This 'sugar tax' crap is doing my head in!

Screeeech said:
Y
White rice, white bread and white pasta are 100% junk food, because as I've explained
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Actually, bleaching white bread has been banned for decades. White bread is sometimes higher in the trace nutrients you mention because it is often added back in.

White bread is not a new industrial processing thing it dates back over centuries, possibly millennia to the era of Roman Empire and even the Egyptian empire. It was done to remove the various oils which make the bread go soar quickly, giving it a longer shelf life. "brown" bread without preservatives has a shelf life of only a few days before it will begin to turn rancid.

White bread and bread in general has been THE staple food of choice in developed society for most of recorded history and even before.

Whole grain, including the husk (the crunchy bits in wholemeal bread) is historically avoided because like the skin of an onion or potato the husk is designed to give pathogens something to attack and not get to the starch interior of the seed. Thus it has a high probability of carrying fungus, bacteria, viri and other nasties which are not good for bread and probably not good for you. Granted the volume and rate of production today means that grain should be cleaner.

Almost exactly the same applies to white rice.

Removing the husk, bran and germ significantly extends the shelf life of the bread/rice and while it removes nutrients and fibre, giving you effectively a blob of starch that is bread/rice's purpose in our diet, a source of carbohydrate. Always has been and should always be. Fibre and vitamins are in abundance elsewhere, so unless you eat only white bread and/or rice you will be fine.

There are also downsides to eating "brown" un-milled grain and rice as it contains substances which are not only "not good" for you, but hinder your use of the nutrients within them.

Note, starch, when cooked turns to sugars. Starch is just a complex sugar structure which aims to slow it's release. We cannot digest it on it's own which is probably partly why plants use starch and not sugar directly, to avoid us eating them. However, we have fire. You simply CANNOT call natural starch converted to sugar by cooking it "highly refined sugar", that dumb. By those measures all sugar is highly refined processed food and that's even more dumb.

I suggest you pick another fight, you won't win on the "Bread is bad for you" lunacy. That is born in the 20-something-and-beautiful-but-a-bit-thick Internet blog level of dietary advice.

EDITED for spelling and grammar.
 
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Tefal said:
Authoritarian forcing = 9p tax on a bottle of coke.
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Well yeah it is the definition of authoritarianism.

If you've been keeping up with the news however, you've got the extreme porn laws where people are arrested for fisting.

You seem to be ignoring everything oppressive the government is doing and just focusing on one issue.
 
PaulCa said:
I suggest you pick another fight, you won't win on the "Bread is bad for you" lunacy. That is born in the 20-something-and-beautiful-but-a-bit-thick Internet blog level of dietary advice.
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I'm not going to spend all night arguing, there's plenty of established science that backs up what I'm saying - as for "20-something-and-beautiful-but-a-bit-thick" internet blogs, I get most of my information from established scientific sources, such as Cancer Research UK, a highly reputable organisation, known for good science and very solid research;

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/abo...r/diet-and-cancer/how-to-enjoy-a-healthy-diet

Eating more wholegrain foods
Wholegrain foods are higher in fibre and nutrients, which can help fill you up for longer and keep a healthy weight. Fibre from wholegrains can also help reduce the risk of bowel cancer.

Simple ways to include wholegrains in your diet include:

  • Choose brown, grainy bread instead of white bread.
  • Choose brown rice instead of white rice.
  • Choose wholewheat pasta instead of white pasta.
  • Choose wholegrain breakfast cereals like rolled oats (porridge oats), Weetabix or Shredded Wheat (or your supermarket’s own brand versions).
  • Snack on plain popcorn instead of crisps.
  • Add barley to soups and stews.
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Even Bupa have a similar message to mine; (funny, because it's places like that where I get my information)

https://www.bupa.co.uk/newsroom/ourviews/diet-cancer-risk

What you can do

  • Keep to a healthy weight – your BMI should be less than 25.
  • Eat plenty of fruit and veg – this should make up at least half your plate for main meals.
  • Eat white meat and fish in preference to red and processed meats.
  • Cut down on carbohydrates that cause a rapid rise in blood sugar – white bread and rice, potatoes, sugary drinks, cakes and biscuits.
  • Choose wholegrain breads, pasta and brown rice to keep up fibre intake.
  • Keep below the recommended maximum of 14 units of alcohol per week.
  • Wash fruit and veg before eating to remove pesticide residues.
  • Wear gloves when handling home or garden chemicals and of course, keep out of the reach of children.
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See what they did there? they lumped white bread and rice, in alongside sugary drinks cakes and biscuits..

