Long bouts of exercise like a marathon or the Tour de France or medical conditions like diabetes are the only exceptions I can think of where you'd want to instantly flood yourself with glucose.

1) this claim is much weaker than "Sugar is the worst substance for public health ever. It's literally poison."

2) and it can be a good idea if otherwise someone would suffer from caloric deficit dangerous to health and eating more food is not viable (yes, this situation is unusual)

Its hyperbole meant to convey a sense of how bad sugar (particularly added sugars) is to the health of the population. Sugar is in everything (more hyperbole!) in the U.S. America by and large is addicted to sugar and it’s very bad for us. Everything is over sweetened. Can’t even buy bacon without sugar added in some form or other.

Anyhoo. Yes sugar can be good and sugar can be bad. "It's literally poison and worst thing ever" does not productively move the needle of the conversation, almost regardless of interpretation.

This is in contrast to carbs in general, and to protein and fat, where some level of each is useful in the diet and provides a reduction in mortality and CVD risk.

As far as I know, it could be useful in case of huge need for calories.

Which basically never happens with modern lifestyle. But I guess may apply to firefighters working for several days or soldier lugging around piles of equipment.

But unlikely to apply to anyone reading HN. Unless they climb Mount Everest for fun, or volunteer as firefighters or are unlike enough to end in a war zone.

If you need to rely on hyperbole/lies/propaganda then I am going to assume that you have no case.

Second, they ferment fruit because fruit is always slightly poisonous (fructose).

Third, after being close to our primate relatives for some time, our ancestors spent a lot of time hunting, which is not a trait of monkeys we know. They eat more varied meat diet than any predator known, did that for a long time, much longer than (now) we eat crops.

Fourth, we have much higher normal percentage of fat in our body. For men, the normal fat percentage range is from 18% to 22%. Our primate relatives have much less normal fat, for most primates it is less than 9%. Our primate relatives sport bodybuilder's or high performance athlete's fat range just living their life.

As with alcohol, fructose is not a toxin in small doses, because liver can handle it (especially when it is fermented into lactic acid). But it is a toxin in doses we usually experience now. Look for "non-alcoholic fat liver syndrome".

But in general it's a far more complicated causality chain. When weight gain leads to insulin resistance then sugar is poison. We have lifestyles that maximize both a lack of physical labor and an excess of high sugar foods.

https://anthonycolpo.com/sweet-stupidity-part-2-the-bitter-t...

His understanding of what happens to fructose in the liver is fundamentally incorrect.

The way I understand it, poison is an umbrella term that includes toxins, venoms, and chemicals. Its definition is basically "is harmful to living beings", while the other three are specific types/sources of harmful.

Edit: Ended up looking it up, looks like I got poison and toxin backwards. Toxin is the umbrella term.

If you go in a supermarket in EU almost every food product contains sugar.

Why does a peas can has to contain sugar ?

There is exactly one common brand of mayo that has no added sugar. One.

And there's no way to buy sugar-free versions of many other kinds of food, from fried tomatoes sauce, sausages, etc. that were traditionally made without sugar for centuries.

It's a plague.

That just means that the item contains sugars. It doesn't mean that we've added sugars to it. A fresh apple has sugar. A fresh tomato has sugar. Many if not most fruits and vegetables do. It shouldn't be a surprise that the canned/frozen varieties have a bit of sugar on the label.

The pure apple in a can can't last for long.

If the ingredient list contains sugar, it was added.

I dont know if you particular peas have added sugar.

A person weighting 100kg should have less than 10 (ten) grams of sugar in a blood. This is less than 40 calories circulating in the blood of this 100kg person. The same person should have less than 10 (ten) grams of ketones in the blood and it is equivalent to less than 90 calories cirrculating.

Ketones are much more efficient energy source, they are twice as energy-dense. Glucose use needs a quarter of energy stored in the glucose, while fat (ketones) need only 3 (three) percents. Glucose needs insulin, fat (ketones) does not.

Glucose (which is not even table sugar!) is not a main source of energy in the body.

I also think that "variety" is a fad, just like other "extremes" you mentioned.

It is a big deal to chug a bottle of Gatorade while lounging in front of some screen when your body has nothing useful to do with all that sugar.

Simple carbohydrates such as pasta and potatoes break down quickly and can also cause one's blood-sugar to spike.

The trick is to not eat pasta with bread. Many people forget about the bread that they commonly combine with pasta and then blame the bloating and weight gain on the pasta that they had.

I'd imagine that cutting out red sauce, which commonly has added sucrose, would be better still.

Pasta is unique in that it seems to be beneficial, in terms of glycemic load, when eaten on its own. But combining it with other foods, but especially bread, may render it more taxing than other foods.

Which is a common trait of food combinations.

But simple pasta and fish dishes appear quite often in the "blue zones" around the globe. Something I should do a better job of eating more of.

I still add sugar and honey and other sweets to my drink and food. Cuz I'm a fiend. But I do now try very hard to avoid straight fructose.

Even strictly cutting out starch becomes problematic after some time, though my experience is also that humans will get unique health benefits from doing that for stretches. Which avoids the trouble of all-in zero carb.