Going sugar free

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#1346528 17-Jul-2015 21:19

Had to learn a lot about sugar not that long ago. Finding out that "sugar free" usually means full of maltodexin was one. Maltodexin actually gives a bigger blod sugar spike than regular sugar.

Another "fun" thing to discover was the "Nz Natural Zilch Icecream" ice-cream that was full of lactose. Since I react to lactose, I know what to eat now if I am ever constipated ;)

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jmh

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#1346610 18-Jul-2015 08:39

I lived in the UK for 24 years and returned to NZ in 2011. I find processed food in NZ far too sweet. One of my favs is tinned creamed rice. All the local brands are incredibly sweet, so I spend over 5 bucks on a tin of creamed rice imported from the UK. I think we are more like the US in terms of how much added sugar is in food.

I'm quite shocked where I hear about kids adding sugar to milo. There are about four teaspoons of sugar in a drink of Milo, but I notice that it gets the 4.5/5 health star rating, which tells you all you need to know about the health star system.

jmh

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#1346613 18-Jul-2015 08:50

I highly recommend Yudkin's book. Although it's been around a while, it's every bit as relevant today, packed full of science, but still very readable. He takes on Ancel Keys who is the guy who convinced the McGovern committee in the US to go down the low fat route (in the late 1970's just before the obesity and diabetes epidemics). In fact, Yudkin was able to demonstrate that it was sugar, not fat, that contributed to heart disease rates. Recent research is backing up Yudkin's thesis.

afe66: For those who are curious get a copy of "Pure white and Deadly - how sugar is kiling us and what we can do to stop it" John Yudkin and published in 1972 and 1986 and reissued in 2012.
ISBN 9780241965283

Fascinating to see the data that was available on this topic decades ago.

The section at the end is also depressing to see the forces of "Big Sugar" at work just like the drug and smoking industries where the author was "de-invited" to conferences one the sponsors heard he was speaking or where his talk was the only speaker who abstract was "forgotten" to be included in the list of abstracts in the conference manual.

NZ sugar consumption per head 1982 50.9 kg/year (Kampuchea 0.7)

UK soft drink consumption per person gallons/year
1939 2.7
1950 4.1
1960 7.9
1970 10.2
1980 18.2

A.

Fred99

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#1346632 18-Jul-2015 09:31

jarledb: Had to learn a lot about sugar not that long ago. Finding out that "sugar free" usually means full of maltodexin was one. Maltodexin actually gives a bigger blod sugar spike than regular sugar.

Another "fun" thing to discover was the "Nz Natural Zilch Icecream" ice-cream that was full of lactose. Since I react to lactose, I know what to eat now if I am ever constipated ;)

I presume you're referring to "GI" - where (cane) sugar has medium GI, fructose low GI, starches and other polysaccharides can have high GI.
I get the feeling that the whole "GI" thing is flawed - complex, poorly understood. Also when you look at typical diet in countries where the staple food has high GI (ie rice), obesity and incidence of CHD in those populations are low. Change to the "western diet" and they rise. That being explained away by "but they eat lots of veges" doesn't wash with me. Perhaps GI is important to endurance athletes etc, but for the rest of us it's probably mainly marketing BS with figures thrown around (which we don't understand anyway) in order to sell us stuff which is supposed to be healthy.

The lecture by Robert Lustig is (IMO) a wake-up call.
There's a couple of things going on there which he discusses. One is the metabolic pathway for fructose and the associated health risks from over-consumption of sucrose/fructose (compared to other sugars). But associated with this is the homeostatic response in humans to fructose - insulin response as well as the associated hunger / satiety hormones leptin and ghrelin. If he is correct (and I think he is), then it's a double-whammy, as not only would the high fructose diet be linked to CHD etc, but "appetite" isn't suppressed in the same way leading to over-consumption and obesity in some individuals.

rhy7s

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#1346682 18-Jul-2015 12:34

jmh: ... He takes on Ancel Keys who is the guy who convinced the McGovern committee in the US to go down the low fat route (in the late 1970's just before the obesity and diabetes epidemics). In fact, Yudkin was able to demonstrate that it was sugar, not fat, that contributed to heart disease rates...

This report is often misrepresented as above. The American diet has never approached the recommendations per the McGovern report. The recommendations of the initial guidelines were:

For the nutrient-based Goals, the Senate Committee recommended that Americans:

Increase consumption of complex carbohydrates and "naturally occurring sugars;"and
Reduce consumption of refined and processed sugars, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
For the food-based Goals, the Committee recommended that Americans:

Increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains;
Decrease consumption of:

refined and processed sugars and foods high in such sugars;
foods high in total fat and animal fat, and partially replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats;
eggs, butterfat, and other high-cholesterol foods;
salt and foods high in salt; and
Choose low-fat and non-fat dairy products instead of high-fat dairy products (except for young children).

Since that time, total calories consumed have increased significantly, the percentage of calories from fat is slightly reduced as a percentage of the total but the absolute value still increased.

rhy7s

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#1346684 18-Jul-2015 12:43

Fred99:
I presume you're referring to "GI" - where (cane) sugar has medium GI, fructose low GI, starches and other polysaccharides can have high GI.
I get the feeling that the whole "GI" thing is flawed - complex, poorly understood. Also when you look at typical diet in countries where the staple food has high GI (ie rice), obesity and incidence of CHD in those populations are low. Change to the "western diet" and they rise. That being explained away by "but they eat lots of veges" doesn't wash with me. Perhaps GI is important to endurance athletes etc, but for the rest of us it's probably mainly marketing BS with figures thrown around (which we don't understand anyway) in order to sell us stuff which is supposed to be healthy...

