Is Sugar Killing Us?
wsj.com
wsj.com
This article briefly discusses inflammation and has mostly sound nutritional advice: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-you-eat-c...
This lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig has been very popular on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM . Unsure of its veracity since I watched this quite a few years ago.
Many other factors should be considered as many have mentioned like micronutrient intake/absorption, physical activity, gut biome, and genetic predisposition.
You may be well aware of the whole broscience that runs in fitness forums and it's very hard sometimes to find good and scientifically accurate sources and until now I've been lumping most of those "inflammation" articles together with the "toxins" ones, mostly a very broad umbrella term that had no real meaning.
But reading your comment and seeing this article from Harvard made me reconsider it so, again, what is this thing about "inflammation" regarding diet? It really just feels like an umbrella term...
Example: too much sugar -> inflammation of arteries (because reasons) -> buildup of cholesterol -> heart attack.
It's not the sugar that cause the heart attack, it's the inflammation from the sugar and the body's response to it. This may seem like a small detail, but remember the theory was that it was the buildup of dietary cholesterol that caused clogged arteries. That was an easy narrative to follow, since, "(because reasons)" wasn't something you can market easily. Fat-free food usually doesn't have cholesterol either so it's good for you, if you're worried about having a heart attack!
This is the same falisty of thinking that merely eating fat makes you fat.
Excessive sugar causing Type 2 Diabetes is much less a theory than the above (insulin resistance)
Anyways, different inflammation is the pain I feel in my wrists typing this, or the pain my ankle from an accident last year. That inflammation is Not Good, and could lead to other Bad Things, like perhaps cancer (so I'm told by an MD)
So it is a very broad term, but it does def. have meaning.
Otherwise the parent's comment is pretty on point.
Yeah, you're right. I would say that one theory is that chronic inflammation can lead to Bad Things, but this is just areas of research at the moment and it's as diverse as types of inflammation.
I gave up gluten (withdrawal symptoms), high fructose foods (digestive issues, celiacs wrecks your small intestine lining), caffeine (withdrawal symptoms), sodium nitrites (withdrawal symptoms, but I don't know much about this one, it's in bacon and deli meats as a preservative / cure), and now sugar (withdrawal symptoms). I feel so good. My nose used to be stuffy all the time, I used to have awful digestion, cutting out these foods totally changed my life.
I'm honestly really grateful that I'm celiac, I think it magnifies all the shittiness that these foods bring. It got me to realize all the garbage I was sustaining myself on. I'm now incredibly healthy despite being 'sick'. One of the stranger realizations was that I now only drink water, and that I used to live mostly off of soda.
All these industries have huge interests in selling people addicting food (caffeine, sugar) and maintaining their market positions. They put out so much misinformation on what is healthy.
Pretty much all water weight.
Do you mean that the caffeine itself doesn't bother you (above its expected effect), but that the withdrawal is pretty rough?
I'm curious, because I also have celiac, and I've also ended up dropping caffeine because it was getting to be too much of a pain to manage it whenever I had to do without for some reason (travel mostly). I've noticed I have no grace with it; if I drink a 20oz Coke Zero right now, which is actually pretty low in caffeine (or, at most depending on your standards, "medium"), in 36 hours I will have a withdrawal headache.
But I can't tell if this is "celiac", or just generally how people respond to caffeine. Most people don't pay attention that much.
(As long as we're comparing notes: I've also noticed that alcohol has little appeal to me, because it mostly just makes me tired and gives me vague muscle pain before I'm "buzzed". In fact I can't say I've ever been "pleasantly buzzed" the way some people seem to describe.)
(Also, before someone comes along and complains about "anecdotes" being used, I do try to keep up with the celiac science, but generally speaking what we're talking about here is way beyond the current science frontier. Science may be the slow-and-steady that wins the race, but in the meantime, we can't wait for science to figure out the perfect way to live with it and/or cure it in 30-50 years... we have it now.)
As I went through my 20s I experimented with abandoning coffee a few times. I had developed the habit in college and I wanted to ensure that I was continuing to drink coffee for the benefits and not simply because I was addicted to it. This meant that I did handful of experiments with not drinking coffee for 2-3 months. The first week or two would be rough. Headaches starting 24-30 hours after I stopped and persisting for about a week. After that I would just settle into what felt like a normal life, but a lot more groggy.
The main difference between my life with coffee and my life without seemed to just be how grumpy I was before noon. I still had insomnia, I still got tired after lunch. Those things seemed unconnected to the coffee.
Maybe I need to go off coffee for a long time to really see the benefits, e.g. give it 3-6 months for my body to recover and stabilize. I'm not sure, but at this point I have what I consider to be a healthy consumption level and I get the benefits of increased alertness and focus in the mornings. I'm focusing on other elements of my life to address any health concerns.
However, a couple of years ago, I noticed that I can actually drink caffeine without getting any withdrawal problems at all, making me think it was all in my head...