If you're still not convinced, one of the references from the Cancer Research UK page, cites a study performed by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, showing a strong link between the consumption of white rice and type-2 diabetes, also showing decreased risk if brown rice is consumed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024208/

Results

During 3,318,196 person-years of follow-up, we documented 10,507 incident cases of type 2 diabetes. After multivariate adjustment for age and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, higher intake of white rice was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Conclusions
Substitution of whole grains, including brown rice, for white rice may lower risk of type 2 diabetes. These data support the recommendation that most carbohydrate intake should come from whole grains rather than refined grains to facilitate the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
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On Bupa. Never take any advice from someone who has something to sell. Period.

On Cancer Research UK. They have a campaign. They are also well on board with the current anti-diabetes government campaign.

On the studies. If you read the finer details you will find that while they are correct in that there is, in their study samples, a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, the risk increase is not all that much considering. Out of something like 200,000 people they encountered 10,000 cases from which they claim a possible 16% rise in risk between those eating milled and unmilled rice.

This is like the study that showed that eating bacon and other processed meats gave you a 3% higher chance of cancer before the age of 60. When you start with the baseline risk of cancer before 60 a 3% rise actually works out to be about a 0.03% increase risk chance of cancer.

Also when you look at the studies closely, they are comparing the extremes. They do not have two distinct groups. They are not testing 125,000 people who eat low white rice and 125,000 people who eat high white rice, there is a spectrum. However the results are based on the extreme ends of the sample, not the full sample. (≥5 servings per week vs <1 per month). I did not check if they quantify what subset of the 200,000 sample that amounts to.

Long term human diet and lifestyle studies are highly prone to error as they require the subjects report and log their diet and only get checked-up ever 2-4 years. Most people are no scientists and do not understand the rigor required. Most people are absolutely terrible at keeping records, especially about their own lifestyle. They are NOT done under laboratory conditions. The subjects do not eat a defined proscribed diet.

The results are not divided out into other lifestyle factors, although they claim to have "adjusted" the results for the other variables (of which there will be thousands, so I doubt that could be possible to do fully). We do not know if out of the 10,000 cases 9999 where obese.

So I would not dispute the results show a correlation and potentially that might account for a causation, but they are indicative and the actually increase is slight. If you look at the rest of your lifestyle and looked at all the health studies out there which claim a 1-10% increase in one thing or another, you would have very little left you could do or eat.

These studies are not really meant to show an actual risk for an individual, they are simple attempting to show a correlation. When you summarise it, it usually ends up in the wording used by the other organisations you quoted, using words such as "suggests", "could", "might", "may", because there are far too many variables and they simply cannot say, "Will" or "does". I suppose when you look at the population as a whole, then a society wide campaign to reduce the risk makes some sense. That does not mean we are all at the same risk based on diet alone.

Look at it another way. type 2 diabetes is rising. However the consumption of white bread/rice has been happening for millennia. So it cannot be consumption of white bread/rice alone that is causing the rise or it would have risen centuries ago. Something else must be changing. My belief is, as already stated, that people are eating too much due to high availability and a less labour/activity intensive life style.

The government(s) cannot legislate for the food industry to encourage people to eat less. It just wouldn't work in a capitalist society. It makes no business sense. I doubt it would even be legal. So the only option is for people to eat less and less nutritious foods and safer and safer foods so they can maintain eating too much or over doing it on risk factor foods.

The other thing to be extremely careful about with these studies is that they are focusing on ONE factor. They do not consider any other factors or outcomes. For example you could find that out of the sample who consumed a high amount of wholegrain rice there was a large increase in disorders or diseases which will not appear in the study as it was outside the studies goals or they simple were not testing for it.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.
 
I see Relentless is now the latest drink to go sugar and sweetener even though they already have a sugar free zero version.

Madness. They are using sucrose instead of aspartame though.
 
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steve5424 said:
I see Relentless is now the latest drink to go sugar and sweetener even though they already have a sugar free zero version.

Madness. They are using sucrose instead of aspartame though.
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Some of their drinks are ridiculous, I went to buy the normal sugar free one but accidentally picked up the blueberry and pomegranate one as it was also blue. I didn't like it so threw it away but it had 70 Grams of sugar in! It's equivalent to 2/3rd of a bag of haribo.
 
PaulCa said:
On Bupa. Never take any advice from someone who has something to sell. Period.

On Cancer Research UK. They have a campaign. They are also well on board with the current anti-diabetes government campaign.
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So I have two choices;

Accept what the studies say, the many other scientific papers I've read, even the words of my own GP which were "you should really avoid white bread, white rice and white pasta, they're only a stone's throw away from junk food"

OR

I throw all of that out and go with PaulCA from forums.overclockers.co.uk, who seemingly hasn't been able to provide an effective rebuttal, or backed up any of his words with evidence.

