Comment on Sweet tea
psud@lemmy.world 3 years agoSugar should be heavily taxed, it’s so dangerous at rates of more than 10 grams a day
Whoa settle down there
Sucrose is 1:1 glucose/ fructose which is near the optimal 0.8 ratio for fueling endurance activities
I rode 100 miles solo in less than 5 hours Sunday on 360g sucrose in 4 750ml bottles
It’sa lot cheaper than all that fancy SIS/skratch etc
Carbs aren’t poison if you move your body
Yeah I consume near 400g carbs every day and am fine as a competitive powerlifter who also runs (which is rare lol). You just can’t be sitting on your ass all day.
If you paid twice as much for the sugar, would it materially impact you?
At this point in my life no. When I was young, for sure
Sure, but so few people are high energy athletes who can legitimately burn the sugar right away.
My comment was really about the great majority of people for whom sugar consumption is a path to metabolic disease, diabetes, and early death
I still support a tax on sugar as it would reduce consumption overall, but for those wealthy enough to exercise hard a sugar tax would hardly hurt
Wealthy enough to exercise? Wtf?
Ain’t even going there
It’s probably a U shaped curve where you can devote (or have to devote) significant time to exercise at very low incomes, but it becomes harder at working poor sort of levels, then easy again at a certain level above poverty
I don’t doubt the number, that means 0.5l soda is 5 times the daily rate!
And when you drink sugar free, your body still crave the sugar.
I recently lost 100lbs partially thanks to Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Zero, and a world of sugar free energy drinks. I also gained 40 lbs of muscle mass.
Note that I gained much of the weight due to major medical issues which left me bedridden for an extended period of time (years). I don’t have the fastest metabolism in the world, so it took a lot of work to melt the pounds off. I could not have done it without diet soda/energy drinks.
The only reason researchers been able to determine for diet soda not contributing to weight loss/“fat” disease prevention is that (current studies are showing) we (consciously or subconsciously) attempt to replace those missing calories with more sugar, rather than cutting back. While there have been studies on the effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin production, etc. they are mostly inconclusive.
If you are shooting for a low carb/low calorie diet, a good diet soda is a safe choice. Don’t let others make you miserable. Just make sure you aren’t pulling in extra calories elsewhere.
Regardless of what type of diet you follow, remember that weight loss boils down to calories out > calories in. Most of your calories come from carbs, so taking on a more active lifestyle with a high protein/low carb diet will ultimately help you lose weight and build muscle mass. Just don’t skimp on the protein (you want most of your calories to come from protein) because you will also be burning some muscle mass unless you actively try to prevent it. Keep a food journal and write down everything you eat/drink. Some dietary choices you make without realizing may surprise you.
I lost 70 pounds over about four months last year primarily via calorie counting. I know it’s anecdotal, but I absolutely felt hungrier after the same meal if I had a diet soda with it compared to an unsweetened iced tea, or even an iced tea with a sugar packet or two. It’s great that you have the willpower to stick to the rest of your diet regardless, but there is definitely a reason people recommend cutting it out to make it easier to follow a plan.
Cool thanks for the tip!
Now if only i could sallow diet drinks
Have you tried coke zero? I can’t stand diet coke but I like coke zero well enough
yes.
MercuryUprising@lemmy.world 3 years ago
It should be taxed on the corporate side. Taxing sugar on the consumer side becomes a poor tax, because poor people will still want sweets from time to time, making those treats now more and more expensive. Well off people will just accept the tax because it’s marginal to them, but when your chocolate bar that you treat yourself to once a week goes from 1.29 to 3.29, then it really fucks your day up.
What should be done is incentives to provide less sugar/glucose-fructose on the product side and encourage companies to make snacks and beverages that have less sugar content.
enragedchowder@lemmy.ca 3 years ago
It doesn’t make a difference which side you tax. If consumers are taxed then corporations will still feel it through reduced demand for their product. If corporations are taxed, consumers will still feel it through increased prices. The tax burden does not depend on who is taxed, but rather how elastic supply and demand are.
irmoz@reddthat.com 3 years ago
It sure makes a difference to the people buying it, that’s the point
enragedchowder@lemmy.ca 3 years ago
It literally doesn’t. The price is the same either way. Reduced demand from the higher tax makes it so producers will lower prices. This is really basic microeconomics.
From Wikipedia: “tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
DrRatso@lemmy.world 3 years ago
Wouldn’t the price go up irrespective of which side you tax it on? Obviously if this is a megacorp, they could spread it out over unrelated products, but in the end its not like theyll roll over, take the corporate tax and leave the product at the old price. Is it being a poor tax even that bad of a thing? This is not a necessity and poor people are generally going to be the ones that suffer from poor diet / lifestyle choices in very big part due to the price/calorie aspect of junkfood et al. Lets be real, if you buy a bar once a week, 1.29->3.29 is not a big deal.
Also, we do have tax on sugarry soft drinks in the EU (atleast my country), it is just laughably small compared to EtOH and tobacco). I personally always have thought that anything with added sugar beyond a certain amount should get a heavy tax, conditional on this tax being funneled into healthcare / public health programs.
psud@lemmy.world 3 years ago
Agreed. Though either way the price of heavily sugared stuff would go up