UKC

Seems to be a lot of finger pointing at Sugar in relation to obesity.

Does anyone know if the problem is solely sugar or is it more generally sweetness ie. sugar AND things like High Fructose Corn Syrup etc
Thanks

In reply to Antigua:

my sisters daughter is obese (VERY) and I think its just because she eats far too much. she doesn't even seem to eat food which is generally considered fattening but just far too much food

In reply to Antigua:

This was an interesting programme on the subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h

In reply to Antigua:

It's all the salad we eat while watching The Apprentice.

In reply to flying el burro:



I thought that was pretty poor actually. Horizon has definitely gone downhill recently. This is excellent:

youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&

In reply to Antigua:

Things like high fructose corn syrup are 100% sugar. A big problem is that there is just so much sugar of all kinds added to loads of foods so many people eat huge amounts without realising it. There are loads of names for simple sugars, all of these things on product labels are sugar:

Sugars ending in -ose include: Sucrose, Maltose, Dextrose, Fructose, Glucose, Galactose, Lactose, High fructose corn syrup, Glucose solids

Just because it doesn't end in -ose, however, doesn't mean it isn't sugar. There are plenty of other names as well that may or may not sound like sugar.

Regardless of how they sound, the following are all sugar:
Cane juice, Dehydrated cane juice, Cane juice solids, Cane juice crystals, Dextrin, Maltodextrin, Dextran, Barley malt, Beet sugar, Corn syrup, Corn syrup solids, Caramel, Buttered syrup, Carob syrup, Brown sugar, Date sugar, Malt syrup, Diatase, Diatastic malt, Fruit juice, Fruit juice concentrate, Dehydrated fruit juice, Fruit juice crystals, Golden syrup, Turbinado, Sorghum syrup, Refiner's syrup, Ethyl maltol, Maple syrup, Yellow sugar

So you see how much can be in food without us realising it. A lot of low fat foods have extra sugar added to make it taste better.

Does that help?

In reply to Removed UserRockarch:

Thanks thats interesting where do things like Aspartame fit into all this?

You see lots of things like sugar free Coke and Diet Pepsi that don't contain sugar but have a very very sweet taste are those products being treated the same as sugar when it come to obesity?

In reply to Removed UserRockarch:
Don't eat processed foods I guess, people wouldn't have before they existed, and they survived okay.

In reply to Antigua:
Aspartame is just a sweetener, i don't think it has any calorific value.
I think RedSonjia hit the nail on the head, most of the problem is volume.
I know a few people who are struggling with their weight gains and despite their efforts they sit there and chomp away at massive meals, cutting out the sweets but then eating massive meals. Makes no sense to me.

In reply to Antigua:

A lot of the media is giving sugar a very bad name lately, however it is important to realise that cutting out sugar completely should not be regarded as a solution as much of our energy can come from sugars. It is important therefore to have things in moderation, which is often made difficult by the amount of sugars (and all other food groups!) that we don't realise we are eating.

I have once been told that Aspartame can be bad for you due to the sweet taste, but lack of calorific value. The brain interprets the sweetness it tastes as "Oh i'm about to receive some sugar, best get ready for that" and so prepares to digest the energy it is going to receive but then doesn't receive any energy and so is left in imbalance. Not sure how true that is, but makes sense to me!

In reply to Antigua:




High fructose corn syrup IS a form of sugar.

In reply to the_liquorice_man:


But you can get your sugar by eating complex carbohydrate, which is made up of long chains of sugars joined together. That way, you get them released slowly, instead of all dumped in your blood in one go.

In reply to the_liquorice_man:

There is absolutely no requirement to eat sugar in order to furnish our energy needs. You could survive quite happily never ingesting sugar.

In reply to Antigua:


I think the thing to aim for is reducing your taste for sweetness:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/artificial-sweeteners-could-lead-to-obesity-dia...

In reply to Antigua:

We need sugar but probably best to get it from a mix of complex carbs like oats & pasta (the body then breaks it down) and fruit & veg rather than loads of added refined sugar.
If you're interested in finding out more, there's a fairly digestible (haha) explanation here.
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA367357/The-Glycemic-Index-Dr-Weil.html

Bottom line - eat a wide mix of unprocessed food and save the mars bars for high energy activities when you need a quick energy input!