PaulCa said:
Look at it another way. type 2 diabetes is rising. However the consumption of white bread/rice has been happening for millennia. So it cannot be consumption of white bread/rice alone that is causing the rise or it would have risen centuries ago. Something else must be changing. My belief is, as already stated, that people are eating too much due to high availability and a less labour/activity intensive life style.
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I'm not saying it is.

I'm saying white rice, white bread and white pasta are bad for you, compared to their whole grain counterparts, for the reasons i've already clearly outlined. White rice, bread, paste are contributing factors towards the problem, the evidence shows that.

PaulCa said:
The government(s) cannot legislate for the food industry to encourage people to eat less. It just wouldn't work in a capitalist society. It makes no business sense. I doubt it would even be legal. So the only option is for people to eat less and less nutritious foods and safer and safer foods so they can maintain eating too much or over doing it on risk factor foods.
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It might make more business sense than you think. With the current lack of legislation it's allowing junk food producers and fast food outlets, to completely saturate the food market, to the point where the majority of food on sale, is bad for you. If we carry on at the rate we're going - there won't be enough money left in places like the NHS to pay for the cost of metabolic disease, caused by food.

I do a lot of work in the US and things are rapidly becoming the same here in the UK, we're filling our high streets, shops, public areas with fast food. Low and behold - we're importing into the UK, a drastic rise in the exact same disorders, that are not only occurring in the USA, but they started occurring there first, the situation is not complicated. (Type-2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver, CVD, obesity, Cancer, etc)

Funnily enough, many of the industries that are saturating our food market, and filling out streets with fast food outlets are American.

If we can legislate the tobacco industry, we can do it for the fast food and junk food industry, it just needs a government with balls and a brain, (unfortunately the current government has neither)

PaulCa said:
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
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The problem with that, is that with the current choices people are making - even if they eat in moderation - I suspect there are people out there who innocently do things similar to;

Breakfast; White Toast (in moderation)
Lunch; White Pasta (in moderation)
Coke; (in moderation)
Dinner; White Rice (in moderation)
Desert; Chocolate (in moderation)

All things in moderation of course, but when the majority of choices or things in front of you are bad - in the final analysis, moderation is a hard thing to end up with...
 
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MikeTheNative said:
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Some of their drinks are ridiculous, I went to buy the normal sugar free one but accidentally picked up the blueberry and pomegranate one as it was also blue. I didn't like it so threw it away but it had 70 Grams of sugar in! It's equivalent to 2/3rd of a bag of haribo.
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The new formula has 24g of sugar.
 
MikeTheNative said:
That must be the reason I get beaten on COD all the time..... not my crap skills.
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I used to drink loads of red bull sugar free when I played lots of FPS games, I found it made me play better (also helped me work) but it started giving me insane mood swings... I'd start the day feeling a bit "meh" and I'd drink a can of red bull, and 10 minutes later have this wave of euphoria.. I'll admit it did bother me a bit, but then again - it's probably not as as bad as alcohol...

krooton said:
I'm starting to think a certain someone works in the bread industry :D
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Yeah I did wonder myself lol.
 
Scam said:
Sooooo... Anyone found a good alternative to Ribena yet?
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If anyone is interested we finally tracked down a bottle of Rocks Blackcurrent squash which is lovely. Sugar, water, fruit juice from concentrate. No ****ing sweeteners. We got it on Ocado.

Bye bye Ribena, their FB page makes for hilarious reading by the way.
 
Screeeech said:
The problem with that, is that with the current choices people are making - even if they eat in moderation - I suspect there are people out there who innocently do things similar to;

Breakfast; White Toast (in moderation)
Lunch; White Pasta (in moderation)
Coke; (in moderation)
Dinner; White Rice (in moderation)
Desert; Chocolate (in moderation)

All things in moderation of course, but when the majority of choices or things in front of you are bad - in the final analysis, moderation is a hard thing to end up with...
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My point is that people have been eating this way for decades, so why is it only now becoming an issue. I just think the modern (last few years) diet craze is throwing the baby out with the bath water a bit. So a study finds a slightly elevated risk in a small subset of it's sample that white foods can cause insulin issues. This is not the same thing as saying that white foods are bad for you. No where near it.

I can see some of it make sense if you have to consider the whole population and that people today are generally becoming dumber and dumber and less and less capable of looking after themselves. True, in the last decade the amount, availability and marketing strength of junk food has increased, but lets attack that and leave stuff like white foods alone. So, maybe it has a few %-tile increase in risk, but it's really not the problem.

