Comment by PieterH
9 years ago
My mother (1973, Edinburgh) bought "Pure, White, and Deadly," and we all read it. I was ten or so. Yudkin attacked white flour, white (processed) fat, and above all white sugar. It made perfect sense to us all, and cutting back on sugar became a slow, yet consistent part of our lifestyle. We never ate that much anyhow. I stopped eating sugar entirely at 15. I still recall the book's cover.
Edit: it took me a lot longer to cut fruit juice from our diet. I was so convinced by that "natural" label. Until I realized my daughter, who'd drank a lot of juice growing up, was addicted to sugar. Then we cut it out. My other kids, not addicted. I was fooled for so long...
The sugar industry has a lot to answer for. It is IMO comparable to the tobacco industry's suppression of cancer studies. Yet worse, because the effects of high-sugar diets are doing more damage, to more people, and last generations.
Think of the hundreds of millions of children who have eaten high sugar diets since they were babies... lifelong damage to their health. A hundred years of damage, these executives and corrupt scientists caused.
I tried arguing the dangers of concentrated fruit sweeteners not so long ago.
There was some debate about whether candy prices were too low.. But the truth is folks get much more sugar from supposedly "healthy" items in the form of fruit juice and concentrates. It is in the bread most folks eat (and sometimes whole grain bread is higher to make it more palletable), they put it in savory foods, and fruit juices and people put it in their coffee and tea. Granola bars and yogurts and a myriad of other supposedly healthy things? High sugar. It would be one thing if the sugar was simply what was contained in the fruit, but often it is above that.
It is much better to eat the piece of fruit than drink some juice - and I think if folks started drinking non-sweetened drinks and quit adding it to so much food (expecially commercially prepared food) it would help quite a bit. Personally, I lost weight after doing the adjustment. My only normal, daily beverages are black coffee or water and have been for years.
The thing is that you do somewhat miss the sugar at first, but I didn't find it any worse than missing some foods after moving countries. Over time, your tastes adjust and it isn't a bad thing.
I've been suspecting that another problem is modern roller mills break up the carbohydrate granules in wheat. It means making 'whole wheat flour' by adding back the bran after milling doesn't give you the same thing as more traditional course ground wheat flour.
The difference is when the carbohydrate granules are intact it takes much longer for the carbohydrates to hydrolyze and be absorbed in the gut. Rolled four because the granules are broken up hydrolyses and is absorbed quickly and results in spikes of blood sugar and insulin which is bad news.
[serious] Is there a reasonable way to eat actual whole grain bread? Every kind I've tried is the worst thing imaginable to attempt to eat...it's a real nightmare. I choke down a half a slice and then have to cleanse my pallet with an entire pizza.
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" But the truth is folks get much more sugar from supposedly "healthy" items in the form of fruit juice and concentrates. "
Or, if you are here in Asia/Singapore, where T2 diabetes is starting to become a big issue- the 3-5 servings of white rice people eat each day is a front page issue on the newspapers.
I tend to be somewhat suspicious of any 'traditional' basic food getting too much bad press. Rice, bread, pasta. White rice tends to get some bad press here as well, along with white bread. Rice itself probably isn't a big deal. It is probably on par with the bread/pasta eaten in the states and Europe as far as health is concerned. There is healthier rice (brown and unpolished) and healthier bread, but we tend to eat the opposite.
But it tends to be a bigger problem if folks are also overweight - and folks aren't doing it by eating rice or bread alone. Large portions and simply eating too much and so on, adding in fast food and convenience food and all of the snacks. And it is a huge problem if you develop T2 diabetes because of the blood sugar spike.
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I think eating a few bowls of rice per day (usually combined with a lot of veggies and some meat) is something that has been done in Asia for a long time, why would it be related to a recent increase in diabetes?
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What is an alternative? I eat a fair bit of rice as well.
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I wonder if the tolerance, and then the love, of highly sweet things is acquired. And mostly probably, it is acquired when one is a child.
I have met and worked with many East Asians and Europeans who came to American in their 20's or older. Almost everyone of them thought American pastry and deserts are unbearably sweet. Most of them shun from soda drinks and other "food" containing high amounts of sugar. If they drink soda, they choose low- or zero-sugar kinds.
