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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2375 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Why is high-fructose corn syrup bad (compared to cane sugar)? If it's not bad, why do people think that it's bad?

Cane sugar tends to generally-but-not-consistently taste better. I'm unconvinced that the health difference isn't just another 'gluten sensitivity'.

I don't know. When I moved from Europe to the US, taking my 2-liters-of-soda-a-day habit with me, it resulted in a slew of crippling gastric issues which responded well and quickly to (1) forcing myself to not drink soda and/or (2) switching to "Mexican coke". Now, of course, there are more differences in the formulations than the type of sugar used. I am however generally very skeptical towards food sensitivities, so it seems unlikely to me that this was pure nocebo.

2-liters-of-soda-a-day

I feel as if I am misreading. That's a lot of soda per day. That's me growing up in the 70s amounts of soda. Quitting or reducing that would substantially improve your insulin sensitivity over time.

I mean there’s definitely people doing that. There’s no shortage of them- either by tonnage or headcount.

Yeah, it was quite a lot - on more productive days I'd easily average more on the order of twice that. I was somehow blessed with a fairly generous metabolism, which allowed me remain slightly underweight through all that and have no problems (in terms of blood sugar levels/functioning) with suddenly going cold turkey, which I believe would suggest that my insulin/glucagon system was fine. Perhaps relatedly, I also used to easily flipflop between eating ridiculous amounts and skipping meals altogether while hyperfocusing on something.

In the end it was simple stomach irritation (enough to cause an intermittent IBS suspicion) from the US variant - and the bad ergonomics of the half-liter glass bottles that mexicoke came in - that got me to drop it (instead replacing it with a more expensive, and painful during withdrawal, coffee habit), and now that I'm back in the EU I have rebounded to maybe 1l/day.

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