60 minutes: Is sugar toxic?
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And since when is monitoring people in a controlled lab for a few weeks at a time (likely limiting their physical activity and who knows what kind of stress to the system having your blood drawn every 30 minutes induces) considered valid scientific research when it in no way exemplifies real world situations that people are exposed to. And sugar is apparently carcinogenic because it can cause an increase in baseline insulin levels as a response, which can drive glucose into potential tumor cells allowing them to grow. That's purely speculative, and very difficult to substantiate when there are so many other reasons for people to develop cancer: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/health/research/red-meat-l...
Personally, I'm still convinced that a calorie is a calorie. And the reason we've been gaining weight, with greater incidence of heart disease, diabetes, etc. is that we simply consume too much food, perhaps too much processed food, but in general we just eat too much. So eat less, and the best way is to consume small portions of food multiple times a day instead of large meals with large gaps in between. Trust me, it works.
Side note: I'm really looking forward to future biofeedback tech. It'd be interesting to know my blood sugar level and heart rate at all times.
Are you sure? I've lost plenty of weight following a low carb diet while eating tons of high calorie dark chocolate and oily meats.
Weight loss is far more straightforward to achieve than health and fitness.
I didn't say it was in any way a good idea - just a retort to the OP's position that short term weight loss is not about calories.
Again, how do you know?
Below someone says diet follows the laws of thermodynamics. That's hogwash. While our bodies certainly follow all laws of physics, that has nothing to do with diet.
We are perfectly capable of expelling unconsumed dietary energy.
If you lost weight it means you burned more calories than you ate.
I mean, calories are just a unit of measure for energy, so if you consume energy, it must go somewhere, either expended or stored in the body. What happens if the body lacks the energy for its processes...doesn't it then burn fat? If you turn fat into energy, that means less mass in the form of fat, with the excess energy dissipating into heat. Isn't this just physics?
Carbohydrates also have the added problem of making your blood sugar swing, which leads to hunger pangs and bigger appetites.
Paradoxically, it's not fat that makes you fat, it's hormones and pasta/rice/potatoes/bread/sugar because they mess with those hormones.
If your body wants more energy, it will find a way to get it, either by inducing you to overeat, or by making you less active. So fixing your hormone balance (specifically insulin levels) is more effective than trying to control your food intake.
Of course, the fact that many restaurants and diners in the US serve really big portions, that most of us don't do a lot of exercise, that we have very easy access to high-calorie foods, that the food industry precision-engineers foodstuffs to be addictive... all of that surely doesn't help, but if Taubes is correct those environmental factors are not the chief cause of obesity.
Don't anthropomorphize the constituant parts of the anthropos.
Also, if your body wants more energy, it's for a reason, and that reason is that the processes of maintaining life require it. And yes, it will get it, but not by making you less active - that's the tail wagging the dog. You're less active in that case because your body can't support the activity rate without burning more calories.
I don't think there's any other possibility.
Secondly, it has to do with how the body stores fat. Eating fast carbs produces insulin which signals the body to store fat in larger amounts than low/slow carb.
It's a pity that the caloric model is so entrenced when really it's the least useful one.
Really, it's not rocket science,stop eating white foods, don't drink calories, eat quality meat and veggies,and your set.
It's a neat idea, and I'd enjoy collecting all that data too.
Would this data be useful for researchers? Or is it just too much information?
And there are risks of knowing too much about your body. People can develop anxiety illnesses (such as hypochondria, which has unfortunate popular connotations but in severe forms can be distressing and expensive) when they become too aware of their heartbeat, for example. See also full body MRI scans which are pointless unless you have an idea of what you're looking for.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bt-lv6IJPxc (animation of a hypothetical, nanotech-based, dermal display)
P.S. I have a reply to your McLuhan comment, but I've been too busy/lazy to have typed it out yet.
> I have a reply to your McLuhan comment, but I've been too busy/lazy to have typed it out yet.