Related or not, a big percentage of American look overweight when compared to Europeans and East Asians.
I am of European descent, and while I had a sweet tooth in my teens, American pastries and desserts were barely edible.
Now that I'm older (and lost my desire for sweets somewhat), I wouldn't touch any of them with a 10 foot stick. They are disgustingly unfathomable to eat and whenever I tried, it upset my stomach greatly.
So are most of your soft drinks, by the way. I cut sweet teas and juices with water to 50/50 ratio and then drink it.
I don't think it's strictly a childhood thing. I moved to Australia several years ago and they cut down on the sizes of soft drinks especially compared to standard American sizing. It took some months to adjust, but now when I go back to the US on a visit the entire thing just seems to be way too much sugar. Same with alot of the pastries, although donuts and cakes are about the same level of sweetness. Maybe with less frosting and more other flavors in the Australian versions. And they're not as stingy as their neighbors down here when it comes to sweets.
When we bake from American recipes we often reduce the sugar by 1/2, sometimes even to 1/3.
Same here. I love sweets (though I don't eat that much lately because you know, health reasons, I'm not 18 anymore - but from time to time I indulge) but it is not easy to find good ones in US (I wasn't born in the US). Practically all mass-produces ones are unbearable once you have shed the sugar addiction and the built tolerance (which I did, see above). Custom-produced are also hit or miss - many of them are terribly over-sugared to my taste. Finding a good dessert is not easy for me now, though in some places they still know how to do it tastefully. Hopefully as more people become aware of how careful one has to be with sugar, the situation improves.
I also used to drink a lot of soda in my 20s, but once I stopped and my taste recovered, I can't drink the stuff anymore - too sweet.
My family is originally from China but have lived in the west for 30 years. We eat the sweets in the US just fine. My wife and her parents recently came to the US from China...the sweets in the US are too sweet for them and they just eat a little bit.
When I first came to US, I found it to be the case for chocolates as well (being a vegetarian, I stay away from pastries and cakes).
I specifically remember trying out KitKat out of craving and it was way sweeter than what I get in India. Tried switching stores before concluding the recipes are tweaked.
> And mostly probably, it is acquired when one is a child.
Most likely acquired when one is a suckling. Milk is kinda sweet and the first thing a mammalian baby tastes. All further taste preferences are then largely acculturation.
Americans saying that foods are too sweet is quickly becoming the new "I don't have a TV." It's a humblebrag to show off status.
I am East Asian and came to America in my 20's. I love pastries and deserts, always looking for local pastries to try whenever I travel, to the point to book hotels that are close to famous pastry shops.
Sorry for any misunderstanding my early comment causes.
Good? I'm not sure it's a humble-brag unless you parade around about it, but if people associate a healthier lifestyle with status, then it's bound to propagate.
I think you got it the wrong way around.
Imitation of habits with percieved high prestige value is one of the most strongest causes of cultural shifts.
Cultural shifts are accompanied by lot of things - including bragging about ones new lifestyle - which then drives the shift in braggees network (social proof if he/she is an average member of the network, imitation of an idol figure if her status is high).
Even if that's true, what's your point?
When you say you don't eat sugar, what does that mean? Do you eat fruit? Bread? Things that metabolize to sugar -- potatoes, squash, tomatoes, grapes, watermelon, barbecue sauce etc. Do you ever indulge in chocolate cake? What about wine or beer?
I just find the term "sugar" to be extremely vague when 50% of foods metabolize to sugar...
The fact that it all ends up as "sugar" is less important than how long it takes to fully metabolize, how much energy and other resources it takes to do so, and what other byproducts the food provides. In the quantities used in many processed foods, the "sugar" that you see on the food label and that is used as an sweetener is generally undesirable for those characteristics.
The basic principle is to avoid refined carbohydrates. If a food is unrefined, then it is ok, with the exception of potatoes, which have way too much carbohydrate.
A good book on this is The Instinct Diet by Susan Roberts, who is a well-known nutrition researcher.
The paleos say we should eat the same diet as our foraging ancestors. The problem with that is different foraging tribes had very different diets. However, one thing they all had in common is they didn't eat any refined carbohyrates. That leads to the possibility our bodies are not well adapted for them, and there is a great deal of research that is n fact the case.
