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Comment by Dirlewanger | Hacker News Reader

Another crutch for the general public's pathetic listlessness to bettering their diets. It's addictive in the way that marijuana is addictive: People are so used to it and therefore trick themselves into thinking they need that good feeling it provides; quitting overly-sugary stuff or marijuana cold turkey will not cause one's body to go into any sort of physiological distress (pulled that phrase out of my ass) as one would with heroin.

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"general public's pathetic listlessness to bettering their diets"

This is a terrible way to associate with and think about people.

There is another rampant addiction going around, phycological dependance on the feeling of smug satisfaction in one's own superiority given by partaking in – and to a larger degree talking about – the latest fad in ( health | diet | environment | programming language | life ).

Anecdotal warning, but I experienced really, really intense headaches for the first seven days after removing all forms of sugar from my diet. After that however it was really easy and right now I feel great and EVERYTHING tastes much, much sweeter.

In total I went 8 weeks without any sugar. I have no plans to ever return to incorporating it into my diet. I consider this move to be one of the best things I've done since removing nicotine and alcohol completely from my life.

What do you mean by "all forms of sugar"? Do you mean you stopped eating foods that were mostly sugar, or had a disproportionate amount of sugar, or stopped using sugar as an additive? Because if taken literally, you couldn't eat any fruit, vegetables and most bread.

Well I know personally I have switched to a "keto" diet, and continue to stay on it not due to weight loss but just the amazing concentration levels and feeling I get while on it.

You are limited to essentially 20g of carbs a day total. This is enough to get a healthy dose of vegetables (not fruit of any kind - leafy greens) and that is about it. Maybe a dollup of sriracha.

Either way, after being on the diet for a couple months I had one bite of a chocolate bar and let me tell you, the flavor was 1000x more intense and I felt no need for more after the first bite.

Of course this is one person's experience, YMMV.

People go on low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets and feel better because cortisol and adrenaline levels are boosted. It's like getting a cortisone shot. This affect can last a year or two. But then eventually stress hormone resistance develops and the whole thing falls apart with some ugly health consequences. People get crashed testosterone and thyroid levels and brain fog.

Sustained low carb is a bad idea. You are mimicking the metabolism of starvation. For the most part you want to be operating with glycogen topped up.

>You are mimicking the metabolism of starvation

Really? Because I feel a heck of a lot less hungry, and sometimes need to remind myself that it's past time to eat breakfast or lunch.

right. if parent is talking about switching to a ketogenic diet (hardly any carbs), feeling bad for a few weeks is entirely normal as your brain switches over to ketones for fuel. and your fluid / sodium levels adjust (one needs higher sodium intake during transition). and if parent cut out gluten, that has been reported to have opiate-like withdrawl symptoms as well.

sources: the art and science of low carb living, wheat belly

I should have been clearer. I was specifically referring to simple carbohydrates (glucose, fructose etc) and avoiding all and for a period of 8 weeks I consumed no fruit. During that time I consumed the main bulk of my diet consisted of legumes and vegetables. All meals were prepared and cooked by either myself or my wife.

We did consume rye bread, but that was made ourselves and used only the amount of sugar needed to activate the yeast.

After 8 weeks I have returned fruit into my diet, but always whole.

The point I was trying to make on the root comment in this, was that simply going cold turkey on sugar, in my case, wasn't hassle free because of the headaches, but it was worth it.

Well that's funny because I deliberately upped my sugar intake and improved my health and well being.

It can be surprisingly difficult to find food without lots of sugar or HFCS in it these days, especially if you are unable (for whatever reason) to cook from raw ingredients.

It's a thorny issue.

Indeed, and you find sugar in all sorts of places you might not expect. For example, Sriracha hot sauce: would you have guessed that the second ingredient is sugar?

Yes but just about any other hot sauce is safe. It is actually really easy to avoid HFCS. My girlfriend & I were laughing the other day as we have been on keto for about a month and we rarely go into the center isles of the grocery store anymore. Produce -> Meat Dpt -> Dairy -> Sauces/Spices -> Done.

Interesting heuristic...how do you handle canned vegetables, beans for instance? Or do you just soak them?

Unfortunately for this particular diet beans are off limits (rather high in carbs). That does not mean they are unhealthy or anything, just that they do not work with this particular diet.

We primarily only buy fresh vegetables. Lots of cabbage, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, onions, peppers, asparagus).

It's a tricky line. I cook a lot and I don't have a sweet tooth in general (though I have some particular favorite sweets, of course). I've come to realize that I'm actually deficient in knowing when I should use sugar as an ingredient; because I only think of it as a sweetener (and have little desire to sweeten the food I cook), I've become ignorant of when you need to use it (for texture, to offset an undesirable sour or bitter flavor, or for other chemical properties).

> to offset an undesirable sour or bitter flavor

It's better to err on the side you're on, because that justification covers quite a lot of ground. For instance, it's hard to find tomato without sugar in prepared food. Or anything else without sugar, actually.

Seems that food companies are afraid of "tasting bad" and just throw sugar in there willy-nilly, with the consequences now in plain sight, to say the least.

Yes, I would have guessed. Can people not taste how sweet it is?

If you use it in the suggested amounts I believe it is only a gram or two of extra sugar. Not enough to make much of a difference.

I don't think that this is entirely fair.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/01/dining/nacho-g...

You could probably argue convincingly that sugar and doritos are actually more compelling to the public, because they are specifically engineered to defeat our body's natural mechanisms for regulating diet.

Such a lazy dismissal of a complex issue. It is entirely possible that there is a spectrum of susceptibility to fructose addiction. Just because it is easy for me to drink alcohol and not get addicted does not mean that it is equally easy for every person to not become addicted. I do not look down upon alcoholics and I certainly do not look down upon the obese. It is a medical problem that we need to figure out.

If you entertain the idea that some but not all people have a susceptibility to fructose addiction and then consider that a very large portion of the food supply is 'supplemented' with sugar you can begin to imagine just one of the reasons why obesity has been on such a rise.

Actually there are symptoms shown when one reduces sugar intake. Nothing quite like heroin or other opiates though.

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