Posts Tagged ‘sugar’

Reducing the intake of sugary drinks is presently quite important to many public health advocates. Taxes on sweet drinks are one effective way to do this. And advocates are convinced that the result will be better health –  less obesity and less diabetes. But it’s worth asking: what will take the place of those sugary […]

Every day we get practical lessons in the power of familiarity bias. Repeat something often enough and people believe it. This week, JAMA Internal Medicine is feeding the soft drink panic machine. “New study links all soda to an early death,” says the Washington Post. CNN gets right down to it: “Want to live longer? […]

Brush your teeth, wash your hands, take a shower. These are all good, healthy ways to clean up. Dietary cleansing and detox rituals? Not so much. So it’s surprising to see the Washington Post making itself a platform to promote a pseudoscience sugar detox cleansing ritual. Does It Work? n=1 The clickbait headline promises to […]

How much added sugar is in a five-pound bag of sugar? It’s taken a while, but FDA has come up with a final answer to this challenging question. None. It’s all sugar, nothing added. The same goes for honey, molasses, or maple syrup. It turns out that the definition of “added” can be quite tricky. […]

Risk-benefit ratio is a term of art that most anyone in healthcare will know. It answers a very basic question. Does this thing offer more benefits than risks? The thing might be a drug, it might be a device, or it might be an operation. But what about some of the beliefs that drive health […]

Everything is effective. Give somebody a potent drug and it will surely do something to them. Enact a health policy and it will surely have an effect. In fact, the effects will certainly be many – both desired and undesired. But for both drugs and health policies, the target is health. So we’d best be […]

Canada’s latest dietary guidelines make it clear. Cut the sugar. Avoid any other sweeteners. Water should be what you’re drinking. And also, enjoy your food. Dietary guideline writers don’t have much of a taste for sweetness these days. But humans do. How shall we cope? The Rising Bias Against Sweeteners The prevailing bias holds that […]

Fruit juice, soda, cigarettes, and vapes. They’re all killing us, but we keep consuming them. Tobacco and sugar are close neighbors on the slippery slope to poor health and premature death. Right? Well, not really. News and journal articles might give you an impression that sugar and tobacco are very similar bad actors. We hear […]

Kevin Hall is a bit of a myth buster. In a number of studies, he has put popular ideas about obesity and nutrition under the microscope of objective data. And by doing so, he proved them wrong. But in a new study published yesterday, he proved himself wrong about ultra-processed food. In a carefully controlled […]

Yep. We’re just about done here. Soda taxes are highly effective, and Philly has proved it. Classic economic price-demand curves work, especially in a city with a lot of poverty. If you tax soda and raise the price, sales go down. Philly obesity and diabetes rates will follow. A hot new publication in JAMA proves […]