People used to ask me this all the time when I'd given up sugar. Everyone has their own idea what it means, but no food that has been sweetened to make it taste sweet is a good start. Personally I'll eat fruit that comes as fruit, but bread is a treat-only food.
That's because you are being extremely vague about the word "metabolize".
Perhaps you want to explore how that word unpacks into many different routes and rates of absorption of the various nutrients involved. How is this altered by the different states of starch before they become glucose? How does the presence or absence of fiber impact this? Which microorganisms are active in the gut in this process?
The issue is fructose and sucrose, people end up getting confused with glucose, which is not the problem.
Clarification: sucrose is a molecule that quickly breaks down into one glucose and one fructose molecule, so it's basically 50/50 glucose/fructose. Fruit juice, honey, and HFCS are also about 50/50 glucose/fructose.
Almost all other carbohydrates break down into glucose and no fructose at all.
So one theory is that the fructose is especially bad. It is processed in a different pathway and might be a lot worse than the glucose pathway.
Not OP, but have been ketogenic over 3 years. No bread, no fruit, no potatoes, squash, tomatoes, grapes etc.
well the lie has recently morphed into the laws slowing and prohibiting soda sales in schools and such all the while promoting juice which can be worse in many cases because people assume its healthy and you cannot over drink because of that
One time I was craving some juice or smoothie, so at the gas station I took one of those 'Naked' brands and glanced on the label, it had some ridiculous amount of carbs and sugar in it, more than 50g. Put it right back.
Not coincidentally Naked was sued in a class-action in 2012 for labeling issues ("misuse of health phrases") and of course they settled so there is no finding of liability on the claim.
Even the best juice possible (made fresh, raw, organic, and green-leafy vegetables) will be comparatively high in sugar. A 16oz juice requires somewhere in the amount of 4-6 lbs of vegetables and naturally no one would ever consume 4-6 lbs worth of vegetable sugars in one sitting much less 6x a day. With the store bought juices there are also likely fruits added which have even more sugar than green leafy veggies and they store bought juices likely aren't raw (i.e. pasteurized) killing many of the beneficial enzymes and nutrients.
I was doing that for years on gas stations, just picked the blue ones. Now that I am more sugar aware, I look at the labels a lot. I was also shocked to see some ridiculous amount of sugar in that what used to be my favourite drink.
"The sugar industry has a lot to answer for."
I don't get this argument. What do you expect the sugar industry to do, argue for consuming less sugar?
It is not the industry's obligation to care for your nutritional well-being. It is the obligation of parents and teachers to be informed and teach kids what good food is. That starts with stopping to watch commercials. Avoiding processed foods in the grocery store and cheap restaurants. Not buying products that have more than 5 ingredients, and above all contain high fructose corn syrup.
Buying vegetables and fruit at farmer's markets. Learning again that there are seasons, and that there is no need to buy apples in spring or summer (when they have to be kept in coolers for half a year, or imported from the other hemisphere). Learning again that good products can often be recognized through the nose rather than the eye. Spending time on small-scale farms. Reducing meat intake to 1-2 a week. Consuming fresh water rather than salt water fish (which are harvested beyond sustainability and have led a multitude of fisheries to go extinct already). Preparing food by hand, even if it is "unhealthy" food like french fries (made from potatoes, e.g. in an oven with a bit of olive oil), pancakes (milk, egg, flour - no need to buy this as a product) or cakes (made just with flour, yeast, milk, eggs, and sugar).
Just switch off television to get back common sense.
Most people take in the information given without a second thought. If their information about sugar is biased by the sugar industry, by paying scientists to lie about their product... then yes they have so much to answer for. But, alas the entire food industry does as well. A lie is a lie, no matter which side you are on.
I'm pretty sure myths and old wives tales existed long before television. At worst television allows myths and untruths to travel faster and more pervasively. But I think generally we're better off with television, especially in a society that values not just individual responsibility but shared responsibility wherein media outlets and commercial interests don't have complete liberty to spout non-sense, like they did 100 years ago. Compared to most under-developed countries the U.S. values more of the latter than you would think. And so major media outlets generally, and television outlets in particular, are much more reliable and truthful than in many other places.
