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Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

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Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#121

Post by dkarras »

johnkpaul wrote: post #73
nindalf wrote: post #64

For the first 3.5 months of this year I was completely off artificial sugar. That meant fruit was ok, but any kind of dessert wasn't. It was hard initially but after a couple of weeks it was easy. I didn't feel the craving to eat dessert like I always did. I also felt much better and more productive now that my insulin levels were more stable than before. On my previous diet I had regular sugar highs and lows (which…

Awesome, congrats! I'm at 2.5 years of no artificial and as close to 0 "natural sugar" as possible. I don't have any fruit and I don't drink milk but have the lactose in cheese sometimes. I also have tomatoes sometimes so there is a little glucose in that. Generally, if I could, I'd have 0 -ose completely. It's done wonders for my A1C and weight. It definitely gets easier after the original weaning. Now it doesn't ev…

I'm curious and don't know much aboutdiet sorry, are you on some sort of ketogenic diet? Without any -ose how does your brain fuel itself?

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#122

Post by will_brown »

ZeroFries wrote: post #103

There's actually not that much evidence moderate sugar intake is bad for you, at all. All this talk about "sugar" swings is completely off base, IMO, especially considering most starches are much higher on the GI and II scales than sugars. Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway. Higher consumption is converted to fat, but most vilifying sugars promote fat, so what's the differen…

>If anyone can link me evidence that moderate sugar intake promotes worse blood sugar regulation (compared to saturated fat, especially) in healthy, non-diabetic populations, would love to see it.

I think you should reframe this...and ask if anyone can link evidence of a case of type 2 diabeties or non alcoholic fatty liver disease where the patient didn’t consume sugar/carbs (those cases don’t exist).

I think historically type 2 diabeties being called adult onset diabeties shows that even life long moderate consumption of carbs/sugars leads to type 2 in many individuals who were “healthy” in their younger years. Moreover, for many people type 2 was just a natural progression, it’s not like historically everyone with type 2 began over consuming carbs/sugar later in life.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#123

Post by shusson »

ZeroFries wrote: post #103

There's actually not that much evidence moderate sugar intake is bad for you, at all. All this talk about "sugar" swings is completely off base, IMO, especially considering most starches are much higher on the GI and II scales than sugars. Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway. Higher consumption is converted to fat, but most vilifying sugars promote fat, so what's the differen…

> Moderate carb feels best

Yeah I agree, but I think the problem is it's way too easy to eat a lot of sugar without realising it. Eat an average low fat yogurt cup and if you're not careful you just ate 30g of sugar.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#124

Post by DanBC »

jrace wrote: post #116
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like saying please stay away from vaping as a way of stopping smoking. Great advice if you can, horrible advice if you can’t. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Except vaping has known and unknown health risks. Saying "I the only way to stop smoking is to vape" is also horrible advice.

When looking at vaping we're not comparing it to not smoking, we're comparing it to smoking. And vaping is very much safer than smoking.

The stuff about the minimal harms and potential unknown harms is only useful for the population who isn't currently smoking.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#125

Post by beat »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #118
beat wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The success of agrarian diets doesn't mean they are healthier than what might be called paleo. Rather, it has a host of other side effects - a larger, more stable food supply means a larger population. A large population means specialization. Farming means staying in one place, forming permanent communities and permanent tools/storage that can't necessarily be carried by hand. Agrarian societies can develop new techn…

But if we acknowledge we adapted to it, we can't just assume that paleo is better for us strictly because it's "more natural" - we adapted to make milk natural for us to drink as well. And if we reject that - how can we say that our adaptation to a paleo diet is then better as it's part of our evolutionary tree?

Not everyone adapted to milk. Lactose intolerance is widespread, and even more common with people whose ancestors did not have a dairy culture.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#126

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

beat wrote: post #125
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if we acknowledge we adapted to it, we can't just assume that paleo is better for us strictly because it's "more natural" - we adapted to make milk natural for us to drink as well. And if we reject that - how can we say that our adaptation to a paleo diet is then better as it's part of our evolutionary tree?

