Who is being "unfair and intellectually dishonest"? The idea is not that 'sugar is bad' or 'sugar is unhealthy', but that sugar is bad and unhealthy as it is being used in our current society. I thought this was pretty clear in the first comment. This is why much of the research that comes up uses the HFS for reference levels.

I agree about my laziness (making my own literature review would be a lot of work), however, controlling for total calories as you suggest could be misleading, because sugar provides lots of calories but often does not reduce hunger:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/254512.php

> however, controlling for total calories as you suggest could be misleading, because sugar provides lots of calories but often does not reduce hunger

I don't see how could it be misleading. You trade sweat treats for fullness, and you could even add low calories side meals to balance the count. That's what a lot of diet regimes do and have been proved to work.

Controlling more parameters so that there are fewer variables between test cases being compared usually reduces the degree to which an experiment is misleading. (Ideally, one parameter would vary and "all else is held constant").

Failure to control total calories just about damns the validity of any diet study right off the bat.

Many studies measure total calories as well as sugar. The study linked above explains the correlation between the two. High sugar provides little satiety, leading to higher total caloric intake because you tend to eat the sugar in addition the other, satiating calorie sources.

You do not simply control for an additional variable when you know there is a direct link between the two. You study it as a dependent variable.

Edit: replaced "fulfillment" with "satiation". Sorry about the vagueness, I thought the meaning was pretty clear from the context.

Which is a reason why you have to control total calories to know that sugar consumption is actually a detriment to health (and at what quantities) and not just a caloric surplus.

"fulfilment" is a vague term and you're veering off the topic into a strawman argument

Yes, and here is the thing: you can't control for the total calories and vary only sugar intake. The change in sugar has to be offset by something else to keep the calories constant. So then to know whether a sugar change is responsible, we have to try different experiments with the same delta in sugar, but varying compensating substitutions.

I think you're missing the point.

It wouldn't make much sense to keep the groups isocaloric but replace the calories from sugar in one group with say, protein in another. You wouldn't be measuring the same thing any more.

The entire point of the study is comparing monosaccharides to polysaccharides and observing changes in 'health' (excuse the vague terminology). Sugar is substituted with a longer chain carbohydrate in well planned research.

> The idea is not that 'sugar is bad' or 'sugar is unhealthy', but that sugar is bad and unhealthy as it is being used in our current society.

that's just as vague as 'sugar is bad'. Sugar consumption, I would think, varies pretty widely.

This is the first I've heard that controlling for total calories would be misleading and your rationale doesn't make any sense. The inverse is misleading, if you don't control total calories then the conclusions drawn from the study don't represent the variables that were altered.

Hunger is a separate topic, you don't design diets so that people have 'the same level of hunger' between control groups because that's not easily quantifiable and irrelevant.

Does it matter?

If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?

Yeah there's probably some case of some kid eating his weight in bananas and getting obese from that. Or someone that has a lot of added sugar but controls their calories just fine. So sure, the statement "obesity is caused solely by added sugar" or "all added sugar is bad" may not be totally accurate.

But unless you really think that added sugar and calories and obesity are totally unrelated, surely you can agree that the statement "if you're obese you should probably tone down the sugar" makes some sense.

The vast majority of people aren't carefully counting their calories and daily nutrient values. They aren't saying "well if I have this soda I should only have half of my entree". The information "maybe just stay away from the soda" is a net benefit to them.

If you're that guy that's counting all of your calories, sure, maybe the studies that don't control for that won't help you. They're measuring something else. But they're measuring what most people are doing.

> If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?

Not necessarily, because that may not solve the problem if they are going to eat just as many calories from other sources. I don't know if that actually would be the case; you'd need to study that.

> They're measuring something else. But they're measuring what most people are doing.

No lol, just no. The study was investigating high sugar consumption in obese children and kids with metabolic disorders. It absolutely was not measuring what 'most people are doing'

> If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?

This is what I meant by intellectual dishonesty. It's a type of informal fallacy I believe is called appeal to consequences. I'll give you an example.

If it was true that Christianity was correlated with lower incidence of homicide, is it right of me to say that everyone should be Christian? I think that statement would be dishonest and untrue.

> Yeah there's probably some case of some kid eating his weight in bananas and getting obese from that. Or someone that has a lot of added sugar but controls their calories just fine. So sure, the statement "obesity is caused solely by added sugar" or "all added sugar is bad" may not be totally accurate.

Follow that reason to it's logical conclusion. If I believed that sugar was bad and caused obesity, and as a result I decided to eat bacon at every meal instead; I would be in a big caloric surplus and be pretty 'unhealthy' and obese, even though I'm not eatin any sugar. It's pretty obvious that the truth is a lot better and more accurate than creating arbitrary untrue rules.

