"Sugar: The Bitter Truth"

[gusl]

Best dieting tip ever: wait up to 20 minutes for the satiation to arrive. It's working for me.

This is from "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", by UCSF professor Robert Lustig who said "High Fructose Corn Syrup is Poison", with convincing evidence that it causes metabolic syndrome and the obesity epidemic. http://www.sweetsurprise.com/

"There is something wrong with our biochemical energy feedback system."

"fructose goes way beyond empty calories. It is a poison."

"AFAIAC, this stuff was Japan's revenge for World War II"

HFCS is so cheap that it has found its way into everything: hamburger buns, sauce, ketchup, most loaves of bread.

The Coca-Cola conspiracy: coke has lots of salt, the sodium makes you thirsty; the sugar hides the salt!

Some schools performed the intervention of cutting out coke machines, and it had a significant effect on obesity and type II diabetes.

On a minor point, he made this statistician (and former logician) cringe once or twice (by assuming Gaussianity, interpreting a defeasible argument as a deductive one and declaring "only the contrapositive is transitive") but his central message seems to be sound, and of course very important.

* - ("lustig" means "funny" in German)

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

His stuff is a pretty stinging indictment, though I too quibble with the details.

Note that HFCS and sucrose are not particularly distinguishable in his theory (and he says as much), so it's not corn that's the issue health-wise. Countries without the ridiculous corn subsidies of the US use huge amounts of sugar derived from other sources and have the same problems.

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

Nancy Appleton has been an crusader against high sugar consumption for some time. Her most famous piece is probably "144 reasons sugar ruins your health". (Please don't complain to me about this list, I already know how far away from rigorous it is.)

I've cut way back on the sugar I consume as part of the diet tweaks I've been making over the past 6 months. Some days are better than others, but I generally try to avoid the stuff.

Hydrogenated oil, on the other hand, is on my never consume list.

[chrisamaphone]

this is something i've been trying to understand better since i saw your post about sugar consumption. i can't make heads or tails of all the stuff i read -- i seem to remember that no was clear on exactly what a simple or complex carbohydrate is, or that the definitions are different when you're in the context of chemistry or health, or that no one agreed which ones were "less harmful"; also that i couldn't find anyone confirming or denying that sugar has any health *benefits* or under what circumstances it makes sense to eat it (i mean, carbs are the biggest part of the food pyramid, right? or do we not believe in that anymore?)

what's up with hydrogenated oil?

[simrob.livejournal.com]

i mean, carbs are the biggest part of the food pyramid, right? or do we not believe in that anymore?

We don't believe in that anymore, says mypyramid.gov. Carbs do not exist anywhere, and grains, which used to be on the bottom, are now just on the left-hand side to avoid the appearance of a privileged position. They furthermore urge you to "make half your grains whole."

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

Hydrogenating oil makes it go racid more slowly, so it is used as a food preservative. In your body, they inhibit uptake of essential fats (omega-3, omega-6), act like saturated or trans fats, and in that role are generally implicated in cardiovascular disease. Heart disease kills more Americans than anything else.

Sugar is a stimulant, so the health benefits would look something like the health benefits of caffeine. It is absorbed by your body extremely quickly, so if your muscle glycogen stores are depleted, and you're inside the replenishment window, sugar-like things are going to aid in muscle recovery.

If you have trouble finding your appetite, eating sugar is a great way to eat more calories, as your digest them more quickly and are hungry again sooner.

There is an enormous amount of material that isn't know about how foods affect us, and there is enormous variation between people, activity level, or even one person over time. As such there isn't much consensus on the topic, and a whole lot of opinion or single-case induction masquerading as truth.

