It’s no wonder more people than ever are skeptical of public health organizations and mainstream experts who claim to possess the final word on health and nutrition, when there is so much proof that information has been censored and even doctored in order to push a certain message that will help corporations like Procter & Gamble become richer and richer.
Like… Just wait till you hear about sugar and the lies around that.
I’m ready. Tell me. I already know I probably shouldn’t eat it but give me the gut punch.
Sugar activates the same receptors as heroin. Which, isn’t surprising since simple sugars are what fueled much of our earlier ancestors. I personally am not a fan of this fact and would rather frame it as heroin activates the same receptors as sugar.
That said, the sugar industry is a mess. A number of documentaries have been made about it, how they have bribed government officials, had the ear of presidents, and have killed journalists.
The problem with sugar is that it’s in just about everything. Sugar, by itself, is not a bad thing so long as you don’t overdue it but…a single coke is overdoing it.
I like sweet things. I totally confess that I eat way too many sweet things. 3 or 4 times in my life I’ve “challenged” myself to go 30 days without eating any sugar except what’s in fruits and vegetables and food like that naturally, making sure to eat a very careful diet and no treats or processed food. Every time within a few days I was having awful cravings and mood swings, and by a week I felt like an emotional wreck who just wanted sugar. I completed my “challenges” but it was disturbing.
It also gave me a ton of empathy for addicts. If I can’t not eat sugar without a massive struggle, I can only imagine trying to get clean from heroin or another drug.
And just like many other addictions, if you power through the first part, the cravings vanish.
Oh definitely. It just did give me sympathy. I’m much better than I used to be, although I definitely have days and weeks occasionally where I’m like wow, I just want something sweet, and I eat like crap and then have to eat super healthy for awhile to balance it out. But I’m only human, and sometimes I get stressed, depressed, or too broke/tired to eat the way I should. And that’s ok. I’ve tried the ultra healthy lifestyle for awhile and I was honestly miserable and unhappy. I like good food, and everything in moderation and all.
I’m not a huge believer in just cutting things out but there are definitely better ways. If you do a lot of your own cooking, you can cut out a LOT of sugar this way.
Even home made chocolate chip cookies have less sugar than their store bought counterparts. And they taste much better.
I have a terrible sweet tooth but I’m much better about it now than I used to be. The key is finding what works for you may not be the same as what works for someone else.
Cooking my own food is practical for me but not practical for most Americans. Switch out sugar for healthy fats is also a good way to reduce your sugar intake.
If you can’t do that, pairing sugar with a protein or a fiber will go a long way. So instead of a candy bar doing a protein bar or doing something like peanut butter and jelly will hit the sweet but also introduce savory, which will dull the desire for sugar.
Most of the US has replaced sugar with something even worse that causes sharper and faster glucose spikes than sugar. Corn syrup. Going back to sugar would actually slow the diabetes epidemic. Sugar actually takes longer to break down than corn syrup but the massively heavy corn subsidies in the US make corn syrup cheaper.
Sugar activates the same receptors as heroin.
So do protein, exercise, meditation, getting a raise, spending time with family, and a million other things. I’m not saying sugar is good, but this statement is meaningless.
This article I single handedly blame for the obesity epidemic.
Published by Harvard (one of the many reasons I discredit them to date, including that their current patient care model is centered around making money not providing high quality care) and paid for by the sugar industry for a paltry $50k.
This spawned the era of “low fat diet” where companies cut the fat content of their products, which made it taste like shit, so dumped heaps of sugar into it.
That’s not the only reason for the obesity epidemic (although it certainly didn’t help). The major reason is rising financial inequality and the fact that unhealthy, sugar-loaded food is cheaper than healthy food.
Oh I’m quite aware that this is a highly complex issue that has evolved over decades and blaming it single handedly on one thing is disingenuous. Nonetheless, I still blame that article single handedly. (/s because tone doesn’t convey well over text)
Also, fat acceptance. You can’t blame only exterior motives and causes. Internal accountability is another piece of the puzzle.
The is a branch of research about the myelin sheath around brain cells showing deterioration due to lack of fat consumption when we shifted to 6-11 servings of bread and pasta a day for all that sugar.
Came about from Alzheimer’s research.
Wow. Thanks, that’s scary!
The fact that the food industry was able to hamstring Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity as FLOTUS should tell you how much power they really have. They didn’t like what she had to say about artificial sweeteners and type 2 diabetes.
Oh, they also take advantage of subsidized slave labor through our prison system.
This is what regulatory capture looks like.
Can we stop saying “paid off” and start using “bribed”? The reality of the US is that bribery exists at every level and we just keep ignoring it or using euphemisms for it to fool ourselves and the world.
No, they genuinely can’t. They can establish the fact that P&G paid them the money, but (good) journalists keep their content and titles limited to the bare facts only, and leave the implications to you to decide as a reader. Additionally, you always have to consider libel cases in journalism and the verbiage you write matters, because “bribe” infers intent that you may not be able to prove in court.