Personally, the truth is also simpler. Rather than avoid certain macronutrients or lengths of carbohydrate chains, the truth is that too much food is probably unhealthy, and if you are obese you should simply eat less food and exercise more (bringing down your total caloric intake or increasing the amount of energy you burn). That sounds simpler to me than saying, "avoid sugar and carbs because after you eliminate all of those foods it's much harder to be in a caloric surplus even though you still can be unhealthy and obese following those rules"

Have I explained enough why your line of reasoning is really a terrible idea?

Saying I'm advocating counting calories is a strawman argument. Additionally, studies aren't intended to 'help' anybody. They are SUPPOSED to be an research into what is true to add support for or against some argument. The problem here is that the study itself was probably very reasonably written, but it was misinterpreted by an idiotic journalist to be something that it isn't.

I don't mean this applies to you, but I think one danger that we have to be aware of is our emotional desire for tasty and convenient foods to drive us to look for any potential flaw in a methodology of a study which shows them to be harmful. There's also an analogue with industry-funded studies where they unethically suppress results that don't agree with their goal.

Personally I am not willing to trust my health the status quo + what I deem to be the best of science because nutrition science is still in the dark ages, and I believe market forces and human instinct are pushing are food supply in a terrible direction much faster than science can keep up with the problems. Instead I am a proponent of common sense approaches like Michael Pollan advocates because it can save us from a good many pitfalls that will befall us if we wait for the science to be settled. In particular I think there is a mindset in a certain type of science-minded hacker that believes so strongly in their own objectivity that they are willing to place all their faith in science while unwittingly being undermined by their own emotions and cravings.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, taken in context your post is like a non sequitur in the thread.

The overwhelming consensus is that a caloric surplus causes obesity (surprise! eating more than you burn causes you to gain weight) and that obesity is associated with a number of negative health effects.

Nutrition is not in the 'dark ages', it's moving faster than ever. I also never brought up any weird nutrition life hacks, my statement was just that sugar is unfairly demonized when we should be pointing the finger at overconsumption.

I think it's fair to say that you don't have to 'wait for science' to be settled on this issue. Consistent overconsumption of food is definitely "not good for you"

The problem is if you eat 100 calories of sugar you will be hungry again in 30 minutes, whereas if you eat 100 calories of protein/fat/complex carbs you will be satiated far longer. The first-law-of-thermodynamics approach is nutrition is often cited around here, but it's a trite truism that is useless in practice, and it is oft used as justification by many to eat a processed snack that puts one on a glycemic rollercoaster rather than an unprocessed item which will tend not to have the same effect.

Again, as I stated in my opening sentence, I am not pinning this on you, but it was your appeal to the old calories-in-calories-out trope that compelled me to respond.

"Hunger" is subjective and a completely different topic to the discussion at hand.

I don't see how the knowledge that the body functions based on balancing energy is in any way useless in practice. If you're overweight, with that knowledge, you know that you are overconsuming food or under exercising and you can take appropriate steps based on that knowledge.

No one is suggesting that you get all your calories from skittles, but the notion that a portion of ice cream is going to make you obese in the presence of a well balanced diet is idiotic.

> processed snack that puts one on a glycemic rollercoaster rather than an unprocessed item which will tend not to have the same effect.

Actually there are lots of high glycemic foods that are 'unprocessed'. Additionally if you're consuming a mixed meal (p/f/c) the glycemic index of any one food is irrelevant and tends to be evened out by the presence of the other foods. There's also not a lot of evidence that high glycemic foods are inherently bad for you, couple that with the fact that glycemic index gets 'evened out' in a mixed meal and it's one of the minutia that can be largely ignored. I find it interesting that you focus on a small detail like glycemic index and yet dismiss scientific research in general and a concept as important as conservation of energy.

It just seems like you read through the thread, saw something related to total caloric intake, and felt compelled to weigh in with your personal belief on how it's an unimportant detail to be concerned about.

The point was that correlation is not necessarily causation and often study methodology is overlooked when interpreting evidence.

Your comment is fair. I definitely acknowledge you didn't deserve my trigger reaction, and yes it is a bit of a non-sequitur. Like I said, it's not about you, but just a pattern that I've seen in my years on HN and generally with many startup-types with unhealthy lifestyles.

To be clear I am not dismissing scientific research, I'm saying that often times the people who cite the strongest belief in science are completely subverting the science by selectively using it to justify eating what they want to eat.

If macronutrient balance is the problem, then you still want to stop adding sugar, and also not add other carbs in similar ways.

Even if total calories are the problem, you still have more to analyze. Depending on how it affects fullness, it could be near-harmless or horrible for you.

I don't understand what you mean by 'If macronutrient balance is the problem, then you still want to stop adding sugar'. We're talking about analysis of study methodology.

Do you mean that having too many carbs is detrimental to health? Because you can have an increased carbohydrate intake without increasing sugar consumption.

Let's assume the study is valid except that it failed to correct for macronutrient balance. It failed to replace sugar with pure carbs. Let's say this made a difference.

The result of the study changes, but it's not invalidated.

Sugar is still bad, but so are other carbs.

You still don't want products to add extra sugar.