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Fructose As Culprit In the Obesity Epidemic
drewtheman writes "According to an interview with Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology from the University of California, San Francisco, fructose, once touted as diabetic-friendly because it doesn't raise insulin levels directly, could be a major culprit for the obesity epidemic, high blood pressure, and elevated blood levels of LDL in Americans and others worldwide as they adopt American-style diets. Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar and up to 90% of high-fructose corn syrup, both ingredients found in copious quantity in most American prepared foods."
http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/whatmakesfoodfatte ning.pdf
The Dietary and Nutritional Survey of British Adults, Gibson (1996, p. 405) concluded that "sugars
appear to have a weak negative [italics added] association with BMI that is not totally explained
by confounders such as dieting, under-reporting or the inverse correlation between energy from
sugars and fat."
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
...but where is a link to the paper or actual report? I just don't trust an interview as easily when it comes to scientific claims as I would the scientific data and whatever fallacies it may hold.
On another note, there have been plenty of studies already demonstrating how nutritionally bad fructose is bad for an individual. Here's a compilation I found awhile back of the cons of using fructose so widely in consumables: http://curezone.com/art/read.asp?ID=32&db=6&C0=17
Fructose used responsibly is actually beneficial. Fructose is substantially sweeter than glucose, so consuming it could allow you to reduce your sugar intake. Consuming as much fructose as you would otherwise consume glucose is clearly bad for you, but there is an opportunity to reduce intake.
The HFCS used in most soft drinks is (I believe) 50% fructose. It is metabolised almost identically to sucrose: there is an initial enzyme that splits sucrose into glucose and fructose at similar ratios to the contents of the corn syrup, after that the metabolism is identical. It seems unlikely therefore that there is any substantial difference in health effects, and most of the studies quoted in the wikipedia article linked from the main story tend to agree with that.
You're right, the sugar quotas and corn subsidies raise prices (directly or indirectly) for almost all consumable items. The jury is still out on whether HFCS truly is tied to obesity (there are studies that go both ways, and TFA adds as far as I can tell nothing new to the debate), but there is absolutely no question that it kills us economically.
Just check out this research study that estimates that subtracting the benefits of the quotas/subsidies from the costs (i.e. consumer/producer benefits of lower costs minus "oh but the poor farming corporations!") leaves the American economy almost billion dollars per year better off.
audioLibre - freedom of music
No, you just need an English lesson.
When A comprises B, it means A is within B, whether it is in whole or in part.
When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part.
Consider another verb for a simpler example:
Baked dough makes cookies.
Cookies are made of baked dough.
Don't drink Soda Pop and always check the labels for High Fructose Corn Syrup. It is says it has it, don't buy it. That shit should be illegalized in most foods.
Why? HFCS and Sugar breaks down to the same things in the body. Every study I've seen shows that HFCS is no more dangerous than Sugar. Studies that only look at the Fructose show that high amounts of Fructose is dangerous. The HFCS in soft drinks and sport drinks is not high in Fructose. The "High Fructose" part of "High Fructose Corn Syrup" means it has a high content of fructose compared to corn syrup itself (which has next to no fructose).
In fact, a happy paper at the NIH says pretty much this.
But yeah, of course, it's what is in the vending machines that counts. Next time you're in the States, see if you can buy something from a vending machine without some type of corn or corn-syrup or corn-byproduct as a major ingredient (sometimes it's even in 'diet' products, which have their own set of health threats).
Yes, the contents are rather different. In most drink vending machines, most drinks are cold or hot green teas and coffee, with a smaller amount of juices, water and sports drinks. Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Heinz finally makes an "organic" ketchup that uses cane sugar instead of HFCS for sweetener. It actually tastes a lot better - like I remember it tasting as a kid. I've also seen other brands of ketchup that use regular sugar as well.
I personally gave up HFCS and MSG to the best of my ability about 9 months ago. I'm still too fat (probably all the beer I still drink) but I do feel much much better. That near continuous run-down feeling is gone now. So is that all to frequent feeling after lunch like a bad flu was coming (buzzing in my head, hot flash, sweating, tightness in the chest, congested feeling).
I'm sure someone will respond saying there's no scientific proof that MSG and HFSC are bad for me and that I'm a fool for trying to not consume them. That's just fine... call me a fool. I feel better not eating them and that's reason enough - placebo effect or not.
Lol. Insulin control the hunger kill switch for the body. People are eating things with fructose and they aren't getting this kill switch. If you over eat raw surgar, you body will generally cause you to throw up. We learned the second part in 7th grade home ec classes and the first in health.
