Good video: Transfats & sugars are the real killers

[Kaido]

Worth 13 minutes of your time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwkBB2Z6914

Very interesting ideas presented, and they make an awful lot of sense to me. As the sugar & transfat content has increased, so have our heart problems & other diseases like diabetes & hypertension. My workplace recently had a health initiative with a group that spoke about how heart disease, diabetes, etc. are all 100% reversible through diet; the problem is that like 84% of people or some crazy number never followed through on changing their diet and were stuck on Lipitor and stuff instead of just solving the problem

The first idea I really like is that cholesterol is not the enemy and that high cholesterol is actually a good thing. Previously it was thought that cholesterol was bad, but the example given is when you see a bunch of houses in a neighborhood on fire, wonder what the cause is, and see the fireman around, the conclusion is that the fireman must be causing the house fires. In reality, cholesterol is the band-aid or scab on the "cuts" that transfats & sugars make in the veins and are the helpers, not the problem-causers.

The second idea is that sugars & transfats cause inflammation. The idea of the vein as a tube and the inflammation causing cuts in the tube, then the cholesterol goes in to put a band-aid on it and builds up because of continued inflammation and blocks the tube. Pretty simple. This jives with all of the studies I've read about sugar, not salt, as the real killer in recent years. The FDA is already working on banning all transfats:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/fda-ban-trans-fats_n_4232871.html

Unfortunately the sugars are getting worse, primarily due to the processing and its presence in absolutely everything. As a person with food allergies, I'm very aware of sugars (I have a grains allergy, which includes sugarcane & corn - so all types of sugarcane, corn syrup, etc. are no-no's for me). Fruit sugars aren't the problem, it's the refined stuff (which does include refined fruit sugars, like the horrible stuff they put in kid's juice & hide with creative names like "white grape juice concentrate") that looks okay but isn't. There are 302+ names for sugar:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sing...mes-of-sugar-so-far-project/10150839799498198

I'm not saying that sugar is evil, but the more it's processed & concentrated and the more foods it's laced with, yes, the worse it gets for us because then we're eating it with every bite. In moderation, it's fine, like anything else, but we're eating it 24/7 without realizing it! Even most of the bread on the supermarket shelves now contains high fructose corn syrup! One of the worst ones is "grape juice concentrate" or "white grape juice concentrate", which isn't what you think. Let's check out "Welch's 100% Grape Juice" - healthy, right? Happy kids smiling on their homepage:

http://www.welchs.com/products/100-juices/grape-100-juices/100-grape-juice

The advertisement line:

No added sugar, color or flavor. It's 100% juice!

100% juice...technically. More on that in a minute. The first red flag:

36g Sugar per 8 ounce serving

Wow, why not just drink a Coke or Pepsi? But it's "fruit sugar", which is healthy, right? Well first, one quick side trip to the actual label:

http://www.labelwatch.com/prod_results.php?pid=481011

WELCH'S, 100% GRAPE JUICE
INGREDIENTS: Filtered Water, Grape Juice Concentrate, Grape Juice, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C).

Water, okay. Grape juice, okay. Absorbic acid (Vitamic C) = corn. But let's talk about that healthy-looking phrase "grape juice concentrate". Because, you know, why would you need concentrate in 100% juice that also lists grape juice as an ingredient? And note that this applies to "white grape juice concentrate" as well:

http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/07/18/food-babe-investigates-sabotaged-at-starbucks/

...calls white grape juice concentrate (which involves heating the juice to high temperatures and adding some chemicals to get a more condensed product) “real fruit juice.”

http://www.examiner.com/article/hidden-sugars-america-s-food-industry

White grape juice aside from the actual "juice from white grapes", which this is not, is also a sugary manufactured additive. When you see this in the ingredients section it is used as a sugar, and is not a juice at all. Don't be fooled. This is a concentrated, highly processed variation of fructose, which unlike actual white grape juice (the juice from white grapes), this product of manufacturers has absolutely no nutritional value and has no nutrients present at all.

Yada yada yada. If you do some reading, it turns out that grape juice concentrates are worse for you than real sugar (more highly concentrated & horrible for your body), but they can get away with advertising it because, technically, it's a "fruit" juice, at least at some point in its life it was. Sort of like how gasoline was once a dinosaur. The sugar and other food industries relying on a combination of broscience (ex. not understand that "not from concentrate" really means "stores in an airtight vat for up to a year where it loses flavor & nutrients and has to be reanimated with flavor packs & corn") & consumer label misperception (i.e. "oh look, it's made from grape juice concentrate, that's healthy right?") to exploit people who don't care & don't want to hear it, but still end up suffering the horrible effects of constant & over-consumption.

Which isn't such a huge problem because it just means more sugar, but the problem is, you're now consuming ridiculous amounts of sugar when you're not even aware of it. What do you mean my 100% fruit juice has as much sugar as a soda does, and that it's actually the bad kind of sugar due to the processing technique, but they hide it in marketing-speak? Or that my BBQ sauce has 12 grams of sugar in just 3 tablespoons? My Dole diced peaches has 18 grams of added corn syrup sugar? My Nutrigrain bar has 12 grams of sugar? Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal has 11 grams of sugar in this supposedly healthy cereal? Boy, that sure adds up all day - and if what they're saying in the video is true, that sugar causes inflammation, which cholesterol then makes scabs over & builds up to make us fat & kill us - we're blindly shooting ourselves in the foot!

