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I know this from the simple fact that I respond completely differently to sugar than almost everyone else I know, except gout sufferers.

The question is why people are guzzling so much sugar in the first place. The answer is they are malnourished. Post war britain was a particularly bad case they deliberately paper over, but my parents grew up with rationing and never snapped out of it, like many others, which led to many of my generation also being subjected to that diet. It simply fills you up but provides people with my metabolism with no energy at all.



I'm not disputing that people respond differently to sugar. I'm asking how that explains the diabetes epidemic becoming more and more widespread as time goes on.


As more people consume a higher amount of sugar (regardless of form), the overall rate of societal diabetes increases. Other factors like reduced exercise, increased consumption of junk foods, exposure to more chemicals like endocrine disruptors, etc. also push the rate of diabetes up faster.


Because you have a blind spot over people responding differently, as indicated by your original question.

If you look at the history of celiac disease the cause wasn’t recognized until a hospital of people were reduced to eating sawdust/dried up tulips, only to find a group of patients actually improved when this happened since they were no longer being actively poisoned. You are not alone in your blind spot, but it is amazing the enthusiasm with which it is promoted by those that should have worked this out years ago.


Sorry for being dense (or having a "blind spot" I guess), but I still don't comprehend how this answers my question.


To go back to what I said which you were responding to

> the fact that different people respond to the same consumed items completely differently

You are making this more specific than it is to be just about sugar and diabetes.

My, non radical, assertion is that different metabolisms lead people to process the same things in fundamentally different ways. Some of these clearly lead to diabetes (and gout etc).

The underlying problem is consuming x or y in isolation could be ok for everyone but in some people x and y are dangerous. Given the mix of what we consume this rapidly becomes a combinatorial headache (especially if factoring in gut bacteria) so there is some sympathy for researchers in this area, but the tendency to confuse cause and effect is way too common.


So this is what I'm hung up on:

> The problem is not the sugar per se, but the fact that different people respond to the same consumed items completely

You stated as a fact that sugar itself is not the problem, and you point to other causes (earlier, differing metabolic responses among people; now, a different substance being a confounding factor) as the explanation. But these just seem to be hand-waving conjectures about how something else could be the problem, not anything factually indicating that sugar itself isn't.

Furthermore, the fact that some people respond differently to sugar would not itself imply that sugar itself is not the problem, which is what's been throwing me off about your discussions. There are plenty of illnesses that some people are resistant or even immune to. There are also plenty of cases where some people initially tolerate a substance but then eventually -- even after many years -- suddenly start showing severe reactions to it, simply as a result of excess consumption. The fact that people don't have the same uniform responses to the same substances doesn't necessarily mean the substances aren't the problem.

This is why I'm saying I can't follow your logic. Your conclusion that sugar itself isn't the problem might still be correct; I don't know. I'm just saying I don't see how your explanations imply that conclusion.




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