> Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.

How do you go from "Sugar should be consumed in moderation" to "Sugar should be ripped out of all foods and the body doesn't need carbohydrates"?

Why jump from a reasonable and sound observation to some ridiculous extreme nobody asked for?

I interpret it to mean that we shouldn't be adding sugar to any of our foods. The natural sugar in the foods we eat is plenty.

I wouldn't even go that far. A slice of birthday cake won't kill someone. Added sugars have their place, but we shouldn't be adding them where they aren't needed and we should consume them in moderation. It's wild how much random stuff has added sugar. I've even seen deli meat with added sugar. Who is asking for corn syrup to be pumped into their roasted turkey?

In side by side taste tests more people like the version with added sugar. That’s why they add it; it sells.

> Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.

The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.

> The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate

Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary?

Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.

> Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary?

You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?

> It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.

You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere hours after eating.

> Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?

We have longer life span. We are healthier then them. And we have also bigger muscles for those fitness oriented.

That article starts with

> The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate dietary therapy

Keto diet is low-carbs - not completely carbs free.

To split hairs, "low carb" means different things to different groups of people. Lifelong adherents of the keto diet put the limit at around 20g of carbs per day. But you can find research studies and the like where they take a normal Western diet (75-90% carbs) and reduce it to say, 60% carbs and then refer to THAT as "low carb."

It's not splitting hairs. Unless you are extremely physically active, even ~100g of carbs a day will inhibit ketosis where the liver converts fats into ketones for powering your brain and body. This is easily seen by using ketone strips to detect ketones in urine.

>The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.

Only in so much as that it will built glucose out of other things you eat if you don't eat carbs separately. Your body runs on glucose which is a carbohydrate.