On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 12:14 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > Let me get this right Charles. > > You are saying that if A implies B, B does not necessarily imply A
Yes, that's what I'm saying. > In other words if Americans eat lots of toxic sugar and get fat as a result, > people who get fat are not gettng fat necessarily because of sugar, right? If eating sugar implies being fat, then being fat does not necessarily imply that you eat sugar. Correct. > The meaning of the above sentence is that getting fat is not due to sugar > alone. Close, but maybe not precisely depending on what you mean by "sugar alone". It means that even if eating sugar always makes you fat, and that all it takes is eating sugar to make you fat, that there may be other things that can also make you fat. So if by "sugar alone" you mean that there may be other things that also make you fat, I agree. If you mean by "sugar alone" that it may take other things in combination with sugar to make you fat, then I do not agree. Sugar alone can make you fat, but it may be that some people who eat no sugar at all could also be fat for some other reason. > If getting fat is not due to sugar alone, how does the article conclude in > such a sanguine manner that it's the sugar that is to blame? That is the > problem I have with the article. Sugar may be sufficient, but not necessary. Or to put it another (simplistic) way, sugar eaters may be a proper subset of fat people. All sugar eaters are fat, but not all fat people are sugar eaters. In which case one should never eat sugar - which is what the article is trying to say. (Because "fat" is actually an oversimplification for "has a dose related toxic effect.") -- Charles