Haha, that's beautiful. Better get it out of your head before the idea half-life expires. ;)
Allow to me say pre-emptively that the Myers-Brigg abstraction is relevant to the medium/message issue. People inclined towards [P]erception can are more likely to suss out the author's intent regardless of how it is transmitted; people who lean [S]ensory are more likely to influenced by the subjective experience of the idea's packaging.
It's frustrating that she takes quotes from the BBC R4 Programme 'Today' out of context. John Humphries is an idiot and has no clue about interviewing technical people. The researchers were careful not to overplay the research.
Even though this is epidemiology and not a double blind controlled study the results are pretty clear; the research was good quality.
Here's what the research said. (She quotes this.)
> “Unprocessed and processed red meat intakes were associated with an increased risk of total, CVD, and cancer mortality in men and women in the age-adjusted and fully adjusted models. When treating red meat intake as a continuous variable, the elevated risk of total mortality in the pooled analysis for a 1-serving-per-day increase was 12% for total red meat, 13% for unprocessed red meat, and 20% for processed red meat.”
This is a calm, cautious, undramatic statement.
The problem is that risk is presented as a percentage, and most people have no idea what that means to their life expectancy; or how to compare that risk to other things.
Check my math, but I think the above figures mean a decrease of one year in life expectancy over 80 years. Eg: compare Bob who doesn't eat too much red meat who lives to 80 with the same Bob who does eat too much red meat who lives to 79. (But risks unpleasant medical treatment that decreases quality of life.)
"The statistics are staggering," study author Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public health, told us. "The increased risk is really substantial." http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/03/12/148457233/death-...
That statement alone is absolutely contra-calm/cautious/undramatic.
The fact that this was an observational study based on a food frequency questionnaire is dubious as well. It's well established that participants underreport foods that are perceived as being "bad" for them and overreport things that society says are "good."
"Foods underestimated by the FFQs compared with the diet records (ie, the gold standard) included processed meats, eggs, butter, high-fat dairy products, mayonnaise and creamy salad dressings, refined grains, and sweets and desserts, whereas most of the vegetable and fruit groups, nuts, high-energy and low-energy drinks, and condiments were overestimated by the FFQs." http://www.ajcn.org/content/69/2/243.full
turns out that idea violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/
According to this New York Times article[1], a calorie is not always a calorie:
A food isn’t a food — they’re all different — but since a calorie is just a measurement of energy, how can it vary? When I asked my question, Nestle’s answer was confounding: “Yes and no,” she said, adding, “It’s Talmudic.” Because calories change as they enter the body, the nine grams for fat and four for everything else turn out to be not very accurate measures at all; besides, foods are only rarely one thing or another.
Here’s what is true, she said: “The studies that have measured calorie intake, that have put people on calorie-reduced diets and measured what happened, show no difference in weight loss based on composition of the diet.” When people are essentially incarcerated, when all intake is weighed and measured, they will lose weight if the calories in their diets are reduced — regardless of the composition of the diet.
[1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/is-a-calorie...
Would a person living on this diet be healthy? If not, and we controlled all the non-caloric variables, does that mean that the premise that "a calorie is a calorie" is false?
http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...
http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-...
http://www.alanaragonblog.com/about/
to:
http://chc.ucsf.edu/coast/faculty_lustig.htm
I'm not saying that's dispositive, but why exactly is Alan Aragon more credible than a medical doctor and UCSF clinical pediatrics professor?
I encourage you to read the two articles though and see what you think.
I'm sure both have tons of post-degree self-study in nutrition, and that's virtually impossible to measure.
The problem of quantifying levels of expertise is a hard one, especially in the world of nutrition.
Also, I'm aware that's merely an anecdote. Based on purely empirical evidence, I'd place both my wife and my friend in the top 10% of their respective fields, though.
The sugar question is settled in nutrition science. Sugar that doesn't occur naturally in food is pretty bad for you. But underqualified people have different opinions and get a disproportionate amount of face time on media.
In fact, I'd say the question is almost identical to the climate change 'debate'. The science is settled, but the average American doesn't know who to believe.
The comparison of his wife and best friend is the anecdote.
He then adds separately that he has empirical evidence--unshared with us--that each is competent in their respective fields.