For that reason the internet is probably a net regression in advanced societies. Perhaps people need to watch more television.
>> lifelong damage to their health.
It's only lifelong damage if you don't change your diet and lifestyle. The world is filled with people who were morbidly obese and have made the changes necessary to reverse the damage and live far more healthy lives now.
The way you put it, it sounds like an irreversible course akin to a death sentence, which it most certainly is not.
That is a myth. Every legitimate long term study of non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people.
1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453)
2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full)
3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/)
4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...) This is borne out by the above data.
5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/)
Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.
My father decided to lose his potbelly in the early 1980s at the recommendation of his doctor, who sent him to a nutritionist. The nutritionist advised him and gave him a diet plan.
6 months later, he returned to the nutritionist having lost the pot, and the nutritionist was shocked, as nobody had ever followed her diet plan before. He maintained the weight loss for the next 30 years. At one point he was even able to squeeze into his WW2 uniform.
He said it was a constant struggle. But it clearly is possible.
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This is just defeatism, and falls down here "after completing structured weight-loss programs". The problem here is thinking of weight-loss in the short term.
If you are 200kg, and drink 5L of soda every day, you don't stop drinking soda for 12 months, lose weight and then go back to drinking 5L soda a day and except to keep the weight off.
You change your diet, and keep it that way. For ever. Thats how weight loss happens.
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I lost 20% 10 years ago and haven't gained it back (295->225 lbs.). On the other hand I am still overweight and would like to lose more.
I did it by just exercising an insane amount every day. (Like 6 hours of cardio+strength training every day) Most people just aren't going to do that.
No diet I ever tried had any similar effect.
It did do a complete reset of my metabolism to the new weight though. I kind of think it has to be something drastic to have the effect people want.
The only problem is that it's really easy to injure yourself being drastic (that and you have have the right confluence of factors to have the free time to pull it off).
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The funny thing about all your links is this:
That most people who lost weight most often times gained it back - yet you somehow think gastric surgery is the cure all when you have to make lifelong changes to your diet and lifestyles and be even more diligent in doing so?
The weight loss for gastric patients levels off after 18-24 months, far shorter than the 5 year mark you use to measure success. I'm not sure how you rate one a success in half the time, and total failure for others since they don't meet your magical 5 year mark.
The problem is, you can't legislate freewill - you have to make a choice to be healthy. Is it easy? Nope, but it can be done.
My grandmother was overweight, had high blood pressure and other ailments. She was able to reverse her Type 2 diabetes through diet and staying active by walking 5 miles a day, hiking and other low impact activities. I had a hockey buddy who was on several different medications for high blood pressure, pre-diabetes and other ailments. Within two and half years, he was off the meds and back on the ice through a combination of intense cardio workouts (P90x, Insanity, etc), weight training, and Brazillian Ju Jitsu - which he had always been into. My best friend was depressed and put on a ton of weight, and became borderline suicidal. He was put on meds and continued to put on weight. Over the course of three years he made various (permanent) changes to his diet and to his life. He started with power lifting, then went to mountain biking, then cycling, then adventure racing, then to mountain climbing. Last year I saw him and he was pushing 40; he was still ripped and finally loving life.
You can't make a switch in 6 months and hope for a five year guaranteed return. Shit doesn't happen like that - it just doesn't. You can't go on a diet for two months and hope that 15 pounds you lost will stay off for five years unless you make permanent changes which is really hard for a lot of people. Finding time and energy to start something new is not how humans function. We constantly look for the shortcut. The shortcut to happiness, the shortcut to getting rich, the shortcut to learning some new programming language. Nobody wants to put in the time to get their shit straight, they just want it to be fixed in some nonsensical time frame.
Everybody I know that went through some serious health problems and got straighten out did not do so in any short amount of time - it took years of dedication, getting up at the crack of dawn, struggling and putting the hard work to get there. No diet can do that for you. The payoff is you get 8-10 years back of your life. You can breathe after you walk up a flight of stairs, you can reduce your cholesterol levels and have a healthy heart and lungs. You can get off your medications, or reduce them from what you're taking now. The upside to being healthy so vastly outweighs the downside and here you are saying - there is no hope, you should give up. How does that even sound to someone who's facing an uphill battle?
