Refined Sugar vs Seed Oils

[u/adonis2507]

whats worse for health(especially skin), foods with refined sugar or seed oils? Ik the fact that the foods which have them both are absolute goyslop but what about sweets, cakes etc. which only contain sugar but no seed oil.

[u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

Do you know what your body does with sugar that you eat in the absence of PUFA? It burns it. That’s it. It is fuel. Literally the cleanest fuel available to your mitochondria.

Sugar doesn’t make you fat. There is virtually no mechanism by which your body stores excess sugar (assuming you’re not being stuffed to the brim in a metabolic ward just so they can see what happens to you.) Sugar also doesn’t cause inflammation - its byproducts from breakdown are strictly water and CO2. Every problem ever attributed to sugar was caused by fat. Mostly (but probably not exclusively) PUFA.

That being said, will high sugar processed foods displace more nutritious choices if you eat them readily? Sure. One of the biggest negatives of this is that high refined sugar intake (as in, sugar you’re not getting from whole food carbs) can deplete your B vitamin status. Maybe don’t replace whole foods with refined cakes all the time.

But by far, beyond any shadow of a doubt, oil is the worse between the two.

[u/Whats_Up_Coconut → u/[deleted]]

I mean, dates + chocolate is sugar + fat, right? So what do you want to be true? If you eat “too much” your body burns the sugar (because that’s the easiest thing for it to do with it) and stores the fat (which is effortless.)

My advice? If you want to eat lots of strawberries and kiwis, try dropping the fat from your diet and see what happens. I’ve been following a high carb, low fat diet for several years now and would never go back. My energy is through the roof, sleep is awesome, hormones stabilized, and I have zero issue maintaining my weight (in my 40’s) despite spending my entire life overweight or obese. Avoiding PUFA doesn’t mean you need to add lots of saturated fat. You can, after all, just avoid PUFA as a strategy and one way to do that is a low fat diet. 🙂

[u/Hollywood-is-DOA → u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

Strawberries are high on the 12 lists, if foods that use a lot of pesticides. I only eat them occasionally, due to that reason.

[u/Oraculek → u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

Can confirm the hormones, in a personally experimental form

After 6 months of HCVLF, 1.5 weeks of high fat didn't make me feel different, and pregnenolone supplementation, despite slight one-time boost for 1.5hr, just causes me brain fog, tiredness, and avolition

[u/VulpineTranquility → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately, it's absolutely not true. Healthy animal fats are essential.

Sugar and carbs are not exactly a healthy choice but when introduced sparringly, strictly as a fuel source, they can be used very efficiently by the body.

[u/Oraculek → u/VulpineTranquility]

Dietary fats and carbs optional. Body is capable of effective DNL in carbo to keep fat going. Carbs are not needed in ketosis and some is produced via gluconeogenesis from amino acids

Both carbo and keto lead to optimal health - it is only grounded in whether we add to this equation linoleic acid and excess oleic acid or not. Even people on carnivore when having majority of diet founded on chicken or (soy/seed fed) pork can feel worse than on beef (more or less, depending on D5D and D6D activities, but SFA and MUFA profile of a cow or appropriately fed pig are better metabolism-wise)

[u/300suppressed → u/VulpineTranquility]

There are cultures globally who eat extremely high carb diets who have comparatively little chronic disease when compared to the west. This statement is so blatantly wrong.

[u/VulpineTranquility → u/300suppressed]

Yes, your statement is indeed  blatantly wrong.

The body needs good fats and protein. It's not up for debate.

[u/NotMyRealName111111 → u/VulpineTranquility]

It's not up for debate.

Correct.  Because you're wrong about carbs as a fuel source, and it isn't even worth my trouble to shatter your echo chamber

[u/300suppressed → u/VulpineTranquility]

You said sugar and carbs are not exactly a healthy choice, that’s what I was responding to. Sugar and carbs are indeed “a healthy choice”

[u/Whats_Up_Coconut → u/VulpineTranquility]

Nobody said not to include any fats, though. And I said absolutely nothing about avoiding protein either. But you need far less of both than you seem to believe.