Boy do I miss soda something fierce.
After about a month my cravings completely disappeared and now when I taste soda its way too sweet and I just don't feel like drinking it anymore.
For me, I was drinking a ton of soda, like 4+ of those Mexican coca-colas a day. If I would sleep in I would 'miss' the dose and feel like garbage. I loved that stuff. I think the first time I cut it out was just to see if I could and I got very sick. Going back or forth a few more times I noticed that it was withdrawal. For me it's a sinus headache and pseudo-ephedrine (sudafed) really helps (wish I knew that a few years earlier).
I know other people have withdrawal symptoms, but I've never seen any reported as severe as what I get. Maybe people just aren't aware, idk. I started paying a lot of attention after I gave up gluten, to what I was eating and how it affected me. Maybe it's that increased awareness or maybe my body responds differently.
I don't drink at all, same thing about no appeal. That might just be because it's a bit of work to find drinks that are gluten free, and not high fructose (ciders / HFCS syrups) and I'm lazy. I also prefer programming and mental challenges, I really feel a night getting drunk is a bit of a waste. Hanging with the gf, programming, or gaming is more fulfilling to me. It's been long enough that I couldn't even tell you any effects, just that I'm a light weight.
I would happily induce these symptoms if anyone wants to study them. I'm so curious about the science behind it. I'm curious if I built up the reliance on it and if it will go away in time. In 10 years can I eat chocolate again? Drink tea? My diet is really strict now, pretty much meat, rice, and water. I eat chipotle bowls with chips (gotta avoid most the ingredients due to cross contamination though). I haven't seen much science on withdrawal either, though I haven't looked too hard.
There is some science that gluten can be treated as an opiate by certain individuals [1]. That link is for people with asymptomatic celiac disease, you also hear it come up in association with Autism [2].
1. https://jhpn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41043-015-0...
2. http://www.autism-help.org/intervention-casein-gluten-free.h...
Here is a pretty good and scientific talk about what is happening (warning > 1 hour long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Edit: just noticed this y/t has already been cited in another comment - evermore reason to pay attention to it :)
How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?
Your body will handle that naturally. If it doesn't have enough of resource A, it'll try resource B, then C, ... It happens automatically.
I lost about 15 lbs during the process and my diet mostly consisted of salads with lots of chicken + cheese + high fat dressing. I was a vegan before I switched to Keto so eating my veggies was not difficult, but some of my friends struggled to keep a "healthy" diet during the process.
The most difficulty you will have doing Keto is your own self-control. Finding recipes & food to buy is easy.
Nutrition recommendations up to this point still recommend high ratio of carbs (45-65% of kcals) because they are the most direct metabolic pathway. Also incredibly important for gut health is fiber, which is a complex carbohydrate (and prebiotic). The concern of carbs is non-complex ones as a high percentage of intake.
They have found that the brain runs on ketones (for a long time it was thought that it required glucose specifically) but long term research is non-existent. So yes, the body can live off of "no carbs", but stating that our carbohydrate requirement is zero is just false according to the literature and nutritional history of the majority of humans.
It's worth reading the history of the food pyramid. Here's a quote from wikipedia:
"The first chart suggested to the USDA by nutritional experts in 1992 featured fruits and vegetables as the biggest group, not breads. This chart was overturned at the hand of special interests in the grain, meat, and dairy industries, all of which are heavily subsidized by the USDA.[10] If Americans followed the chart suggested, they would buy much less meat, milk, and bread. On the other hand, if they ate as the revised chart suggested, it "could lead to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes," as original composer of the food Pyramid, Louise Light warned. "
I know from a personal standpoint, once I removed refined carbohydrates from my diet I dropped 25 pounds in two months (without bothering to excersize.) So the idea that somehow the diet that made me fat is somehow the "good" diet because the USDA says so strikes me as being silly.
A diet with high carbs should be mostly complex carbs. There is no minimum refined carb recommendation. The only recommendation is to limit added sugars to <10% of daily kcals. That recommendation may be reduced further in later revisions.
I'm super skeptical that 45-65% of diet being carbohydrates is healthy though. Unlike proteins and fats carbohydrates don't have much nutritional value other than being useful for creating glucose. Since your body can synthesize glucose anyway, you don't really need that much. In terms of fiber, you can get that from vegetables. I don't necessarily think you have to cut out carbs completely and go on ketosis, but of all the major macronutrients carbs are the least useful, so it seems odd that they should be the vast majority of the diet, especially when we've known for at least a hundred years that carbohydrates are fattening. (I'm amused when people act like ketogenic diets are "new" -- historically high fat/low carb diets were common. And historically we didn't have an obesity problem.)
From a personal standpoint, I barely eat any carbs and I've lost zero strength despite dropping 25 pounds. Apparently the diet that has made me thinner and increased my energy and mental clarity is the "dangerous" one, and the diet that has made everyone obese is "healthy" and "balanced".
[1] The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung
For example, it is believed that when we sleep our energy comes from fats. We are not doing anything exerting, so the process of (fat catabolism -> energy) >= energy needs. The brain needs glucose however, so it gets it from glycogen catabolism or protein catabolism (gluconeogenesis).
Edit: For some reason I cannot reply to the comment below. The recommendation is 45-65% based upon individual need. I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the brain can use ketone bodies.
I disagree that glucose = obesity as you seem to see it. Many, many things (nutrition, PA, stress, hormone issues, etc) are related to obesity.
A lot of what you emphasize is related to the lack of physical activity that the population no longer gets. If we truly want to solve obesity, it takes adjustments to diet and consistent purposeful physical activity. There's a lot that can be done with nutrition, but continuing our highly sedentary ways will always have consequences for health that nutrition alone will not completely solve.
Lets say for a second you're right and you need glucose, though. 65% is a really high number, and we basically know exactly what it leads to (obesity).
Would you have lost the same 25lbs. if you had just eaten less? In other words, does it really matter that you cut out carbs only? Are you chowing down on bacon and steaks?
Yes we have needs for micronutrients, which are acquired from all of the macros. If your diet is truly varied, balanced, and adequate (in all three macro categories) on a regular basis you will likely not be significantly deficient in micros.
And if you're going to suggest that the solution there is to decrease caloric intake, I also think that's bad advice. We know, from type 1 diabetes, that your body doesn't store fat if insulin isn't present. Certain foods have a much stronger insulin response than others, and not surprisingly carbohydrates have a much stronger insulin response than fats. IE, the notion that all calories are equal is not supportable by the scientific evidence. So if the culprit is insulin response, it would make much more sense to adjust what you eat and when you eat it, instead of measuring a number (calories) that isn't that useful anyway.
You're ignoring the complexities of insulin/components of a healthy diet/physical activity regarding carbohydrates. Technically, you could just eat only protein and survive. Doesn't mean this is the best advice and without many complications.
Of course carbs have higher insulin response as insulin regulates blood sugar uptake. Fats dont produce sugar, therefore insulin is unrelated. And many, many things cause weight gain, including fat intake for some.
Current guidelines allow for up to 35% of total kcals to be fats, with minimal/no risks. This encourages plenty of consumption of fats for energy. Perhaps if we continue our extremely sedentary ways then this will be raised higher in the future.
I (and presumably many others) have used it with notable success, so when I see a data point that suggests it's not a valid approach, I immediately question the validity of that data point.
HFCS is 45-58% glucose, and 42-55% fructose, and sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. There is one more bond in sugar, but enzymes in your gut break that bond apart very quickly.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
Page 209 onwards.
It's worth reading those few pages, but here are some snippets.
> Products sweetened with HFCS are not necessarily significantly higher in fructose than foods sweetened with sucrose as HFCS has a similar composition to sucrose, which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
> The body absorbs free fructose and glucose, or the same sugars derived from sucrose and HFCS, in exactly the same way. Therefore it appears unlikely that fructose, as consumed as a component of most HFCS or other glucose-fructose syrups, causes metabolic abnormalities or promotes weight gain more than other sugars consumed in an isocaloric diet (Klurfeld et al., 2013).
Especially this:
> A3.10 Therefore on balance, it is considered that there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that fructose intake, at levels consumed in the normal UK diet, leads to adverse health outcomes independent of any effects related to its presence as a component of total and free sugars.
Breaking the sugar / carbs dependency was really difficult for the first weeks but now I'm "fat adapted" as they call it.
I've been doing this diet for a year or so and broken it a few times for weeks at a time. Getting back was super easy and I didn't gain much weight. In 2016 I've lost more than 20 kilos, or about 6 belt notches. I even had to buy a new smaller belt.
If you want to know more about this look for the Atkins diet, 4 hour body diet, keto diet, etc. Those are all variations on the same idea of reducing or eliminating carbs from your diet.
What I can say is that I can see the effects of cortisol (stress) on my fasting glucose levels. When my ex does something that causes strife, my glucose levels will be 20-30 pts higher for the next few days.
In general, I ate fairly decently, and didn't consume mass amounts of sugar.
It's my belief, that our diabeetus epidemic is related to more than just our diets. Perhaps our modern living environment is too stressful and makes certain segments of the population susceptible to metabolic disease?
I don't have any better way to explain this psychological stuff, but for me there was a change for sure. A subtle one, but it made a big impact on my life long term.
The reason I stopped eating sugar was that I saw a pattern in my moods depending on what I ate. I initially thought that it my eating habits were dictated by life circumstances and that life circumstance were dictating my mood, but two things stood out, which left me to try going without sugar.
First I wanted to loose weight, so I went on a protein only diet during a very stressful time and it made me feel pretty good. Second, I was feeling even better, when I was fasting. Third, I had my worst "breakdown", when I was training for a marathon (I ran many, so it wasn't marathon stress) and ingested a lot of sugar.
[edit] I love caffeine btw, so I'm not saying this is inherently bad -- just something we often forget.
[1]http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacter...
I had no effect of that sort. I can only assume that this is one of those 'some people respond well to this, others not so much'.
And there isn't a type to look like. The idea that only obese people have type 2 is ignorant at best.
Consider yourself lucky you have type 2, you can control it very easily if you choose to do so. I would gladly swap my son't type 1 for type 2 any day of the week.
In my own experience, cutting out sugar (from anything else but fruit) and wheat from my diet has made a big difference.
Toss in the emerging idea that inflammation has a relationship with depression and the knowledge that sugar causes inflammation and it sort of makes sense. Obviously, the previous sentence should probably be backed up with a few legitimate studies.
That said it worked for me, and undoing it doesn't work for me for the above reasons. Add in regular exercise and things changed pretty seriously.
Whole grains are much better for you than white or processed breads, but they should still only be a small part of your diet, not the base.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_USDA_nutrition_guid...
By playing enough games with legal serving size, which has no relationship with observed consumption, you can end up with a standard serving of broccoli having twice the fiber as a standard serving of wheat as found in bread, for example.
Generally speaking it was very unusual for your ancestors to eat grains as the primary component of their diet before the very recent advent of agriculture. Grains are highly effective at fattening up large mammal livestock, such as cows, pigs, and humans. If a farmer would feed it to a pig to fatten it up, its probably a poor dietary choice for the average overweight American.
Wheat is extremely healthy ... economically ... if you're a wheat farmer or perhaps in health care. For everyone else, unlimited grain consumption turns out about the same for humans as hogs, at least WRT bod fat percentages.
Personally I still probably wouldn't eat breads or wheat often, I'll consider it a treat every now and then.
Several months of this diet and my A1C has dipped back to almost-normal, not even "pre-diabetic" levels. For me at least, carbs are definitely a killer.
143 points by prostoalex 12 hours ago | flag | hide | past | _web_ | 128 comments | favorite | save to pocket
There are lots of very healthy diets with much more long term data behind them like the Mediterranean diet.
your body will not lose weight without a reduction in caloric intake, that you successfully lost weight is proof that your new diet was a caloric deficit.
i'm glad you had such success, i just wanted to point out to other readers that there's nothing magic about low carb diets.
I'd read the whole thing, but the first couple paragraphs set the scene:
Obesity is often considered a problem of excessive calories. This caloric obsession has been indoctrinated into all of us since we were children. Too many calories in, too few calories out, or some combination is what we believe leads to weight gain and obesity. If it were indeed true that excess calories leads to weight gain, then the solution is simple: Reduce calories eaten. This has formed the standard dietary advice of the last 50 years. And it has failed spectacularly. Obesity rates have skyrocketed upward despite continual exhortations to cut calories. So, the proof is in the pudding. This advice does not work.
The other major strategy has been to increase exercise. Total calorie expenditure is not simply exercise, but includes basal metabolism. However, basal metabolism is not under conscious control, so it is assumed to be stable. In fact, the basal metabolic rate may increase or decrease up to 40% depending upon many factors, but one major one is caloric intake. But here once again, this advice has failed us.
Exercise comprises a very small proportion of our daily calorie expenditure. Let us assume basal metabolism of 2,000 calories per day. Walking for 45 minutes might burn 100–150 calories. If you’ve ever watched the calorie counter on your treadmill, you’ve probably already noticed how few calories are actually burned. This means that 95% of caloric expenditure is not related to exercise.
Continual exhortations does not mean calories have been cut. The fact that it's still said so often and loudly indicates that either it's not effective, or people aren't doing it.
> us assume basal metabolism of 2,000 calories per day. > Walking for 45 minutes might burn 100–150 calories. > If you’ve ever watched the calorie counter on your treadmill, >you’ve probably already noticed how few calories are actually burned > This means that 95% of caloric expenditure is not related to exercise.
So exercising doesn't account for that much calorie burn compared to your basal metabolism. 5% is not a small number, though (when you're not high over your daily needs to begin with), and this doesn't address any effect that even minimal regular exercise might have on your basal metabolism.
I haven't read the whole thing - but based on the glaring holes in these couple of paragraphs, I find that there's not a strong case for doing so.
It also doesn't account for the people who do successfully lose weight by following this basic advice. I'm -50lbs from where I started two years ago and am about 10lbs above where current doctrine says is "healthy" for me. What did I change?
I eat larger breakfasts, a light (but not necessarily healthy) afternoon snack, no lunch and small dinner for a net of significantly less food. (I still tend to snack on unhealthy things after 10pm some nights). I started walking (1.5 miles in hill country x 3-5 days. Less often lately).
That's it. I still eat like crap. I still drink mostly heavily-creamed coffee, diet soda, and sweet tea.
Perhaps you can see how I'm skeptical when I the opening paragraphs discount the two most significant but minor changes I made -- being told it doesn't work when it clearly has does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of the rest of the text.
(In a similar way that being told to cut calories an add exercise doesn't inspire confidence in the people who have done so with no luck.)
But "for me" is the important bit. Everyone is different. Perhaps that relatively light walking kicks my basal metabolism into overdrive - I really don't know. What I do know is that I made a couple of seemingly simply changes plus the behavioral change of not eating a) when bored and b) every time I felt slightly hungry, and it worked really well.
There's a lot of crap pseudoscience in this space and there is still a lot that we don't know - which means it's not going to get better anytime soon.
And in any case, I'm glad you found something that works for you. I found something that works for me, with much less effort and longer-lasting effect than the various extremes I've tried in the past.
No biggie, you'll get satiated too fast to overconsume.
Increase proteins?
You satiate even faster.
Increase sugar?
You will eat a lot more and your leptin signal gets all sorts of messed up.
http://www.irkitated.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eat-bloc...
Things are not as simple as "don't eat sugar"
Low fat cheese is also quite bad if you want to avoid sugar / carbs since adding / leaving in the carbs is pretty much the only way to produce a low fat cheese while keeping the same texture (you can increase the proteins but it will make it very stringy and or hard).
I think most people with a nutritional chemistry background would agree, as well, most general medicine practitioners that eating less sugar is a proper direction for much of the population.
It really isn't. When we look at what obese people eat they aren't just eating too much sugar. They're eating too much of everything, including fat.
Cutting out the sugar would help (especially because it's often a pointless addition with a painless substitution eg soda to non-sugar soda), but it would not be enough.
This may not be as useful a replacement as we've always been lead to believe. There's recent research that suggests that the body is tricked into behaving as if the sugar substitutes are actually sugar[0], especially when considering abdominal obesity.
---
[0] "Chronic Low-Calorie Sweetener Use and Risk of Abdominal Obesity among Older Adults: A Cohort Study" - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
True; obese people aren't just eating too much sugar, but also fat (and protein), but the problem is still the sugar.
The sugar makes you hungry, making you able to eat more fat (which is highly calorie dense). If you cut the sugar (and other high GI/II carbs), you will eat a lot less of the rest.
Sure, the problem in calorie intake is the combination, but eating just fat and protein is fine, while eating only carbs and protein is definitely not.
Do you have any credible research on this? I'd be interested to read it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24819342
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16129086
Low carb AND low fat https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3139783/
This paper is often quoted when talking about eating regularly vs rarely (IF), in which the subjects were given meals with 70/15/15 of carbs/protein/fat, in which regular eaters consumed less: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10578205
This is a paper on a similar trial with 60/14/26 and 49/25/26 macro comp instead, with opposite results (meaning you were full longer when eating less carbs): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034047/
Things are really that easy. Sure there are many potential solutions, but that one definitely works.
So in comes December. And there is candy and chocolate everywhere. In just a single week our house filled up with it and here I am, stuffing my face full of sugar.
I think the struggle just goes on, right?
I didn't eat - stuff with added - sugar for about a year a few years back. Was pretty nazi on it, didn't just cut down a little bit. I read all the labels and didn't even buy bread with added sugar or syrup etc. Lost 30 kgs. Never felt so good.
Sugar is poison, really should eat it. The best thing is that everything start tasting much better after cutting off sugar. It's amazing. Salt taste more, vegetables taste more. And if you're having a bad urge to eat something sweet, just drink water.
I think the struggle just goes on, right?
To some extend: Yes. But something flipped in my head this time. The struggle is less serious. Heck, I even prefer an orange over the cookie now.
The struggle goes on if you keep getting little triggers which wake up the green-eyed monster that always wants more sugar. If you avoid slightly sugary things it will help avoiding very sugary things.
For the last half a decade I've tried most things in both nutrition and training. While I'm back to a moderate regiment now, both diet and training, not abstaining from anything I think the key takeaway is not of one diet to rule them all, but merely what insights each brings.
From doing LCHF I realized how hunger is altered by carbs.
From doing IF I realized how hunger is altered by ghrelin, and how it's very much trainable (in the span of about two weeks). Also how "real" hunger feels versus "fake" hunger, and that the feeling of hunger is completely harmless and can really sharpen your focus.
How neither is particularily easy on your social life.
Etc, etc. Even if I'm back to a "regular" diet now, I have a much better understanding of the things I eat, and can make more informed decisions, both on content, portion size, and meal times.
Everyone should try everything (if time permits). Never be afraid of exploring outside your comfort zone.
a) Sometimes, we see candy as some kind of reward or treat. Most children are given chocolate etc. as a reward. So, to a certain extend, it is seen as something special. Most chocolates are marketed as special, as a reward, as well. But to be honest, chocolate is cheap and there is an endless supply.
The realization for me is: There is no shortage. There is no scarcity. There is no need to eat it. I can buy candy whenever I want. There's really nothing special about it. In fact, most chocolate is quite nasty anyways, cheaply produced garbage, especially in the US ;)
b) It's an addiction and the desire fades, if you don't eat sugar for a while. I'm an all-or-nothing guy. If I eat a bit of chocolate once, I might as well eat it every day.
I must cut it entirely and fight cravings by other means. Someone suggested drinking a glass of water. This works. I ate some sugar-free gum once in a while to fight cravings.
For some people, this won't work and they need to allow themselves a cheat day once per week or something like that.
c) Eating sugar is a habit and breaking it gives you more awareness of your behavior, which I find desirable in general.
d) I like to see myself as a person who eats healthy.
e) I like to see myself as a person who is able to resist sugar, especially because everybody finds it totally normal to eat tons of sugar and doesn't see the problem. This plays to my ego ;)
f) After a few days, it's less about avoiding sugar, but to not break the chain of abstinence. Think Seinfeld-calendar.
Try the premium chocolate bars that are 80%-90% cocoa. The whole bar might be 10g of sugar, but the cocoa is so rich there’s no way you could even eat more than 1-2 tabs in one sitting. Compare that to a Snickers or whatever, which is 40-50g of sugar for the whole bar.
It gets a lot easier though. After going in and out of keto a couple more times, it completely stops being an issue.
It's interesting that to know if it has anything to do with Sugar, as I take moderate amount of sugar.
Did you completely cut off sugar/variance of sugars? what about fruits?
Could be coincidence and/or confirmation bias, but it's a low cost, low risk, thing to try.
(Be aware that you want to use a clean water source. And, I'm not a doctor.)
The other thing is my appetite decreased enormously and I lost about 25 pounds without trying. I actually decided to gain a little weight because I got too thin.
The only bummer is Thai and Indian is so sweet it might as well be dessert.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-...
"in June 2011 the USDA replaced MyPyramid with a new and simpler icon, MyPlate"
Why does the holy war not also fight against flour? Against corn? Should it not distinguish between "vegetable" oil, olive oil, butter, and coconut oil?
Also, betteridge's law of headlines.
I thought that was pretty well-known? Is there something new later in the article? (I don't have access)
Was pretty good
To paraphrase, if an external force was making our kids sick, addicted and more likely to die, we'd be bombing them into oblivion.
But as this force is the food industry's vision of profit at all costs, we just watch them get progressively sicker with each generation.
The sugar industry conspired to discredit and bury him and his research, they succeeded and passed the blame to saturated fats instead! Fortunately he was rediscovered ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/10634081... )
Is anybody else experiencing this? It makes life quite difficult because it's really hard to avoid sugar totally.
However, evidence is pretty high that we could cut sugar and have zero negative effects. The largest cut would be in what people are drinking nowdays. (It is truly baffling to see how much sugar the average person consumes from soda.)
Consider, unless you are drinking multiple glasses a day of coke, you are probably actually quite low in your weekly intake of sugar compared to the average.
There are forums of people that take the opposite viewpoint, and do very well too. It's best to be open minded. We don't have everything figured out yet.
Parent is referring to people who think polyunsaturated fats are bad for you, though. And what I'm taking issue with is the argument that because there exist 'entire forums' of people who have accepted a claim, their views should be given credence.
However, if you are in position to measure other items, I'd highly suggest it.
What exactly is an "empty calorie"? What metric is it low on? It has calories. What is it empty of?
Proteins have specific uses, and some of them can't be produced by your body, so that would be an example of a "non-empty" calorie. Same thing with lipids. Carbohydrates are, essentially, sugar. (Once they're broken down). Obviously you can use them for energy, and they're useful in that regard, but once you have "enough" carbohydrates to fuel whatever activity you're doing adding more just causes your body to convert them into fat. So, that's why they're considered "emtpy" -- they have no nutritional value other than being converted to glucose.
I do however take issue with this:
> but once you have "enough" carbohydrates to fuel whatever activity you're doing adding more just causes your body to convert them into fat. So, that's why they're considered "emtpy"
That's true with any calorie. By that definition any calorie you're not using is empty.
I'd say the primary for survival is energy. Sugars (carbs) are very high on that. There are of course secondary nutrients like eg amino acids in protein that are very important.
What is in your opinion "nutritional content"?
That said, it is trivial to find primary items for survival if we just discuss things you would die without. Consider, water has zero calories, but you would die without it.
Are they worthless? No. They do provide caloric value. But they do not provide any nutritional value. This isn't even really at debate, is it?
I'll say it again: Talking about "empty calories" is in my experience always when masking a lack of real nutritional knowledge. Because when I hear it it's always comparing one sugar with another carb (eg flour), or sometimes even better comparing sugar with honey, as if that is any better.
If what you mean by "empty calories" is foods with only carbs and no proteins or fats, then I agree it could be a useful term. If you mean something else I'd like to know more about your reasoning.
You can't tell the damage of a poor diet (or other maladies), simply by looking at videos.
You're also fairly young. A poor diet wrecks your health in a cumulative way.
I'm not saying your diet is poor (I have little data about your diet), I'm just saying it's up in the air with knowing that you eat, "plenty of sugar", and you IG yourself doing calisthenics. Would you agree?
Not that you CAN'T see differences, in some instances. I look at former classmates from college and they look horrible when I compare myself (and they know it) - but it's mostly from abuse of alchohol, which I think we can all agree will age you.
> There are forums of people who follow Ray Peat's ideas, and some do consume large amounts of sugar, and do really well.
How are their teeth?
This.
Here's another article that explains the alternative view point on this: http://digestiblekitchen.com/2013/10/confused-about-sugar-on...
Note that I'm not recommending processed foods either. I actually think it's much harder to eat lots of sugar, if you are only consuming it in non-processed foods.
But then is it sugar itself that is the problem?
Sorry, but this sounds like a personality cult. How about following the state of the art dietary advice?
Sure, consensus scientific advice can change over time, and be conflicting at times. But it will always be better than following some individual's opinions.
A an upcoming documentary an alternative theories related to this: http://perceivethinkact.com/
Also checkout the forums yourself, and then decide if these people are unreasonable:
That is assuming you are not suffering from a bias towards authoritarian sources. ;)
There's already consideration for different viewpoints inside the scientific consensus -- that's how it's formed. Yes, it's not perfect but better than its absense.
So, unless those different viewpoints follow the scientific method and are part of the scientific discussion, they are basically either kooks (like Willhelm Reich) or snake-oil salesmen (like, too many to mention).
>Main stream advice should always be questioned.
Usually mainstream advice on pragmatic issues is exactly what works and has been tried and true. (Not to be conflated with mainstream opinion -- on flakey matters, such as personal, political, aesthetic, moral etc subjects).
>Also, different diets work for different types of people, and there are 10000 other factors. You can't simply isolate one variable, complex systems don't care about your linear ideas.
All those are things that the scientific community knows already. So I don't see their relevance here.
Plus, while "different diets work for different types of people", they are not that different in the end, unless someone has a specific genetic condition. At best, some diets are easier, as a habit, for some people to follow than others (some can count calories, some can cut some specific food more easily, etc). But the ways they work (nutritionally) are the same, and the principles are the same. People are not unique snowflakes.
>That is assuming you are not suffering from a bias towards authoritarian sources. ;)
It's precisely the single person that's the "authoritarian source", and the scientific consensus, formed in a discussion, and under experimentation across the globe, that's the flexible and non-authoritarian source.
Scientists are subject to the human condition, just like anyone else.
I agree there are many snakeoil salesman, or kooks around. But I don't agree that the mainstream has the most optimal advice. In my personal experience I have been much more successful, in all my pursuits (health, programming, movement) by not following main stream advice, but rather seeking the minority that makes sense to me. In the words of Mark Twain, "The majority is always wrong, and the minority is sometimes right". I think the secret is finding the minority that aren't kooks, or snakeoil salesman. They do exist. I have found a few of them. Take the Ray Peat example. He didn't even know he had forums of people discussing his ideas. He doesn't even actively promote himself, or his ideas at all. I respectfully disagree that main stream advice is the most pragmatic.
I don't think the scientific community embraces the holistic nature of the world enough, as we tend to be dominated by linear thinking. If what you said were true, then we wouldn't have fields like Systems Thinking. It's definitely a niche area in research.
I also disagree about your comments on different diets. I have personally seen people religiously follow different diets, and do very badly on some, and well on others. I also prefer not to make statements like "People are not unique snowflakes" since I don't think we know enough at this stage. We are only beginning to understand the role of organisms in our gut for example, on overall health. I think your arguments here are too simplistic, and do not give a complex system like a human body enough credit. You should know that any simple answers to complex questions tend to be wrong.
Scientific consensus tends to be attached to formal institutions, not so? Formal institutions are then an authoritarian source. It comes from a position of authority. What you're essentially saying is something Government decreed for example, is not authoritarian, became it was enacted by a group of people. Obviously not true. Private individuals are generally less authoritarian, but they no doubt can be too. In this case, I am not aware of Ray Peat at all expressing his opinions as fact, but rather as something to be considered and questioned, like anything else.
I'm not actually that young, I'm 33.
If you take cancer rates by age as an indicator you can see age 33 barely registers: https://canceraustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/statistic...
Or diabetes: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/age/fig1.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
He gets into the chemistry around the 40 minute mark.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind...
... points by prostoalex ... ago | flag | hide | past | -----> web <----- | ... comments | favorite
Is it a matter of dosage?
Because if it is, how do you make people consume less? Of course you can set a limit for grams of sugar per gram of food sold, I guess it could make people eat less sugar.
Sugar does have a lot of fructose in it, but fruits have higher fructose content because they have less glucose.
Reality, turns out, is more complicated than black and white.
Doesn't seem to be so: http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/glycemic-index
Whole-grain/white can be misleading as far a sugar goes. I've had whole-grain brands that were so sweet that I couldn't stand to use them for sandwiches.
Turns out Betteridge's law is just something snarky Internet people say.
This appears to be the one I recall: http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/03/19/betteridges-law.html
My numbers were off it's actually 46% "non-polar", 20% "yes", 16% "maybe" and, 15% no
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232419
Additionally there was a publication in a statistical journal which also discussed the "phenomenon" http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-016-2030-2 which also found that it wasn't a factual assertion (in academic papers).
Anyways - if the downvote was for something other than my own snark I'd love to hear what it was.
Apologies for coming off as a jerk.
Downvoters: show me academic papers. Not some tabloid mis-quoting some paper, but the actual paper or at least an abstract.
Otherwise you're just being dietary fanboys
"SV kids getting healthy thanks to one weird trick"
That is, at best, claims of a balanced diet resort to existence statements, but never evidence ones. I am not going to claim I eat healthy, or that everyone should follow my diet (not many like whiskey nearly as much as I do), however, it is baffling to me the amount of stock people have placed on such things as "square meals", "food pyramids", and finally "balanced diets."
So, by all means, build strawmen to knock down against people asking questions. But realize you are likely not helping advance any actual knowledge unless you are presenting evidence.
Is that really true though?
The only proven harm of sugar is that it ruins your teeth. Tooth decay is relatively rare in Europe until the introduction of refined sugar. A small number of people have a hereditary condition that causes a painful reaction to the fructose component of sucrose and they get conditioned from early life to avoid all sweet foods. They tend to have immaculate teeth but are not otherwise more healthy than the general population.
They are equal, as anybody with rudimentary knowledge of biochemistry can tell. Modern processed food have the added benefit of micronutrient fortification so your need of vitamins should be met mostly in case you actually plan to follow that diet.
The appeal of a "balanced and natural" diet has a mostly puritan origin but its benefits are far from clear. The only proven method to delay the onset of aging is caloric restriction. Kale and supplements are mostly placebo.
As I said in a sibling post, restricting calories works. But, so does restricting grams. The same way not writing code prevents bugs. It also prevents features, so is a somewhat worthless endeavor.
However, consider the trivial case of your calories coming from poison. Not shockingly, strict equivalence is out the door.
Which is not too say it is a worthless proxy. It is quite good, actually. But it is just a proxy.
Not to say this is a myth like Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, but there is honestly a lot of evidence either way so we can't make establish a causative relationship for everyone. It is quite possible for people to have a short term reaction to salt because the hormones in charge of water and sodium balance can take several days to stablise, but again, we are unsure of long term consequences especially on an individual level.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2101015-does-eating-mor...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
The rest of your symptoms suggest that you are either eating too much like the guy from Supersize Me, or have more underlying health issues that require a better designed diet to heal. It's not food but how you eat.
However, it seems you are assuming that we have adapted to our current diet. Possible? Surely. As an argument, though, this is appealing to the incredible nature of our bodies. I'd prefer evidence.
For years, medical biologists such as Robert Lustig predicted all sorts of havoc that happens when we eat sugar and promised all of our problem woulds go away if we cut sugar from our diet. A lot of it makes good theoretical sense but experimental support is sorely lacking. Seeing his name quoted in this thread again and again makes me sad in a way because we are far from sure whether he is right or wrong.
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have undergone a similar shift in reputation: Before the 2000s it was thought to be beneficial, now you have people like Ray Peat who reckons it is literally worse than sugar and saturated fat. I have a PhD in biochemistry myself and still find it difficult to choose who to listen to and what to believe, but if Vilhjalmur Steffansson can live an entire year in apparent good health eating only meat then the human body has to be more forgiving than we assume.
On the sugar front, is the evidence really lacking? Taubes' book referenced tons of ancient studies that showed support. Anecdotally, I have yet to meet someone that was not benefited by halting soda.
I said that I am not interested in halting research in any direction. It is likely, to me, that there are interactions involved and this will require study. I have yet to see anything that vindicates sugar, though.
"But a study published in a leading medical journal has found the opposite is true, with a diet full of natural fats improving the health of people taking part."
"The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found overweight middle-aged men who ate high levels of saturated fat and low levels of carbohydrate became slimmer and healthier."
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/742143/fat-is-goo...
They once published a short article on the benefits of a new drug being created by genetic modification (they have a very heavy anti GM stance in all their articles), but this time it was OK, because the gene was from a potato and not from a test tube.
If you like scientific papers but are not an expert in the nutrition field, this would be a great start.
I would also be interested in other's opinions about the site, e.g. if it is unfairly in favor of plant based diets.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2012/11/19/ask-...
Of course you should not stop eating any sugar. You need 24-36 gramms/day [0]. What you should stop consuming is added sugar. Your food will contain enough sugar anyway.
[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/a...