"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think we should only be allowed a slurpie issued by the government that contains everything we need... no other food or drinks, except water.

Soylent Green is people!

No, Brawndo. It's got everything the body craves. Electrolytes!

Monkey Chow should work... someone tried it for a little bit: https://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html

That's a joke that should be reality.

I heard of someone whose parents just didn't give them sweet candies as a child and they never developed the craving. This is just a "I heard of one person ever" but since it's so rare, it's all I have to go on. I wonder if this would be reproducible.

I'm glad my parents weren't like that. I have so many good memories of birthday cakes, sharing treats with my siblings, Hallowe'en, etc... where some sweet thing was a core part of the event.

One of my favorite memories of my Dad is being out with just the two of us and we took a break for a surprise ice cream cone. Having him just to myself for a bit was pretty rare and to sit in a Dairy Queen somewhere for 30 minutes chatting and having ice cream was the absolute best.

On the topic of parents, I’m second generation immigrant. All of my family grew up in other countries, in poverty. None of them have ever developed cavities and such. I’ve never seen my parents ever express any craving for sweets.

I once quit sugar for 6 months. It was harder than quitting alcohol, nicotine or caffeine. My first super-sweet treat after those 6 months was a donut and it almost made me vomit on the first bite. The dopamine rush quickly overwhelmed my physical aversion.

I remember going through that after basic training and AIT(Ft Sill, Oklahoma- absolute Hell). As a kid/teenager/young adult I was very active in gymnastics, Tae Kwon Do, Tang Soo Do, skateboarding, rollerblading, and I watched what I ate. While in basic I was losing a lot of weight(super fast metabolism) so they shoved sugar/carbs down my throat in basic- made me drink soda, eat burgers, donuts and pizza in the mess hall (also my platoon hated me over it because they weren't allowed to touch any of it, and here I was so full I'm gonna puke and here comes a Drill Sergeant who slides me another donut which I now have to eat). It sucked because I had to run 2x per day as opposed to once a day/every other day, so it felt like I had a lump of cement in my stomach. The side stitches give me chills to this day. Puking while running is not fun, and then what was the point of filling me to bust if I don't get to digest a quarter of it?

Anyway, by the time I got to AIT I was so happy to not have to touch any of it, I didn't. So while my classmates went off-post on weekends and got fat on garbage I went out and had fun, but at well at the mess hall.

By the time I was out of the service (2yrs) I hadn't touched sweets/caffeine/crap in almost that whole time. I remember being able to taste the caffeine in sodas(if you've ever drunk ginseng you probably know what it tastes like), and they felt like straight syrup.

Somewhere along the way I had a girlfriend who got me back into them, and they just became a part of my life again.

Now, here I am, 40, getting rid of them again. But now it's worse because I really enjoy my morning coffee and knowing I will be replacing it with running (which I used to love until the US Army), doesn't help my motivation much.

But yea, quitting sugar and caffeine. Smoking cigarettes wasn't this hard to quit :(

Just out of curiosity, whey are you quitting caffeine?

Just for the record, I wasn't saying we can't have nice things and everyone should start to live this way. Not at all. It was just an interesting data point. You do make it sound, though, like sugar is required to have a nice childhood. I don't think you're right and the conclusion that you're happy you got to do all these drugs, I mean, yeah of course you'd not want to live without if you had it. I wouldn't either because I also had it. But might an alternative history not also have been able to be nice? That's what I'm wondering about.

But you could still do all of that with carrots. … /s ;)

It's one outcome, the other is that the child feels like they've been repressed all their life and go on a sugar binge. I've heard similar stories about kids raised vegetarian discovering bacon and hamburgers for the first time.

I know only one person who was raised vegetarian (most people in Europe are fervent meat eaters) and this didn't happen to my friend at all, but yeah I can totally see that happening to many on a broader population.

My parents didn’t let us drink sweetened sodas except on special occasions, and never Coca-Cola for some reason. It massively helped, to the point that apart from a few high school and college years, I don’t really drink them.

