Sugar,the Enemy or just over used?

[MMX]

Interesting article.

The one item I cut totally out of my diet as it is in tons of food in the USA is High Fructose Corn Syrup. Many articles claim that HFCS cannot be processed by your body the same way sugar can. I would agree with that. AS I cut it out I immediately lost more weight than I had before.

This article is about sugar and sweeteners in general but also that the food industry is just as bad as the auto/oil industry when it comes money…

www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129540.500-sugar-on-trial-what-you-really-need-to-know.html

[meguro]

If you prepare most of your meals from scratch, no processed ingredients, you can avoid many of these modern health hazards. Just say no to prepackaged food. I have to admit that it is hard to say no to a bag of Doritos.

[Ros]

Feb 1, 2014 21:21:34 GMT -5 MMX said:

Interesting article. The one item I cut totally out of my diet as it is in tons of food in the USA is High Fructose Corn Syrup. Many articles claim that HFCS cannot be processed by your body the same way sugar can. I would agree with that. AS I cut it out I immediately lost more weight than I had before. This article is about sugar and sweeteners in general but also that the food industry is just as bad as the auto/oil industry when it comes money… www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129540.500-sugar-on-trial-what-you-really-need-to-know.html

High fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose and 45% glucose; table sugar is 50% fructose and 50% glucose, so I wonder why the body would process one so diffferently?

I imagine part of the reason you lost weight just by cutting out HFCS is that you stopped eating all the high-fat, high-sugar, calorie dense food it's added to and therefore cut your calorie intake.

My feeling is that there is no one food that is 'bad' or 'the enemy' but that our general habits of consumption need to change: as Meguro said, more towards preparing your own food and away from convenience food.

[meguro]

It is a pain for me to provide the link at the moment, but I did read that fructose is more easily converted to fat in the liver than glucose. The article went on to describe some other effects of HFCS including a higher incidence of diabetes, a suger related type of cirrhosis, premature aging, neuropathy, retinopathy and a bunch of other things that made me question that banana walnut muffin I had for breakfast.

[Ros]

Feb 3, 2014 9:15:36 GMT -5 meguro said:

It is a pain for me to provide the link at the moment, but I did read that fructose is more easily converted to fat in the liver than glucose. The article went on to describe some other effects of HFCS including a higher incidence of diabetes, a suger related type of cirrhosis, premature aging, neuropathy, retinopathy and a bunch of other things that made me question that banana walnut muffin I had for breakfast.

I don't think there's any evidence that HFCS is any worse for you than sucrose - the constituents are nearly identical, it's just that HFCS is used more than sucrose because it's cheaper to produce.

Another article about sugar from Scientific American:

blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/07/15/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/

It does say that a lot of the studies linking fructose to increased fat production, fatty liver etc. have been carried out in which rodents (who metabolise fructose differently from us) or humans consumed far more fructose than would normally be encountered in the diet. Interestingly, fructose consumption has been declining for more than a decade.

Bottom line, we should all live more healthily (which includes eating less sugar). Who'd have thought that the answer to losing weight and being healthy would be a sensible diet and lifestyle?  

[meguro]

Feb 3, 2014 10:51:04 GMT -5 Ros said:

Feb 3, 2014 9:15:36 GMT -5 meguro said:

It is a pain for me to provide the link at the moment, but I did read that fructose is more easily converted to fat in the liver than glucose. The article went on to describe some other effects of HFCS including a higher incidence of diabetes, a suger related type of cirrhosis, premature aging, neuropathy, retinopathy and a bunch of other things that made me question that banana walnut muffin I had for breakfast.

I don't think there's any evidence that HFCS is any worse for you than sucrose - the constituents are nearly identical, it's just that HFCS is used more than sucrose because it's cheaper to produce.

Another article about sugar from Scientific American:

blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/07/15/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/

It does say that a lot of the studies linking fructose to increased fat production, fatty liver etc. have been carried out in which rodents (who metabolise fructose differently from us) or humans consumed far more fructose than would normally be encountered in the diet. Interestingly, fructose consumption has been declining for more than a decade.

Bottom line, we should all live more healthily (which includes eating less sugar). Who'd have thought that the answer to losing weight and being healthy would be a sensible diet and lifestyle?  

This is a very interesting presentation on why fructose is not metabolized by the body like glucose. Basically, the claim is that fructose is ethanol without the buzz.