Higher Risks of Stroke and Heart Disease Linked to Added Sugars (cnn.com) 77
A new study on added sugars (also known as "free sugars") concluded they're bad for your health, reports NBC News.
"The research, published in the journal BMC Medicine, found that diets higher in free sugars — a category that includes sugar added to processed foods and sodas, as well as that found in fruit juice and syrups — raise one's risk of heart disease and stroke." The study relied on data about the eating habits of more than 110,000 people ages 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom, whose health outcomes were then tracked over about nine years. The results suggested that each 5% increase in the share of a person's total energy intake that comes from free sugars was associated with a 6% higher risk of heart disease and a 10% higher risk of stroke.
An author of the study, Cody Watling, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, said the most common forms of sugar the study participants ate were "preserves and confectionary," with the latter category including cookies, sugary pastries and scones. Fruit juice, sugar-sweetened beverages and desserts were also common, he added.... The people found to have the highest risk of heart disease or stroke consumed about 95 grams of free sugar per day, or 18% of their daily energy intake, Watling said. By comparison, U.S. guidelines suggest that added sugars should make up no more than 10% of one's daily calories.
"Avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages is probably the single most important thing we can be doing," said Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard University who was not involved in the study. Willett added that although there are some health benefits to drinking a small glass of orange juice occasionally, its sugar content means "a glass of fruit juice is the same thing as Coke...."
The Oxford researchers found a positive relationship when it comes to fiber, unlike sugar intake: Consuming 5 grams of fiber a day was associated with a 4% lower risk of heart disease, the study suggested, although that did not hold true when researchers controlled for participants' body-mass indexes.... Watling said, the study demonstrates that the types of carbs people choose to eat may matter more than the total amount. "What's really important for overall general health and well-being is that we're consuming carbohydrates that are rich in whole grains," he said, while "minimizing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, as well any kind of confectionary products that have added sugars."
It's a point underscored by CNN: After over nine years of follow-up, the researchers found total carbohydrate intake wasn't associated with cardiovascular disease. But when they analyzed how outcomes differed depending on the types and sources of carbohydrates eaten, they found higher free sugar intake was associated with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and greater waist circumference. The more free sugars some participants consumed, the greater their risk of cardiovascular disease, heart disease and stroke was....
"This study provides much needed nuance to public health discussions about the health effects of dietary carbohydrates," said Dr. Maya Adam, director of Health Media Innovation and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, via email. Adam wasn't involved in the study. "The main takeaways are that all carbs are not created equal...."
CNN adds that the mechanism seems to be that sugar intake "can promote inflammation," according to an assistant cardiology professor at Columbia's medical center. "This can cause stress on the heart and blood vessels, which can lead to increased blood pressure..."
"The research, published in the journal BMC Medicine, found that diets higher in free sugars — a category that includes sugar added to processed foods and sodas, as well as that found in fruit juice and syrups — raise one's risk of heart disease and stroke." The study relied on data about the eating habits of more than 110,000 people ages 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom, whose health outcomes were then tracked over about nine years. The results suggested that each 5% increase in the share of a person's total energy intake that comes from free sugars was associated with a 6% higher risk of heart disease and a 10% higher risk of stroke.
An author of the study, Cody Watling, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, said the most common forms of sugar the study participants ate were "preserves and confectionary," with the latter category including cookies, sugary pastries and scones. Fruit juice, sugar-sweetened beverages and desserts were also common, he added.... The people found to have the highest risk of heart disease or stroke consumed about 95 grams of free sugar per day, or 18% of their daily energy intake, Watling said. By comparison, U.S. guidelines suggest that added sugars should make up no more than 10% of one's daily calories.
"Avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages is probably the single most important thing we can be doing," said Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard University who was not involved in the study. Willett added that although there are some health benefits to drinking a small glass of orange juice occasionally, its sugar content means "a glass of fruit juice is the same thing as Coke...."