Same. Milk was always an option.

During college I availed myself of all-you-can-drink soda, and pretty much stopped drinking milk. Surprise, surprise the change (coupled with stress) resulted in some pretty serious and frequently recurring GI issues.

Finally isolated the cause (docs were useless), went back on a 1+ glass of milk a day practice, and everything returned to normal.

Since then, I pretty much cut soda out of my diet as well. IMHO, if we're looking at it from a caloric perspective, there are a lot more delicious things to spend 140 calories on.

Grew up in a country where no coca-cola was available. The sweets were given to kids only on special occasions.

Now as an adult I am happily consuming great amount of Coca Cola, however never developed a taste for Americanized supermarket style sweet treats (Oreos, etc. )

For me it was the opposite. Only got exposed to standard candy and chocolate here and there. I still love chocolate, and hate any kind of carbonated drink. It boggles my mind how people manage to drink that stuff voluntarily.

But to each their own. I think this whole guessing the best diet for kids can go any way because it's just one of many factors. Though there are definitely known risk factors, e.g. how drunkenness at a young age greatly increases the risk of alcoholism later on.

My personal experience with that situation is that half the people grow up with no desire to eat sweets and the other half end up with an eating disorder. It’s a gamble, but if you get lucky it’ll pay off with a lifetime of stable blood sugar.

I think it might be all in the how, not in the what.

If you specifically deny your kids sugar and tell them it's the debbil and all that, you're gunning for the disorder when they finally rebel and try the forbidden carbohydrate.

However, if it's just not a thing. You never point it out, you never mention it, you just don't have sugar around, then they're more geared for the dismissal of it.

There's difference between "no sweeties" and regular cola drinking :P

I only drank coke on special occasions as a kid. When I finally had free reign I went on a coke binge for years and I still enjoy it, though I've limited the amount I consume. Given we're keyed towards enjoying sweet I don't think denying kids soda would mean they hate it on first contact - I'd imagine it'd be like kids who did get exposed to it - some hate it, some love it.

My 3 year old hates sweets. Ice-cream, cakes and chocolates/candy are a hard no. So much so that he cried once my wife tricked him into tasting ice-cream. OTOH he loves ripe sweet tasting fruits so it is not aversion to sweet taste.We'll see how long this lasts...

My five year old is the same, although he had a "breakthrough" last year and now loves pan au chocolate.

I've known many a parent that has tried this. However, the wheels fall off the bus as soon as the kid enters public schooling. The only parents that I've know to be successful are ones that home schooled their kids.

I know a 9yo who never got candies from their parents and doesn't seem to like them so far.

There's also a doesn't-like vs doesn't-like-the-quantity question. I could easily eat a whole chocolate bar in one go some time ago. Since then I reduced my sugar intake a lot. Now I feel like one row is overwhelming - 1-2 pieces is just fine.

Have an upvote for your tongue-in-cheek social commentary.

Sugar is more addicting than alcohol and it definitely is mood-altering, though it seems the effects are more subtle and less severe than alcohol

The method also works with other accidic drinks, such as lemonade.

The comment does not contribute anything to the discussion. It's a just an ad hominem. Please don't do that.

To resurrect the bootleggers!

The only thing legal for kids to eat should be spinach and brocolli.

Parents should be jailed if they fed them cakes.

I’ll go one step further—-all beverages with the sugar:water ratio of Coca Cola should be summarily banned.

Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one.

"Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one."

Let people decide for themselves? Alcohol is unhealthy, so it should be banned. Hamburgers are high fat and environmentally impactful, so those should be banned, too. Let's not forget cigarettes....

Yes people should opt to not consume unhealthy stuff, but how much authoritarianism do you really want?

Banning all of those won't work - remember the Prohibition? - but there's plenty of discouragement things going on, at least on this side of the pond. Alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed, tobacco can no longer be advertised for, displayed, or be in any kind interesting (bland packaging), and that's after they had to have big warnings about the health risks of smoking. And there's plans to introduce sugar taxes - which I would be more on board with if those taxes were used to subsidize and lower the price of 'good' food / essentials.

