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How the Sugar Industry Tried To Hide Health Effects of Its Product 50 Years Ago (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: About 50 years ago, the sugar industry stopped funding research that began to show something they wanted to hide: that eating lots of sugar is linked to heart disease. A new study exposes the sugar industry's decades-old effort to stifle that critical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, recently analyzed historical documents regarding a rat study called Project 259 that was launched in 1968. The study was funded by a sugar industry trade group called the International Sugar Research Foundation, or ISRF, and conducted by W. F. R. Pover at the University of Birmingham. When the preliminary findings from that study began to show that eating lots of sugar might be associated with heart disease, and even bladder cancer, the ISRF pulled the plug on the research. Without additional funding, the study was terminated and the results were never published, according to a study published today in PLOS Biology. The study in question investigated the relationship between sugars and certain blood fats called triglycerides, which increase the risk of heart disease. The preliminary results from the research, called Project 259, suggested that rats on a high-sugar diet, instead of a starch diet, had higher levels of triglycerides. The rats that ate lots of sugar also had higher levels of an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase in their urine, which at the time was thought to be potentially linked to bladder cancer, says study co-author Cristin Kearns, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry.
Read some of crusader Gary Taube's books to find out how institutions like Harvard and many more succumbed to industry research money that makes sugary foods an integral part of today's diet and yes, the ubiquitous Food Pyramid. Bought.And.Paid.For.
Sugar's an addictive drug, like opoids, nicotine, even social media and gaming. This is one of the US's favorite business models: addiction-- Profit!!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Have you ever looked at ingredients for stuff? Sugar is in EVERYTHING. Even stuff you wouldn't expect - like milk, or most peanut butter.
It's all poison.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A couple of sodas a day is moderation? lolwut? Just one 12 oz. Coca-Cola has over 40 g of sugar. Even only 2 cans a day is over 80 g of sugar and that’s not even remotely a “moderate amount.”
Table sugar (also called sucrose) and HFCS both consist of two simple sugars: fructose and glucose. The proportion of fructose and glucose in HFCS is basically the same ratio as table sugar, which is made of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Both sweeteners contain the same number of calories (4 calories per gram).
But the fructose and glucose in table sugar are chemically bonded together, and the body must first digest sugar to break these bonds before the body can absorb the fructose and glucose into the bloodstream. In contrast, the fructose and glucose found in HFCS are merely blended together, which means it doesn't need to be digested before it is metabolized and absorbed into the bloodstream. Because of this, theories abound that HFCS has a greater impact on blood glucose levels than regular sugar (sucrose). However, research has shown that there are no significant differences between HFCS and sugar (sucrose) when it comes to the production of insulin, leptin (a hormone that regulates body weight and metabolism), ghrelin (the "hunger" hormone), or the changes in blood glucose levels. In addition, satiety studies done on HFCS and sugar (sucrose) have found no difference in appetite regulation, feelings of fullness, or short-term energy intake. How can that be?
Well, the body digests table sugar very rapidly, too. And both HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) enter the bloodstream as glucose and fructose—the metabolism of which is identical. There is no significant difference in the overall rate of absorption between table sugar and HFCS, which explains why these two sweeteners have virtually the same effects on the body.
Sugars are a subset of carbs.
Athletes favor eating complex carbs over simple carbs like sugars.
So why is it so unlikely to suspect that the chemical industry is doing the same thing with GMOs?
Because a genetically modified plant is still made of the same stuff as any other plant. The proportions of these chemicals in these plants might be different but the fundamental chemistry is unchanged. If the proportions of the chemicals is different then the cause of any health issue is in the chemicals, not the genetics.
Suppose I have two different potatoes. One is a common variety of potato but was grown in soil that is rich in chromium. The other was grown in more typical soil but has been genetically modified in a way that makes it take chromium from the soil more efficiently. If someone shows up with poisoning from chromium do we blame the potato farmers for planting in high chromium soil or for planting a GMO?
If this is from growing crops in chromium rich soil we'd probably have the soil treated and the farmer would be held blameless. If this was from a GMO then we'd have people ready to have this farmer tarred and feathered. Both cases the farmer had no intent to harm anyone, and the poisoning would have been out of ignorance. It also would likely have been from someone eating a lot of "organic" potatoes from the same local community garden. Buying potatoes shipped in from long distances means the risk of such kind of poisoning is rare as the potatoes would be mixed from many locations.
Barring some freak side effect like a potato taking up a heavy metal from the soil the ability for a GMO to pose any health risk is non-existent. GMOs don't suddenly gain the ability to produce some crazy chemical structure. These plants must still be able to process air, water, and sun like any other plant. We can test for things like heavy metals, or bacteria growing on the plant, or whatever. We test for many of such risks and we treat plants for others, like using radiation to kill the bacteria on plants.
If you think that irradiating plants is also bad then you are doubly stupid. Stupid for thinking GMOs are bad and stupid twice over for thinking irradiating plants is also bad.
Think what you want though, that just means more potato chips for me.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Like corn that contains gluten.
Bullcrap. Corn, whether GMO or not, does not contain gluten.
(easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
I googled it, and came up with ... nothing. There was not a single reference to GMO corn containing gluten.
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad
You can imagine anything you want, but unless you can cite an example of a real (non-imaginary) GMO product available to the public that actually contains those genes, then your imagination is irrelevant.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Actually, its position varies over time--sometimes it's inside the Sun, and sometimes it isn't.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
But the fructose and glucose in table sugar are chemically bonded together, and the body must first digest sugar to break these bonds
The bonds get broken when the sucrose gets into contact with an acid, so basically as soon as it hits your stomach. That's why there's little difference in practice between eating HFCS or sucrose.
