> Sugar. Is. Poison.

Only in the sense that bad things happen to you if you consume too much. I don't like that label though, because if you follow that logic nearly everything is a poison (eg. water poisoning), which makes it useless as a label. A more accurate label would be something like "substance that we're likely to overconsume and cause harm, due to human psychology/physiology", but I guess that's not as attention grabbing as comparing it to rat poison or draino.

See also, the noncentral fallacy: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...

"The dose makes the poison". Paracelsus already said it in the XVI century.

have you ever seen a toddler on sugar? it transforms one into a werebear

Toddlers are just werebears. The crash might be real, but there has been research into the "rush" part and its been shown that kids really don't get a rush. It's probably just confirmation bias on the part of adults. https://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-suga...

Not saying we should feed our kids endless sugar, however.

I saw this with other parents when my son was small. So. Much. Confirmation. Bias.

I absolutely can feel effects from large changed in sugar intake, but the tiny things parents thought were evidence of a sugar rush were ridiculous.

Its not clear to me that the study disproves that kids do not get a rush from sugar:

"Dr. Tamborlane, also from Yale, reported that children given sugar had higher levels of adrenaline."

I'm not an expert in human biology but doesn't adrenaline increase activity?

Under discussion here is the long-term (not short-term) effects. The short-term effects are not, as far as I can tell, especially acutely dangerous, though they could be bad per se if experienced all the time (e.g. sleep disruption).

But toddlers can also be pretty wild with or without sugar. They sometimes get very excited when hungry, when tired, when woken from a nap, when lacking exercise, when frustrated, when separated from specific adults, when in conflict with other children, ...

Is sugar bad in high doses? Yes. Is anything bad in high doses? Oxygen - check. Water - check.

Let's try to be more moderate, lest one day there is a ban on poor dihydrogen monoxide...

> Sugar. Is. Poison.

I always feel this is a gross oversimplification. There is nothing that isn't poision in sufficient quantities.

Except that US food culture emphasizes sugar as a keystone ingredient. It's so ingrained into the American palate at this point, it would present a competitive disadvantage to remove it from your food or restaurant.

Sugar is put into everything. Cereal, sauces, drinks, bread, meat, salad dressing, mashed potatoes. If you try to eat without sugar for the first time in a while, you'll be in total shock by how bland things taste. And your body won't tolerate the change either.

We're signing ourselves up for diabetes, inflammation, brain disease, physiological and mental dysfunction, and a multitude of other disease states by continuing the status quo.

Sugar is poison by the sheer volume with which we consume it.

>And your body won't tolerate the change either.

Source? If I'm understanding correctly you're saying that people experience physical withdraw symptoms for sugar?

I experience physical withdrawal from sugar. There isn't really any medical literature to back it up. It gives me sinus headaches so I do not consume it at all. The multiple times I've cut it out (took a few tries) I would get quite sick for 12-24 hours. Strong sinus headache, cold sweat, shivering, vomiting, diarrhea.

No shit :)

Try cutting most of it for a month, been there, done that...

Sure but this statement is completely useless.

That is my point. Saying sugar is poison is useless statement. Its not poison in the same way that arsnic is. Treating sugar the same way you would treat arsenic makes no sense. Arguably its closer to being poisinous the way broccoli is, but that also makes no sense. Its a gross oversimplification that leads to bad conclusions.

Genuine side-question (that ages me a bit):

Eggs were ever considered unhealthy?

They’re a relatively high source of dietary cholesterol. When we first figured out that serum cholesterol is correlated with cardio problems, we basically assumed that dietary cholesterol must be bad. We’ve since figured out that dietary cholesterol is a much less significant driver of serum cholesterol than one would naively assume.

> We’ve since figured out that dietary cholesterol is a much less significant driver of serum cholesterol than one would naively assume.

I challenge you to find any study which supports this conclusion that is not funded by egg industry.

I mean, the Framingham study found no link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol in non-diabetics (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024517/). It doesn't really get bigger or higher quality than that.

Every single thing you have posted was an attempt to muddy the water. Enough already.

Hilarious. That's a "no, I cannot" then.

Making up shit to post does not improve the world or your reputation.

Are you talking to yourself now? You're the only one that's posted "made up shit" without citation.

Who do you imagine you are fooling?

There's only one fool in this conversation and it's not me.