GI is also often misleading in isolation, usually measured for food containing 50g of available carbohydrate, the serving sizes to achieve this vary quite a lot in volume and density. Glycemic load can give a more accurate representation when compared to the way people actually consume food.

jmh

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#1346708 18-Jul-2015 13:16

How have I misrepresented it then? Your quote talks about "reducing foods high in total fat and animal fat, and partially replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats" and "Choose low-fat and non-fat dairy products instead of high-fat dairy products". Sounds like a low fat diet to me. You are correct though, that the recommendations have led to an increase in calories as a result of increased carbohydrates. Apparently in NZ, according to the 2011 food consumption survey, over the previous 10 years calories in total and from fat have decreased. Interesting.

rhy7s:
jmh: ... He takes on Ancel Keys who is the guy who convinced the McGovern committee in the US to go down the low fat route (in the late 1970's just before the obesity and diabetes epidemics). In fact, Yudkin was able to demonstrate that it was sugar, not fat, that contributed to heart disease rates...

This report is often misrepresented as above. The American diet has never approached the recommendations per the McGovern report. The recommendations of the initial guidelines were:

For the nutrient-based Goals, the Senate Committee recommended that Americans:

Increase consumption of complex carbohydrates and "naturally occurring sugars;"and
Reduce consumption of refined and processed sugars, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
For the food-based Goals, the Committee recommended that Americans:

Increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains;
Decrease consumption of:

refined and processed sugars and foods high in such sugars;
foods high in total fat and animal fat, and partially replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats;
eggs, butterfat, and other high-cholesterol foods;
salt and foods high in salt; and
Choose low-fat and non-fat dairy products instead of high-fat dairy products (except for young children).
Since that time, total calories consumed have increased significantly, the percentage of calories from fat is slightly reduced as a percentage of the total but the absolute value still increased.

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rhy7s

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#1346717 18-Jul-2015 13:38

jmh: How have I misrepresented it then? Your quote talks about "reducing foods high in total fat and animal fat, and partially replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats" and "Choose low-fat and non-fat dairy products instead of high-fat dairy products". Sounds like a low fat diet to me. You are correct though, that the recommendations have led to an increase in calories as a result of increased carbohydrates. Apparently in NZ, according to the 2011 food consumption survey, over the previous 10 years calories in total and from fat have decreased. Interesting.

I'm saying it is often misrepresented by only choosing the recommendation to reduce fats and ignoring that it also recommends reducing sugar, cholesterol and sodium. And then saying people are following a low fat diet when they are consuming the maximum recommended fat in various dietary guidelines, usually 30-35% calories from fat. The minimum usually being something like 10-15% or up to 20% for women.

kiwijunglist

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#1347369 19-Jul-2015 21:07

'fructose, can’t be effectively processed by the liver and is converted to fat."

Actually pretty much all excessive calories are stored as fat, this sentence doesn't make sense as converting to fat is effectively what the body does.

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rhy7s

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#1347379 19-Jul-2015 21:20

kiwijunglist: 'fructose, can’t be effectively processed by the liver and is converted to fat."

Actually pretty much all excessive calories are stored as fat, this sentence doesn't make sense as converting to fat is effectively what the body does.

You've hit on another issue that often arises when ignoring an important operative word, "excess". The pathway for converting fructose to fat is slightly more efficient than calories from other sources but that doesn't really become a big issue until calories in is greater than calories out anyway.

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#1347389 19-Jul-2015 21:35

kiwijunglist: 'fructose, can’t be effectively processed by the liver and is converted to fat."

Actually pretty much all excessive calories are stored as fat, this sentence doesn't make sense as converting to fat is effectively what the body does.

I have a feeling it's not that simple. Just like some fats are good, some are bad, some are ugly, i think the research suggests fructose does something bad-ugly. Not sure, i need to phone a friend here.

KiwiTim

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#1347470 20-Jul-2015 09:06

I greatly reduced my sugar consumption 20 years ago. I did this because of chronic ill health. Having a diverse and healthy gut microbiota is one of the fundamentals of good health, which interacts with the immune system, and even our mental and emotional states. Since we are the product of millions of years of evolution, our guts have very gradually evolved to our changing diet over time. Changing from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming grains and eating dairy would have required quite an adjustment over a rather short time frame, evolutionarily speaking. Not only were new foods introduced, but the great diversity of foods from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle were reduced to the few species that we grow and farm. When you consider the huge spans of time that humans evolved over, the change to agriculture, which occurred 12,000-10,000 years ago, is but a flash in the pan. Of course, with the industrialization of sugar production and the increasing consumption of manufactured sugar loaded 'foods', another novel dietary shift has occurred within modern people over the last 100 years (certainly more so over the last 30-40 years). What does all this sugar do to our gut microbiota? It shifts the microbial community to be dominated by yeasts and we are simply not evolved to cope with this.

Sugar does us no good. I am far healthier for having minimized my consumption of it. Our bodies and guts are simply not adapted to high sugar diet as we don't have this in our evolutionary history.

Batman

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#1347490 20-Jul-2015 09:41

but we have beaten evolution.

in evolution the strongest and fittest and most adaptable has best chance to survive.

today the richest the effluent the developed has the best chance to survive.

wasabi2k

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#1347493 20-Jul-2015 09:45

joker97: but we have beaten evolution.

in evolution the strongest and fittest and most adaptable has best chance to survive.

today the richest the effluent the developed has the best chance to survive.

I think you mean affluent.

effluent is often produced by the richest...

Batman

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#1347495 20-Jul-2015 09:46

lol oopsie. i could blame autocorrect but i'm just going to not blame anything lol

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