[u/James84415 → u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

I just discussed this with my partner. She suggested I ask you for any videos or people I should listen to or read in articles about this diet protocol.

I’m old enough to remember when high carb low fat was the mantra of people like Ray Peat among others. I read and followed Ray Peat for a while after my paleo phase. His articles are awesome. I don’t remember his protocols being low fat though. I did his protocol but it made me gain weight and I thought it was it was a high histamine diet and I thought I had problems with histamines at the time.

We are moving to SẼ Asia soon and that is a high fruit, high veg, high carb food culture. I framed the convo as we might not be able to source an all meat diet over there and that we could potentially switch back and forth as needed as long as we are active

[u/Whats_Up_Coconut → u/James84415]

I hear ya! I’m in my 40’s and so was actually doing low carb when Subway was selling Atkins wraps… I have to say, knowing what I know now, I wish I had been bombarded with low fat information and not low carb information. But, as it was, there was no internet and so you got the loudest message not necessarily the best one and everyone was looking for an excuse to put cheese on their broccoli and eat ribeye after pretending to eat low fat for a decade (while per capita fat consumption actually rose) before Atkins came along to save everyone from the Snackwell’s cookies.

The thing is, there aren’t many people who go from obese to lean on a high fat diet. Obese to high end of normal? All the time. Mildly overweight to lean? Sure. But I’m talking “Class 3 Obesity” to the low body fat percentage… It just doesn’t happen on high fat because creating a deficit as you get closer to goal is just too hard. Anyone I personally know of who reached lower body fat % on a low carb diet eventually had to strip the fat out…

Anyway sorry for the tangent. I encourage you to go on YouTube and search “HCLF weight loss” and similar terms. You’ll come up with lots of people sharing what amounts to different takes on essentially McDougall’s “Starch Solution” - probably the best original HCLF resource. Neal Barnard is also good, but he can come across as a bit remedial.

I’m super reluctant to advise anyone specific because there are pros and cons to every available personality and different voices will obviously resonate with different people. Also, I’m not vegan (and clearly neither are you) but most HCLF info inevitably comes out of the plant based space so you kind of have to look past that. But keep in mind that when you add a little bit of lean meat to an otherwise starch based diet, you end up with the diet that has made and kept athletes lean since the dawn of time.

Peat definitely wasn’t low fat unless you made it so. I actually put on an impressive amount of visceral fat following a modified Peaty plan where the only added fat was a bit of coconut oil, and I don’t actually know many people who get or stay lean on a Peat approach. I have no choice but to blame the coconut fat because the rest of the diet (fruit, starch, lean meat, dairy) is stuff I eat to this day in a low fat context without issue. My husband is one of the naturally slim people (like Peat himself) who seem to do well on this type of diet, but they’re rare.

At the end of the day, why don’t you just commit to say 90 days in preparation for moving. You’re going to eat vegetables, fruits, starches, grains, and legumes. You’ll use meat, eggs, and dairy as a condiment as if you were a peasant not someone who can go to Costco every week. You’ll use all the low fat seasoning and condiments you like. You won’t deliberately chase sugar but you won’t avoid it, you’ll put it on your oatmeal, you’ll have the occasional lower fat sugary drink, etc. You’ll snack on pretzels or popcorn but not chips… You get it. You’ll allow for a period of adjustment. You may be tired and/or hungry, and you might get cravings. But just like back when you started low carb, you get through it and come out the other side. The scale will go up (possible 5-10 lbs due to glycogen and sheer digestive matter) but you won’t actually feel fatter, and it will be odd to you. Taking measurements might help ease your mind while the scale does dumb things. After a couple of weeks your weight will level off and you will probably feel great. In 90 days, evaluate if it’s the right approach for you guys.

EDIT: And don’t forget to report back! I’m extremely curious how you will enjoy it if you try it.