But no big deal right? The issue isn't that bad, is it? Well, aside from the fact that heart disease is the #1 killer in America - it even beats out cancer!

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

We're up to 600,000 deaths (in contrast, only 40,000 people die per year in car accidents) from heart disease per year in the U.S., or 1 in 4 Americans:

http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/

We don't want to change. We don't want to hear it. We like our tasty comfort food and enjoy the ignorance & bliss that our food coma brings. The science is coming out that pretty much explains why suddenly everyone is dropping dead of heart disease. Sure, causation is not correlation, but do some reading on heart disease in other countries vs. the U.S. - makes for some interesting reading for sure! And food companies do a good job funding studies to obfuscate the results and tilt the findings in their favor, so you never really get a clear answer on what is what. The stuff in the video above seems pretty clear to me, at least.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now. I just find stuff like this extremely interesting, especially since I am forced to live with food allergies and am very, very aware of ingredients. And it's really no one's problem but our own, on an individual level. Sure, the food industry is carefully pulling the strings, essentially telling us lies, and feigning ignorance & avoiding responsibility about how much sugar content foods have because hey, they only control one product that you're eating the whole day - Cookie Crisp cereal is part of a nutritious breakfast! The government can't manage this stuff, and it's heavily influenced by lobbyists anyway, so really it's a "buyer beware" situation. Unfortunately, the information isn't clearly & readily available, and besides, we're all food addicts. Hats off to those of you who eat healthy on a regular basis, because I'm still fighting my addiction! Haha.

 

[uclaLabrat]

As a scientist, as a chemist, nothing in the world pisses me off more than rants like this.

There aren't really 302+ names for sugar, there's a ton of different sugars. Sugars comprise a family of compounds, each of which can come in different forms. Starches are just sugar polymers.

I'm not saying that sugar is evil, but the more it's processed & concentrated and the more foods it's laced with, yes, the worse it gets for us because then we're eating it with every bite. In moderation, it's fine, like anything else, but we're eating it 24/7 without realizing it! Even most of the bread on the supermarket shelves now contains high fructose corn syrup! One of the worst ones is "grape juice concentrate" or "white grape juice concentrate", which isn't what you think. Let's check out "Welch's 100% Grape Juice" - healthy, right? Happy kids smiling on their homepage:

This is the sort of thing that really gets to me. It's not a good argument. Sugar doesn't get any more refined than table sugar. That's it. It's essentially pure sucrose at that point. It's not insidious, it's not the evil scourge of our diet. Overeating a lot of shitty food and not exercising is.

People act like they're drinking formaldehyde when they give their kids fruit juice (as evidenced by your quote, and yes, grape juice concentrate is EXACTLY what I think, CONCENTRATED GRAPE JUICE!). It's GRAPE JUICE! Welch's isn't giving kids the ebola virus!

Sugar (in some form or another) should make up 30-40% of the average person's diet, by calories. Sugar is the primary metabolic intermediate in your body. What does that mean? Everything your body does, it does with sugar. If it doesn't have sugar, it converts other things to sugar. It needs sugar (glucose) to function.

This fearmongering and hyperbole with response to sugar in the media is analogous to the war on fats and cholesterol that happened in the 80s. It doesn't need to be a freaking religion, people need to calm down.

 

[Raghu]

^ Not entirely true. Body can function very well without external supply of glucose or sugars. Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient.

Most of the cells in our body can directly burn fat for energy. At rest, significant portion of our energy comes from burning fat.

 

[Kaido]

This is the sort of thing that really gets to me. It's not a good argument. Sugar doesn't get any more refined than table sugar. That's it. It's essentially pure sucrose at that point. It's not insidious, it's not the evil scourge of our diet.

Like I said, I don't think that sugar is necessarily evil in & of itself, at least not when used responsibly. The trouble is, Americans in general are unknowingly using it irresponsibility and that increased intake is one of the things causing 2/3 of us to be overweight and 1/3 of us to be obese. In 2008 alone, obesity cost the US $147 billion dollars. Yes, diet & exercise are important, but really & truly understanding just how much sugar we're consuming on a daily basis is also really important and is carefully hidden by the food industry.

Just look at your average daily diet: morning breakfast is processed orange juice, toast from bread containing HFCS, jelly with added sugar. Lunch is Campbell's tomato soup with 12 grams of sugar, a fruit cup with added corn syrup, and a fruit drink with concentrated fruit sugar. A salad for dinner with 2 tablespoons of Kraft Creamy French Salad Dressing adds 6 grams of sugar. On average, Americans eat as much as 22 teaspoons of added sugars per day, which is nearly half a cup. Half a cup of sugar every day, 365 days a year, that most people have no idea they're ingesting.