In the US, we might not even need to tax sugar. We could try just ending the massive subsidies for it (and corn).

Why can’t government just stay out of it? I don’t recall electing a government to be my parents. Government should build roads and have a Navy but why should a government “encourage” healthy behaviors, etc. Are people unable to be adults on their own?

OTOH I'm not sure casting people into the wild to deal, all on their own, with megacorps employing hundreds or thousands dedicated to convincing people to make bad choices is a great idea, either.

I'm not convinced Rugged Individualism and anything like the modern economy are compatible, in any kind of way in which the outcome of trying to have both is pleasant. It may be a "choose one" kind of situation.

The government is great for collective action necessary in situations that resemble the prisoner’s dilemma, where incentives of individual agents lead them to take non-pareto-optimal decisions.

Things like breaking up monopolies, mandating open access to infrastructure, and, yes, countering the effects of companies and advertisers manipulating us and exploiting our weaknesses.

> Let people decide for themselves? Alcohol is unhealthy, so it should be banned.

Our societies socialise the costs of peoples’ bad decisions, so it can’t be 100% laissez-faire. That said, I disagree with the Prohibitionist instinct. Adding a tax that pays for the edge-case costs seems to make the most sense.

I wonder if we'd need to tax the vegetarians for living too long and spending a lot of taxpayer dollars in their extended elderly years. Maybe we should actually subsidize the folks cheeseburgering their way to sudden cardiac death.

So much misinformation. Vegetarians don’t live longer. And cheeseburger eaters don’t die sooner in general.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-vegetarians-live-longer...

Then let’s stop socializing the costs of people’s bad decisions.

For some reason it sometimes seems as if people would rather everybody is responsible for everybody else's bad decisions but never their own. It's crazy, I know.

I would also like to imprison people who stand blocking moving walkways and escalators so I am comfortable with a high degree of authoritarianism as long as it is perfectly aligned with my wants.

I realize this is not a very practical worldview.

Here in the UK a lot of stores no longer sell caffeinated drinks to under 16s (it's not a law, but it's a common practice) so Red Bull et al. are out. I guess such a thing could be extended to sugary soda in general eventually. It's annoying, though, because if I want to buy one, I have to be "challenge 25" checked, but I guess it reduces my consumption as well!

There’s zero evidence whatsoever that caffeine is unhealthy for children. And given what we know about the health benefits in adult, coffee is most likely health promoting for children.

It's not just the caffeine itself - that's one aspect. It's promoting the "use this to not sleep" recurring lifestyle choice, which some kids do come to rely on.

This gets worse with Monster and others pushing the caffeine limits. (I remember a free Monster giveaway at uni - could not sleep for close to 30h - that stuff is not healthy)

Well, that's you. Everyone drank Monster at my uni and I don't think there were any reports of sleep issues. Of course it depends on your existing caffeine tolerance, and I guess most students consume quite a lot of caffeinated beverages, but if it was a common issue for those with low tolerance I'm sure we'd have noticed.

>Everyone drank Monster at my uni

How was the silhouette of the people who drank the most of it?

It varied :-p. But the best-seller in our vending machine was the white, sugar-free variant.

No, see evidence regarding energy drinks in the references of https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

> Several studies identified a strong, positive association between the use of energy drinks and higher odds of health-damaging behaviours, as well as physical health symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, hyperactivity and insomnia

What do you think about narcotics, should they be legal or not?

One thing I noticed is that people who are for banning soda or alcohol are surprisingly for legalization of soft and hard drugs.

Banning is different from criminalization. So to make both legal but not easily obtainable seems consistent. Throwing someone in jail for life for possessing a 2-liter of coke seems wrong.

anyone possessing 2-liters of coke is obviously a dealer. I'm all for decriminalizing the travel size cans, but we need party-size felonies for party-size containers.

comparing addictions serves no meaningful purpose. people who want legal drugs still believe in a minimum age. i think that sugar should be seen as addictive as other drugs and the users must be old enough to be able to understand the risk of consuming.

