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Sugar Love

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: Sugar Love

#41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> glucose is still really bad for you Every cell in your body runs on glucose. To say glucose is "bad for you" is simply idiotic.

yeah, i should have said in high quantities, but I was just paraphrasing the video. The point was, in the video, he did not say it was just fructose, glucose can also be a problem.

It can be a problem if you're type I diabetic or are obese, both of which result in impaired insulin sensitivity.

Otherwise, you can quite healthily gorge on starch and sugars and your tissues will happily mop up the glucose and fructose into glycogen. And then if necessary into fat, but lipogensis from sugars is surprisingly inefficient and glycogen capacity is more than you probably think.

Re: Sugar Love

#42
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure, in that video, the argument was that while glucose is still really bad for you, fructose[1] is much, much worse - it's a poison that's causing an epidemic. 1. And specifically the manufactured fructose isolates vs. natural fructose found in fruit. Edit: rather glucose in high quantities as noted in response below.

> And specifically the manufactured fructose isolates vs. natural fructose found in fruit. Is there an explanation as to why this would be the case (if it is)? With a lot of vitamins the argument is over absorbability of different forms, e.g. there are various forms of dietary calcium, and various kinds of calcium supplements, and they may not be equivalent. But my understanding was that fructose in fruit is pretty m…

There is an explanation. I urge you to watch the entire video. The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it. This if you get too much the liver processes a lot of it through the wrong pathways, and that causes all types of chaos.

There are a couple of differences with natural fructose. First natural fructose almost always comes with fiber. The fiber if processed at the same time as the fructose allows the liver to properly process more fructose. This is because the fiber provides certain nutrients which allow the liver to process more fructose along the proper pathways.

Second, natural fructose is usually in plant cells. In order for us to process these, we much first break down the plant cells in our stomach. This takes some time, so the effect is that the natural fructose does not hit the liver in the same speed and concentration as refined fructose.

This all has scientific support by the way. Lustig mentioned a study in old Caribbean sugar plantations. There they tracked the health of the masters and workers. It turned out that while both the masters and workers ate mostly sugar, the masters had a lot of health problems associated with obesity and diabetes, while the workers did not. The difference was that the masters ate refined sugar, while the workers mostly just ate raw sugar cane.

There was another study in japan, where scientists tried to give people massive amounts of sugar in the form of apples. These people did not have any of the problems associated with high sugar intake.

Re: Sugar Love

#43
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balanced diet? For the longest time, the FDA has claimed This is what sets my alarm bells off the most loudly. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, we heard over and over how the science was settled. Fat was bad for you. Nutritionists the world over were supposedly on board with the food pyramid. Contrarians like Atkins who had objections to the science and advocated something different were ignored -- or to the…

I see quite a striking parallel in the way AGW "denialists" are treated similarly to how the likes of Yudkin were treated for speaking out against the dogmatic ideas of health "science". Very few scientists today speak out against the "climate change" dogma out of fear of losing their jobs, status among their peers, or funding - and those who dare are ridiculed, despite having published peer reviewed science (althoug…

Peer reviewed denialist science? Links please. (And this isn't a joke--I very much want to read this, but it looks like downvotes are easier than substantiating.)

Re: Sugar Love

#44
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And specifically the manufactured fructose isolates vs. natural fructose found in fruit. Is there an explanation as to why this would be the case (if it is)? With a lot of vitamins the argument is over absorbability of different forms, e.g. there are various forms of dietary calcium, and various kinds of calcium supplements, and they may not be equivalent. But my understanding was that fructose in fruit is pretty m…

There is an explanation. I urge you to watch the entire video. The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it. This if you get too much the liver processes a lot of it through the wrong pathways, and that causes all types of chaos. There are a couple of differences with natural fructose. First natural fructose almost always comes with fiber. The fiber if processed at the…

I think you're almost there

Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit

"The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it."

Correct, glucose can replenish muscle glycogen, fructose can't (the liver produces both types of glycogen) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3592616

"This is because the fiber provides certain nutrients"

Fibers, per definition are not digestible but are other things that may happen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Fiber

And of course glycemic index may be a problem with sugars as well.