This wasn't the norm for diets 50 years ago, nor were transfats, and 50 years ago it was rare to see someone who was overweight because our diet wasn't as processed and we weren't repetitively & constantly eating this stuff. I always hear older people talk about how there was only "one fat kid in class" that everyone made fun of, but today the majority of people are overweight (including myself, crap! haha). I'm particularly sensitive to the sugar content in manufactured food because I have a grains allergy and get sick when I eat anything with sugarcane or corn in it, and the more processed something is, the worse I feel. Corn syrup gives me a headache, but HFCS gives me a wicked bad headache. So it's especially annoying when you have food allergies and have to deal with the food industry adding sugar into nearly every product on store shelves.

I don't think the point of the discussion is that sugar isn't sugar - sure, it all reverts to sugar eventually, and aside from special cases involving food intolerances like mine, that's not really a big deal for most Americans. I think the primary issue is the amount that we consume every day, especially the quantity that we unwittingly consume. And if what they say in the video in the OP holds true, then we're screwing ourselves over by what we normally eat because sugar = inflammation = cholesterol blockage = heart diseases, diabetes, etc., which is all completely reversible through a diet change.

So yes, I would agree with you - I don't think that sugar the evil scourge of our diet, I think it's more the manipulation that the food industry puts into our diet by hiding sugars through creative names and injecting it in product after product after product, which adds up. Half a cup of sugar a day on average is absolutely nuts to me! I think it's ridiculous that the majority of the foods in the aisles have added sugar to them. It's definitely a "buyer beware" market out there; it's just that most people don't have the knowledge about what they're really eating other than "I know I should eat healthier" and don't quite realize to what extent they're consuming sugar on a daily basis.

 

[SP33Demon]

Amen brother. I have almost completely cut refined sugar out of my diet (I still do fruit in smoothies and of course milk sugars in my shakes) and you'd be surprised how sensitive the body can get to it. I had a large piece of cake yesterday for an office party and immediately got sleepy as fuck due to insulin surge. Back in the day when I was eating loads of sugar, this wouldn't have phased me but I was on a one-way train to diabetes. Same with caffeine, when I stopped taking that shit I became extremely sensitive to it - if I take it now, I'll crash pretty hard before bedtime because it drains me. Bottom line is, you'd be surprised how much tolerance your body has built to even sugar but you'll still feel look and feel like shit after eating it every day. The only thing I eat that is semi-bad = organic tortilla chips for cheap carb energy but even that doesn't have 1/5 the effect that straight sugar will have on my system. Cut out sugar, replace those calories with protein, and you'll see how much weight you'll instantly drop and keep off. It's not a coincidence.

 

[Batmeat]

First off, youtube, huffington post, label watch, 100daysof real food, are not accepted in the health community as legit research sites or articles. They are peoples opinion. UCLA is right. refined sugar = table sugar. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

#2 Cholesterol is both good and bad for you. Without getting into a lot of detail, you need to do some research on HDL's vs LDL's vs VLDL's vs Chylomicrons. The term "Cholesterol" is a generic term which includes all of those and has more metabolic uses than coating arteries and veins. It's been a long time since my biochem classes but a couple uses off the top of my head are glycoprotein matrices and biphospho lipid layers of cells.

Lastly, 100% juice comes in a couple forms. Concentrated (simply means they've taken water out of it, which is why you add water to concentrated juice) and non concentrated (what you go buy in the store in some sort of container that says 100% pure juice.

Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient.

this is simply not right. Every cell in your body uses glucose. You get glucose by eating it, your body making it whether it's glycogen or glucose, or by breaking down fats and protein.

The atkins diet worked so well because you limited your carbohydrate intake by eating almost nothing but protein. This causes your body to burn up it's glycogen stores first. After that's all gone your body starts breaking down your fat stores next. After that's gone your body has to resort to breaking down protein to get glucose. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM IS. Protein breakdown forms Ketone bodies. All cells in your body can use these for energy EXCEPT cells in your brain. They can only use Glucose for energy. You need carbohydrates to feed the cells of your brain. The issue here is that most people eat simple carbs (white breads, processed grains, pasta) when in reality we should be eating complex carbs (whole grains, wheat breads, etc)

to sum it all up....

refined sugar = bad
natural sugar = not as bad as refined, better for your body
Sweeteners like Equal = bad
simple carbs = bad
complex carbs = good
HDL = good
VLDL and LDL = in general bad, but you need some
Chylomicrons = basically a combination of HDL's, VLDL's and LDL's

Trans-fats are an issue with me. My understanding is this.....any chemist knows what Cis and Trans orientation is. All trans fat's get hydrolized once they hit your stomach acid and subsiquently are changed into a Cis form. That being said, I haven't looked into the whole Trans-fat issue much.

Finally, like I said earlier it's been a long time since my biochem days, maybe someone here with a biochem degree can comment on what I said.

 

[shadow9d9]

Like I said, I don't think that sugar is necessarily evil in & of itself, at least not when used responsibly. The trouble is, Americans in general are unknowingly using it irresponsibility and that increased intake is one of the things causing 2/3 of us to be overweight and 1/3 of us to be obese. In 2008 alone, obesity cost the US $147 billion dollars. Yes, diet & exercise are important, but really & truly understanding just how much sugar we're consuming on a daily basis is also really important and is carefully hidden by the food industry.