The Oxford researchers found a positive relationship when it comes to fiber, unlike sugar intake: Consuming 5 grams of fiber a day was associated with a 4% lower risk of heart disease, the study suggested, although that did not hold true when researchers controlled for participants' body-mass indexes.... Watling said, the study demonstrates that the types of carbs people choose to eat may matter more than the total amount. "What's really important for overall general health and well-being is that we're consuming carbohydrates that are rich in whole grains," he said, while "minimizing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, as well any kind of confectionary products that have added sugars."
It's a point underscored by CNN: After over nine years of follow-up, the researchers found total carbohydrate intake wasn't associated with cardiovascular disease. But when they analyzed how outcomes differed depending on the types and sources of carbohydrates eaten, they found higher free sugar intake was associated with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and greater waist circumference. The more free sugars some participants consumed, the greater their risk of cardiovascular disease, heart disease and stroke was....
"This study provides much needed nuance to public health discussions about the health effects of dietary carbohydrates," said Dr. Maya Adam, director of Health Media Innovation and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, via email. Adam wasn't involved in the study. "The main takeaways are that all carbs are not created equal...."
CNN adds that the mechanism seems to be that sugar intake "can promote inflammation," according to an assistant cardiology professor at Columbia's medical center. "This can cause stress on the heart and blood vessels, which can lead to increased blood pressure..."
Tax it (Score:5, Insightful)
Pigouvian taxes are good, actually when they are clearly needed.
No problem in human history has been solved by just telling and expecting people to "just make better decisions" on the scale of millions.
Re: Tax it (Score:1)
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No problem, I'm also enacting a 2% shoving tax.
Re: Tax it (Score:1)
Regulation, not taxation (Score:2)
Then we'll have war planning taxes, followed by war taxes. :-)
I don't think taxing addictive goods is useful - that's the government making money off misery. But investigation followed by regulation is fine - that's what government is for. All sort of interesting factoids come out in an investigation -- like how the tobacco industry knew its products killed people, but mostly funded studies to prove the contrary.
Let's pretend a food manufacturer invents an incredibly addictive beverage. Say it's a flavoured
Re: Regulation, not taxation (Score:1)
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Move to a country without taxes. They’re usually great places. You could try Monaco but I hear the buy in fee was $40 million.
Re: Tax it (Score:1)
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Yep, let's fuel another 10 wars with the sugar tax
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Pigouvian taxes are not intended to be moneymakers, if the sugar tax is collecting low revenue then there's a good chance it's working.
Also fought a bunch of wars for fruit without a sugar tax.
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Everything is intended to be a money maker when talking about human beings with a lot of power and next to no consequences.
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Not to be confused with the US Sugar Import Program [usda.gov] which is a tariff on less-expensive foreign sugar imports to prop up domestic sugar production -- which (probably) helps the switch to / use of HFCS.
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Yes, taxes are better than tariffs.
Also if the tax on sugar excludes HFCS and other common sugar substitutes than the tax is bad, yes.
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Particularly when the government endorses and subsidizes bad decisions.
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The problem with taxing something which is fairly ubiquitous is that people will just consider the tax to be akin to inflation and cut their spending elsewhere. So, you may be intending to reduce the use of sugar, fossil fuels, or whatever other "evil" you're intent on taxing out of existence, but you end up just hurting Netflix and the restaurant industry instead (as examples).
Free markets are complex things, and they don't always react in predicable ways when you press on the scales.
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Thing is it's ubiquity is the market working as intended. People generally love highly processed, sugary and tasty foods. It's ubiquity has fucked with our monkey brain receptors as we still value the sugar as a rare and vital energy resource.
If we recognize that despite the fact we want it but on the overall for everyone it's actually bad then it's fair to manipulate those markets imo. A tax is also the simplest and least distorting way to enact the change, far less than subsidies or tarrifs.