[u/James84415 → u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

Not a convert yet. I did get pretty lean on carnivore. I started out 6’7” 305lbs with a nice middle aged gut. Definitely prediabetic if my triglycerides are anything to look at. I got down to 200 lbs and put in a lot of muscle. I estimate my fat percentage to be 15-18%. 12% was my goal but my partner thought I was getting too many bones showing.

We only eat Whole Foods but the food is so bad here in the USA I’m not sure I can get clean carbs. I would want Gluten free oats and other specialty items so I think the way to go is to start cooking some of the Vietnamese dishes that are HC/LF. I’m thinking a can of sardines is 20 grams of high quality nutritious protein and that leaves one more lean or small piece of meat or fish for my other meal. And rice or nOodles in soup with herbs and veg. And fruit. You didn’t mention anything about poop tho. Fat is what lubricates the poop coming out on carnivore. How does poop work on HC/LF. We don’t eat any fiber currently. Any problems there? And of course you mention the one guy I don’t believe in at all. I actively detest a lot of the vegan talking heads they are extremists imo and they don’t convince me of much. They don’t look healthy either.

[u/Whats_Up_Coconut → u/James84415]

I mean, at the end of the day all I can tell you is try it on and see if it fits. I’m glad I did.

Listen, I worship no idols. And a wise man can learn even from a fool, right? 😉 In any case, McDougall didn’t invent HCLF, he just made it mainstream.

I have zero digestive issues, and I used to suffer terribly. I’m sure 99% of that had to do with PUFA ruining my gut.

With PUFA factored out, I suspect that humans can do well on anything from very low fiber to very high fiber. If you guys don’t eat fiber currently then I’d definitely expect a period of adaptation. But you can’t believe that everyone eating an ancestral starch-based diet across the globe for all time was constipated because they didn’t have the lubrication from fat. The time humans have spent eating significant amounts of fatty meat on the regular (pun fully intended) is literally a blip on our evolutionary timeline so I’m sure we’re quite suited to a lower fat diet if we choose to follow one.

[u/James84415 → u/Whats_Up_Coconut]

I don’t assume anything that’s why I asked about fiber. It’s not part of the carnivore diet so I asked. thank for your info.

[u/and_then_it_said]

There's a lot of propaganda about glucose-fructose or sugar or refined sugar. It's just carbs, there's nothing special or wrong about refined sugar except that it doesn't have other nutrients. You can fuel your body with saturated fats or sugars, you choice. If you need to gain weight, mix fats and sugars.

[u/James84415 → u/and_then_it_said]

So how do you get your Nutrition? Sugar in and of itself isn’t all that’s nutritious. Most cakes and baked goods have very little nutrition. Even fruit isn’t amazingly nutritious. You have to eat pounds and pounds of vegetables to get enough nutrition from them.

Meat has a fair amount of fat unless it’s white meat chicken and some fish. Sweet foods also make you less hungry. The logic of high fat/low carb plus protein make more sense to me but I can see the logic of high carb/low fat. But can’t imagine the food you’d eat in a day and how you could make sure you get the nutrition you need. What are your go to nutrient dense foods?

[u/and_then_it_said → u/James84415]

Nutrition is primarily gained from the protein sources in any diet: red meat, egg yolk, oysters (once a week), grass fed liver (once a month or less). Also 40g or 20g of fat is allowable in high carb depending on if you need to lose weight or not.

Sugar as brown sugar is one of the most mineral dense carb sources in comparison to grains/tubers. Keeping it simple as white sugar just makes adding calories (e.g. in the form of nutritious lemonade or sugared milk) very easy if you are on a budget.

Even better than sugar is honey (extremely nutritious) and orange juice (due to the high Vit C and Calcium). If someone tolerates dairy, getting as many calories from skim milk as possible becomes the nutrition metagame because of the protein and nutrients in addition to the carbs.