Just look at your average daily diet: morning breakfast is processed orange juice, toast from bread containing HFCS, jelly with added sugar. Lunch is Campbell's tomato soup with 12 grams of sugar, a fruit cup with added corn syrup, and a fruit drink with concentrated fruit sugar. A salad for dinner with 2 tablespoons of Kraft Creamy French Salad Dressing adds 6 grams of sugar. On average, Americans eat as much as 22 teaspoons of added sugars per day, which is nearly half a cup. Half a cup of sugar every day, 365 days a year, that most people have no idea they're ingesting.

This wasn't the norm for diets 50 years ago, nor were transfats, and 50 years ago it was rare to see someone who was overweight because our diet wasn't as processed and we weren't repetitively & constantly eating this stuff. I always hear older people talk about how there was only "one fat kid in class" that everyone made fun of, but today the majority of people are overweight (including myself, crap! haha). I'm particularly sensitive to the sugar content in manufactured food because I have a grains allergy and get sick when I eat anything with sugarcane or corn in it, and the more processed something is, the worse I feel. Corn syrup gives me a headache, but HFCS gives me a wicked bad headache. So it's especially annoying when you have food allergies and have to deal with the food industry adding sugar into nearly every product on store shelves.

I don't think the point of the discussion is that sugar isn't sugar - sure, it all reverts to sugar eventually, and aside from special cases involving food intolerances like mine, that's not really a big deal for most Americans. I think the primary issue is the amount that we consume every day, especially the quantity that we unwittingly consume. And if what they say in the video in the OP holds true, then we're screwing ourselves over by what we normally eat because sugar = inflammation = cholesterol blockage = heart diseases, diabetes, etc., which is all completely reversible through a diet change.

So yes, I would agree with you - I don't think that sugar the evil scourge of our diet, I think it's more the manipulation that the food industry puts into our diet by hiding sugars through creative names and injecting it in product after product after product, which adds up. Half a cup of sugar a day on average is absolutely nuts to me! I think it's ridiculous that the majority of the foods in the aisles have added sugar to them. It's definitely a "buyer beware" market out there; it's just that most people don't have the knowledge about what they're really eating other than "I know I should eat healthier" and don't quite realize to what extent they're consuming sugar on a daily basis.

What do you mean "unknowingly"? If they are making the food at home, then the information is on the labels...

 

[Kaido]

Finally, like I said earlier it's been a long time since my biochem days, maybe someone here with a biochem degree can comment on what I said.

Thanks for the input, it's always good to hear a more scientific perspective on this stuff. If there's one thing you can always count on when it comes to releasing studies to the media, it's that information is subject to change :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

What do you mean "unknowingly"? If they are making the food at home, then the information is on the labels...

Oh, I mean a lot of stuff by "unknowingly":

1. I'm probably the only person I know IRL who reads food labels. Most people don't, and it seems like most people don't care. Labels are confusing and filled with strange words and have no real bearing on how people making purchasing & eating choices anyway. The basic metrics are "does it taste good and can I eat it right now".

2. The average American does not know that they are ingesting 1/2 cup of sugar a day on average. *I* didn't know that was the average, but I see people come into work with a bottle of Mountain Dew for breakfast, so there's that :awe:

3. Sugar is hidden by over 300 names. "Crystalline fructose" doesn't sound so bad when you're scanning the ingredients list on a product, does it? Because "HFCS" is bad, right? Crystalline fructose is even sweeter than HFCS and also comes from corn.

4. Not only does the food industry have creative names for hiding sugar, but they also stick it in nearly every product you pick up. Most of the whole-wheat breads in the baked goods aisle have high fructose corn syrup in them. Why, aside from the fact that corn sugar is cheap?

Again, I'm not saying that sugar in & of itself is bad. But the amount we unwittingly consume, the amount the food industry injects into such a variety of products, and the creative names they hide things under really adds up to a bigger picture. I had a huge struggle avoiding corn for the first few months after I was diagnosed. Just look at all of the names for it:

http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php

So by unknowingly, yes - I don't know really anyone outside of the Health & Fitness forum here who reads labels and is willing to add up sugar grams in their daily food content & actually track what they eat. It's just not a common activity, which is why the food industry is getting away with doing garbage like this. And they can feign innocence by saying it's up to the consumer, but then they stick in every product across the board, so it accumulates throughout the day as you eat your meals & snacks.

Bleh.

 

[SP33Demon]

Oh, I mean a lot of stuff by "unknowingly":

1. I'm probably the only person I know IRL who reads food labels. Most people don't, and it seems like most people don't care. Labels are confusing and filled with strange words and have no real bearing on how people making purchasing & eating choices anyway. The basic metrics are "does it taste good and can I eat it right now".
...

So by unknowingly, yes - I don't know really anyone outside of the Health & Fitness forum here who reads labels and is willing to add up sugar grams in their daily food content & actually track what they eat. It's just not a common activity, which is why the food industry is getting away with doing garbage like this. And they can feign innocence by saying it's up to the consumer, but then they stick in every product across the board, so it accumulates throughout the day as you eat your meals & snacks.
...

This is exactly true, nobody reads labels and it's sad.