Anecdotal
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Cigarettes are a bit of a different beast. Most people initially find the smell repulsive, and only continue using them once started because they're extremely chemically addictive. It's also entirely possible that it's only tobacco that is falling out of favor and not so much the act of smoking, as there seems to be increasing enthusiasm among those who are pushing for recreational marijuana legalization.
Furthermore in regards to taxation, even if the original intent is not to produce additional revenue,
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I'm not gonna say cigarettes are analagous 1:1 with sugar but you don't get addicted to ciggies after just one or two, it's something of an aquired taste. Really similar to marijuana, people first few hits are going to be harsh, coughing and generally unpleasant and even the psychoactive expereience is kinda unpleasant at first as well. Also while marijuana and cigarettes are both "smoking" in my opinion I have to imagine the amount of people who are supplementing one for the other is very small. I have
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Thing is it's ubiquity is the market working as intended. People generally love highly processed, sugary and tasty foods. It's ubiquity has fucked with our monkey brain receptors as we still value the sugar as a rare and vital energy resource.
Yeah, I know it's hip and progressive to pretend humans are monkeys, but actually we're *very* different from monkeys in that aspect. Monkeys don't value sweet taste all that much because their staple food is fruit. They get it every day. For them it's a "meh, okay" like let's say boiled rice for us. Humans on the other hand are adapted to a very different environment, not the jungle but the savannah. On savannah fruit are very sparse, and wrt to diet you either eat grass, or you eat things that eat grass.
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I'm sorry, maybe the sarcasm wasn't transalting, i wasn't using "monkey" so literally. Firstly because we're apes, not monkeys, but also really just to remind everyone that we are still animals and our brains don't alway smesh with our modern living in which has evolved around them while they are still pretty much the same for the last few tens of thousands of years.
Basically we are not designed to have access to so much processed, easy to get high caloric food.
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Greed ruins it (Score:1)
but then consumers see that the non sugar drinks (Coke Zero, Pepsi Max and so on) are much cheaper then the sugar versions
Oh, you sweet summer child. You think our leaders will leave all that potential tax revenue on the table? They'll tax the diet stuff too, like they did in Philadelphia, PA [wikipedia.org].
According to that Wikipedia article, the tax does actually reduce purchasing of sweetened drinks. I'm not sure how well it actually does at reducing consumption once you take shrinkage into account. E.g., the people who just say "fuck it" and don't scan their soda when they get to the self checkout lanes. It has also become something
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https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
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in this case that is not nearly enough. where i live this is already taxed in several ways, and even banned in schools, which is good but is only really saving face: the appeal of glucose and the marketing around sweet and snack are simply too strong, and the loopholes too wide: people are still getting obese (hey! this is the sanctuary of mediterranean diet!!!) and will pay that tax gladly even while each successive government is systematically dismantling the universal healthcare system that will not be t
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cheapest crap
this is the correction needed. it's one thing to make the option of the unhealthy choice while having a high cost to it, it's another when that option is widely available and the cheapest. God knows I would probably eat prime steaks a lot more often if they were the on the cheaper end of the food options.
I do agree though that some other work probably will have to be done to make the better options cheaper and more widely available.
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Considering how many foods now contain added sugars, taxing added sugars would push even more people into poverty than ever before. Food prices are very high now. Adding taxes is not the right way to go.
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The idea would be for those foods to not use as much sugar in them, especially those that are just spiking things up.
I enjoy baking so I don't often buy bread but I got some plain-ol white bread the other week and was amazed at how sweet it is with sugar being pretty high on the ingredient list. That idea would be to nudge manufacturers to reduce those types of things or to put it on price parity with the leathier option.
I do agree that some wraparound policy to make healthier food items cheaper and availab
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That might be a welcome change. Recipes take time to change, though, and it is entirely possible that there would be years of pain coming from a tax like this. Plus the corn lobby would fight it vigorously, and anyone shipping "altered" recipes would run the risk of alienating customers.
