Bonus: Sugar Sag with Commentary

About this episode

The episode revisits the impact of diet on skin aging, particularly focusing on sugar's role in causing 'sugar sag'.

While we’re on a short break between seasons, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes from Season 1. This week, we’re re-releasing our exploration of how your diet can affect your skin – now with added commentary! Wrinkles and sagging skin—just normal aging, or can you blame your sweet tooth? We dive into “sugar sag,” exploring how sugar, processed foods, and even your crispy breakfast toast might be making you look older than if you’d said no to chocolate cake and yes to broccoli. Along the way, we encounter statistical adjustment, training and test data sets, what we call “references to nowhere,” plus some cadavers and collagen. Ever heard of an AGE reader? Find out how this tool might offer a sneak peek at your date’s age—and maybe even a clue about his… um… “performance.” Statistical topics Confounding Correlation vs causation Measurement error / proxy variables Overfitting Plagiarism Proper citing practices References to nowhere Statistical adjustment Training and test sets Methodologic morals “When you plagiarize, you steal the errors too.” “Overdone statistical adjustment is like overdone photo filters–at a certain point it’s just laughable.” Citations Collagen…

People in this episode

Hosts: Regina Nuzzo, Kristin Sainani

Topics covered

• diet
• skin aging
• sugar effects
• statistical analysis
• collagen
• health

Keywords

• sugar sag
• skin aging
• collagen
• diet
• statistical adjustment
• processed foods
• AGE reader

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Sugar Sag, Diabetes, Effect of Collagen Turnover on the Accumulation of Advanced Glycation End Products, Apparent Accelerated Aging of Human Collagen in Diabetes Mellitus

More episodes of Normal Curves: Sexy Science, Serious Statistics

• Odds Ratios: Do most people get them wrong? · June 1, 2026 · 55 min
• Coffee and the Heart: Is caffeine a trigger for AFib? · May 18, 2026 · 58 min
• Sleep and Exercise: Does working out on too little sleep speed up aging? · May 4, 2026 · 1h 6m
• Sex Recession: Are young people really having less sex? · April 20, 2026 · 1h 9m
• Diagnostic Testing: Do the stats tell you what you need to know? · April 6, 2026 · 1h 9m
• Epidurals: Are labor epidurals really linked to autism? · March 23, 2026 · 1h 11m