I have a good example: Today I was looking at protein bars at the price club to see if any were worth buying in bulk for protein in a pinch. The crazy thing was that every single protein bar/powder (over 12 different brands) minus Muscle Milk powder had a variant of soy protein in it! (Soy Lecithin doesn't count, it's in everything; also Muscle Milk protein bars do have soy in them /letdown). You probably don't think it's a big deal, but I don't want any soy in my diet at all and was astounded that 95% of stuff has freaking soy in it. Furthermore, it has other crappy ingredients that I don't want in my diet like Malitol. Read those labels my friends.

 

[ewdotson]

3. Sugar is hidden by over 300 names.

Speaking as another chemist, go back and reread uclaLabrat's post about this point. Seriously, it's not a good argument.

 

[Kaido]

This is exactly true, nobody reads labels and it's sad.

I have a good example: Today I was looking at protein bars at the price club to see if any were worth buying in bulk for protein in a pinch. The crazy thing was that every single protein bar/powder (over 12 different brands) minus Muscle Milk powder had a variant of soy protein in it! (Soy Lecithin doesn't count, it's in everything; also Muscle Milk protein bars do have soy in them /letdown). You probably don't think it's a big deal, but I don't want any soy in my diet at all and was astounded that 95% of stuff has freaking soy in it. Furthermore, it has other crappy ingredients that I don't want in my diet like Malitol. Read those labels my friends.

My toddler is allergic to soy. Stinks. Unfortunately, that's economics - soy is cheap, therefore it gets used in everything just like corn.

 

[Kaido]

Speaking as another chemist, go back and reread uclaLabrat's post about this point. Seriously, it's not a good argument.

I think we're discussing two different points here. To quote uclaLabrat's post:

Sugar doesn't get any more refined than table sugar.

So we've established that ultimately, sugar is sugar, correct? If I'm missing your point here, please let me know. I am open to new information; I just need some clarification if that isn't the case. Again, I'm not saying that sugar is evil in & of itself. It's the way the industry uses it and the way that we as consumers use that I'm taking issue with. My complaints are these:

1. The food industry is putting sugar in EVERYTHING

2. They are hiding sugar under different names to disguise it from the average consumer

I think that what I said earlier about hiding sugar under 300 different names is a very good argument. If sugar is sugar, then the over-consumption of any variation of it is still bad, right? The average consumer isn't going to know what "crystalline fructose" or "invert syrup" is, especially not under those innocuous-sounding names. This article says that American adults consume 22 teaspoons of sugar per day: (34 teaspoons for teens!)

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32543288/...n/t/cut-back-way-back-sugar-says-heart-group/

By comparison, most women should be getting no more than 6 teaspoons a day, or 100 calories, of added sugar — the sweeteners and syrups that are added to foods during processing, preparation or at the table. For most men, the recommended limit is 9 teaspoons, or 150 calories, the heart group [American Heart Association] says.

My point, as per the video in the OP, is that the over-consumption of ANY kind of sugar can lead to bad results. And if what the video is saying is in fact true, then that often hidden excess sugar in the average American diet is what is causing a huge number of our collective health problems.

 

[ewdotson]

I was talking about the "There aren't really 302+ names for sugar, there's a ton of different sugars. Sugars comprise a family of compounds, each of which can come in different forms. Starches are just sugar polymers." part.

They aren't hiding "sugar" under different names in an attempt to fool consumers. They're legitimately different ingredients, even though they're all sugars. The companies are being precise as to what's in their products, as they are required to by law.

This is not, of course, to suggest that most Americans don't consume more sugar than they should or that they're aware of.

 

[smackababy]

I was talking about the "There aren't really 302+ names for sugar, there's a ton of different sugars. Sugars comprise a family of compounds, each of which can come in different forms. Starches are just sugar polymers." part.

They aren't hiding "sugar" under different names in an attempt to fool consumers. They're legitimately different ingredients, even though they're all sugars. The companies are being precise as to what's in their products, as they are required to by law.

This is not, of course, to suggest that most Americans don't consume more sugar than they should or that they're aware of.

Kaido's point is that the "precise" names are misleading. The average consumer doesn't know there are 302+ different kinds of sugars. If they read a name of a sugar they have never heard of, it doesn't register as a sugar. That is, if they read the label at all.

I agree with Kaido that the food industry is rather deceptive in their marketing, but that is a product of the average consumer being ignorant.

 

[shadow9d9]

Oh, I mean a lot of stuff by "unknowingly":

1. I'm probably the only person I know IRL who reads food labels. Most people don't, and it seems like most people don't care. Labels are confusing and filled with strange words and have no real bearing on how people making purchasing & eating choices anyway. The basic metrics are "does it taste good and can I eat it right now".

2. The average American does not know that they are ingesting 1/2 cup of sugar a day on average. *I* didn't know that was the average, but I see people come into work with a bottle of Mountain Dew for breakfast, so there's that :awe:

3. Sugar is hidden by over 300 names. "Crystalline fructose" doesn't sound so bad when you're scanning the ingredients list on a product, does it? Because "HFCS" is bad, right? Crystalline fructose is even sweeter than HFCS and also comes from corn.