Re: Sugar Love

#45

> The solution? Stop eating so much sugar. When people cut back, many of the ill effects disappear. I understand the article focuses just on sugar, but when it starts getting to the health effects, the focus shouldn't be on just sugar but rather all high-glycemic-index foods, including bread, pasta, potatoes, and so on -- at least from what I understand. It doesn't do much good to cut back on sugar if you replace it…

Don't forget that the glycemic index of food is impacted by what else is eaten.

For example, a candy bar had a lot if simple sugars in it, but also a lot of fat, which slows gastric emptying and results in a much lower than expected glycemic index.

Re: Sugar Love

#46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an explanation. I urge you to watch the entire video. The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it. This if you get too much the liver processes a lot of it through the wrong pathways, and that causes all types of chaos. There are a couple of differences with natural fructose. First natural fructose almost always comes with fiber. The fiber if processed at the…

I think you're almost there Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit "The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it." Correct, glucose can replenish muscle glycogen, fructose can't (the liver produces both types of glycogen) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3592616 "This is because the fiber pr…

^ This is a model HN post. Instead of contradicting and insulting the parent poster, it acknowledges the value in the contribution, and adds further clarifying information to correct minor errors.

Thank you!

Re: Sugar Love

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a 100 calorie quantity of bread not be better than a 100 calorie quantity of sugar cereal? Assuming of course that you don't buy bread with sugar in it. "Although the Glycemic Index provides some insights into the relative diabetic risk within specific food groups, it contains many counter-intuitive ratings. These include suggestions that bread generally has a higher glycemic ranking than sugar and that some po…

The glycemic index is a totally broken concept. Your body and tissues are made to happily work with surges of insulin and there is absolutely nothing problematic about that. From a weight loss perspective sugars, such as in fruit juice, are superior to starches for two reasons. The fructose is thermogenic and raises base metabolic rate. Secondly, starches tend to reach lower lengths of the intestine undigested where…

> Your body and tissues are made to happily work with surges of insulin and there is absolutely nothing problematic about that.

then what is diabetes about?

Re: Sugar Love

#48
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an explanation. I urge you to watch the entire video. The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it. This if you get too much the liver processes a lot of it through the wrong pathways, and that causes all types of chaos. There are a couple of differences with natural fructose. First natural fructose almost always comes with fiber. The fiber if processed at the…

I think you're almost there Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit "The problem with fructose is that the liver has only a limited ability to properly process it." Correct, glucose can replenish muscle glycogen, fructose can't (the liver produces both types of glycogen) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3592616 "This is because the fiber pr…

Fructose is fructose, there's no "natural fructose" however it's one thing to eat it pure, another one in a fruit

That I can buy. What I'm more skeptical of is that there's a distinction between "manufactured" and "natural" fructose once both have been concentrated and are used as additives to sweeten other products. Eating a pear is one thing, but I'm less sure that a "naturally sweetened" product which has been sweetened with concentrated pear juice or a similar fruit-based sugar extract is really more healthy than the same product that has been sweetened with more conventional "manufactured" sugars. I don't doubt that eating an actual fruit is almost certainly better than either one.

Re: Sugar Love

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a 100 calorie quantity of bread not be better than a 100 calorie quantity of sugar cereal? Assuming of course that you don't buy bread with sugar in it. "Although the Glycemic Index provides some insights into the relative diabetic risk within specific food groups, it contains many counter-intuitive ratings. These include suggestions that bread generally has a higher glycemic ranking than sugar and that some po…

The glycemic index is a totally broken concept. Your body and tissues are made to happily work with surges of insulin and there is absolutely nothing problematic about that. From a weight loss perspective sugars, such as in fruit juice, are superior to starches for two reasons. The fructose is thermogenic and raises base metabolic rate. Secondly, starches tend to reach lower lengths of the intestine undigested where…

The amount of macronutrients to be consumed would of course depend on your weight and activity level. I use this calculator for Leangains: http://sareyko.net/leancalc/

I agree that fructose (whole fruits) is preferrable to starch, and people with colitis/IBD seem to find relief from that: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info

But I'd recommend agains juices - they allow to pour down way more fructose quicker than you could chew in the form of whole fruit.

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