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Comment by tsigo | Hacker News Reader

Still no recommended daily allowance for sugar, huh?

Current WHO guidelines state 6 teaspoons a day total sugar intake for the highest level of health benefits. Really wish food regulatory organisations like this would start actually taking note of that

That equates to 24g (1tsp of sugar is 4g) or around the same as in a can of Coke. That seems very low, is the sugar overuse that bad?

Note that a few papers (forgot the link) found that naturally occuring sugar is fine. (I ate a banana and two oranges today and that's already above 24g of sugar, so I got worried and went to do some research..)

It's not that you can eat as much sugar as you want as long as it's not refined. For example, after your fruit consumption, you should have brushed your teeth (according to 'the guidelines'). The thing is that 50 grams of sugar is just really, really low...

That may seem low by the amounts of sugar you are used to using. But its high in terms of human homeostasis.

Consider this:

Normal human blood sugar [1]: 70-100 milligrams per deciliter of blood.

Blood volume of average human [2]: 5.5 liters

Thus, total blood sugar in non-diabetic human: 3.85 to 5.5 grams

Density of glucose: 1.54 grams per cubic centimeter

Thus, total volume of sugar in average human: 2.5 to 3.6 milliliters

In other words, your body does its best to cap the amount of sugar flowing through you at about one-half teaspoon. A 12 ounce can of coke has 39 grams of sugar, or 7-10 times what the human body considers normal. Its a tremendous shock to the system - the resulting insulin response sends your body on a roller coaster of hormone regulation.

So the WHO recommendation is actually a lot more strict than it might seem at first glance. Not only should your total sugar intake be capped at a low level, it should also be spread throughout the day.

[1] https://www.virginiamason.org/whatarenormalbloodglucoselevel...

[2] http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21...

Edit: This is the whole point about trying to eat low-glycemic index foods.

I watches a few videos by Robert Lustig at UCSF. My take away is healthwise a can of Coke == one shot of booze. Partly because the fructose in HFCS and or table sugar shares the same metabolic pathway in the liver as ethanol. People that eat a lot of sugar tend to develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

24 grams HFCS is 14 grams fructose. A shot of 40 proof booze is 14 of grams ethanol.

Also the slug of glucose in a can of Coke spikes your blood sugar, which spikes your insulin levels. This is also not good. Take away from that eat complex carbs. Difficulty a lot of 'health food' contains processed carbs.

My gut unsupported feeling is, people living sedentary lifestyles, which is most people, don't require much in the way of carbohydrates.

I have mixed feelings about Lustig. A lot of his theories make good scientific sense but the experimental observations just don't add up. Still I agree with him in saying that the fat-free fad have probably done more harm than good since a lot of the supposedly low fat food have heaps of added sugar to maintain the taste and people end up eating way more calories than needed.

That's the WHO guideline for what they consider 'very good'. However the actual, realistic guidelines are 2-3 times as much across the world; and most people don't even manage to stay below that.

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