The acid is consumed by the process and must be replenished, which takes energy, hence why there's more than a little difference in practice between eating HFCS and sucrose.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I completely believe your story.
I used to make myself an iced mocha drink every day. I had the recipe perfected: my favorite espresso beans, the right amount of Hershey's syrup, a particular brand of vanilla soy milk I liked, and ice. So good. About 400 Calories (more properly: kcal) and almost all of the Calories from sugar.
I looked forward to drinking that every day. Some days I had two.
Then I read a book called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle that convinced me that refined carbs were a bad idea in general, and sugar a bad idea in particular. I had heard/read a lot of conflicting things about diet ("sugar is bad for you! no, fat is what you must avoid!") and this book didn't have any single shocking new thing, but put all the pieces together convincingly.
At the time my blood triglycerides level was worryingly high. From the book, I believed my diet was a major contributing factor, and I needed to stop enjoying my daily iced mochas.
When I stopped I really missed them. When I wasn't allowing myself to have them I started to really crave them.
I started drinking my espresso shots straight-up. No sugar, no milk, just espresso into my mouth. I figured: lots of people like black coffee; maybe I could learn to like it. After about a month I got used to the taste of coffee and started to like it. These days I drink strong coffee instead of straight-up espresso just so it takes a bit longer to drink and I have more time to enjoy it.
My blood triglycerides level went back down, by the way.
I think you had a more extreme case of this than I did, but I felt similar cravings and I totally believe your story.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What scientists (and athletes) have known for some time now is that a calorie is not just a calorie, and a carbohydrate is not just a carbohydrate. The nature of the nutritional source matters, even if the end product of its metabolism is the same caloric energy equivalent. And the reason, quite simply, is because different nutrients are converted to energy through different metabolic pathways in the body. In the past, the importance of this fact was not well-appreciated; even though some researchers had sought to point this out, they were largely regarded as being on the fringe of mainstream nutritional science. Much has changed, however, with the elucidation of these specific pathways and the more recent revelation of the relationship between the human gastrointestinal system and the microbiome that it contains.
To address your specific points, the energy content of a "complex" carbohydrate (e.g., what we commonly think of as starches or long-chain polysaccharides) is extracted more slowly than a simple carbohydrate (e.g., what we think of as "sugars" which are generally mono- or disaccharides). Comparatively, insulin levels do not rise as quickly in the digestion of the former; there is more "processing" to be done by the body to break those long chains down and ultimately get to the glucose that cells then directly utilize to create ATP. So the first lesson is that anything that slows the rate of gastric emptying, or the rate at which blood glucose elevates after a meal, is going to have a beneficial effect on insulin regulation. The second thing to understand is that fructose is a pentose sugar that is exclusively metabolized via the liver, unlike glucose. Sucrose (table sugar) is composed of one glucose and one fructose molecule. High fructose corn syrup is essentially sucrose with a higher proportion of fructose, making it sweeter (as fructose is sweeter than glucose). Complex carbohydrates are not high in fructose. But we now have ample evidence that the consequence of long-term, excessive fructose consumption in a low-fiber diet causes liver damage in the form of hepatic steatosis and inflammation. The liver and pancreas work overtime and can't keep up. In fact, this is precisely what foie gras is: overfeeding geese with corn mash until their livers turn to fat, except in humans, this result is self-induced due to the neurochemical effects of sugar consumption.
Regarding endurance athletes, I would not say that they are necessarily healthier: they have optimized their bodies for physical exertion (higher VO2max, lower resting HR, greater muscular efficiency, higher lean muscle to fat ratio, etc), but this does not exactly translate to better overall health as measured by factors like total longevity and disability-free lifetime. In fact, we know that many of these athletes suffer from long-term health complications as a result of their training and competition, such as arthritic disease. In any case, if we are talking about how they are able to consume vast quantities of food yet remain lean, this is simply a matter of energy consumed versus energy expended. Yet the quality of the diet remains important even if there are no obvious signs of metabolic damage--sure, they might not get a fatty liver because gluconeogenesis kicks in, but even they know that they can't just drink 10 liters of soda to carb load.
The main driver of obesity in the United States is gross overconsumption of food relative to the energy needs of the average sedentary American. This is the imbalance in the basic caloric equation (energy in > energy out). And I say it is "gross" not in the "yuck" sense, but in the "it's REALLY WAY over the top" sense, because we're seeing people eat upwards of 3500-4000 calories per day when their expenditures are in the 2000 range. The secondary driver, which is what we might think of as "kicking the liver while it's down," is the extreme preponderance of calories from refined sugars, which do not trigger the satiety response as quickly as the equivalent energy co
Just stop. Your basic facts about HFCS makeup and metabolism are wrong and therefore I assume the rest of what you are saying is shilling.
Unlike what you said, HFCS has four common versions with different quantities of fructose: HFCS-42 has 42% fructose. There is also, HFCS-55, HFCS-65, and HFCS-90, containing 90% fructose. Soft drinks typically use HFCS-55 or HFCS-65, but of course there's nothing on the labels to indicate which version of HFCS is being used.
Also, unlike what you said, fructose is not metabolized identically. Unlike glucose, fructose is metabolized nearly entirely in the liver, which is where the triglycerides are coming from (re: the article).
Disappointed that whoever modded you up didn't at least check Wikipedia first.