[simrob.livejournal.com]

That's a good point about sugar - there's this stuff called "GU" which is basically just caffeinated cake icing as far as I can tell. You take it with water while doing endurance running. It's amazing and it really does help, but that's because you take it when your body is badly in need of energy right away. Probably when your (=chrisamaphone) muscles reached the point of not responding the other day it would have been an appropriate to take something similar, but I don't know - climbing seems more strength than cardio, and you definitely have run your muscles out of that sweet, sweet glycogen (pun!) after mile 7 or so.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Didn't McGovern, after losing the '72 presidential election, devote his life to a crusade against the sugar industry? Kind of like Gore and global warming, except he ended up getting ridiculed instead of lionised.

late notification

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

notification for your comment *just* arrived.

[widdertwin.livejournal.com]

A better translation for lustig would be "congenial", I think. Lustig is better used to describe people with pleasant dispositions, rather than the humour factor of a joke, for instance. In that case you'd want to say witzig.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wirehead_/]

i can't drink anything with HFCS in it anymore -- it tastes too sickly sweet. (i can't taste it in foods, like bread, but try to avoid it anyway.)

one of the best things i ever did for myself was give up empty-calorie drinks. for the most part i only drink fruit juice, water, and unsweetened tea. (though i occasionally make exceptions such as mango lassi.)

btw, i've heard the satiation thing from other sources, though i had heard 15 minutes. i don't know if it's related to sugar consumption or it just takes time for the signals to get from the stomach to the brain.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wirehead_/]

what about sugars in fruit?

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

And what about the sugars in milk?

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

It is not 100% clear to me what Nancy's opinion on the matter is, but sugar in fruit is largely fructose, which has a relatively low glycemic index compared to other types of sugar. As well, fruit has fiber in it, which slows the digestion of that sugar. Plus, fruit has a high water content, so it has relatively fewer calories per volume than grains. As such, an apple is the best appetite suppressant there is, even though it has a lot of sugar.

Because of the sugar, fruit is a mixed bag, but compared to very nearly anything else available in such a convenient form factor that tastes so good, fruit is a major win.

So I'd select it before nearly any other kind of snack food, hands down, with the awareness that it still contains sugar--you can totally go overboard. You're just highly unlikely to, and it is far easier to go overboard on things that are much worse for you.

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

For a non-endurance event, you can and should consume more fat and protein, but you also should consume carbs, particularly in the form you describe. I'd personally something like Hammer Gel, which has maltodextrin rather than sugar. Maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate that is immediately broken down by your body into simple sugars, and has glycemic index better (that is, higher) than most sugars.

However, things like that exist mostly to aid endurance athletes, as your stomach does not function very well when you're operating in your upper heartrate zones, as your body doesn't have the blood to spare for digestion.

If you're doing periodic work, you can eat actual food, in small quantities, and your body will digest it during rest periods or periods of lower intensity. If that doesn't wind up being true (i.e., you can't actually digest), I personally find that sports gels alone are too much for periodic events, and that I need to eat fat and protein to keep myself from being jittery. I do eat them for endurance events to positive effect.

If chrisamaphone bonked the other day, however, she needed to consume carbohydrates with the higest glycemic index possible, which was the immediate deficiency and need.

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

Lactose is sugar, so it works like any other sugar. With the added benefit that a huge percentage of the world's population can't digest it. Most of the milk I consume is in the form of kefir, which is fermented. That process removes most of the lactose. (Though if you purchase commercial kefir, most of that sugar has been put back in.)

It does turn out that chocolate milk has very nearly the perfect ratio of carbs and protein needed in a recovery drink. So if you're doing endurance work and can digest milk, it is an effective way to replenish muscle glycogen and repair muscle tissue.

Whole milk has a reasonably high quantity of saturated fat, which should also be consumed in moderation.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

maybe I learned Bayerisch rather than German.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

"it's way beyond empty calories, it's a poison"

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Fruit juice is sugar water just like soda, whereas the lassi has other stuff in there too so it probably isn't as bad (depending how much sugar you add).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wirehead_/]

hmm, sort of. fruit juice contains actual nutrients, though, unlike soda. but yeah, it is high-caloric and sugary; i don't drink it all day or anything, just in the morning.