Is sugar toxic?
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Is sugar toxic?
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#2Here is a video from Dr. Robert Lustig about sugars. It is an hour and a half long but very informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
After watching it, I've considerably reduced my sugar intake. I still drink soft drinks during lunch/dinner, but I am slowly weaning myself off them and onto water/tea and other better alternatives.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#3Life is toxic. You'll eventually die of it.
Really, if you remove everything harmful to health from you life (including everything related to a computer), you'd probably die of boredom, depression and frustration real fast.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#4Yes.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#5I do a ton of review of nutrition studies and here's the conclusion I've come to:
The primary concerns are the biggest killers: cancer and CVD. The main causal pathway by which carbohydrates (of which simple sugars have the largest effect) affect CVD incidence is via the simultaneous lowering of HDL and raising of blood serum triglycerides. This is much more important for predicting CVD episodes than the 'low LDL' you hear touted a lot. The connection between sugar and cancer is less well established.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#6I found Dr Lustig's talk enlightening because I always thought of it simply as input -> output (sucrose -> glucose). In retrospect, it's obvious that the bio-checmial process your body uses to convert that is pretty darn important.
However, as cool as it is to get re-introduced to things like ATP and Krebs Cycle, the driving message we get from experts has been a constant for a long time: avoid processed foods.
It's incredibly simple advice to understand and to follow. It's also an excessively easy lifestyle to adopt. There is no lack of unprocessed foods and it isn't more expensive. I just don't understand why people don't eat better. I'd be pretty depressed if I was a health-care professional...decades of messaging and things are only getting worse.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#7Good message: "don't over consume and stick to unprocessed sources".
It bothers me though that the word sugar is in the title since they really mean sucrose. Both fructose and glucose occur naturally (fruit, veggies, starches) and are not harmful.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#8I found Dr Lustig's talk enlightening because I always thought of it simply as input -> output (sucrose -> glucose). In retrospect, it's obvious that the bio-checmial process your body uses to convert that is pretty darn important. However, as cool as it is to get re-introduced to things like ATP and Krebs Cycle, the driving message we get from experts has been a constant for a long time: avoid processed foods. It's…
I just don't understand why people don't eat better.
I understand it perfectly. The brain rewards bad diet; sugar tastes better than fiber. Couple this with food companies that need to grow 10% a year to keep their investors happy, and you have the perfect recipe for making people eat more, cheaper calories. Processed food may be the same price as unprocessed food, but it's more calorie-rich, it's more advertised, and it gets more shelf space at the store. (It is really a lot cheaper, but sold at a higher markup. So that profit buys ads and shelf space.) Hence, the path of least resistance is to buy processed food.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#9Good message: "don't over consume and stick to unprocessed sources". It bothers me though that the word sugar is in the title since they really mean sucrose. Both fructose and glucose occur naturally (fruit, veggies, starches) and are not harmful.
Sucrose occurs naturally too. So does cyanide. Natural != good to eat.
Re: Is sugar toxic?
#10Is there seriously anyone left at this point who doesn't think sugar is toxic?