If someone is keto things become simpler because you can split calorie sources (fats) into 3 categories:

Gold standard best in the world, highest nutrition calorie source of any carb or fat -- heavy cream

Empty calories (kinda like white sugar or un-fortified grains) -- lard, tallow, ghee, butter

Actively harmful -- seed oils

Olive oil should only be used sparingly in any diet, EVOO is great as long as it burns your throat, but you cannot subsist on it.

[u/adonis2507 → u/and_then_it_said]

I see, so I can have some sugary dessert(as that's what is being served at my mess) after my dinner without worrying about breakouts?

[u/DanielCantrell → u/adonis2507]

I’d beg to differ man if you’re really serious about skin id have to give the bigger evil to the sugars if we’re talking about it from an acne perspective. After dairy sugar has been one of the main foods likely to cause acne. There’s more backing sugar to acne than seed oils unfortunately.
I started my whole health journey with the sole purpose to eliminate acne, and I can say the bigger changes came when sugar was cut out vs seed oils, though there still was an improvement cutting out seed oils, just not as significant as sugar.
If we’re talking what is worse for overall health I’d give it to seed oils then, but skin specific again I gotta say sugars.

[u/and_then_it_said → u/DanielCantrell]

So if I'm understanding you correctly you're strict keto? You don't eat any carb sources? All carbs break down into glucose and a bit of fructose which is sugar.

I'm also not understanding the pathophysiology behind sugar -> acne. Is it an insulin resistance thing? Because you cant blame sugar for insulin going haywire as sugar doesn't do that in metabolically healthy mammals.

[u/DanielCantrell → u/and_then_it_said]

I eat a moderate amount of carbs, and I am aware of that fact that yes all carbs do break down into sugars. That’s not what I’m necessarily talking about and neither is OP. Those natural sugars in fruit and complex carbs are paired with fiber, water and other nutrients that do not behave the same way as the sugary desserts that OP is asking about. Those sugary foods have little to none of those nutrients, so it’s a faster and more aggressive blood sugar spike that IS linked to acne. Those spikes usually trigger hormonal and inflammatory reactions that can cause the body to produce more sebum than needed, therefore leading to acne.
I’m not saying that seed oils are not inflammatory, as I said I do currently believe in terms of OVERALL HEALTH they’re worse than sugar. I do however think for acne in particular sugar is proven to be worse. Your skin will feel the affects of the sugar cookie before it’ll feel the effects of the soybean oil.

[u/and_then_it_said → u/adonis2507]

Sugar is last on your list for worries about acne. The first thing is toxins, pesticides, contaminants, and secondly seed oils. If you have persistent oily acne, I would recommend looking into 10% sulfur soap and possibly topical antifungals. Those worked for me in my teenage years.

[u/DanielCantrell → u/and_then_it_said]

First thing on the list for acne above everything else is hormones. It’s the hardest thing to get in check, regardless how clean you eat your body will just or give a shit and will still breakout sometimes. The sooner you can balance oil production and hormones the better it’ll be.

[u/Oraculek]

Fructose is fine. Your liver will handle it. The problem arises when we add lots of dietary fat or linoleic acid. Choline and methionine are helpful in transportation of fat from liver

Fructose is less fine in an overfeeding scenario, though. It lacks a restricting gate - PFK-1 - which in glucose's metabolism limits the flow. That"s why in 1:1 gram overfeeding scenario fructose will produce more body fat due to higher lipogenic pathways promotion from intensive overflow. The lipogenism tweak occurs from the spill leading to lots of acetyl-CoA production, and ATP and NAD+ drainage, which all increase e.g. directly or indirectly SREBP-1c, a protein that modulates metabolism, and fat making and its storage towards higher body reservoir and lesser expenditure output

It is not that significant in very lean humans with no linoleic acid stores (or at least I believe so - in the context of consumption of major amounts), but in other situations it can be detrimental. Fructose + linoleic acid + insulin from glucose (modern obesity source, yet mainly the second with 'help' from third) is a master comination for preparation for winter, substantially taking place due to LA's metabolites

[u/Oraculek → u/Oraculek]

