from Hacker News

Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

by tchalla on 1/7/25, 5:51 PM with 384 comments

by neom on 1/7/25, 8:40 PM
Interesting. I think folks in the comments here maybe missed this paper is way more about the beverages part making it important. The research is around sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). If I'm reading it right, the SSBs have a differentmetabolic effect.
"Due to their liquid form, SSBs are rapidly consumed and digested, resulting in lower satiety, higher caloric intake and weight gain. High doses of rapidly digested glucose also activate insulin and other regulatory pathways, which can result in visceral fat production, hepatic and skeletal muscle insulin resistance and weight gain. High doses of rapidly digested fructose directly activate hepatic fat synthesis, leading to ectopic fat deposition and metabolic dysfunction in liver and muscle"
Unfortunately I can't find where they define high dose, but if you look at what they say is high elsewhere, it seems to be around 9 servings a week of "any beverage with added sugars and >50 kcal per 8 oz serving, including commercial or homemade beverages, soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks, punch, lemonade and aguas frescas." - A can of coke is 12oz I believe?
by mrcwinn on 1/7/25, 11:41 PM
My father was Type 2 and for decades drank sweet tea; sweet tea that progressively became sweeter and sweeter. If you were to let it settle, you would see a thick layer of sugar sitting at the bottom of the glass. Eventually, he lost both of his legs beneath the knee due to infections that festered. He spent his last few years in a wheelchair and then eventually died of a heart attack.
Bad habits, bit by bit, over the course of years.
As a photojournalist, he won a Pulitzer for earthquake footage in 1989, saw the shuttle take off and land countless times, and took an incredible photo at a NASCAR event of a car, engulfed in flames, flying directly at his lens. (He got the shot and then dove out of the way.)
Which I guess is to say... life is ups and downs. Be wary of sugary stuff.
by sitkack on 1/7/25, 6:14 PM
> Burdens of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages in 184 countries
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03345-4.pdf
The data and the code used for the analysis appears to be available.
----
One of the reasons that we don't have Universal Healthcare in the US is that things that are categorically unhealthy would be prohibited from being sold. Afterall, it would benefit not only the receivers of care but also the people funding the healthcare system. The sellers of those things will fight (to their death) to prevent that environment from existing.
Not allowing something to be mass produced, marketed and sold is different than banning it outright.
I personally think mass scale tobacco and soda should not be sold, at the same time I think people can hand roll and pack a pipe into the grave. Same for their at home bathtub soda.
by tomcar288 on 1/7/25, 7:33 PM
It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now that there's an entire constellation of diseases (diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, fatty liver disease, heart disease, etc, etc) known as metabolic syndrome that are all caused by diet and lifestyle.
by siliconc0w on 1/7/25, 8:37 PM
I'd bet a dollar per gram additive sugar tax in excess of 5g would immediately flatten the chronic disease curve. Maybe double that if it's marketed towards kids. There are a lot of problems besides sugar/HFCS but it's easily towards the top of the list.
by znpy on 1/7/25, 11:23 PM
Tangentially related: a while ago i used to drink aspartame-sweetened drinks (sugarfree coke) but I did quit that as well after reading thst the sweet taste is still going go stimulate insulin production.
Speaking with a relative eho is a medical doctor they told me that yes, that’s a thing.
I’m not sure to what degree this might fit into the discussion, but just wanted to write this down.
Nowadays i just drink water.
I still have the occasional beer or the occasional glass of proper wine if i’m out with friends.
by havella on 1/19/25, 2:13 PM
I drink 270g of pure sugar during a hard 3h bike ride. While allowing me to complete the hard work, it also helps with not feeling empty afterwards and eating uncontrollably. As long as I don’t gain weight It’s all good.
by rauljordan2020 on 1/8/25, 2:25 PM
I'm from latam. I never saw anyone drink water growing up. Anytime you try to drink water, people label you as boring, even your parents. Whenever we go to a restaurant, the first thing you ask the waiter is "what sodas do you have?". If you're not feeling like drinking soda and want something "healthier", you ask what kinds of fruit juices they have. If you don't like the options, you settle on a hyper-sweetened tea.
I frequently ask my parents to drink more water, and they get defensive saying they drink a lot of water but I just don't see it. The truth is they only drink half a small cup in the middle of the night...