Corn syrup, or fructose used instead of sugar means that for most people, they are under fed as far as their body is concerned and telling them. This is why it is an issue. If regular sugar was used, the body's kill switch for eating would kick before a person ends up spending "every waking hour stuffing their faces with lard". Cause after all, what is lard but a form of sugar. Same with startches. Your body is good at sending signals to eat when it is deprived of something. And people are being deprived without knowing it.
Now lets look at some more effects of fructose, low insulin means low amounts of energy which means the bodies metabolism slows down which means more food gets stored as fat while the body is sending signals to eat more. Do you see a cycle here that is more then some fatass stuffing his face because he can? I hope so otherwise the entire idea of the article is waisted on the space between you eyes and ears.
And for the record, In america, you don't need to be eating donuts, candy, soda pop, and cakes to get the fructose. It is happily embeded in canned soups, frozen foods and all sorts of other things like the breakfast cereal that is supposed to be good for you. Chances are, if you don't make it from scratch, you will come into contact with it.
Clearly people aren't taking the time to read the article (I'm shocked), so here's a summary of the fructose info...
Our consumption of fructose has gone from less than half a pound per year in 1970 to 56 pounds per year in 2003.
high fructose corn syrup came on the market after it was invented in Japan in 1966, and started finding its way into American foods in 1975. In 1980 the soft drink companies started introducing it into soft drinks and you can actually trace the prevalence of childhood obesity, and the rise, to 1980 when this change was made.
it's not the calories that are different it's the fact that the only organ in your body that can take up fructose is your liver. Glucose, the standard sugar, can be taken up by every organ in the body, only 20% of glucose load ends up at your liver. So let's take 120 calories of glucose, that's two slices of white bread as an example, only 24 of those 120 calories will be metabolised by the liver, the rest of it will be metabolised by your muscles, by your brain, by your kidneys, by your heart etc.. Now let's take 120 calories of orange juice. Same 120 calories but now 60 of those calories are going to be fructose because fructose is half of sucrose and sucrose is what's in orange juice. So it's going to be all the fructose, that's 60 calories, plus 20% of the glucose, so that's another 12 out of 60 -- so in other words 72 out of the 120 calories will hit the liver, three times the substrate as when it was just glucose alone.
fructose [does] three things that are particularly bad in the liver. The first is this uric acid pathway that I just mentioned, the second is that fructose initiates what's known as de novo lipogenesis...Which is fat production...Excess fat production and so VLDL [the bad form of cholesterol], very low density lipoproteins end up being manufactured when you consume this large bolus of fructose in a way that glucose does not, and so that leads to dyslipidaemia.
And then the last thing that fructose does in the liver is it initiates an enzyme called Junk one, ...and when you initiate Junk one what happens is that your insulin receptor in your liver stops working...that means your insulin levels all over your body have to rise.
put all of this together and basically you've got a feed forward system of increased insulin, increased liver fat, liver deposition of fat, increased inflammation -- you end up with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. You end up with your inability to see your leptin [**leptin tells your brain you are full**] and so you consume more fructose and you've now got a viscious cycle out of control.
In fact fructose, because of the way it's metabolised, is actually damaging your liver the same way alcohol is. In fact it's the exact same pathway, in fact fructose is alcohol without the buzz.
Don't confuse the issues.. Yes, sugar is bad for you in large amounts, but real sugar is a whole lot better than the corn sugar crap that is used everywhere in the US. The nice thing about real sugar is that it is a natural appetite inhibitor, which means that you will not be hungry after drinking a non-US produced Coca-Cola, in fact you are more likely to forget to eat all together, since Cafeine is also a appetite inhibitor (Many European computer nerds are unhealthly skinny as a result).
The problem is the corn sirup, that both contains high amounts of carbs, and will leave you hungry after drinking it.
I took organic chemistry so I understand what the ingredient are (at least on the basic structural level) and can pronunce them very well ;).
Anyway the argument is a bad one (and remind me of the argument of people saying "oh god they are adding chemicals in our food") If you took normal organic growing food and we told you the list of stuff inside it, you would not understand half of it, still that would not make it more or less dangerous. 2-oxo-L-threo-hexono-1,4- lactone-2,3-enediol is an example of it. Naturally I could call it L-ascorbate too. Or maybe vitamin C. The problem are not that people don't understand what the smallest ingredient part in ppm or milli% of their food composition is, the problem is that people ignore totally the composition of the main ingredient, like fat, and refuse to do sport, and eat a lot during the day way way more than is necessary for their activities, and not equilibrated. It is a LIFESTYLE problem. It ain't one signle factor but a combination of many. And no, the ingredient you can't pronunce without having being in university ain't the problem.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"There are plenty of ways to get obese and, yes, shockingly, the most common ones include eating all sorts of calorie rich food without giving your body a way to expend those calories."
