71–80 of 144 posts
How can one buy bulk glucose to use as a sweetener instead of fructose or sucrose?
Look for dextrose or corn sugar. Here's one link: http://www.nowfoods.com/Products/ProductsbyCategory/M004079.... . Personally, I just do my best to avoid anything that tastes sweet.
Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist who runs the "Track Your Plaque" program and the Heart Scan blog ( http://www.heartscanblog.org/ ) has identified sugar as one of the primary factors contributing to heart disease. He advises his patients to generally eliminate all sugars, grains (they break down into glucose in the bloodstream), and anything else raises blood glucose levels.
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1. We all agree there is conclusive evidence of a problem with diet and obesity. 2. Author inconclusively argues that sugar is the cause of the problem. 3. Someone says this is irresponsible journalism (scaremongering). 4. In response, you say that that this is not irresponsible journalism because doing nothing in a crisis is irresponsible, even if doing something involves a little bit of misdirection. As someone tha…
"In response, you say that that this is not irresponsible journalism because doing nothing in a crisis is irresponsible, even if doing something involves a little bit of misdirection." Did I say that?
I guess the big issue I have with his advice is that obesity is really most strongly correlated with increased intake of calories, and less so with the macronutritional source of those calories.
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Being tentative about drawing conclusions is not the same as being content free. Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong, it seems like this topic could use a little more tentativeness.
"Considering how often past dietary advice has been wrong" ... ...I would argue that writing news articles about things with no conclusive evidence is worse than irresponsible journalism. It's downright harmful, in the most literal sense of the term.
Supposing readership gets scared enough to eliminate these "added sugars" from their diet, like Soda and candy and cookies cease to exist. How is that harmful? Oh yeah, some companies would disappear and people would be, at least temporarily, out work. These "added sugars" didn't even exist not that long ago, so worst case we would be eating more like we did in the 1800's. Perhaps some new information I don't know about suggests that the added sugars are now indispensable for our well being?. "Downright harmful" is I think, a little exaggerated.
"Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do." Wow, that was a content-free article, borderline scare-mongering, eg. "when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good". There's no information about what sort of doses are really bad at all, and so nothing useful to learn from it. I have 2 kids who w…
I actually found it to be content dense. It was a bit unactionable, but a good amount of content. Of course he also gives you the names, so you can look up the studies, although he also pretty much tells you that its not applicable to your current diet. Again, maybe not actionable, but definitely content. Especially for a mainstream newspaper article.
Well, yes and no. There is some good but as-yet not conclusive reasons to believe that sugar is far more dangerous than it appears. On the other hand, there is nobody I am aware of who has any argument in favor of consuming more sugars or more sugary foods. I am not aware of any argument against cutting back your sugar consumptions as a reasonable preventative step. A conventional dietitian will place much less emphasis on it than Dr. Lustig, but they won't try to talk you out of it.
This is as opposed to fats, where I have seen arguments made that cutting back on fats can be actively harmful. I'm not making it here, nor am I claiming it is true, I'm simply saying I have definitely seen that argument made.
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Dr. Lustig is a nationally-recognized authority in the field of neuroendocrinology, with a specific emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. He is currently investigating the contribution of biochemical, neural, hormonal, and genetic influences in the expression of the current obesity epidemic both in children and adults. He has defined a syndrome of vagally-mediated beta-cell hyper…
Which means?
For those who haven't watched the video lecture referenced early in the article, I highly recommend checking it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Lustig does a fantastic job explaining the cellular processes at work, which appealed to my engineering side. I'm not usually passionate about biochemistry and this lecture is definitely long, but if you make it through the first 15 minutes you will be hooked.
I'm not a nutritionist, biologist, or doctor, but I have a huge sweet tooth, and I actually tried to answer this question on my humble little blog ( http://foodconstrued.com/2011/02/sugar-cravings/ ) back in February. My answer: It is not the sugar, but the empty calories leading to obesity and then to further health complications.
I finally discovered that sugar (and alcohol) were my biggest contributors. So for me, sugar is definitely toxic. Now that I limit my sugar, I go weeks without heartburn, and when I do get it, it's usually because I had some beer or wine the previous day.
Based on this experience, I was interested that he talked about the fructose being removed by the liver (as alcohol is). I probably have some liver issue. This article has led me to a new avenue of research. In the meantime, I am a believer in limiting sugar intake.