Not everyone adapted to milk. Lactose intolerance is widespread, and even more common with people whose ancestors did not have a dairy culture.

Oh absolutely, but the people who were exposed to the new diet did. We can and have adapted that quickly.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#127

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jrace wrote: post #116
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like saying please stay away from vaping as a way of stopping smoking. Great advice if you can, horrible advice if you can’t. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Except vaping has known and unknown health risks. Saying "I the only way to stop smoking is to vape" is also horrible advice.

I didn’t say that either. Just that if you couldn’t quit cold turkey, vaping is better than just continuing with cigarettes. I was able to do the former, but can totally understand those who resort to the latter.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#128

Post by nazgulnarsil »

sprash wrote: post #95
msiyer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I eat mostly fruits, very little vegetables and cooked grains. I have lost 10+ kgs in the past 6 months. I was not obese, but could lose some weight. Refined sugars are detrimental for health. Whole fruits and their sugars are great!

Fruits are actually full of sugar. Just because they are not "refined" doesn't mean those sugars are not harmful. They are essentially the same molecules (most prominent: saccharose, fructose, glucose). Bananas are especially bad. Blackberry, Raspberry and Strawberry are OK even thou they have a sweeter taste in my opinion.

No one had ever demonstrated fruit intake as harmful. Fruit intake is strongly positively correlated with healthy outcomes.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#129

Post by EForEndeavour »

ZeroFries wrote: post #103

There's actually not that much evidence moderate sugar intake is bad for you, at all. All this talk about "sugar" swings is completely off base, IMO, especially considering most starches are much higher on the GI and II scales than sugars. Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway. Higher consumption is converted to fat, but most vilifying sugars promote fat, so what's the differen…

> Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway.

The first half of this sentence (fructose is low GI) is factually correct. The second half (most fructose is converted to glucose in the gut) is factually incorrect. The entire sentence and comment oversimplify sugar metabolism. tl;dr: control your fructose intake.

First, nitpicky corrections: about half of ingested fructose is converted to glucose, not most of it, and this occurs in the liver, not the gut (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649104/).

Second, and more importantly: GI is a woefully inadequate measure of the healthfulness of a food. the glycemic index (GI) of a food is indexed to a standard amount of carbohydrate mass (usually 50 g) from that food. GI captures the impact on blood glucose per gram of carbohydrate, but it certainly misses crucial aspects of sugar metabolism. For example, carrots have a high GI (above 70), but that's not a reason to stop eating carrots. You'd need to eat a huge amount of carrots to spike your blood sugar. Glycemic load is a more useful metric (https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/glycemic-index-a...), but even that is beside the point when it comes to fructose and its deleterious health effects.

Fructose, being fructose and not glucose, of course has a low glycemic index, since GI is defined based on blood glucose.

Dr. Robert Lustig (UCSF pediatric endocrinologist) has devoted years of effort to communicating the disproportionate damage that fructose causes to human metabolism. In brief, fructose is processed along different metabolic paths than glucose, and is better than glucose at making people fat, diabetic, and metabolically unhealthy (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592517/)

A top-level summary from 2013: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/21/fructo...

A very detailed lecture (video and transcript): https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#130

Post by blurhblurh »

louthy wrote: post #25

I have a super sweet tooth and have become more and more concerned about it as I get older. One thing that I am really bad at is any kind of conscious diet or regime, I am just not regimented with anything really. So, I tried the big-bang and did a 4 day fast - my theory being, well, treat it like a drug addiction and go 'cold turkey'. It worked. I massively cut down on my sugar intake because I didn't feel like I ne…

I've done this as well and I second it. I did a 5 day fast and treated myself to a massive breakfast on the 5th day. It was glorious and really reminded myself of not needing so much junk. I fast whenever I feel myself slipping. It's an amazing tool!

For these longer fasts, I just drink water and electrolytes.

If I ever get fat, I would fast my way to success honestly. If you do it right it seems healthy!

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