In reply to Removed User:

While this is true the energy currency is glucose.

It is the simple fact that there's too much hidden sugar being put in to our food. I like to use the example of the humble banana - when we started eating these in huge numbers after the war, they were nowhere near as sweet as they are today. If you ate one of the early ones you'd be forgiven for spitting it out. They have been selectively bred to be as sweet as they can be.

In reply to gethin_allen:



This line of thinking contains no causal information though. It just restates the problem. It doesn't address WHY people eat the volumes they do.

It also assumes that eating 'too much' makes us fat when it could be that obesity is driving us to eat more (there are several examples of where a physiologic condition/hormonal state drives changes in energy expenditure, appetite and size).

In reply to Antigua:

It's the combination of 50/50 sugar fat which is the problem. In tests (10 +years) the calories consumed didn't change much to that which is required and the subjects didn't put on weight when only sugar or fat was eaten as the bodes receptors limit our consumption that what the body needs. But when its 50% sugar / fat the bodies receptors are turned off / in hibited and thus people gorge themselves on the food which is obviously also inherently highly calorific.

In reply to Antigua:
Optimum Sports Nutrition by Dr Michael Colgan states that the body will turn excess sugar into fat. The same goes for all carbs and protein too (25g in one meal max roughly) so its not just sugar.

In my opinion and experience maintaining a good fitness regime will keep you slim (although a poor diet will obviously reverse the affects of any training package and not be good for the organs).

There are too many donts

I cannot take being told consistently "Don't". can you?

To stay slim I have to "Do"!

My Silver Bullet is motivation...

What's yours?

Billy Davies

In reply to BillyDavies:

I'm not coming at this from the diet/lose weight perspective more as a what if any is the difference between drinking a glass of Coke Cola made with sugar and a glass of diet Pepsi made with aspartame?

Leaving out the general health implications of drinking crap are the 2 the same?

When the WHO say cut down on sugar do they lump in general sweetness i.e artificial sweeteners in with sugar? Yes I know that the presents of artificial sweeteners generally indicates poor quality food but in themselves are they being treated the same as sugar is what I'm asking.

In reply to BillyDavies:


Sadly not for many people. I got to the stage of wearing size 18 trousers while being a very fit mountaineer. I was working as a freelance instructor, spending all my days off in the hills, but my body just doesn't burn calories. For some people, excersize works, for me it's irrelevant, and it all depends on what I eat.

In reply to Antigua:

My understanding, and this is from hearsay rather than any research, is that aspartame is also bad, but different bad! I seem to remember reading about people getting nasty side effects from it.

In reply to birdman:

But we do need the combination of the 2, which is why our bodies crave it so much. That horizon programme showed that the one who ate no sugar lost muscle as his body ate the muscles to get sugars! We just have to learn to limit both, as always, it comes down to having a balanced diet

In reply to girlymonkey:

'Diet' drinks contain very few calories, and generally don't contain other types of sugars like Fructose etc. However I'm not convinced the replacement chemicals aren't harmful in another way.

In reply to girlymonkey:

I wasn't suggesting we didn't need fat or sugar. Admitedly i was slightly off track from what the OP was asking, but my answer was more that we need fats sugars and proteins, but when fat and sugar are combined our bodies naturally defences (for want of a better description) are switched off thus allowing more to be eaten.

The program has changed the way i look at diet (as i my normal diet), i do try to limit the amount of carbs (sugars and complex cards) as my body seems to pile on the weight but realise that i need a certain amount to facilitate physical and mental activity.

In reply to girlymonkey:

There was some suggestion that artificial sweeteners can trick the body into creating insulin to control blood sugar levels as it thinks it's receiving sugar (taste receptors on the tongue).

Not sure what long term implications of that could be, but i'm guessing as with most stuff anything in the extreme isn't good for us.