4. Not only does the food industry have creative names for hiding sugar, but they also stick it in nearly every product you pick up. Most of the whole-wheat breads in the baked goods aisle have high fructose corn syrup in them. Why, aside from the fact that corn sugar is cheap?

Again, I'm not saying that sugar in & of itself is bad. But the amount we unwittingly consume, the amount the food industry injects into such a variety of products, and the creative names they hide things under really adds up to a bigger picture. I had a huge struggle avoiding corn for the first few months after I was diagnosed. Just look at all of the names for it:

http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php

So by unknowingly, yes - I don't know really anyone outside of the Health & Fitness forum here who reads labels and is willing to add up sugar grams in their daily food content & actually track what they eat. It's just not a common activity, which is why the food industry is getting away with doing garbage like this. And they can feign innocence by saying it's up to the consumer, but then they stick in every product across the board, so it accumulates throughout the day as you eat your meals & snacks.

Bleh.

Wouldn't the different names for sugar all be covered under the "sugar" amount on the label? In other words where it says X grams?

I've always read labels... Just makes sense to me. If people CHOOSE not to read labels, then that is their OWN fault, not someone else's.

 

[uclaLabrat]

^ Not entirely true. Body can function very well without external supply of glucose or sugars. Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient.

Most of the cells in our body can directly burn fat for energy. At rest, significant portion of our energy comes from burning fat.

Ok, wrong, wrong, and wrong. With the minor exception of the body can in fact survive without external sugar, but it does so by converting other things (proteins and particular fats, specifically) into sugar. Sugar is the currency by which ATP is generated. If sugar isn't present (either in glucose or glycogen), your body makes it.

Here ya go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

I'm not a biochemist so I'm sure there's some stuff I'm missing, but the above is pretty much gospel.

 

[uclaLabrat]

First off, youtube, huffington post, label watch, 100daysof real food, are not accepted in the health community as legit research sites or articles. They are peoples opinion. UCLA is right. refined sugar = table sugar. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

#2 Cholesterol is both good and bad for you. Without getting into a lot of detail, you need to do some research on HDL's vs LDL's vs VLDL's vs Chylomicrons. The term "Cholesterol" is a generic term which includes all of those and has more metabolic uses than coating arteries and veins. It's been a long time since my biochem classes but a couple uses off the top of my head are glycoprotein matrices and biphospho lipid layers of cells.

Lastly, 100% juice comes in a couple forms. Concentrated (simply means they've taken water out of it, which is why you add water to concentrated juice) and non concentrated (what you go buy in the store in some sort of container that says 100% pure juice.


this is simply not right. Every cell in your body uses glucose. You get glucose by eating it, your body making it whether it's glycogen or glucose, or by breaking down fats and protein.

The atkins diet worked so well because you limited your carbohydrate intake by eating almost nothing but protein. This causes your body to burn up it's glycogen stores first. After that's all gone your body starts breaking down your fat stores next. After that's gone your body has to resort to breaking down protein to get glucose. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM IS. Protein breakdown forms Ketone bodies. All cells in your body can use these for energy EXCEPT cells in your brain. They can only use Glucose for energy. You need carbohydrates to feed the cells of your brain. The issue here is that most people eat simple carbs (white breads, processed grains, pasta) when in reality we should be eating complex carbs (whole grains, wheat breads, etc)

to sum it all up....

refined sugar = bad
natural sugar = not as bad as refined, better for your body
Sweeteners like Equal = bad
simple carbs = bad
complex carbs = good
HDL = good
VLDL and LDL = in general bad, but you need some
Chylomicrons = basically a combination of HDL's, VLDL's and LDL's
The biggest issue with carbs is regulating blood sugar levels. Carbs with a low glycemic index are metabolized slowly and help regulate blood sugar levels. Drastic swings in blood sugar level lead to insulin resistance and type II diabetes, IIRC. So complex carbs and table sugar aren't necessarily bad, as long as they're in reasonable amounts. I think the recommendations below are a little on the extreme low side, but I'm biased. I also don't see an issue with artificial sweeteners, I think all the BS about how they make you fat is just that, BS. If you keep track of your calories, there's no problem.
Trans-fats are an issue with me. My understanding is this.....any chemist knows what Cis and Trans orientation is. All trans fat's get hydrolized once they hit your stomach acid and subsiquently are changed into a Cis form. That being said, I haven't looked into the whole Trans-fat issue much.
Trans fats aren't isomerized in the stomach at all, as far as I know, I could be wrong, but it doesn't make any sense to me. First, the stomach isn't acidic enough to really affect an isolated double bond, though it could hydrolyzed to an alcohol I suppose. However, trans is the thermodynamically more stable form, and would thus predominate. That's an issue since it leads to high density plaques which are bad for the arteries.

Finally, like I said earlier it's been a long time since my biochem days, maybe someone here with a biochem degree can comment on what I said.

Bolded.

 

[Raghu]

Gluconeogenesis supports my statement. We don't need to consume any sugar/carbohydrate externally since the body is able to make it from fat/protein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a common source of energy in living organisms; however, no carbohydrate is an essential nutrient in humans.