That's true to an extent, but our bodies are in fact designed to expel unneeded calories. The sensitivity of these triggers seems to differ from person to person, which is one reason some people can eat anything they want without gaining weight, while others can count calories and still become obese.
I was in the latter group. Exercising daily and eating quite well, yet ending up in my mid-twenties at an overweight 230 pounds. It turns out carbohydrates -- and especially sugars like fructose -- cause a rapid blood sugar spike and insulin production, which in turn triggers your body to conserve excess calories in fat cells. At last, I stopped eating less and started eating differently -- no sugars and starches, but plenty of protein and fat -- and dropped 75 pounds so quickly I astonished everyone I knew. Without the carb/insulin trigger, your body naturally uses only the calories it needs and eliminates the rest.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Less about respect, and more about fear of being ostracized. Sure you'll get away with it a few times, but not too many times. People have eyes, and you really never get to hear what other people say about you in Japan. Pretty important stuff when you generally end up getting to know your community better since your on foot allot more, and on public transportation. Once you are caught, and have a black mark for doing something bad, you'll spend a damn long time clawing your way outa that hole if you ever can. It's easy to sluff off personal guilt in other countries, but in one thats so entrenched with the idea of personal guilt...it's hard to have it not rub off on you after a while. Theres others, but thats a big one I've noticed.
From my read of TFA, fructose breaks down in the body the way alcohol does. The liver has to do all the work (glucose is mainly broken down directly in muscles and organs, where it is useful), and turns it to fat, while not raising insulin levels. Not raising insulin levels means the body doesn't know it has enough sugar already, which means apetite doesn't decrease in the amount it should.
Now, fruits have the exact same fructose in it. Why are fruits better? For one, they come with other nutrients. For another, to consume the amount of fructose in a glass of coke, you'd have to eat a whole bushel of apples. The logistics prevent you from overindulging in fruits, while soda's are all about overindulging.
Largely because they seem to have made no attempt to really buy cheap foods. The biggest one would be rice. You can get an amazing amount of calories from rice and that shit is dirt cheap. It is also soaks up flavours really well so you can season it easily, and cheaply. You should be able to get rice in a 50 pound bag for around $14. Now given that you get about 220 calories per cup and a cup weighs 7 oz or so that's about 25,000 calories per bag, or a while weeks worth of calories for one large person.
Using that as a staple, you find that you now have more to spend on other things. You also will discover that rice is quite healthy.
Now please don't think I'm arguing that people should have to live off of a couple bucks a day for food, but realise that these congress people aren't doing it right. When it comes to really cutting food budget, you don't go to White Castle. You concentrate on materials which are cheap and have good calorie content. Rice is essentially the unbeatable champ in that area and hence forms your staple (it is not such a coincidence that it often forms the staple of diets for people more poor than is even conceivable in the US). Beans also work well, especially when purchased bagged and not canned, and they supply protein. Beans and rice, though not glorious, are just about enough on their own to sustain you.
If they are serious about seeing how to live on an extremely low budget for food, they should at least make an honest effort.
The BS is the /. article summary. From the transcript:
Robert Lustig: Well high fructose corn syrup, it should say that, now in Australia for instance the sodas don't have high fructose corn syrup they have sucrose. Well sucrose is half fructose. You know a lot has been made over this high fructose corn syrup being particularly evil. In fact high fructose corn syrup is either 42% or 55% fructose, the rest is glucose. Well sucrose is 50% fructose the rest is glucose. In fact high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are equally problematic.
Norman Swan: Basically table sugar.
Robert Lustig: Table sugar -- that's right. We were not designed to eat all of this sugar, we're supposed to be eating our carbohydrate, particularly our fructose, with high fibre. Well the fact is we have 100 pound bags of sugar that go into the cakes, and the donuts.
Norman Swan: So we don't need to get obsessed on fruit sugars, it's sugar itself, sucrose.
Robert Lustig: Absolutely, it's sugar in general.
