Sugar, on the other hand, is very obviously bad for you. It causes type 2 diabetes, it causes caries, and it also suppresses the feeling of satiety. Reducing your sugar intake is the easiest way to get into better shape.
Exercise is important, but it won't undo all the damage. E.g. if you heavily drink and smoke, no amount of exercise will undo that. It's the same with sugar. Exercise won't undo all those insulin spikes.
It's true that we need glucose, but we need it at a slow and steady rate. We don't need it at a rate which causes a massive insulin response. If your body actively combats the amount of sugar in your bloodstream, you apparently overdid it.
Non-processed food without added sugars is a good way to get a little bit of sugar over the course of several hours. The absorption rate is delayed by fibers. That's why fruits are fine while juice isn't.
The big problem with avoiding processed food is that it's really inconvenient. Cooking, just like exercise, takes time and effort.
No, excess sugar is bad for you.
E.g. if you eat some premade pasta sauce and some slices of toast, you're probably very close to exceeding your budget. So, it would be a good idea to not have a can of pop or some cookies.
Anyhow, if you only eat veggies and meat, you'll do just fine. The big problem is the added sugar found in most processed foods.
I wouldn't say that sugar is a bad thing on its own, but the people who use it to enhance their products are not doing so to help our brains work better. They are doing that because they know that our species has an appreciation for this stuff and in their quest for short term profits they can externalize the long term costs associated with the effects of sugar overload which we ourselves do not have a way of detecting until it is too late.
I don't agree with all of the anti-sugar things. Probably shouldn't tax sugar itself, and in moderation it isn't a bad thing. Most folks don't have a lot of candy in their diet (because there are limits). But they do drink a good deal of sugary coffees and drinks when it would be better to eat a handful of fruit and drink some water. Most folks don't need the added sugar to feed their brain - fruit and vegetables and some grains wind up as that anyway.
It isn't sugar in and of itself that is such an issue, but that we tend to put it in everything, so our consumption is really high.
Sauces and prepackaged foods have an amazing amount of added sugar. The typical american breakfast is nearly a dessert. Cranberry juice, pushed as healthy, is generally sweetened, even if it is with concentrated fruit juice. All of these things add up especially when combined with lack of reasonable choices near you and large portion sizes. And trying to figure out what has added sugar and other such things has been proven difficult. And this is a major problem for folks trying to have some sort of balance in addition to being a problem for folks that are low-to-mid income and/or have little time to cook their own food as it gets harder to limit such things even in supposedly healthy food.
People want to be victims rather than taking responsibility for themselves. They need something to blame.
Unless I'm imposing costs on others (which, admittedly, sugar can do), don't tell me what I should or shouldn't eat.
There is no evidence to support this sort of chemtrail level conspiracy theory nonsense.
I believe that people should keep track of what food they eat and depending how they feel, modify their particular diets accordingly.
My wife and I have reduced the processed foods we eat, and try to avoid sugar, and it seems to have had a great effect on how we feel and general health.
If you are a skeptic that is fine, skepticism should be the default, but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
I wasn't able to find anything in PubMed on the causal connection as you describe, though I did find papers like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684604/ on "Archaea and Fungi of the Human Gut Microbiome: Correlations with Diet and Bacterial Residents" which describes the correlation.
> Methanobrevibacter and Candida were positively associated with diets high in carbohydrates, but negatively with diets high in amino acids, protein, and fatty acids. A previous study emphasized that bacterial population structure was associated primarily with long-term diet, but high Candida abundance was most strongly associated with the recent consumption of carbohydrates. Methobrevibacter abundance was associated with both long term and recent consumption of carbohydrates.
How do you know it's Candida and not Methanobrevibacter?
I do take supplements specifically to reduce the amount of Candida in my gut (probiotics and caprylic acid) so my feeling of better heath in the last 4 or 5 years of avoiding processed foods might also be a result of these supplements and not just avoiding processed foods. I feel better, but I can't pinpoint why.
It's a flawed experiment, though. Literally the smallest possible sample size, extremely susceptible to the placebo effect, no controls.
I'd be interested in a large, rigorously controlled study on this, where the control group is fed convincing imitations of sweet (via artificial sweeteners) and processed (via presentation) foods. A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable.
re: "A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable." I was not asking the other poster to accept my results, but rather suggesting that it would be worth the effort to do the experiment themselves.
Yes, there has been a lot written. And there is no evidence.
>but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
95%+ of the food I eat comes from my property. There's nothing processed to cut out. I feel no different than I did when I was eating little ceasars pizza and coke every day for a year. This "experiment" is not an actual experiment, and would not support the claim in question even if it were.
I wonder what you mean by that...
Those designations (organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, natural) have their place. The practice of it is where consumers get cheated.