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Comment by Evgeny

10 years ago

Adding random citations to straw man arguments proves nothing.

Did we even read the same articles?

Here are some examples I picked up in five minutes that look like completely reasonable referencing to me.

Anyone with an Internet connection can easily verify as much for themselves by visiting the Food and Agriculture (FAO) website, and checking the per capita intake of sweeteners in Japan for that year. Do that, and you’ll see the Japanese were averaging 52 calories per day from fruits, and a far more significant 174 calories daily from sugar. “Sweeteners, Other” and “Honey” supplied another 86 cals/day[7]

So just from sugar alone, the Japanese were obtaining 22 grams, or 4.4 teaspoons, of fructose per day. The Japanese do indeed eat fructose-containing sugar, and have been doing so for hundreds of years[8].

The same FAO data we just checked out shows that in 2009, the average per capita energy intake in Japan was 2,674 calories/day. The corresponding figure for the USA was 3,652 calories/day[7]

Unlike the US rise in obesity, which stems from both declining activity and a marked increase in per capita caloric intake[11, 7], Australia’s rise seems to have been caused almost entirely from decreasing physical activity.

The indignant paediatrician then completely refuted himself a moment later when he admitted that Americans were indeed eating more than they were in the 1980s[13]. And at 7:30 in his “Bitter Truth” video, Lustig acknowledges to his audience: “We are all eating more now than we did 20 years ago.”[4]

Taubes cites a 2004 CDC article reporting that since 1971, total fat intake increased among women by a mere 6.5 grams but decreased among men by 5.3 grams[14]. This gives the impression overall fat intake has remained relatively unchanged.