If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?
Yeah there's probably some case of some kid eating his weight in bananas and getting obese from that. Or someone that has a lot of added sugar but controls their calories just fine. So sure, the statement "obesity is caused solely by added sugar" or "all added sugar is bad" may not be totally accurate.
But unless you really think that added sugar and calories and obesity are totally unrelated, surely you can agree that the statement "if you're obese you should probably tone down the sugar" makes some sense.
The vast majority of people aren't carefully counting their calories and daily nutrient values. They aren't saying "well if I have this soda I should only have half of my entree". The information "maybe just stay away from the soda" is a net benefit to them.
If you're that guy that's counting all of your calories, sure, maybe the studies that don't control for that won't help you. They're measuring something else. But they're measuring what most people are doing.
> If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?
Not necessarily, because that may not solve the problem if they are going to eat just as many calories from other sources. I don't know if that actually would be the case; you'd need to study that.
> They're measuring something else. But they're measuring what most people are doing.
No lol, just no. The study was investigating high sugar consumption in obese children and kids with metabolic disorders. It absolutely was not measuring what 'most people are doing'
> If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?
This is what I meant by intellectual dishonesty. It's a type of informal fallacy I believe is called appeal to consequences. I'll give you an example.
If it was true that Christianity was correlated with lower incidence of homicide, is it right of me to say that everyone should be Christian? I think that statement would be dishonest and untrue.
> Yeah there's probably some case of some kid eating his weight in bananas and getting obese from that. Or someone that has a lot of added sugar but controls their calories just fine. So sure, the statement "obesity is caused solely by added sugar" or "all added sugar is bad" may not be totally accurate.
Follow that reason to it's logical conclusion. If I believed that sugar was bad and caused obesity, and as a result I decided to eat bacon at every meal instead; I would be in a big caloric surplus and be pretty 'unhealthy' and obese, even though I'm not eatin any sugar. It's pretty obvious that the truth is a lot better and more accurate than creating arbitrary untrue rules.
Personally, the truth is also simpler. Rather than avoid certain macronutrients or lengths of carbohydrate chains, the truth is that too much food is probably unhealthy, and if you are obese you should simply eat less food and exercise more (bringing down your total caloric intake or increasing the amount of energy you burn). That sounds simpler to me than saying, "avoid sugar and carbs because after you eliminate all of those foods it's much harder to be in a caloric surplus even though you still can be unhealthy and obese following those rules"
Have I explained enough why your line of reasoning is really a terrible idea?
Saying I'm advocating counting calories is a strawman argument. Additionally, studies aren't intended to 'help' anybody. They are SUPPOSED to be an research into what is true to add support for or against some argument. The problem here is that the study itself was probably very reasonably written, but it was misinterpreted by an idiotic journalist to be something that it isn't.
If most people consuming a lot of added sugar also consume too many calories, and most people not consuming too many calories also don't consume a lot of added sugar, then isn't it still good advice to most people to stop eating so much sugar?
Yeah there's probably some case of some kid eating his weight in bananas and getting obese from that. Or someone that has a lot of added sugar but controls their calories just fine. So sure, the statement "obesity is caused solely by added sugar" or "all added sugar is bad" may not be totally accurate.
But unless you really think that added sugar and calories and obesity are totally unrelated, surely you can agree that the statement "if you're obese you should probably tone down the sugar" makes some sense.
The vast majority of people aren't carefully counting their calories and daily nutrient values. They aren't saying "well if I have this soda I should only have half of my entree". The information "maybe just stay away from the soda" is a net benefit to them.
If you're that guy that's counting all of your calories, sure, maybe the studies that don't control for that won't help you. They're measuring something else. But they're measuring what most people are doing.