Comment by onetimeuse92304
1 year ago
IMO the graph is misleading a bit.
Sugar is much less of a problem if you are also being very active on a daily basis. For example, your work contains physical component or maybe you are walking a lot.
So while the graph is showing dropping amount of sugar consumption, it is not taking account for also falling healthy limit of sugar consumption, ie. the fact that we should be eating even less overall given falling activity levels.
And this is especially true for kids whose activity levels fallen dramatically since smartphones.
I can tell that the same amount of sugar has much less effect on me since I lost weight and started running a lot every day. And I know this because I put on a continuous glucose monitor from time to time and can observe sugar spikes from foods to debug my diet.
You can learn a lot wearing CGM like the fact that my local Starbucks was serving me lactose-free milk regardless of what I ordered. You can tell lactose-free milk on a CGM because of a huge glucose spike. The reason? "Lactose free" is misleading. In reality they don't remove lactose. Lactose-free milk is obtained by adding to milk an enzyme that converts lactose to glucose and galactose which can be easily absorbed by the body and cause blood glucose spikes.
Your comment has helped me immensely... I have some degree of lactose sensitivity (can eat cheese and ice cream but cant drink milk), and when I have optimistically tried lactose free milk in the past it has upset my stomach just the same as the normal milk would. What you mentioned about the production of lactose free milk is something I had wondered, how could they actually remove the lactose. anyways thanks for you comment I will go down a research rabbit hole of galactose
Why don’t you start by reading the ingredients on what you’re drinking… it’s milk + lactase (the enzyme in question)
I do read the ingredients. And have worked through several processes of elimination to try and figure out the cause, however it's not at easy as a simple process of elimination as several aspects of the FODMAP triggers overlap in symptom so it is hard to pinpoint.
This is overly dismissive. I wouldn't expect everyone to know that lactose + lactase = glucose + galactose. I do, but I studied molecular biology.
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How is it misleading? it's simply showing that people aren't eating more sugar. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to add that to an article about how "100 pounds of sugar a year with half the activity because people people are playing xbox too much" that's fine - this could be a part of that conversation.
Nothing wrong with the bigger conversations... but also nothing wrong with data points like this for the sake of data points.
> Lactose free" is misleading. In reality they don't remove lactose. Lactose-free milk is obtained by adding to milk an enzyme that converts lactose to glucose and galactose
Thereby leaving the milk lactose free... Lactase, the enzyme in question, is produced by those who are not lactose intolerant and results in the same quantity of sugar though perhaps without so much "spike".
The misleading part is that people don't expect milk to be a sugary drink.
It's sugary in any form. That's an issue of ignorance rather than being mislead.
It would also be a lot more useful if it included all carbohydrates, particularly categorized by glycemic index.
> IMO the graph is misleading a bit.
...how?
Like, seriously how? The graph is about sugar. It doesn't have obese or similar words in it.
If there is a graph of "U.S. citizen's smartphone usage trend from 2010-2021", are you going to say it's misleading a bit because it doesn't take sugar into account...?
It is misleading people because people see the graph and compare it to the graph of rising obesity levels and infer (incorrectly) that if sugar is falling and obesity is rising then it is not sugar that is responsible for obesity.
The truth is that obesity is more complex problem but sugar definitely one of the important drivers.
One way obesity is a complex problem is that in most people it is delayed by decades. Our bodies can take a lot of punishment for a long time before they become disregulated enough to start gaining weight.
In this particular sense, it's 100% "people"'s fault. This graph just doesn't say it. It really doesn't. If people misreading something makes it misleading, I really wonder if there is any graph that isn't misleading ever.
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So you draw your own faulty and misleading conclusions from a graph which never says anything about obesity, and then say it's the graph that is misleading not your analysis?
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> You can learn a lot wearing CGM
Are you diabetic?
He posted, then deleted, a response saying he's not diabetic, but isn't healthy either. I guess he wears a CGM because he falsely believes transient blood glucose spikes ultimately cause T2D.