by bentt on 1/8/25, 2:08 AM
Fruit smoothies are an interesting case of a "sugar beverage" which doesn't quite act how you'd think. Intuitively, you'd think that speedy ingestion of that much fructose with all its fiber obliterated in a blender could potentially cause spikes in blood glucose. However this study showed that when the fruits had seeds, like blackberries and raspberries, the glucose peak was lower with blended fruit than whole.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9657402/
by busyant on 1/7/25, 9:03 PM
I know several people who’ve undergone bariatric surgery.
One of the post-surgery ‘rules’ is … “Don’t drink your calories.”
by hilux on 1/7/25, 9:32 PM
It's "good" that this is in Nature, but does any health-aware person not already know this?
Our real problem is that most people aren't health-aware, and advertising (including the pharma-funded healthcare system) absolutely overwhelms common-sense truths about health.
Over the past few years I have improved my own health by greatly limiting my intake of sugars, including by cutting out "healthy" smoothies, but I learned all this from Dr Internet, and NOT from any physician who was being paid to treat me. US physicians' knowledge of nutrition is stuck at whatever they were taught in med school, which was probably 20+ years behind the research at that time.
by xnx on 1/7/25, 9:44 PM
There is almost nothing* like sugar drinks in the natural world our bodies evolved in. Sugar drinks are about as different as tea leaves and pure cocaine. It's is no coincidence that both are refined white powders.
*honey
by jodosha on 1/8/25, 6:26 AM
Not a native English speaker but, isn’t the word “attributable” in the title at least misleading?
Shouldn’t it be “linked” instead?
The paper indicates correlation, not causality.
by ashtami8 on 1/8/25, 7:06 PM
How did this article get past the sugar mafia? That too in nature!
Yudkin [1] must be chortling ;)
Warren Buffett, have your boys been slacking off? Somebody is gonna get really hurt...bad!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure,_White_and_Deadly
by tpoacher on 1/7/25, 10:31 PM
"Tendency to manifest consumption of sugar beverages attributable to predisposition to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease."
Hm. I thought the "switcheroo test" would create an obviously false "what if" statement in this case, but not so sure.
by SMP-UX on 1/10/25, 8:09 AM
Trying to attribute it to just one cause is always fallacious. In truth the modern Western diet is probably the worst of it.
Highly processed seed oils that are chemically extracted and used for frying and baking. I'm not one of those people who believes that they are genuinely toxic but they have too much omega-6.
Inexpensive sources of sugar everywhere.
Conditioners and preservatives in everything.
Most vegetables and fruits are sprayed with pesticides to some degree.
Low variety and diversity of vegetables in traditional diets.
Combine this with exceedingly high levels of misinformation both from the government and various dietitians, celebrities, medical journals, doctors, Facebook groups and users, conspiracy theorists etc. It's hard for people to know what is actually going to kill them and what isn't.
All I can tell you is is that I got a pair of 90-year-old grandparents who always eat eggs and bacon for breakfast, cook their food the old fashioned way, drink plenty of tea and always seek out the highest quality ingredients for their foods.
by KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 on 1/8/25, 12:01 AM
There is a classic book about the effects of sugar named "Sugar Blues" for the interested. I have a bad reaction to sugar so have to avoid certain foods -- e.g. bananas are a no-no for me.
by gigatexal on 1/8/25, 7:50 AM
Well this article scared me. Guess I will have to quit Mountain Dew. But what if I switched to the sugar free one? (Am I swapping diabetes and heart disease for cancer?)
by gigatexal on 1/8/25, 8:05 AM
What was hard to read from the article was if there’s a weekly or daily intake of sugar from SSB’s that’s “safe”?
by D-Coder on 1/9/25, 5:49 AM
Does this mean that soft-drink companies could be facing tobacco-company-style lawsuits?
by pelagicAustral on 1/7/25, 9:19 PM
I only ever drink coke when I'm mixing with whisky... not sure which one is worse...
by lakomen on 1/9/25, 10:17 PM
What else will they find out, that sugar is sweet?
by ketarnath on 1/8/25, 4:19 AM
Yet another article implying causation from association. The theory that sugar CAUSES diabetes type 2 fails when you look at people that eat a ton of carbs but keep the fats low: low fat vegans, fruitarians. Find one that's diabetic. They should be dropping like flies. But look at people that eat high fat >40% of calories, and the rest in carbs, and there you'll find the population of the metabolically compromised.
by dotcoma on 1/7/25, 7:48 PM
Really? I thought it was salad’s fault.
by caseyy on 1/7/25, 8:37 PM
If A causes diabetes, then it causes C outcome of diabetes. It’s a tautology.
((A → B) ∧ (B → C)) → (A → C)