I dunno about banned. Not practical, for one thing. Although... I dunno, I don't see bootlegging being as successful or widespread with soda as it was with alcohol. Regardless, probably not practical.

But the state of things in which unlimited free refills of soda is the norm, 64+oz fountain soda servings are common, and 300+ calories of soda are often added on to "combo meals" for effectively just ¢20-¢30 over the cost of the food as a "sweetener" (ha) to get people to choose a combo over a single item, is clearly not great. Something's out-of-whack.

So all juices and smoothies? many of them have more sugar than Coke.... Even juices without any added sugar will have a ton of sugar in them if they come from sugar rich fruits.

That's because a glass of juice isn't the equivalent of eating an orange, it's the equivalent of eating an orchard.

An exaggeration, obviously, but it is really bad. The number of fruits you have to eat to equal a glass of juice is significant.

Apple juice is about 100% sugar which is why you'll see it in so many "100% juice" products.

Apple juice is about 10% sugar, I don't know why you're mentioning an improbable number.

And here's the thing: Sugar is not a bad thing per se. It's overconsumption of it that's the issue. I'd rather have someone drink fruit juice than soda, but all in moderation.

I think sugar is 100% sugar, hence "apple juice" can't be "100% sugar" since it has to have some water in it

I thought that apple juice was a bit dry and grainy.

What's wrong with diet soda?

There is strong suspicion artificial sweeteners mess up your gut biome, but it’s not yet as established as the evils of sugar.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but which ones, and could you provide any sources? This is the first time I've heard that.

I'm not saying I'm right, as I'm not a biologist and this is just stuff I've seen (oft repeated) on the Internet, but:

A search on Google Scholar shows multiple publications exploring the adverse effects on sweeteners on gut microbiome:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=artificial+sweeteners+e...

I've definitely read that it may play a role in decoupling the taste of sweet with satisfaction. That in turn may lead people to ultimately eat more before feeling satisfied, which is bad.

Also, I think there might actually be some links to type II diabetes, but I'm skeptical of causation on that one. It's not implausible, but fully correcting for people already trying to reduce sugar intake sounds essentially impossible in that case.

As part of improving my health, I came off of drinking sugary sodas a few years back and went sugar free. My dentist remained unimpressed saying that the sugar is only a small part of the story and really it's the acid in soda that will cause me problems. I now drink a lot more water around any soda consumption to mitigate it slightly, but I gotta have some bad habits..

> but I gotta have some bad habits..

I think this should be normalized. In a lot of threads like this, there's some teetotalers that say all vices are bad and you should stop all of them at once.

But vices are fine, in moderation. Having some soda every once in a while is fine. Drinking it by the gallon every day is problematic. But it's been normalized like that by the companies that produce them.

Back in my day (shush kids, grandpa is talking), we got one, maybe two small glasses of soda and some crisps on a sunday. That was it.

People who moralize over vices tend to have some dirty little vices themselves.

still being hypocrite doesnt make you wrong

Possibly carcinogenic, but that's a big possibly, compared to the blatantly obvious harm caused by high-fructose corn syrup.

That's news to me. Wikipedia also notes that Aspartame which is the sweetener used in most diet soda, has not been found to be carcinogenic with a bunch of citations.

Or are you talking about other ingredients?

He's not. Artificial sweeteners are one of the most demonized additives on the planet despite being one of the most studied. Because people are so often looking for a reason to get rid of them.

Even the studies of them being bad for "getting used to sweetness" and thus making people more obese through compensatory over-eating are studies that rely on self-reporting and polling.

When properly controlled, physics works as it always has and you can't magic mass or energy out of thin air.

If you're talking about aspartame it's about as possibly carcinogenic as the moon landing was possibly faked.