He doesn't claim anything to be simultaneously an anecdote and empirical evidence.
Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. I could set up shop tomorrow, calling myself a nutritionist.
That's made a bit more complex because you have sensible nutritionists working within public health doing real science, and you have wingnuts.
"Accept my logic as correct because I namedrop a well regarded name as a supporter". But since well regarded people can be wrong this is no sort of proof at all.
Which poster seems more guilty of a fallacious argument?
It would be like some guy saying that physical money is bad and referring you to a CBO publication about hyperinflationary currencies.
If you disagree with one of his conclusions, please post your thoughts - but be specific. I'm open minded... if "He makes scientific statements that can generally be inferred from the cited sources, but which the sources don't actually prove"...I'm happy to agree with you but that seems like that would be simple to show but you don't link to anything or provide any arguments or even a sentence or two to back it up.(?)
I don't have a horse in this race, but I'm not going to discount someone just because they aren't a professor at UC-SF.
He completely biffs Lustig's position on fruit (vis a vis Atkins Diet). In that lecture, Lustig says fruit is okay, whereas fruit juice isn't, because the fiber in fruit blocks the fructose from being metabolized, while the glucose gets used.
Lustig may be right or wrong. But criticisms should be about what he actually said.
Since Lustig publishes his research and results, Aragon could step up act like a scientist and either refute or confirm Lustig's data. But sciencificalologeries is hard work, whereas just making shit up is pretty easy.
Further, while I'm on board with Lustig's science, and conclusions, and strategy, I've personally adopted a nutrition somewhere between Eat To Live and Dr Terry Wahls "eat 9 cups of fruit and veggies per day". Works great for me.
In particular, Aragon doesn't seem to get the difference between a lecture and an academic paper. One can't edit a lecture, so you have to give the speaker a little leeway. Aragon also can't seem to tell the difference between a rhetorical flourish and a claim of absolute fact. Disappointing!
"If you feed a rat a boxcar of anything, it'll get cancer".
While it is an aside, getting enough sleep will also reduce your necessary daily food requirements by about 400 calories.
While it is an aside, getting enough sleep will also reduce your necessary daily food requirements by about 400 calories.
NYTimes article, same subject: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.ht...
One concern of the doctor's that's somewhat glossed over is how fructose, unlike other sugars, is metabolized in the liver. His gripe here is partly with the glut of sugar in our diet, and partly how all of the sugars in a food product are lumped together on the nutrition label as "sugar", with no distinction between the different molecules.
What you need to do is read the original literature and pay attention to the details. Bad studies are usually bad for a few reasons:
1. Bad experimental design. If you are testing hypothesis X, but your study design doesn't control for all the variables, then the data won't really tell you anything. For example, if you want to see if a high-fat diet increases the risk of cancer and you don't control for smoking or environmental exposure, your data is crap whether it supports or rejects your hypothesis.
2. Bad data. You may have a great experimental design, but if your data isn't strongly supportive of a conclusion, then it's a weak study. If we take the above example and compare a high-fat diet to a low-fat diet across 5 different group and 2 groups show no effect, 2 groups are right on the border of being statistically significant and one group is strongly positive, it doesn't really tell you anything.
3. Bad conclusions. The data says one thing, but the author goes ahead and concludes it means something else. You see this a LOT in bad science. Again if we take the above example, the data may strongly support that a high-fat diet is bad, but then the author goes ahead and says that all fats are bad. The data doesn't support this. This is sort of what the sugar-is-toxic studies do. Are diets that are hyper-caloric and have a high percentage of carbohydrates derived from simple sugars bad for you? Most likely. Should you actively try and exclude them from your diet? The answer to that is no (and the data doesn't support that conclusion).
I was formally trained as a scientist, but no longer work in the lab, but the training on I got in designing experiments (be they in the lab or in marketing) has served me well in filtering out "crap" of all sorts.