The other worry is that the smear campaign on sugar will push people back to high fat diets. Which will not make things better as it will put a much higher load of people's livers and cause significant obesity issues. It is already happening with people jumping on the "High Protien" diets which carry significant issues.

In fact I don't think there is a single classification of food that is totally safe to eat in any significantly higher levels than normal.

On that subject, have you watched "Super size me"? So many people use it as evidence of how bad MacDonalds is for you. If you actually watch the film and listen to the doctors etc. None of them are saying the diet is bad, ALL of them are saying he is eating too much of it and overloading his liver. If he hadn't of forced the issue and eaten a sensible amount of it, he would have been fine.

Consider this, I think it presents a much better and more balanced view without the scaremongering of "bogey-manning" of foods:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/
 
PaulCa said:
My point is that people have been eating this way for decades, so why is it only now becoming an issue. I just think the modern (last few years) diet craze is throwing the baby out with the bath water a bit. So a study finds a slightly elevated risk in a small subset of it's sample that white foods can cause insulin issues. This is not the same thing as saying that white foods are bad for you. No where near it.
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Well it is really, just about anybody knowledgable in nutrition will tell you that white bread, white rice and white pasta are bad for you in general. Nobody is saying they're going to kill you outright - but they're not good for you, (low in fibre, high in refined carbohydrates and in some cases added sugar)

The amount of white rice and refined grains being consumed has gone up drastically in the west over the last few decades, which also coincides with the amount of takeaways and fast food that we eat now - hardly any of which existed pre 1980, compared to the numbers today.

PaulCa said:
I can see some of it make sense if you have to consider the whole population and that people today are generally becoming dumber and dumber and less and less capable of looking after themselves. True, in the last decade the amount, availability and marketing strength of junk food has increased, but lets attack that and leave stuff like white foods alone. So, maybe it has a few %-tile increase in risk, but it's really not the problem.
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If you attack the junk food industry (Mcdonalds or Burger King), their market power and exploitation of the consumer - you're attacking 50% of literally everything they sell (eg; burger buns) which is "white food" so you can't really isolate one and target it, whilst leaving the other alone - because they're all interlinked.

But overall I do agree, we have to legislate against the junk food industry, my idea wouldn't be to ban everything outright, but would be to impose quotas on the amounts available. One of the biggest problems is how junk food companies have so much money, they can easily buy up retail space where ever they like, in as many places as they like - seemingly without any limit, some of my ideas (off the top of my head) would be;

  • Make it so the number of junk food and takeaway outlets, are strictly limited in town centres (it's simply unnecessary to have 50x or more fast food outlets in a town)
  • Impose a heavy tax on any building purchase that is to be used as a junk food outlet.
  • Impose quotas on the percentage of junk foods sold in supermarkets, which are highly processed and hyper palatable, (eg; Crisps, Chocolate, Fizzy drinks, Sweets - we don't need two 40ft long isles full of this stuff)
  • A total outright ban on trans fats as per bhf recommendations; https://www.bhf.org.uk/about-us/our-policies/preventing-heart-disease/trans-fats
  • The removal of high levels of junk food for sale at supermarket and petrol station checkouts, including 2 for 1 offers, and that notorious maze of sweets and crisps that M&S have in most of their shops.
  • Potential govt funded reward strategies for the consumer, or retailer - if it switches from selling junk, to healthier natural fibre-rich foods (fruit, veg and whole grains) maybe some sort of bonus for the retailer and/or consumer,
  • Govt funded employer schemes that reward employees for being healthy; small financial rewards or similar, for maintaining a healthy weight and being active. (BMI/hip-waist ratio/cholesterol/blood pressure/weight/waist size)
Of course, none of the above would probably ever be implemented, but I think those things would help. (some countries have successfully done some of those things)

PaulCa said:
On that subject, have you watched "Super size me"? So many people use it as evidence of how bad MacDonalds is for you. If you actually watch the film and listen to the doctors etc. None of them are saying the diet is bad, ALL of them are saying he is eating too much of it and overloading his liver. If he hadn't of forced the issue and eaten a sensible amount of it, he would have been fine.
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Yeah I have seen it and I agree - it was pretty silly, I think it unfairly demonised McDonalds, they could have done the same thing with Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, etc - and had the exact same result. All it really proved was that if you eat way over your daily calorie allowance in junk food, you'll run into health problems.

I don't have anything against McDonalds or any of the fast food companies in principle, to this day - one of my fave meals is a quarter pounder with fries and a coke (I probably have it once every few months)

The problem I have, is that these companies expand in a seemingly uncontrolled fashion, with no regard for the damage they're doing to society. The only consideration is how much money they're making, mostly because a big corporation doesn't behave like a person with morals, it behaves like a machine, which is why I think they need tough regulation.
 
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