What this guy said.

Don’t you remember the egg whites only phase?!

That was part of the 1990s "fat is evil" thing.

"The Fifty Year Rehabilitation of the Egg"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4632449/

Oh yes, they had cholesterol (and they still do)... it's just that they CAN be a part of a healthy diet, while breakfast cereal arguably can't no matter how many vitamins you add to it. You'll still find plenty of egg white only things out there in the dairy aisle or at your local diner... since it was the dreaded yolk with all the fat (and vitamins and cholesterol) that was supposed to be bad.

And.... it turns out that fat is totally harmless. Saturated fat, anyway. What we were blaming on regular fat turns out to have been caused by sugar and trans-fat. Trans fat, or hydrogenated fat, was finally (almost!) banned in the US in 2017. (Although you can still buy Crisco!) Trans fat was invented in the 19th century as a way to get people eating cottonseed oil margarine. When fat got blamed for what sugar was doing, they pretended hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and later other hydrogenated oils, were not at fault.

Even people who have learned that sugar is poison often still believe there is something wrong with fat.

Eggs have plenty of cholesterol. But there is nothing wrong with dietary cholesterol. Your liver makes it for you all day long. Blood cholesterol measurements are about markers for circulatory disease that is not caused by cholesterol.

It's less about the fat per se, egg whites are drastically lower in calories and still relatively tasty if prepared well.

an egg is already 70-90 calories how much lower do you need it to be? 3 egg meal at less then 300 calories its pretty good

Well, it's less about the total amount of calories as it is about the amount per volume of food. 300kcal of egg whites is just a lot more food in size, and some people (myself included) just enjoy eating larger quantities and are willing to sacrifice some quality in taste. Also, if you're paying attention to protein intake then 300kcal of egg whites is also a lot more protein than the equivalent amount of whole eggs.

The fat isn't inherently bad, but there are tradeoffs that some people prefer.

Sugar, specifically the way we stuff all foods these days full of it, is the “root of all evil”. Healthcare costs, the obesity crisis (just because everyone is fat now doesn’t make it normal or healthy), lack of military readiness, sugar addiction, it’s all linked to sugar being extremely cheap and highly addictive which means every mass manufactured food is stuffed full of it.

I absolutely believe that sugar is the cigarette of our time. It’s just a lot harder to point out the deleterious effects on society. With cigarettes you can point to lung cancer and that’s all you need. Sugar causes varying harms, of varying degrees, so you can’t easily point to something to scare people, especially when obesity is normalized. On a societal level however, the price is clear.

Sugar must be regulated, taxed, and zero-calorie sweeteners encouraged as the default.

> zero-calorie sweeteners

What about the idea that sweeteners cause insulin resistance? Is there any proper (not funded by the sugar industry) research either way?

It was all on purpose: sugar and corn syrup are cheap.

Yup. - https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-jun-27-la-ol-nix...

Earl Butz has a lot to answer for, in hell. But he has plenty of company.

Just to add to this, anything processed is generally not great for health. After going through a lot of gut issues and reading many articles and books here is what I understood..

Avoid things which... * contains more than 3 components which you can't understand. * your grandma doesn't recognise as food. * comes in a plastic cover and doesn't degrade for a long time.

I know this pretty much eliminates the entire super market but if you go through what I have you will rethink everything you put in your mouth.

In the 1990s, fat. was. poison.

The fat free craze then is what led to many more food items having added sugar then ever before. They took out the fat, and added more forms of sugar to more foods.

Demonizing one food type completely just because they've been mis-used by industry is rarely healthy. Focusing on demonizing sugar is repeating the cultural mistakes of the past. Focusing on whole foods would be a better way forward.

Honest question - what about if you drink a ton of water? Does that "dilute" the effect that consuming too much of one thing has? I've never actually looked into it myself but I've always held that belief, perhaps falsely.

Might slow digestion down a little bit, but probably not significantly. Fiber helps slow down sugar absorption, which is why fruit is okay for you. Ultimately most of what you put into your stomach absorbs into your blood stream, so eventually your pancreas will have to deal with all the sugar by releasing a lot of insulin

That will unfortunately kill you pretty effectively, 6 liters or so in a short timespan is all it takes...

Reductionist mentality to something as complex as nutrition could make anything you eat poison.

The gas from broccoli could increase greenhouse gases?