch TV, and we can control which foods we eat. The question here is, which foods should we eat?

One view is that if we eat foods we've been eating for the past million years, then we probably don't have to worry about which foods we eat. The answer is simply, "Eat any which haven't been designed by humans in the past 10,000 years."

In the USA, foods are required by law to list every ingredient. This is a huge advantage if one were to read them. If I see corn starch, soy, sugar (if it's added as an ingredient, then that means the food is artificial), etc, then I don't buy it.

It's incredible how many foods are excluded by this method. You almost can't find ham that hasn't had sugar added. I pretty much have to buy summer sausage, pork steaks, and chicken. No more bologna.

I'm afraid I don't have very much insight into the matter. All I know is that it seems apparent that evolution can change human dietary constraints in surprisingly short periods of time, particularly over the short course of 10,000 years.

Paleo diets still seem like a good idea to me, I just remain unconvinced that this is clearly due to evolution. Other types of restricted diets seem to stack up well; the diet seems sound but the justifications seem a bit pseudo-sciency.

Sugars are fundamental bio-molecules and are essential for life.

So is carbon dioxide, but in the political vernacular it's now a "pollutant".

Obviously there is a sense in which it's true that sugar can be toxic and carbon dioxide can pollute, but these kinds of word games aren't meant to convey that sense, they're designed to confuse people. I think less of the writers and politicians who use them.

The title is pure linkbait. What they are trying to hide behind their typical populist wording is that the confidence levels linking increased sugar intake to an increase in diabetes are just as high as those linking cigarettes to lung cancer.

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