Of course, there is no consensus winner for this category. If there was, no one would be talking about it (though I might still write about it as if nobody were talking about it). The other day, I Googled the phrase "this generation's cigarettes" just to see where the Good Old Interwebs stood on the matter.
The first hit was an article from The Atlantic about cellphones. The second echoed the same sentiment. The third was a Reddit thread, the top comments including vaping, soda, and pornography. The fourth result returned to cellphones (1).
Of those top hits, only one-third of the third result hinted at what I am almost certain is the correct answer:
My view was undoubtedly strengthened by reading books by Gary Taubes. His Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat were two of the most important books I read in my first couple of years after college. Each book, though sometimes laborious reading, described a basic chain of events he suspected as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic in modern societies.
First, excessive carbohydrate consumption promotes unnaturally elevated insulin levels as the body attempts to process the high sugar content of the food. If the body is kept in this state over a prolonged time, eventually the body's mechanisms for converting food energy into fuel are permanently disrupted. The results is, among other things, a person primed to put on weight anytime excess carbohydrates are consumed (2).
I must stress how these books were not exactly scientific. Rather, they were an approach to answering questions not easily resolved through established scientific methods. Taubes simply tried to find alternate explanations for some of what he observed in the real world: the way many struggle to control their weight, the increased prevalence of 'adult' disorders in children or infants, the explosion of late-life metabolic diseases in Western cultures. His writing merely described his theories but I found his explanations sensible enough at the time of reading to pay greater attention to matters of nutrition and lifestyle in the following years.
One thing I started to notice was how the advocates of a low-sugar (or no-sugar) lifestyle were not being balanced out by anyone on the opposite end. That is, for each 'avoid sugar' advocate, there was a noticeable absence of an 'eat more sugar' counterpart. The 'pro-sugar' side seemed interested in solely maintaining the status quo. If the attitude toward sugar was to change in the future, the trend seemed to point in only one direction. And like with any one-way street, the options are to stop or go forward. There is no place for turning back.
I was surprised when I first noted this. Surely, given how much money a company selling sugar-based products could make by inspiring even more sugar consumption, there would be hordes of salesmen demanding we eat more sugar. The lack of anyone doing so surprised me. When I later read about how many products hid their added sugar content from consumers, I wondered further: why hide an ingredient unless the producer knows the ingredient is unhealthy?
I also noted the positive results top athletes gained after cutting out sugar. Steve Nash, a professional basketball player, simply stopped eating sugar as he hit his early thirties. Perhaps by coincidence, he extended the elite performance of his career beyond what most experts predicted. Other athletes, like Tom Brady or Novak Djokovic, have seen surprising results after reducing or eliminating sugar intake (indirectly, by adopting diets which happen not to include it).
As the old saying goes, 'reading two books and observing some anecdotal evidence via the ESPN app are good enough for me'. I started my own self-experimentation with sugar reduction during this time between 2011 to 2015. I lost about twenty pounds which, again, I must attribute to a host of factors. But I'm certain reducing sugar intake played some role in the weight loss.
The most notable result of my experiment was how reducing sugar consumption seemed to alter my appetite. I used to eat fairly often, about three to six times a day- snacks, small meals, and big meals. I found no need to do so when I reduced my sugar intake. The idea was reinforced every morning after I ate a high sugar meal or dessert; often, I woke to find my stomach grumbling with hunger. This contrasted with my nonexistent appetite the morning after a vegetable meal.
During this time, I also started fasting. I got into this by accident. Every once in a while, I would stop to think around dinnertime and realize I had yet to eat at all during the day. Prior to my diet change, I never could have made it past lunch. Once I realized I was capable of fasting, I started skipping meals with regularity and was surprised by how much better I felt on these days.
My experience with appetite fluctuations loosely supports Taubes's insight about how the 'calories-in, calories-out' explanation for weight accumulation is notably missing any mention of how hormones and enzymes alter the body's energy processing functions. When I think back to infancy and puberty, my biggest periods of weight gain, I identify not an excess of calories consumed but a sudden surge of new growth hormones. And to get back into the sports examples, athletes busted for performance-enhancing drugs seem to always stimulate their muscular growth through hormone-altering substances.
I picked out Taubes's most recent book, The Case Against Sugar, just a couple of months ago. I was not sure if the book would be more of the same. In hindsight, I think I read it at the perfect time for me. My grocery shopping and workout routines were pretty fixed and I was perfectly happy with my approach to both. At the same time, I was seeking out more information than ever on a scattering of nutritional topics including optimal muscle recovery, the effects of fasting, and the impact of sunlight on mood. I was primed, so to speak, to learn more about healthy living and use any new information to reconsider my daily habits. I'll write more about some of these details in my reading review on Sunday.
Until then, thanks for reading.
Tim
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. But what was I expecting?
The other results in the top ten were about variations of cigarettes. I suspect this result was influenced by using the word 'cigarettes' in the search term.
Notably missing was sitting, the conjecture I hear every once in a while. I'm not very convinced by the arguments and I tend to almost automatically roll my eyes anytime I hear discussion about 'the dangers' of sitting.
Though I understand sitting is not necessarily the healthiest of all pursuits, I think the analogy to sitting is careless. Humans have been sitting for a long, long time, mostly because a lot of things we do are simply better accomplished by sitting. Human have not stood around with flaming sticks dangling from their lips because this does not optimize performance in any field.
To put it another way, I do not think the effects of prolonged sitting compare well with the lung cancers, throat problems, or diseased mouths lifelong cigarette smokers were tricked into inflicting upon themselves.
2. Life changing?
Not quite. Like I've done recently with books about writing, I took Taubes's work and wove them into a larger chorus of nutrition voices I was reading at the time. I did, however, get away from some of my basic principles I carried with me out of college: a preference to eat small meals more frequently, 'carbo-loading' before workouts, and buying pasta or bread.