Addictions aside, food producers have done a fairly good job of providing what it is that customers want. Perhaps too good of a job.
Fancy that (Score:2)
*munches on dried banana chips for a snack while having a bowl of cereal every morning*
In 10 years the sugar lobby will be (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember when Philip Morris was caught pitching their cigs to 3rd world countries by explaining that their product was good for the economy because it reduces the $$$ spent on medical care for old people? Sugar does the very same thing!
Re:In 10 years the sugar lobby will be (Score:5, Insightful)
using the same strategies the tobacco industry does.
What makes you think they haven't already been doing this?
Re:In 10 years the sugar lobby will be (Score:5, Informative)
The Sugar Lobby paid off researchers to pin heart disease on fat, specifically saturated.
In the 70's. The government promoted low-fat high-sugar diets for 30 years.
Cuts down on Social Security payments.
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In the 70's. The government promoted low-fat high-sugar diets for 30 years.
This is misleading. The government advocated low-fat high-carbohydrate diets, which is not the same as sugar.
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In the 70's. The government promoted low-fat high-sugar diets for 30 years.
This is misleading. The government advocated low-fat high-carbohydrate diets, which is not the same as sugar.
No actually it is the same, there is little difference between added refined sugar made up of mono and disaccharides and the complex carbohydrates broken down into mono and disaccharides by salivary and pancreatic amylase [wikipedia.org]. Things really went off the rails when Crisco bought the fledgling American Heart Association and we started to get hydrogenated seed oils in all of our food.
Third quartile has some of the lowest hazard (Score:1)
LOL, gotta eat more sugar to have less chance of heart attack, just not too much :p
Devil is in the details, read the supplemental data.
Bottom line, real and fake sugars are bad for you (Score:3)
How about the government not allow the purchase of candy, donuts, cakes, soda and sugary cereals via EBT cards? And not permitting them to be sold in k-12 schools?
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How about we let poor people have something sweet once in a while, they have a hard enough life as it is.
The sweet things are making their lives harder.
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Bottom line, real and fake sugars are bad for you
This research doesn't seem to prove that, although that could just be bad reporting. The article makes no comment about how the study controlled for total calorie intake. Someone whose diet is made up of 20% added sugars probably eats more calories per day than someone whose diet only has 5% added sugars. So this study could simply be proving that a high calorie diet leads to a greater risk of heart problems.
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I don’t know what this particular study says but controlling for macros and calories sugar is almost always worse for you than consuming complex carbs aside from a few situations that 95% of Slashdot has no need to worry about,
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Well, the data is subject reported, they "removed implausible intakes" and the end points are soft, so it's interesting but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Iowa corn subsidies. (Score:5, Insightful)
The resulting over-abundance of corn led to a financial incentive to find uses for the oversupply, and one of them was high-fructose corn syrup. The subsequent over-abundance of high-fructose corn syrup led to an incentive to find uses for it, so they just started putting it in every single mass-produced food product. By the time US consumers got wise, it was too late: Industry stayed five steps ahead of every consumer revolt, moving the most destructive versions overseas while finding new ways to poison Americans. Same scumbags probably sell diabetes medications too.
History is weird.
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There are two different HFCS, "HFCS 42" which is 42% fructose used mainly in processed foods and has less fructose than table sugar (Table sugar is 50% fructose) and "HFCS 55" which is 55% fructose used mainly in processed drinks and has a little more fructose than table sugar. There is no reason for me to believe that HFCS is the devil and sucrose is the saint rather than all of it is bad for you.
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Moderation (Score:3)
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because people lie about what they eat all the time
I’ve seen someone actually feed themselves unconsciously when food was present and when they noticed it startled them into dropping it. People have been known to even eat in their sleep. I find it funny that some people might be telling the truth and just not know if.
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... other negative habits including diets high in fats. Moderation in all things.
High fat plus high carbs - especially simple, and more especially refined ones - is a killer. But if you're going to ditch one of them in your diet, lose the carbs.
