50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)

Re:50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame... by joe_the_user on Saturday January 19, 2019 @01:01AM (#18945584)

This is reductionist experimentation that encourages the development of out-of-context remedies targeted to one risk factor or one causal event at a time, a recipe for failure.

I don't think you can compare fat and sugar. Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years and one that's been common for at best a couple hundred years. The association of high sugar diets with diabetes is pretty strong, as an example of potential harm. The complete elimination of refined sugar from one's diet is fairly practical.

Fat, broadly has been part of the human diet since before the evolution of modern humans. It's something that can't really eliminated and certainly shouldn't be.

So, this "no reductionism" argument is fairly crude itself, reductionist-even, actually.

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Re:50 Years Ago, the Sugar Industry Paid Scientists to Blame... by Udik on Saturday January 19, 2019 @04:47AM (#18946197)

> Sugar is a specific refined product. It's existed a rare thing for only a couple thousand years

This sounds frankly absurd to me. Sucrose- the normal white sugar- simply breaks down into glucose and fructose; all three sugars- sucrose, glucose and fructose- are found in all fruits in 8-15% proportion on weight (much more for dried fruit, of course). They have always been part of our diet, even before we started hunting animals. It's not because you see it as a white powder it's right to assume it's a new ingredient in our diet. It's not.

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