I don’t know why doctors would have any authority on my statement which does not mention medicine. My statement is about logic and language, not about medicine.
SSB [sugar sweetened beverage] consumption can lead to weight gain, inflammation, and T2DM [type 2 diabetes].
The fact that it talks about drinks directly rather than sugar is, if anything, more relevant to our discussion! Now, there are many caveats in the paper, obviously, but we are talking about a narrow statement that consumption of sugar (or drinks containing it) “can lead to diabetes” and you denied it.
I think you’re hung up on the direct causal links to the point where you’re objecting to perfectly ordinary turns of phrase. “Can lead to” does not mean the same as “directly causes.” Do you have a way, in your preferred language, of referring to the path from too much sugar to diabetes, without explicitly mentioning weight gain?
I haven’t denied weight as a factor or too much sugar as a factor, if that’s the term you’re looking for, but even in the article you reference the same issue comes up of moving the goalposts. Eating sugar does not cause diabetes, nor is just eating sugar a factor. Eating large quantities of sugar is a factor. See the difference?
So what I would say to you is that when you say “eating large quantities of sugar is a factor [in developing diabetes]” other people, including me, say “too much sugar can lead to developing diabetes” and mean exactly the same thing.
If you want to be precise, you can qualify phrases like “can lead to” and “cause” and so on with “directly or indirectly” - but to me, without that qualification, they can mean either.
I wouldn’t say that, because I think there is too much room for misinterpretation. But that’s not the thing I replied about and not what I really take issue with. That was, to remind you:
Not according to doctors.
I don’t know why doctors would have any authority on my statement which does not mention medicine. My statement is about logic and language, not about medicine.
I suspect you’re also wrong in the particular case. Let’s see what the first article I pulled out says:
The fact that it talks about drinks directly rather than sugar is, if anything, more relevant to our discussion! Now, there are many caveats in the paper, obviously, but we are talking about a narrow statement that consumption of sugar (or drinks containing it) “can lead to diabetes” and you denied it.
I think you’re hung up on the direct causal links to the point where you’re objecting to perfectly ordinary turns of phrase. “Can lead to” does not mean the same as “directly causes.” Do you have a way, in your preferred language, of referring to the path from too much sugar to diabetes, without explicitly mentioning weight gain?
I haven’t denied weight as a factor or too much sugar as a factor, if that’s the term you’re looking for, but even in the article you reference the same issue comes up of moving the goalposts. Eating sugar does not cause diabetes, nor is just eating sugar a factor. Eating large quantities of sugar is a factor. See the difference?
So what I would say to you is that when you say “eating large quantities of sugar is a factor [in developing diabetes]” other people, including me, say “too much sugar can lead to developing diabetes” and mean exactly the same thing.
If you want to be precise, you can qualify phrases like “can lead to” and “cause” and so on with “directly or indirectly” - but to me, without that qualification, they can mean either.
Cheers!
So, not to beat a dead horse, but what we’re saying is that eating sugar doesn’t cause diabetes?
I wouldn’t say that, because I think there is too much room for misinterpretation. But that’s not the thing I replied about and not what I really take issue with. That was, to remind you:
I think that is wrong and likely to be understood as meaning “too much sugar cannot lead to diabetes even indirectly” by most people.
Well I think you’re moving the goalposts and we’re gonna have to agree to disagree.