In the absence of dietary carbohydrates the body makes only a very small amount of glucose for a few specific functions. In general, the body adapts to burning fat/ketones for most of its energy requirements. This video has an explanation of the biochemistry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqwvcrA7oe8

The atkins diet worked so well because you limited your carbohydrate intake by eating almost nothing but protein. This causes your body to burn up it's glycogen stores first. After that's all gone your body starts breaking down your fat stores next. After that's gone your body has to resort to breaking down protein to get glucose. THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM IS. Protein breakdown forms Ketone bodies. All cells in your body can use these for energy EXCEPT cells in your brain. They can only use Glucose for energy. You need carbohydrates to feed the cells of your brain. The issue here is that most people eat simple carbs (white breads, processed grains, pasta) when in reality we should be eating complex carbs (whole grains, wheat breads, etc)

Protein does not break down into keto bodies. Fats break down into keto bodies. All the cells in the body can burn fat directly, except the brain (fat molecules cannot cross blood-brain barrier). Brain uses keto bodies because keto bodies are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier. The brain can work very well without glucose.

 

[uclaLabrat]

Oh, I mean a lot of stuff by "unknowingly":

1. I'm probably the only person I know IRL who reads food labels. Most people don't, and it seems like most people don't care. Labels are confusing and filled with strange words and have no real bearing on how people making purchasing & eating choices anyway. The basic metrics are "does it taste good and can I eat it right now".
Pretty much. The company is trying to sell a product, after all, they go with what works.

2. The average American does not know that they are ingesting 1/2 cup of sugar a day on average. *I* didn't know that was the average, but I see people come into work with a bottle of Mountain Dew for breakfast, so there's that :awe:
The average american doesn't know what day it is, so there's that.
3. Sugar is hidden by over 300 names. "Crystalline fructose" doesn't sound so bad when you're scanning the ingredients list on a product, does it? Because "HFCS" is bad, right? Crystalline fructose is even sweeter than HFCS and also comes from corn.
HFCS isn't bad. It's the same thing in the same proportions (roughly) as table sugar, it's just hydrolyzed. Table sugar (sucrose) is a dimer of glucose and fructose. That means it has one molecule of each bonded together. It's just about the same as table sugar, with the exception that it would probably raise blood sugar (blood glucose leve is what they measure) more quickly than sucrose, which has to be metabolized (hydrolyzed) first.

Secondly, fructose IS sweeter than sucrose (by a factor of about 1.5 IIRC), which is a good thing. It means that a given recipe can achieve the same level of sweetness by adding much less sugar (30% less!) and thus reduce sugar intake. That's one reason fructose has become a popular additive.

Thirdly, all sugars are metabolized differently. Your body uses glucose as fuel, which is but one type of sugar that comes in several different forms by itself. Glucose is treated differently than fructose which is treated differently than sucrose which is treated differently than mannitol or xylitol (sugar alcohols and popular artificial sweeteners). A really good primer on how fructose behaves in the body is actually wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose
A big issue is a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about look at poorly designed studies and draw even worse conclusions from them. Even worse, people want to see these things in black and white, while the reality is more of a spectrum, as with most things in life.

4. Not only does the food industry have creative names for hiding sugar, but they also stick it in nearly every product you pick up. Most of the whole-wheat breads in the baked goods aisle have high fructose corn syrup in them. Why, aside from the fact that corn sugar is cheap?
The wiki page has a really good explanation as to why that is, as most of it has to do with the versatility of fructose and its cheapness.
Again, I'm not saying that sugar in & of itself is bad. But the amount we unwittingly consume, the amount the food industry injects into such a variety of products, and the creative names they hide things under really adds up to a bigger picture. I had a huge struggle avoiding corn for the first few months after I was diagnosed. Just look at all of the names for it:
Good, we agree. Sugar isn't bad. Eating a lot of it, like eating a lot of fat, or eating a lot of protein, is bad. Everything in moderation, including moderation!

http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php

So by unknowingly, yes - I don't know really anyone outside of the Health & Fitness forum here who reads labels and is willing to add up sugar grams in their daily food content & actually track what they eat. It's just not a common activity, which is why the food industry is getting away with doing garbage like this. And they can feign innocence by saying it's up to the consumer, but then they stick in every product across the board, so it accumulates throughout the day as you eat your meals & snacks.
The food industry isn't some evil entity, it's just trying to sell products. They sell what people want, and people want things that taste good and are aesthetically pleasing. Sugar helps them accomplish that. Pretty much everyone on the planet knows what is reasonably healthy and what isn't. Eating a bag of doritos a day and washing it down with 2 L of mountain dew is not a recipe for longevity, and I think everyone knows that. Worrying whether or not your wheat bread has a few grams of HFCS or crystalline fructose in it is not going to make a difference, I'm sorry to say. It's starting to become a religion for a bunch of people who don't understand the biochemistry behind it, and thus it devolves into conspiracy theories about "evil food corps" trying to "trick consumer" into being unhealthy and "hide their ingredients" to your detriment.

It's not that insidious, they're just trying to protect themselves from morons creating bad PR over nothing, which a bunch of the so-called "health" blogs do on a daily basis. Seriously, when I'm in the mood for a massive face-palm, I go to P&N, or I go to articles on Yahoo! health written by "experts" who know nothing about metabolism or biochemistry, and laugh at the conclusions they draw. They're beyond terrible.
Bleh.