A low carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet that has you in ketosis most of the time improves metabolic health, lowers fasting blood sugar, decreases insulin resistance, reverses diabetes, and slows atherosclerosis. Also - ironically and counter-intuitively - it actually decreases non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. (Simple carbs - especially sug
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Yes indeed, most of this was perpetrated when President Eisenhower, a 4 pack a day smoker, had a heart attack in office.
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Correct. Sugar is not inherently bad. What is bad is obesity from too much food and not enough exercise. The report even states the correlation of waist girth.
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interesting, btw ... (Score:2)
... is the sky still blue?
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We need salt though. You literally die without it, so all good things in moderation. Hold on, checking on the optimal cocaine intake...
Could we please have a link to the study, CNN? (Score:1)
Association (Score:2)
So there is an association. Does that mean that the sickly folks eat lots of "free sugar", or that eating "free sugar" makes one sickly? The researchers seem to think the latter, but there is no reason (other than built in bias) to choose that branch over the former.
Sugar, or calories? (Score:2)
Sugar's a great source of empty calories, and the summary reads a lot like they've tracked the overall "free sugar" intake, but haven't bothered to compare it with overall calorie consumption. So, sure, eating lots of empty calories is bad (duh), but I'm not sure if that demonstrates that sugar, per se, is bad, or 'free sugar' is just the quickest trip to being a diabetic lardass.
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They had hazard ratios corrected for BMI and weight circumference too, didn't show much difference. As I said above though, third quartile of free sugar consumption actually had the lowest hazard ratio.
Being in a higher quartile of worrying about a couple percent on hazard ratios probably isn't good for your health either, I'll just eat some cookies.
Tax and legislate. (Score:3)
Just the other day I was talking to a friend about how the EU drastically reduced salt added to pre-made meals, soups, sauces,.. It was decided higher-up, after consideration of long-standing evidence, that our salt overconsumption needed to come down: The industry had long habit of adding more and more salt not just as preservative, but as taste reinforcer to most all they produced. So EU demanded x% less added salt step by step for a couple consecutive years. The reduction went through without anyone noticing: it's just a habit, that can be unmade just the way it was made.
A couple years later, our team worked together with some folks from the US. At noon, catering would be delivered, delicious fresh meals for all.
We were quite amazed seeing how the Americans poured salt over their plates. And then we realized until some 10y before that, we would have all done the same.
The salt in our diet had perished, and nobody had noticed. And yup, we've decreased related cardiovascular diseases, globally the leading cause of death.
Now the issue with sugars is more complicated as, contrary to salt, they may take up a good fraction of the foods, say in ketchup, soups or sauces. To achieve any sensible reduction, they'll need to put less cheap corn sugar and more tomatoes in the ketchup, for example. That sweets contain sugars, that's a given, but the industry really dumps it in every package one would otherwise think as relatively harmless or even healthy, like soups or pizza's. Who on earth would add sugar to soup or pizza at home!?
Some countries have an epidemic of obesitas and related health issues and it costs them dearly. Legislation and tax helps, and funds can be redirected to healthcare or reducing prices on healthy foods: if an apple is more expensive than a snickers or a can of coke, something is genuinely fucked up.
Taxes work: https://www.obesityevidencehub... [obesityevi...hub.org.au]
Another personal note: I rarely buy anything to drink, maybe a coke twice a month cos I really love it with my fries. The rest of my drink comes from the tap: water, tea, some coffee in the morning. I feel so sorry for those in the supermarket hauling a caddy loaded with water, let alone for those stashing coke or lemonades and thinking they're doing their kids a favor.
So yes, tap water any time, for me. Thanks. Heck, I had almost a dozen folks over for dinner this evening and instead of getting drinks for them I spent some more on quality food. Made soup and a main course that they all adored. And not one remark that I served them, for drinks,(couldnt resist my lil inside joking experiment;) just water from the tap.