---
So don't blame the article, blame the summarizer. I've read (but can't link) that the difference between the current American diet and the diet in the 50's is almost exclusively the amount of sugar eaten.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The remarks about bran are only partially correct. All bran is not the same. Wheat bran, contrary to the implication, is bad for you and has no dietary benefits. It irritates the intestines and blocks the absorption of nutrients. It is a myth that whole wheat bread has more vitamins and minerals and is therefore better for you than white bread. Yes, it has more vitamins and minerals. No it is not therefore better for you, because they are not accessible. What matters is not what is in it, what matters is what you can get out of it. The problem is phytates, which prevent absorption of minerals.
The right way to eat wheat bread is the way that was traditional until the rise of the steam baked industrial rapid rise loaf. That is,first, a slow fermenting rise, usually overnight. This makes the bread both lower GI index, and also more digestible. Second, flour which is not whole wheat but is relatively high extraction. This the so called grey flour of traditional French bread. Until modern times, when people talked about 'white' bread, what they meant was bread without the bran, a greyish color, but containing the germ.
The extraction rate varies from 75% or less for conventional white flour to 85% for brown but not wholewheat flour. In countries where bread is the staple, the extraction rate is usually in the low eighties and this is probably the sensible level. The rate in the US during WWII was raised to 80% - similarly in the UK, or perhaps a little higher. It would be a dramatic step forward for modern diets if it could be placed at that level today.
The same points apply to rice bran, which also should be avoided. It is striking that traditional cultures with long histories of healthy eating invariably mill rice and refine wheat, but never try remove oat bran. Both wheat and rice bran are better used by feeding to poultry, when the conversion into high quality protein is a much better use for it than irritating the human bowel to no nutritional effect.
Oat bran is in a completely different category. It does not irritate the bowel, and its nutrients are available. I believe the same to be true of spelt.
Its worth remarking that probably one of the main causes of obesity is the obsession with the low fat diet. Without any real evidence, we have embarked on a gigantic nutritional experiment in the Anglo Saxon countries over the last 30-40 years. We have gone from diets which were reasonably balanced in terms of saturated fats and complex carbohydrates, to ones which attempted to eliminate all saturated fats. However, the natural and normal craving for some fats has led to the substitution of polyunsaturated fats for saturated. There is no evidence that this is healthy, and much that it is far worse. In addition, since the available high carb foods are highly refined, we have then substitued for potatoes, rice and pasta, much sugar, including fructose. The result is a diet far worse than what we started with, and one which our evolutionary history has never prepared us for.
It is not an accident that this has happened at a time that the health food movement has metamorphosed into the supplements industry.
So what should we eat? Liberal amounts of meat, fish eggs butter and full-fat, non-homogenized milk. Absolutely no refined vegetable oils. Moderate amounts of mono-unsaturated vegetable oils (olive and peanut). No corn oil, safflower oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, margarine. Liberal amounts of vegetables of all sorts. Liberal amounts of sourdough bread made with coarse white flour. Similarly pasta. White, not brown, rice. Parboiled is OK. Fruits in season. And fruit juice, if at all, in great moderation.
Exercise well, and stay off the scales! Because the other great cause of obesity in Western society is the practice of dieting, which, as many studies have shown, simply leads to long term weight gain.
The body regulates the rate of breakdown of sucrose (into fructose and glucose) through the enzyme sucrase. Ingesting fructose-glucose mixtures bypasses your body's regulation mechanism, resulting in faster uptake and greater stress on the body's other sugar-regulation mechanisms, such as insulin.
In the end, greater stress on a body system results in it wearing out sooner, hence the epidemic of adult-onset diabetes.
High-fructose corn syrup is NOT the same as sucrose. People with sucrose intolerance lack the enzyme and cannot properly digest sucrose.
Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.
4 -2006/jihanki.jpg
m ini_en/pic_mini/life031.jpg
Carbonated soda is not "very rare". And Coca Cola machines without soda only exist when other Coca Cola machines *with* soda sit right next to them.
Japanese vending machines almost always exist in multiple units - it's actually uncommon to see a single vending machine by itself. In the event that you *do*, that vending machine will *always* have at least one, and usually two or more flavors of carbonated soda. When vending machines are paired together, they have one particular kind of drink in each, so yes, of course you will only find carbonated drinks in one out of the four or five machines in any given spot. But they're always there.
This is a typical single-unit Suntory machine installation:
http://www.japonophile.com/wp-content/uploads/200
And the same for Coke:
http://z.about.com/d/gojapan/1/0/8/2/machine2.gif
This is a more common multi-machine installation:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/deai_korea/contents/teacher/
(I know the url says "korea", but that's Japan. Here is the original page it's from.)