- Coming through the day w/o white sugar is a completely different experience: no more downs (or "sugar crashs") through the day and work motivation is always up
- These sugar crashs or downs can be severe especially if you are under stress; then the stress is multiplied which leads to depression and more white sugar consumption
- Eating now fruits because of the fructose regularly, before I've never ate fruits (there was no reason because anything with white sugar was much sweeter and tastier than fruit)
Now when I accidentally eat something containing white sugar I immediately "feel" the white sugar: my brain is getting a high like with alcohol or caffeine—it's a difference compared to fructose. It's a subtle feeling and you probably won't feel it if your are used to white sugar. Before I related the downs to the heavy lunch I had before, that I haven't slept well or that the work is just so boring, etc.
Another observations regarding "white sugar could be drug": Look how many shelves with sweets you find a grocery store and compare the amount to other foods and with alcohol (where you usually find similar quantities).
> Americans are now consuming nearly 130 pounds of added sugars per person, per year.
This sentence is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Assuming 311,600,000 Americans. I have no way of telling how many Americans are eating a "safe" level of sugar versus how many Americans are eating a "dangerous" level of sugar.
130 lb is nearly 60 kg - that's a remarkable amount of sugar. And if that's a mean then there are people eating considerably more than that.
Scarily, the amount of added sugar has decreased (between 2000 and 2008) - (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db87.htm)
> Although the percent of daily calories derived from added sugars declined between 1999–2000 and 2007–2008 (2), consumption of added sugars remains high in the diets of Americans.
60kg/365 = 164g per day sugar in a coke: 39g sugar in starbucks skinny latte: 13.2g / 17.5g / 22.9g (small->large) heinz ketchup: 23.7g / 100g etc.
(Looking at that list, I probably hit 100g or more per day, even though I stopped adding sugar to my tea and coffee.)
So, toxic might a little strong, but when the doctors that worked on these studies recommend no more than about 100g/day of added sugars in your diet, less than what's in a can of soda, "large quantities" may not mean what you think it means either.
For starters, there are pathways for breaking down fat, storing it, and burning it in the body.
Secondly, refined sugars incorporating fructose are all about equivalently bad.
Thirdly, when you go over a certain smallish amount of fructose, your liver has to respond to eliminate this 'toxin' from the body, which produces really bad LDL cholesterols, which contributes to stroke and heart disease risk.
On the basics, and this is the slightly confusing thing for those new to this topic, your body really only uses glucose sugar directly. There is a whole mechanism dedicated to storing glucose as glycogen (in the liver), and then retransforming it and burning it when you need energy. This does not work with fructose, which has to be transformed to fat, stored, then burned later.
This nutritional disadvantage of fructose would be enough for me to stop eating it, even without all the other problems.
The US move from complex carbs like starch that can be broken down to glucose in the body and readily used by cells, to poorer quality foods with much added (cheap) fructose, has massively increased the amount of fructose we ingest, and according to Lustig, increased the damage to our bodies.
I personally don't eat refined / fructose sugar except in fruit and small amounts of honey or jam, and the times when I have a something like a cookie with lots of sugar, I really really feel the effects, the worst being a sort of sugar come-down that manifests as extreme irritability.
25% of calorie intake as fructose, like many Americans, and the liver floods your system with fat.
Most of the same dangers as alcohol.
A better analogy would be adding nitrous oxide , if you added high octane fuel to a car that uses regular results in less power.
The point being that the average American now consumes sugar at "toxic" quantities (and of course, the word "toxic" was very much link bait). It's hard to deny America has an obesity and diabetes problem.
The conversation is coming off like:
Original Post: "People might choose agave nectar for
<reason 1>, but it fails to deliver what
they are attempting to do."
Me: "Agave nectar doesn't exist just to satisfy
people with <reason 1>. There are people that might
choose it for <reason 2>."
Aside 1: I'd heard that Agave wasn't that good nutritionally and did a quick search to clarify. The first piece I read was actually about how many people see Agave nectar as a raw food sweetener when in fact it is cooked at 250+ degrees for many hours to break down the starches into simpler fructose.
Aside 2: To be fair, the original discussion was about health effects not the philosophical/moral considerations our our food choices.