It is exceptionally obvious that this is a bribe to any reasonable person who reads it, and we should not outsource our responsibility to think critically and draw conclusions to journalists.
we should not outsource our responsibility to think critically and draw conclusions to journalists.
This is the reason why half of America is dumb as fuck.
Also, there’s something called journalist norms. If Reuters decides, for example, to start calling them bribes, everyone can start calling them bribes. It’s only libel if it’s not the norm to describe things that way. Same with calling them “lies”. “Non-truths” is such a stupid journalistic standard. They should have stuck with “lies” from the beginning.
Sorry, trying to understand here. Are you saying that reporting only the facts, without editorializing on the reasons behind it, is the reason why half of America is dumb as fuck? If so, I think you have that relationship entirely backwards. America being dumb as fuck is forcing/encouraging our news to spoonfeed more and more to the public, giving them power and as a consequence, whoever has control over those media institutions. You’re asking for propaganda (without explicit intent to do so, which I recognize), and I’m not going to support that even if I agree with the underlying message of that propaganda.
“reporting all the facts” is an editorial decision as well. There’s nothing stopping newspapers from reporting on statements by politicians and comparing those statements to the objective truth or facts within the same reporting. The only thing stopping them is all-sides-ism. I was going to say that fear of getting sued is also stopping them, but they actively do a lot of reporting that gets them sued or killed and they happily go on in the name of First Amendment and journalistic freedoms. So yeah, it’s literally an editorial decision to report only on “blah said this!” instead of “blah said this, but the facts don’t support it!”
As for spoonfeeding, sure that’s always a bad idea. But there’s always a fine line, isn’t there?
Yes, there are various editorial decisions made, directly or inferred, in any article, but that’s not the argument here. We’re talking about the explicit editorial decision of calling this handover a “bribe”. “Bribe” infers intent, which cannot be definitively proven without evidence that they don’t have. It’s insanely obvious to any reasonable party that the intent is there, but that is the line between spoonfeeding and reporting. They report on what they can prove, and any extrapolations will be left to you as the reader by any news agency that respects their reader in the slightest and isn’t just trying to make you believe something. Anything else is propaganda or a tabloid, and I don’t want to read it.
I don’t think I can rebut your argument in “that fear of getting sued… freedoms” because I just do not think it is grounded in what actually happens, but not sure we can do much but just agree to disagree on that one. Fwiw, I think most reputable news agencies avoid this exact thing very consistently and always have tried to.
i can see the difference between a lie and a non-truth. Liars know that what they say is not true (Trump is a liar). Non-truth is when people honestly believe that the stupid shit coming out of their mouth is the truth (Maga people who parrot Trump are not liars, but what they say is not the truth either: hence the necessity for the term non-truth).
nitpick here but there already are terms for saying something that’s not true (whether the speaker believes it or not) - one is “lie” and the other is “untruth”. There was never the need to create a new word for it. I’m not saying language shouldn’t progress. But in this case, coining a special term for jus Trump gave him too much power in our collective consciences than was necessary.
“lobbying”
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/the-money-behind-the-fight-over-healthy-eating-214517
Leave this here if you wanna learn more about the woman behind this story. She’s not completely unbiased herself and is funded by a Houston billionaire. Her name is Nina Teicholz.
She still might be correct. And the association between saturated fats and heart disease does seem to be moderated by other factors. For example, cheese, butter, and yogurt seem to have more benefits than harm, even with their high saturated fat content. But again, this is based on limited studies.
Also, fiber seems to be a moderator as well. So a high psyllium diet will moderate the effects of saturated fat.
And this is from the WHO, 2022.
Our findings strongly reinforce the guidance that, when replacement energy is required, it should be provided by PUFA, plant sources of MUFA and slowly digested carbohydrates. Thus, dietary fats should come largely from seeds, nuts or liquid vegetable oil (olive, canola) rather than hydrogenated vegetable fats or land animal fats and coconut oil.
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240061668
Overall though, there are no questions as to whether unsaturated fats are bad for you (they’re not). And the environmental impact of eating saturated animal fats can’t be denied. It would be better for the world if we reduced meat consumption and the use of animal products.
I had some flak from the ADA (American Diabetes Association) thread because I was calling out the conflicts of interests caused by donations from corporations, big pharma with indtitutions like the ADA, AHA and regulatory bodies. Instead of focusing on facts, science and educating people, hijacked by mammon.
Shit like this causes people to lose trust in institutions and helps feed conspiracy theories and create grifters who take advantage of this loss in trust. If you cant trust the people in charge, people who establish themselves as experts, then the chances that there are more Aaron Rodgers out there doing their own research will only grow.
They were also paid off to increase the acceptable amounts of sugar in your diet by sugar and soft drink companies. Refined sugar is terrible for your heart and health in general.
This is the sugar thing all over again.
Give me back my Trans fats
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AHA isn’t government. Government has also been fooled/bribed before but many regulatory agencies have recs and regulations on most of the things you mention. They just don’t have any “bite” to enforce, like the EPA being disallowed from regulating many waterway by the conservative SCOTUS.
