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How the Sugar Industry Tried To Hide Health Effects of Its Product 50 Years Ago (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: About 50 years ago, the sugar industry stopped funding research that began to show something they wanted to hide: that eating lots of sugar is linked to heart disease. A new study exposes the sugar industry's decades-old effort to stifle that critical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, recently analyzed historical documents regarding a rat study called Project 259 that was launched in 1968. The study was funded by a sugar industry trade group called the International Sugar Research Foundation, or ISRF, and conducted by W. F. R. Pover at the University of Birmingham. When the preliminary findings from that study began to show that eating lots of sugar might be associated with heart disease, and even bladder cancer, the ISRF pulled the plug on the research. Without additional funding, the study was terminated and the results were never published, according to a study published today in PLOS Biology. The study in question investigated the relationship between sugars and certain blood fats called triglycerides, which increase the risk of heart disease. The preliminary results from the research, called Project 259, suggested that rats on a high-sugar diet, instead of a starch diet, had higher levels of triglycerides. The rats that ate lots of sugar also had higher levels of an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase in their urine, which at the time was thought to be potentially linked to bladder cancer, says study co-author Cristin Kearns, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry.
Started out as a kid, before I knew it was hooked on Cap'n Crunch. Within a few years it was harder stuff - twinkies, mars bars, ju jubes. There's no end. Before it hit me, I was buying up chocolate bunnies after easter and binging on them for days and was looking forward to Christmas only for the delicious Turtles. And they say it's not a drug. They're crazy.
"GMOs are safe" is a nonsensically overgeneralized statement. It's entirely dependent on the *specific* GMO being discussed. The whole point of a GMO bioweapon for example is to NOT be safe.
If you're specifically talking about GMO foods, then the answer is a definite "it depends". Golden Rice, etc seem quite safe, as do many survival- and yield-boosting enhancements. But the GMO food market is dominated by things like Monsanto's poison-resistant crops, which might be fine on their own, but exist for the specific purpose of allowing the plants to be saturated with chemicals that are both known to be toxic to humans, and to be absorbed into the "food" part of the plant.
And then there's the very definite secondary risks of monoculture that inevitably accompany enhancing yield, etc. of a comparative few crop strains, which makes them far more vulnerable to disease and other blights. You know that weird cloyingly sweet candy flavor that's called "banana" despite not tasting remotely right? That's actually what bananas used to taste like, before the commercial banana monoculture was hit by a plague that rapidly drove our preferred species to extinction. Too dense a population with too little genetic variation is *extremely* vulnerable to plagues.
Not to mention the very real risks of allowing Monsanto and friends to have a legal stranglehold on the food supply, which they have already shown themselves to be eager to abuse at every opportunity.
And of course if you want to go full "Frankenfood", there's no reason you couldn't engineer corn, or anything else, to produce any of a wide range of highly toxic substances that would make them as lethally poisonous as the most deadly of mushrooms. And there are in fact already GMO crops (not deployed...I think) designed to produce their own pesticides internally - not immediately fatal to humans, but most pesticides can do nasty things to us if consumed in large enough quantities. And no amount of scrubbing will wash off a pesticide that's produced within the fruit itself.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Have you ever looked at ingredients for stuff? Sugar is in EVERYTHING. Even stuff you wouldn't expect - like milk, or most peanut butter.
Whatever works for you dude. Eating fats upon fats upon protein works great for me. Salt + butter + not-carbs, and I am great. Add carbs into any of that, your "processing" doesn't even begin to factor into it, and all get it is fat, sick (constant allergy/flu-like symptoms) and depressed probably from the first two.
My first venture onto a keto/atkins diet, I had my blood pressure drop from medium high to "wow you're doing just fine", my triglycerides went from 390 to 95, weight from 235lbs to 190lbs, and I got completely off all diabetes-related medication - all within the span of 10 weeks. Apparently that's simply the way my body was designed to eat. Might not be the way your body was designed to eat, that's all fine and dandy, good luck with figuring that out. But they're going to have to pry the salt and saturated fats from my cold dead hands.
The only thing I know for sure is that when it comes to food, I really can't trust studies. Take any stance you want, and somebody has a study to "prove" it. Such useless BS. Dr Atkins nailed it when it comes to the uselessness of nutritional science in America in the mid-to-late 1900s, and I sure am glad as hell he spoke up.
The sugar industry and the AHA and FDA have already been responsible for so many thousands upon thousands of man-years lost to diseases like type II diabetes, do you really want to keep shoveling that shit for them? Haven't people figured out why health care costs are so bloody much higher than the rest of the world? Hint: it's what you put in your mouth, and it ain't butter.
Eat only bread and fish. Drink only water and wine. I call it the Jesus diet. Have you ever seen a Jesus statue that wasn't lean with 6 pack abs? Of course, longevity only ensured for 30-35 years, YMMV.
A couple of sodas a day is moderation? lolwut? Just one 12 oz. Coca-Cola has over 40 g of sugar. Even only 2 cans a day is over 80 g of sugar and that’s not even remotely a “moderate amount.”
We know how this ends, it costs you an arm and a leg.
Well, at least an arm.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Barring some freak side effect like a potato taking up a heavy metal from the soil the ability for a GMO to pose any health risk is non-existent. GMOs don't suddenly gain the ability to produce some crazy chemical structure.
1) Roundup-ready GMOs on average get sprayed with more Roundup than non-resistant plants would, leading to a higher load of pesticides (which get absorbed into the plant), not because the GMO produces them, but because the GMO allows them.
1.a) This overuse leading to Roundup resistance in weeds, then needing even more pesticides, has also been published for a number of years.
2) "BT" GMOs contain genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, expressing an insecticide. B. thur. is used in organic farming (spores and Cry proteins sprayed on crops) because it is deemed mostly safe to the environment, but it seems research of effects on human health is "insufficient". I would think there is a bit of a difference between a topical application that can be washed off, and a systemic production of the insecticide.
Just stop. Your basic facts about HFCS makeup and metabolism are wrong and therefore I assume the rest of what you are saying is shilling.
Unlike what you said, HFCS has four common versions with different quantities of fructose: HFCS-42 has 42% fructose. There is also, HFCS-55, HFCS-65, and HFCS-90, containing 90% fructose. Soft drinks typically use HFCS-55 or HFCS-65, but of course there's nothing on the labels to indicate which version of HFCS is being used.
Also, unlike what you said, fructose is not metabolized identically. Unlike glucose, fructose is metabolized nearly entirely in the liver, which is where the triglycerides are coming from (re: the article).
Disappointed that whoever modded you up didn't at least check Wikipedia first.