It is true that Japan has much more variety of drink types in their vending machines than we do. But I disagree that their drinks are all that much healthier. Their vending machines contain drinks of the following types:
a) Canned iced coffee - always sweetened
b) Soda
c) Beer
d) Sweetened, processed juice drinks (their equivalent to "Sunny Delight")
e) Iced tea (unsweetened)
Of those, only tea is even remotely healthy and calorie-free. And it's true that it's usually available for those who want it. But then, diet soda is always available at vending machines here too; not as healthy as tea, but at least calorie-free and non-obesity forming. Most people choose something else, in both countries.
Our problem is portion control. The standard bottle size in vending machines here is 20oz. A Japanese canned coffee is I think 7oz. Big difference. We're drinking almost three times the sugar in our sugar drinks as they are, just because we're drinking a lot more of it. (This extends beyond vending machines too; go to McDonald's there and the "large" drink is the same size as a "small" here.)
Combined with the rest of their diet, which is a lot less fatty and rich in calories, and with a lot smaller portions, and of course they're in better shape. Though with the rise of fast food there, they're fattening up now just like we already have. (Most articles on this are a bit alarmist, IMO - it's still obvious that they're in pretty good shape, but obesity rates are rising.)
It's really not rocket science why we're all getting fat. Too many calories, too big portions. It drives me crazy how people read stuff like "fructose makes you fat!" and think they can just cut out fructose and lose weight. Meanwhile, they're still eating double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fries and two apple pies for lunch and wondering why they're still getting fat. The culprit to gaining weight is calories. That's it. Simple laws of physics. All of these foods that supposedly "cause" obesity do so because they are high in calories and low in nutrients. That includes fructose. The bottom line is you need to control your calorie intake, which means both controlling the types of food you eat as well as the amounts.
Somewhat related to a number of the comments....
A book was published about a year ago, "Mindless Eating". It discussed the various factors that cause us to overeat and undereat. (The latter is a serious problem in combat situations in the military. It's one thing for a civilian to lose 20 pounds of fat, it's another thing for a fighting soldier to lose 20 pounds of muscle.)
It's easy to say "eat less/eat healthier", but that requires far more attention than you realize. Marketers are NOT trying to get you to eat poorly, they just want you to buy from them instead of the competitor. If everyone wanted broccoli, there would be broccoli stands on every corner.
Most people want something fast, cheap and filling. Chains have tried introducing healthier fare periodically (e.g., Taco Bell had 'lite' choices for awhile), but they weren't popular enough to be economically viable. But offer a larger standard drink or more fries and your sales climb, so you get a downward spiral that results in a pound of french fries and people drinking 64 ounces of soda.
Worse, this "renormalizes" what people expect. Did you know that coke bottles were originally 8 fl oz? Then pepsi introduced a standard 10 fl oz bottle as a marketing gimmick. Vending machines stabilized things at 12 oz for a while (since you had to stay at the standard size to be sold in the machine), but fast food restaurants competed with each other with larger and larger cups, free refills, etc. You could always buy a smaller size but that's psychologically hard when you get half as much drink but pay nearly the same price.
Ditto coffee. It used to be a cup or two in the morning, perhaps with a bit of cream. Then Starbucks came into the market and the sizes have not only increased, the amount of fat and sugar has exploded. People who would never consider drinking a milk shake every day (or even twice a day!) do this without thinking twice when it's a fancy Starbucks drink. If you want a cup (8 oz) of black coffee... good luck!
I think the most telling story was some guy at a yard sale(?) who asked if the seller had any more dinner plates in a set from the 40s. He was holding a serving platter. Historically dinner plates were around 8", but now they're usually 12" (iirc), or over twice as much area. People tend to fill their plates so we're eating a lot more food without thinking about it. Now look at sit-down restaurant chains (Chili's, Olive Garden, etc.) They're selling presentation so they use larger plates than you have at home, and they fill those plates. It's not an exaggeration to say that they serve 3 or 4 solid servings, nutritionally speaking.
This is gradual enough that most people aren't aware that it's happening, but we are eating a lot more food and finding it harder to eat the correct portions. How often have you seen a 6'+ adult order from the child's menu?
Does this excuse people from TRYING? No, of course not. But arrogant "people should know better" tirades don't help since changes requires us to be aware of the subtle changes that have lead us to the current selections and portion sizes.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken