I think you can make a solid case that, for most people, fructose and therefore sucrose is bad in any significant quantity. Sure, fructose can help replenish liver energy stores if you're an athlete, but most people aren't.
Similarly how people stand against epidemiology they should stand against demonizing single ingredients.
Apple, by Lustig's opinion, is the worst fruit there is but he will never, in a scientific study, demonstrate the ill-effects of consuming apples, while another group consumes the same equivalent amount of raw fructose extract.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/making-the-case-fo...
>Another nutrition expert, Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, who has called sugar “toxic” at high doses and fructose the most “actionable” problem in our diet, is still a fan of fruit. “As far as I’m concerned, fiber is the reason to eat fruit,” since it promotes satiety and the slow release of sugar.
For example, there are hunter-gatherer tribes living today that consume a significant amount of sugar (up to 60% of their calories) and don't have the same problems with obesity, diabetes, etc.
I'm no expert but it seems that the human body doesn't handle bodyfat very well. Perhaps all of this negativity around sugar can be explained by the fact that sugar is calorie-dense and calorie-dense foods tend to make people fat. Especially in the hyper-palatable forms we have in America.
Sugar is less calorie dense than fat, and this kind of naive reductionist CICO thinking would tend to support the war on fat that preceded recognition of the problems associated with sugar.
It’s true that humans are not well adapted to deal with persistent surplus, but sugary persistent surplus seems to be a particular problem.
Yes. I never said that it wasn't.
> naive reductionist CICO thinking
CICO is how the body works. If you absorb more calories than you burn you will gain weight. It also doesn't matter the source of the calories. We have metabolic ward studies that tell us that.
> sugary persistent surplus seems to be a particular problem
I agree. In fact one of the prevailing theories of diabetes is that fat molecules enter the cell and get in the way of insulin absorption. In other words, insulin resistance.
I forgot their names but there are 3 main tribes that I remember being studied. Two of them ate significant amounts of honey and a third traded for refined white sugar.
>Honey represents a substantial portion of the Hadza diet (~10-20% of calories)
There is another tribe that will eat up to 60% of their calories from honey depending on the availability of food.
Another tribe trades with first-world countries for white sugar.
In that paper they also reference the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo. Specifically: "The Mbuti of the Congo forests eat large amounts of honey. According to Ichikawa (1981), honey is their favorite food. At times, during the rainy season up to 80% of the calories in their diet come from honey."
The reason they don't have those issues is they are constantly burning calories and in constant motion. H/G is not an easy life and those tribes (both men and women) put in a ton of manual labor. In college I remember one film where a tribe in Papua New Guinea were shown climbing a 15ft tall palm tree. All three males they showed were totally shredded. Six pack, lean upper bodies, biceps and legs were all cut.
I would imagine the sugar gets burned up pretty quickly and it not only a source of calories but a primary source of energy - which is needed for how they live.
My whole point is that the bodyfat is causing the issues. If sugar was the root cause then we should be seeing diabetes, etc. in these hunter-gatherer tribes.
I can imagine lots of reasons for not running this study. Maybe there's no funding or interest in it. Or maybe it falls short of proving what you're hoping it proves. Or maybe he's busy with a dozen other things. I have no idea. It's certainly an effort that needs to be justified. Just saying he isn't doing something isn't particularly enlightening. Much better would be if you could link to some other study on this and show the results didn't match what he claims.
> In his talk he mentions the healthy Japanese but he does not mention that they eat more calories from fructose (in percentage of their consumed calories) than USA citizens yet are healthier.
No comment on Lustig in general, but 3 comments on your criticism:
- He literally says in his talk that the Japanese diet "eliminates fructose". So it's not really that he doesn't mention what you're saying; he actually claims the opposite is true, so he addresses this head-on. Do you have a link or something (for those who don't know) that show's he's wrong about this you could share? You could try to shoot down down his argument if you show he's wrong on that basic fact. Make sure you get the details correct, though, like the time period (in case things have been changing).
- "Healthier" is too vague. They could be doing better on lots of metrics but not the particular one he's talking about, but come out "healthier" overall.
- Similarly, there could be a million and one other things that they do differently from Americans that could make up for whatever damage fructose is alleged to do. Just because the end result is that they're healthier and that they consumer more fructose doesn't mean fructose isn't having a negative effect on them.
You haven't really provided any more support for your argument than he has at all, so it's hard to take your word over his (regardless of whose might be right). If you have something to support your position that would be super helpful.
There is no healthy sugar by comparison.
Glucose is used in IV drips, and in emergency conditions, providing someone with glucose and electrolytes can prevent them from passing out.
The metabolism of fructose is somewhat analogous to that of ethanol.
Does that mean it's toxic?
Based on a naive reading of things, I removed fruit from my diet as well, but that's against WHO guidelines: I used to eat like 3 Fuji/Envy a day (haha).
Sadly I once tried to refind this story by googling but couldn't find it again, so I might as well be screaming, "the second coming is nigh!"
* The lobbying thing
* That fiber gets you full so you don't eat as much fructose
* That fiber modifies the absorption process