In reply to girlymonkey:

It seems that the only way to deal with appetite is to eat more natural food,but you don't have to go vegan or organic or whatever.It essentially seems that we need to eat food which has the same energy value but of lower sugar and more fibre(and more bulk).So for example it is better to eat an orange than to drink a glass of fresh orange juice.The juice is made from several oranges,and has most of the nutritional value of all those oranges,but it would be unusual for anyone to eat more than one orange at a time.
Likewise salad may be a little boring at times if you eat it all the time,nevertheless it is more filling and is likely to stop your appetite at an earlier stage.Hence you may control your diet more readily.
Likewise drinking a pint of water before eating helps fill the stomach and reduce appetite.Yet it is hard to drink sometimes as food still seems more appealing.
I am probably telling you what you already know,and it does not help when you have a craving for a processed food,just like a chocolate addiction.

In reply to Antigua:
the elephant in the room: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wheat-Belly-Lose-Weight-Health/dp/0007568134

In reply to malk:

Nothing personal but another health professional using there position to make millions selling a crank diet.

Its interesting that humans have been eating wheat for thousands of years with no problems yet the explosion of people with wheat allergies seems to correlate exactly with the industrial production of bread.

In reply to birdman:

Thanks thats more what I was looking for.

In reply to Antigua:

Herewith a sweeping generalisation:

During billenia, homo sapiens has been scoffing a range of regionally grown foodstuffs à-la-nature, ie. pretty much as they occur in nature.

During the last few centuries, 'progress' has hit new limits: all foodtypes planet-wide are available to all, and, processing of foostuffs has made them transportable, and longlife. At the expense of health, because we are adapted to what historically we're used to.

So, *any* attempts to extract, or break down natural foodstuffs must be kept under surveillance, because diet is more than carbs, fats and protein. For optimal health all must be consumed with their requisite fibre, minerals, vitamins and even enzymes. And of course *without* added colorings, preservatives, texturises (plasticisers?) etc.

All that makes modern cuisine hard work, but there's the choice. More haste less speed.

In reply to LeeWood:

When thinking about what is "natural" it's probably worth bearing this in mind:-
http://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/ingredients-of-an-all-na...

In reply to Antigua:


The skeletal record shows that human beings started to suffer from diabetes and osteoporosis, amongst other diseases, at the same time as the introduction of grain crops many thousands of years ago.

Einkorn and spelt are like low-tar fags when compared to modern wheat; not as bad, but still pretty bad.

Incidentally, re Wheat Belly, it's hardly crank. Have a look at the studies he cites; they're all from mainstream peer-reviewed medical journals not New Age stuff.

In reply to felt:


So do really bad undergraduate essays. Does the author have much published and peer reviewed?

In reply to felt:


If that is true, I can think of one or two other lifestyle changes that will have occurred at the same time, and over the same period that might have a contributory factor.
I think it's a correlation/causation misinterpretation.

In reply to off-duty:


But margarine causes divorce doesn't it?

http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703

In reply to Antigua:




HFCS is sugar ie sucrose. Take a look at some of the Lustig talks on YT:

youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&

In reply to Cardi:


I'm also not sure that just switching to diet drinks addresses the issue if you have a sweet tooth and eat too much. Of course the drinks companies are happy to supply the need. I'm not sure why we need such an industry when water does everything you need and is free.

In reply to Turdus torquatus:


Indeed they do. But they're not usually classed as crank; cranks usually cite stuff like the Kabbalah, the Daily Mail, Hegel, etc, rather than the Am J Clin Nutr, Am J Gastroenterol, Diabet Med, Eur J Nutr etc.

Anecdotally, within two months of eliminating 'healthy whole grains' from my diet I shed 12 pounds, lost my belly, got over my lunchtime exhaustion and stopped suffering from the abdominal pain/IBS that I'd had since 2003.

In reply to off-duty:

Amazaing! When chemicals are organised by plants they should be acceptable to our metabolism; but how much have bananas been engineered ?

In reply to felt:

nuts are also bad mmkay..
http://chriskresser.com/another-reason-you-shouldnt-go-nuts-on-nuts

In reply to off-duty:



what other lifestyle changes (not diet related) are you thinking of to account for the observed skeletal changes in the neolithic?
some interesting reading here: http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml

nutrition is clearly a factor, so to call it a misinterpretation is a misinterpretation..