Fultonius “ There's not enough slack in the system to do it all properly, because we've built a system that means everyone needs 2 x 5 day a week jobs to live” compare well with the tribe.
Quote from: Falling Down on January 30, 2024, 09:20:59 pmFultonius “ There's not enough slack in the system to do it all properly, because we've built a system that means everyone needs 2 x 5 day a week jobs to live” compare well with the tribe. Fixed that for you Fultonious. Most of how people choose to live boils down to maintaining status relative to their tribe. It’s a never-ending game unless you suss out nobody else cares about your status (job, house, car, qualifications, education, income, wealth) as much as you, and everyone else is too busy caring about their own relative status just as much. That’s the system, the incentives are perverse if happiness/good health is your goal.
Someone's been drinking the Morgan Housel koolaid
I subscribe to a foodie substack called Vittles. Here’s a recent, thoughtful article on UPF’s https://open.substack.com/pub/vittles/p/the-hater-ultra-processed-foods?r=4n4mm&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
It was Tim’s DOACEO talk that prompted me to try cutting out sugar.However, I fear he comes across as too ‘extreme’. Most people can’t imagine surviving on a diet of salad, seeds and fermented carrot. The bit where he’s talking about fermenting bits of veg in a jar had me chuckling. Does he do any exercise?!
On R4 just now, 'food for life' by Tim Spector. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001vtnc11mins19secs: ''One of the unhealthiest things we can do is consume sugar, in sweetened fizzy drinks. This is now strongly linked to risk of obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease. ''. Then goes on to explain why artificial sweeteners replacing sugar in drinks (such as Red Bu|l zero sugar) don't change the risk for obesity despite the calorie reduction, and suggests this is to do with gut microbiome negatively affected by sweeteners. Which is why I have such a low opinion of climbers who choose to take money to market Red Bu|l / sugar-sweetened drinks to young people.
Most of how people choose to live boils down to maintaining status relative to their tribe. It’s a never-ending game unless you suss out nobody else cares about your status (job, house, car, qualifications, education, income, wealth) as much as you, and everyone else is too busy caring about their own relative status just as much. That’s the system, the incentives are perverse if happiness/good health is your goal.
Quote from: petejh on January 31, 2024, 10:13:14 amOn R4 just now, 'food for life' by Tim Spector. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001vtnc11mins19secs: ''One of the unhealthiest things we can do is consume sugar, in sweetened fizzy drinks. This is now strongly linked to risk of obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease. ''. Then goes on to explain why artificial sweeteners replacing sugar in drinks (such as Red Bu|l zero sugar) don't change the risk for obesity despite the calorie reduction, and suggests this is to do with gut microbiome negatively affected by sweeteners. Which is why I have such a low opinion of climbers who choose to take money to market Red Bu|l / sugar-sweetened drinks to young people. The artificial sweetener bit is nonsense. There's nothing inherently wrong with sugar sweetened fizzy drinks if consumed within a balanced diet (they will not cause obesity, type II diabetes, or heart disease in these circumstances as I've previously provided evidence for); however, I agree that for many people they will contribute towards a being in a calorie surplus and therefore will cause cause obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease...
The artificial sweetener bit is nonsense.
The only comment I'd like to say to counter your stance (you're not a sugar company shill are you??!! ;-) ) is that nutritional studies are highly liable to bias, it's been shown over and over again that the studies are usually funded by either sugar companies, or sweetener companies and that the conclusions often aren't borne out by the numbers in the studies. There's a lot of junk science out there! (not saying your links are junk - I haven't scrutinised, just that junk exists and we can all be swayed by it)
So, I'm not intending to "rubbish" your standpoint, I'm going to look into that myself when I get the time, but I do think your language is too "sure".We cannot say:QuoteThe artificial sweetener bit is nonsense.All we can say is that the studies you've read indicate that XYZ... A new study could come along next week and completely change our understanding. 100% cherry picking, but I can quite quickly find some studies to counter your points:https://www.purdue.edu/hhs/news/2019/05/study-soft-drinks-including-diet-sodas-contribute-to-increased-sugar-intake-and-total-calorie-consumption-in-children/And people that consume a high quantity of UPFs (FDs article notwithstanding), on average, consume 500 calories more...https://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/about/news/newsletter/2019/summer/story-01.html#:~:text=The%20answer%20was%20a%20definite,faster%20rate%20and%20gained%20weight.So, while your studies may show that on a calorie controlled diet sugar or sweetened drinks don't make any difference to weight loss/ gain, they may be missing a link to increased appetite and therefore calorie consumption, which as you've shown has all the usual downsides.Debate is good.
So, while your studies may show that on a calorie controlled diet sugar or sweetened drinks don't make any difference to weight loss/ gain, they may be missing a link to increased appetite and therefore calorie consumption, which as you've shown has all the usual downsides.
The artificial sweetener bit is nonsense. There's nothing inherently wrong with sugar sweetened fizzy drinks if consumed within a balanced diet......However, to say that replacing sugar with artificial sweetener in drinks (such as Red Bu|l zero sugar) doesn't change the risk for obesity, despite the calorie reduction, due to the impact on gut microbiome couldn't be more wrong. It is an outright lie and is shit, dangerous advice.
So a professor of genetics whose specialism is nutrition and the gut microbiome, and who's made it his career to study how food impacts our health, says unequivocally that you're wrong about sugar.
Same for sweeteners. You should debate with the scientists - not me - who say pretty clearly that sweeteners do impact the gut microbiome, which in turn impacts health. Spector has a twitter and a linkedin, why don't you present your case to him, with those studies linked, and see if he replies? You'll get a far better answer than on here.
edit: I notice you're focussing on calorie reduction (from drinking sugar-free with artificial sweeteners) - but calories isn't the direct mechanism at work. The mechanism proposed as I understand it is to do with how sweeteners affect appetite/satiation which in turn affects eventual total calorie consumption.
Liam, I know we're mostly interested in humans here rather than mice, but it is much much easier to study mice than humans (you can control their environment and have them all of the same inbred strain etc). Such a study with mice found that artificial sweetners screwed up their gut microbiome and that caused them to become diabetic. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13793I fleetingly looked at the first link in your list (the International Journal of Obesity randomised trial). My first thought was that people who already were obese perhaps already have very messed up gut microbiome. So the damage is already done, and artificial sweetners can't cause much additional wreckage.
That's quite different from saying that if all Shauna Coxley fans were to start drinking over-caffeinated sugary drink company Zero, it would be harmless for them.
Tim Spector says that calorie restriction doesn't work. Meta analyses show that this statement is incorrect. He says that exercise doesn't help us lose weight. Meta analyses show that this statement is also incorrect. Smart people can still display cognitive dissonance. I can find you Nobel Prize winners who think climate change isn't real, but i'll stick with the consensus.
I said that sugar does tend to make people fatter, so I think you've misunderstood my argument. Consuming sugar doesn't make me fatter or unhealthier because I control for it. That's what I mean by the 'sugar isn't inherently unhealthy independently of the calories it contains' claim.
the sheer number of studies in existence with results that contradict each other.
Am I saying that there are no negative effects associated with artificial sweeteners? No.Am I saying that artificial sweeteners consumed in normal doses do not appear to lead to negative health consequences and more often than not are shown to actually have positive health effects as a result of calorie restriction? Yes.