Re: Tax and legislate. (Score:2)
> Who on earth would add sugar to soup or pizza at home!?
Ask any Italian. Personally I use molasses.
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Interestingly, when you eat sugar, you release insulin which causes your kidneys to retain sodium.
Fatfree (Score:1)
Remember when "fat" was the enemy, so everything went "fatfree" and ended up adding a ton of sugar to it?
That was "The Science(tm)" back then, and the legacy of heart issues is the result.
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Hey folks! Look at how we fucked with the science in the past. Might as well stop thinking and do whatever feels cool there’s like literally no way you’ll ever figure out how not to be a diseased land whale.
and you know what feels cool? Eating tobacco smoked spare ribs smothered in Sweet Baby Rays!
I like to eat a big plate every Sunday, then go for a scooty puff around the lake, then it’s nap time. Someone or another told me that’s bad for me but this is an important family tradi
Wrong metaphor (Score:2)
Something I discovered too late. (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of years ago I suffered a heart attack. At the hospital they asked me about my diet, focusing on fat, salt and alcohol intake. I scored 8 out of 10 in their healthy eating scale, mainly because I never eat oily fish as l find it unpleasant.
I couldn’t understand why I had suffered a heart attack in my 40s, this was something I associated with old people and those grossly overweight. So I spent an inordinate amount of time researching the situation. Having the luxury of access to all the medical journals and an understanding of how to interpret them due to working in a university I discovered a lot of interesting information is available that shows the focus on fat and salt are misguided and that added sugar is the worst possible thing to have in your diet.
I used to be of the opinion that sweeteners were bad for you, that sugar bing natural was the safer bet. As a result I would actively avoid anything with artificial sweeteners due to health concerns and would happily drink up to 4 cans of coke a day, because I have never liked hot drinks like tea and coffee. This I believe is what caused the harm that resulted in my heart attack.
Some obvious questions arise, why are French people not at higher risk of heart disease when thier diet includes more fat and alcohol than most? Why are diabetes at double the risk of heart disease or stroke than the rest of the population?
It turns out that the body doesn’t handle the sudden spike ing the glycemic index very well. It causes an inflammatory response and a huge release of insulin. The liver then sets to work converting all that sugar into fat in the form of LDL cholesterol. As is well known elevated levels of LDL are implicated in the development of heart disease, but it is the inflammation that causes the calcification of the lipoprotein and therefore the ‘hardening’ of the arteries. Studies have shown that excessive sugar intake permanently changes the immune system to be more aggressive in the inflammatory response.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I think great harm has been done by lobbyists on behalf of food producers that have deflected the focus away from sugar to fat and salt as well as promoting the idea that you can eat whatever you like as long as you exercise enough. All so they can sell profitable foods.
By far the best thing would governments could be doing to protect the health of people is to find ways to help reduce sugar consumption. I’m not necessarily talking about the obvious things like deserts and soda but things like savoury foods that sugar has no business being added,
While there are many aspects to healthy living, if there was one thing above all that I would recommend it would be to do what you can to reduce added sugar in your diet.
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Be wary of artificial sweeteners as well. They apparently play havoc with your gut. One example research paper:
https://www.cell.com/cell-meta... [cell.com]
Not only that, but artificial sweeteners like aspartame and ace-k are linked to higher probability of cancer. This podcast does a good job of outlining the issues with artificial sweeteners and provides research paper links in the description:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you really want something that tastes sweet, natural sweeteners like stevia are the be
Should have been minimizing these things anyway. (Score:2)
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People already watching the amounts they eat of these things are already protected and those that are not don't care.
Or they just don't know.
My median sugar intake is 168g a day. (Score:2)
I've been logging my food precisely for about 5 years now and my median sugar intake a day is 168g a day. Min 28g. Max 375g. I'm feeling great and run 50 to 70km a week.
I comprehend (Score:1)
Just my opinion (Score:1)