Rant above.

 

[Kaido]

Rant above.

That's not a rant, that's a logical discussion, so excellent response! We appreciate that here in H&F :biggrin:

Technically, as with literally everything else in the world, the responsibility falls upon the consumer, so buyer beware. However, I also think that we need some form of increased regulation, because companies will take advantage of every single limit they're afforded by the government. For example - yes the bread may only have a few grams of added sugar, but like the article above said, the average American eats 22 teaspoons a day, when the adult men should really be consuming a maximum of 9, so we're getting more than double our daily recommended dose. Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the statistics:

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm

1. More than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese.
2. Percent of adults age 20 years and over who are overweight, including obesity: 69.2% (2009-2010)
2. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars.

Nearly 70% of us are overweight, that's insane! Especially given the incredible financial toll. And most people either don't care or will fight it - just look at when NYC tried to ban extra-large sodas or whatever that debacle was (sure, but you could just buy two large drinks instead lol). And yet 25 million people in the United States have diabetes.

Ultimately, it's no one's responsibility but the individual to regulate their diet. Sugar content is printed on the ingredients of every food item out there, so there's really no excuse. But then again, everyone is also human, and sugar is an extremely addictive substance - just look at those statistics above. Alcoholics are really sugarholics. Smokers are sugarholics - cigarettes can contain up to 20% sugar. The amount of sugar that we consume throughout a day is just plain scary. Here's a cool website that shows how much sugar is in different foods by using sugarcubes stacked next to it to illustrate the amount:

http://www.sugarstacks.com/

I don't know what the right answer is for regulation. We're obviously not regulating ourselves very well if 70% of us are fat and 600,000 of us die of heart disease every year. The food industry has a powerful lobby, so any legal methods will be hindered. If sugar is as bad as the video in the OP makes it out to be (when consumed in excess quantity, which based on statistics, more than half of the nation does on a regular basis), then it's a pretty serious issue and desperately needs to be addressed.

Plus I'm allergic to sugarcane & corn (grains), so I'm mostly just peeved they keep putting it in different foods and making it so I can't eat stuff

 

[Kaido]

Ok, wrong, wrong, and wrong. With the minor exception of the body can in fact survive without external sugar, but it does so by converting other things (proteins and particular fats, specifically) into sugar. Sugar is the currency by which ATP is generated. If sugar isn't present (either in glucose or glycogen), your body makes it.

Here ya go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

I'm not a biochemist so I'm sure there's some stuff I'm missing, but the above is pretty much gospel.

On the flip side, I grew up consuming nothing but sugar, so you can also survive on a sugar-only diet :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

Wouldn't the different names for sugar all be covered under the "sugar" amount on the label? In other words where it says X grams?

I've always read labels... Just makes sense to me. If people CHOOSE not to read labels, then that is their OWN fault, not someone else's.

Yup. And given the fact that just shy of 70% of us are overweight, there's apparently a whole heck of a lot of people who choose not to read those labels.

You are one of the few people who DO read labels. Take it from a guy who didn't start reading labels until later in life. About 5 years ago, I was diagnosed with my first allergy - dairy. I had to start reading labels and was somewhat self-conscious about doing that in stores because I had literally never seen ANYONE else reading the labels on food items off the shelf, so it was a little awkward starting out.

Plus, making use of the data is difficult for most people. The individual names for sugars (and other ingredients) are can be pretty obscure. I have a buddy who is allergic to MSG and would keep breaking out (skin rash), so we had to do some research to find out the sneaky hidden names like "yeast extract" and other garbage. That, plus math is hard for most people. Adding up stuff like the sugar content of all of the foods & portions you might eat throughout the day can be a barrier. There are lots of good tools out there to help with that stuff, but you also need the motivation to use them. Hard to care when you're an addict :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

Kaido's point is that the "precise" names are misleading. The average consumer doesn't know there are 302+ different kinds of sugars. If they read a name of a sugar they have never heard of, it doesn't register as a sugar. That is, if they read the label at all.

I agree with Kaido that the food industry is rather deceptive in their marketing, but that is a product of the average consumer being ignorant.

Yup. And as others have mentioned, it's not like the sugar content itself is hiding - manufacturers are required to print it on every label. But the other sneaky thing they do is use ridiculous small portions. "Oh, these cookies only have 6 grams of sugar! Wait, PER COOKIE?!" Haha.

 

[smackababy]

Yup. And as others have mentioned, it's not like the sugar content itself is hiding - manufacturers are required to print it on every label. But the other sneaky thing they do is use ridiculous small portions. "Oh, these cookies only have 6 grams of sugar! Wait, PER COOKIE?!" Haha.

Per cookie isn't as bad as some things like bags of chips. Serving size: about 8 chips. Servings per container: about 2.3... Yeah, that isn't deceptive at all.

I do like that sodas and candy bars are now coming with easy to spot nutritional information (even if it is only calories as of now) on the packaging for the entire amount.


I am still upset that "zero" calorie labeling is allowed. It just has to be below 5 calories per serving...