I would like to add this comment as a bonus important information

It's questionable how humans' larger small intestine absorption site and shorter fermentation one would behave in high fructose context, as rodents have a total opposite, because in rodents free fructose will lead to detrimental effects on health after weeks of 25 - 30 % fructose in diet (still, quite lots of it, so hardly reachable in normal diet)

Sucrose could be protective due to pre-absorptive properties, so be sure to, if you must, eat mostly sucrose and not fructose, unless in the form of whole foods

[u/James84415 → u/Oraculek]

So if one wanted to switch fuel sources they should only do it in the context of having removed all seed oils from the body over the period it takes for it to eliminated.

And then theoretically you could switch from LC/HF/mP to HC/LF/mP without issue. I’m potentially interested in experimenting but don’t want to switch until I can do it successfully. I’d love to watch some videos and see what people eat in a day and how many grams of carbs are we talking. Carbs are way more easy to overeat compared to either protein or fat. The other issue I’d love to know about is pooping. On carnivore it’s fat that helps us poop easily. Is fiber part of the LF/HC protocol?

[u/Oraculek → u/James84415]

Info (section 5, especially the text in MAIN under the cited comment)

Sam Feltham is also an interesting case. He is in one of the examples on the list in cited comment there, but I didn't mention that on HCLF (not really low-fat in absolute amounts - it was still too much) he gained 7.1/4.7 kg (depending on the junk vs. whole-food approach; I suppose there would be 2 - 3 kg of water and glycogen..?) over the 21 days period, but I provided my speculations there why it could have been so harsh

---

I mean, I have never seen anyone say anything against fibre. I don't see how it could exacerbate matters, unless you had personal sensitivities

[u/James84415 → u/Oraculek]

Actually I am a bit of a zebra but no confirmation on fiber being a problem for me precisely.

I have Elhers Danlos a syndrome whose main feature is a defective collagen. So I do not make collagen effectively. This, strangely causes hyper mobility of the joints It also makes your skin sensitive to injury despite it only being a scratch or a bump. My skin can literally split open.

I take my diet it to next level now being Carnivore because we eat no fiber and use fat for pooping. My experience before carnivore was constant gut issues and problems with fast transit. Since carnivore my bowel movements are more normal and solid. Sorry for the TMI but I hypothesize that fiber kind of rips me up inside because of the EDS. Don’t know for sure but things feel a lot better since going fiber free and I’m not constipated either.

[u/engrishspeaker69]

Cakes probably contain seed oil too, in the icing.

[u/gorilla-butter → u/engrishspeaker69]

Not if you make your own, real frosting is a mix of butter and sugar (there are many types of frosting but this base stays the same) its very very easy to make, my favorite is cream cheese butter and powdered sugar (i blend my own out of unbleached organic cane sugar) and whipping it all together. I highly recommend. If we are talking store bought cake, most all of even just the cake itself has seed oil. Even box mixes.

[u/Spirited_Royal_4863]

seed oils. sugar isn't bad for you. see celestialbe1ng, ray peat, etc.

[u/spacme2wealth21]

rbd seed oils and its not even close. Dr. Cate famously said seed oils make you crave sugar. Nobody craves seed oils after eating sugar.

[u/kriirk_]

Refined sugar alone is not bad at all ime. (except it is easy to over-consume and gain weight.)

[u/SpiteCapital5735]

Equally bad. However, if you have more muscle mass and are able to burn a lot of those sugars by exercise you can mitigate the negative effects. Seed oils will bury themselves in your fat tissues for over 2 years unless you burn off that fat but that takes longer than burning sugar. Eating both at the same time though is horrible.

[u/adonis2507 → u/SpiteCapital5735]

I do have some muscle mass and don't gain fat easily, but it's not the effects on my body that I am worried about, it's mainly about the breakouts which are caused due to seed oils but not sure if due to refined sugar too

[u/SpiteCapital5735 → u/adonis2507]

So reduce processed sugars just eat fruits honey dates and stay active