Unreal.
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So is that categorized as addiction? Or do these suggest that sugar intake irreversibly damages a person's metabolism?
Many of my extended family got sick and some died from adult-onset diabetes brought on by eating too much sugar. My father and grandfather suffered and died from low-fat diets (where sugar was never a concern because doctors were obsessed with eliminating dietary fat, period). Even if the outcome isn't obviously fatal, the accumulated damage does not go away and it carries real health risks until death.
And please don't use that weasel word "lifestyle" which the sugar industry wielded as a weapon against their victims. Oh, fatty, go and exercise some more! It's your lifestyle that's wrong, not the rubbish we've put on your table.
And we still see supermarkets with rows and rows of sugar-based junk foods. It's going to take decades to undo the cultural and educational damage let along the health damage.
>adult-onset diabetes brought on by eating too much sugar
Genetics is a much bigger component of T2 than sugar intake.
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The number of fat cells is set in childhood and stays constant throughout adulthood, according to research conveniently titled "Fat cell number is set in childhood and stays constant in adulthood" http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/05/04/fat-cell...
The size of those fat cells can be changed through diet and lifestyle, but since the number of fat cells cannot be lowered naturally, sticking to a healthier lifestyle is extremely hard for a [formerly] obese person, as there's just one thing the fat cells are programmed to do, and that is to grow in size.
If you where fat as a child, you'll have more fat cells than normal. Those cells stay with you basically forever. So while eating less food makes you lose weight, those extra fat cells will keep messing with your hormones.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18454136?otool=karolib&t...
Anyone who has been morbidly obese has permanent damage as a result. It is certainly better to right the ship, but some damage does not go away.
Sugar does have some nutritional value, and is a hallmark of primate diet. Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high.
> Sugar does have some nutritional value, and is a hallmark of primate diet. Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high.
This statement reflects a glaring ignorance of both scale and science. First of all, sugar is a hallmark of a primate diet only in complex not in simple forms, which is not the kind being referred to here. By nutritional value do you mean has calories? So does Vodka. And what at all do the calories have to do with the scale of harm?
Does this not include sugar found in foods? Are those considered complex?
Is eating natural sugar found in fruits as bad as eating refined/processed sugar?
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It is true that many monkeys are tree dwellers and are heavy fruit eaters. Humans and other primates are neither. They will eat fruit as part of a mixed diet that is more omnivorous than anything. And wild fruit is not as rich in sugar as you imagine. It's mostly fibre. The stuff you buy in the supermarket is not a hallmark of a primate diet. Soft drinks are not a hallmark of a primate diet. Cakes and biscuits, they are not a hallmark of a primate diet. They are fake food.
Genuinely curious as to what you mean by "other primates". What else is there apart from humans and monkeys?
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> Tobacco is an addictive insecticide that won't even get you high.
Nicotine is an addictive substance which suppresses appetite and increases focus; as found in tobacco leaves, it has a pleasant smell and taste.
It's worth mentioning, since most people don't know, that nicotine on it's own is not as addictive as tobacco. AFAIK the MAOIs in tobacco smoke contribute more to its addictiveness than nicotine [1]
I've been chewing nicotine gum semi-regularly for a few months to improve my focus at work, and have not found it addictive so far. (I've never smoked).
(Still, I wouldn't recommend people in general do this without carefully considering the risks.)
[1] https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
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Loss of focus is a well known symptom of nicotine withdrawal. It goes away after a few days.
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As a former smoker, you are absolutely wrong. Tobacco will give you a kick, as nicotine is a stimulant.
I'd describe it as being similar to caffeine, it makes you more alert. Of course there are downsides that everyone knows about.
Fructose is a hallmark of primate diet. Refined fructose is not. The only refined fructose in the wild is honey and that is way too rare and too well defended to be the hallmark of anyone's diet (other than honeybees, of course).
Humans are perfectly capable of eating all the fructose they may ever want in its unrefined state as it appears in nature without any adverse effects. I.e. you can eat fruit until you are full, and nothing bad will happen. It is in fact quite healthy. But once you refine it into pure fructose, such as crystal sugar or molasses, then all hell breaks loose.