[bmacho]

Humans eat sugars for thousands of years now (and honey since millions of years), but random sweeteners are new.

I'd say let's not pretend that any map made by splashing paint on a paper is the terrain, and go full retard based on that.

[robertlagrant]

Humans have not eaten this much sugar for thousands of years.

[Wolfenstein98k]

They have not eaten any artificial sweeteners for more than a few tens of years.

[robertlagrant]

I'm contradicting the point that people have been eating this much sugar for thousands of years. I'm not claiming the reverse for sweeteners. No population's eaten this much sugar for more than tens of years either.

[bmacho]

All the living humans, in average? No.

But otherwise, individually, why wouldn't they? A lot of people had the sweet tooth, and the money, and they ate this much sugar, or even more.

[jedberg]

Because until recently it was very expensive to get sugar. Only the richest people could even afford any at all.

There were lots of things with small amounts of natural sugars, but nothing like the processed foods we have now.

[strken]

The Hadza get 15 to 20% of their calories from honey: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers...

[jedberg]

First, honey is not the same as refined sugar.

Secondly the article itself states that it’s the intense exercise that keeps them healthy, not their diet.

[strken]

In response to the first point, honey is predominantly fructose, glucose, and water. If you think sugar hydrolysed by bees is better for you than HFCS hydrolysed by humans, why? Is it the glucose?

In response to the second, do you agree with the original statement that implied sugar was damaging, or do you think it has no ill effects on someone who exercises enough? If walking 8 to 12km a day can completely counteract such large quantities of sugar in the diet, does that not make sugar harmless in many cases?

[dtech]

I fail to see how this is relevant, if anything it's evidence of harm. Those people notoriously had rotting teeth [1] and probably a myriad of other health issues (many unrelated to sugar)

[1] https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/01/18/tudor-england-the-...

[rsynnott]

> Humans eat sugars for thousands of years now

Indeed, and that has been plenty of time to discover that, in excess, it kills us. Despite intense scrutiny, there is no reason to think that the same goes for aspartame, which is the only sweetener used in significant amounts in soft drinks in the UK, and thus the only one promoted by this levy.

[agurk]

I don't have an opinion on the health effects of sweeteners, but as I noted in a longer comment on this page, multiple sweeteners are commonly used together and aspartame is far from universal in the mix.

[waihtis]

Research suggests that aspartame increases the risk of:

    -certain types of cancer, including lymphoma, leukemia, urinary tract tumors, and neurological tumors

    -type 2 diabetes

    -preterm delivery

    -toxicity in the kidneys

    -toxic liver disease

    -harmful changes to the salivary glands

Your "completely safe without question" additive, sir

[xigoi]

Is there any food that doesn’t cause cancer according to some study?

[AlexeyBelov]

Can you cite the paper, I'm very intrigued.

[croes]

If you know one road is dangerous and the other may or may not, which one do you choose?

[meowfly]

This conversation always goes like this:

----

Person: Diet soda is bad for you

Me: It's better than sugar and especially high fructose corn syrup

Person: Just drink water

----

Ok... Such a helpful suggestion. We should all just drink water, just exercise, just save money, just work harder, just put down our phone.

I wonder why we don't all just do all the right things all of the time.

[waihtis]

a rare smart take on HN, hats off