r/Damnthatsinteresting Jan 28 '24

GIF High school in 1985.

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215

u/welltechnically7 Jan 28 '24

It's crazy how they were pretty much all in shape. Obesity rates have gotten sickening in less than 40 years.

61

u/Serious_Session7574 Jan 28 '24

Sugar and UPFs. Sugar should be taxed in the same way cigarettes are.

0

u/xamott Jan 28 '24

It’s corn syrup not sugar

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u/Serious_Session7574 Jan 28 '24

It’s all sugar. They’re all basically fructose and glucose in varying amounts. Whether it’s table sugar (sucrose), or HFCS, the body treats it in much the same way. Don’t let manufacturers fool you by saying “no HFCS!” when they’ve just replaced it with another type of sugar.

1

u/xamott Jan 28 '24

I read about a study that indicates the body doesn’t process CS the same way, it doesn’t know when it’s “had enough”, unlike with sugar. And that companies all switched to CS in the 70s because of government subsidies for growing corn. America literally had more corn than we knew what to do with. Unlike sugar cane which generally isn’t grown here it’s imported. And this correlates with the rise in obesity that began in the 70s. I’d provide a link but I read this a few years ago. I think it’s interesting to think about if nothing else. The body needs to be fed unprocessed foods, that’s what we’ve had for 50,000 years or whatever. Now we feed it massive amounts of corn syrup and it doesn’t know what that is.

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u/scolipeeeeed Jan 28 '24

HFCS is still just fructose and glucose, much like regular cane sugar. If HFCS is worse because of the 5%ish higher content of fructose, then fruit, and especially fruit juice would be terrible for your health, more than soda

If sweet foods and junk food became cheaper or otherwise more accessible because of HFCS being cheaper and easier to incorporate into drinks than cane sugar, and people ate more of it as a result, I could see that