an excess of either fat or sugar or starch or protein in one's diet can be very harmful to health but for some irrational reasons for many years fat was the only one irrationally labelled as 'bad' for health. Just like most edible things, none of them are 'bad' if you don't overeat any one of them.
Out of fat, sugar, starch and protein, sugar is the only one you could do without (for optimum health that is) as starch alone can provide all the carbohydrate requirements you need but with a much less and therefore a much less harmful blood-sugar spike after each meal. In addition, sugar is addictive, encouraging people to overeat, while starch isn't.
One problem is that much nutrition 'research' is only funded by companies wanting 'science' to back up their
product claims.
And while they probably mostly don't deliberately distort the science, they tend to pick scientists who already
support their product [for whatever reason] even if those scientists are a fringe minority.
This, among other factors, biases the research, which is why you get wildly differing claims week to week
in the papers about products that are supposed to have this or that property...
This means that sadly you cannot trust almost all of this research, we are building houses upon sand.
There are measures that can be done to help fix this, but sadly government is much more concerned
with medical rather than nutritional research and there are enough concerns with that to keep them
occupied.
Originally posted by googlefudge And while they probably mostly don't deliberately distort the science, they tend to pick scientists who already support their product [for whatever reason] even if those scientists are a fringe minority.
This, among other factors, biases the research, which is why you get wildly differing claims week to week
in the papers about products that are supposed to have this or that property...
In addition to your points, there is extreme bias in the media as to what gets reported. People are perceived to be looking for an easy way out of obesity or someone to blame for it all, so any story that can label one particular food as the culprit or can name a miracle food that will solve everything gets far more press coverage.
The story in the OP is a case in point.
Originally posted by humy an excess of either fat or sugar or starch or protein in one's diet can be very harmful to health but for some irrational reasons for many years fat was the only one irrationally labelled as 'bad' for health. Just like most edible things, none of them are 'bad' if you don't overeat any one of them.
Out of fat, sugar, starch and protein, sugar is the only one y ...[text shortened]... r each meal. In addition, sugar is addictive, encouraging people to overeat, while starch isn't.
the article states this,
The proportion of energy we get from protein tends to stay stable, whatever our diet.
Originally posted by robbie carrobie the article states this,
The proportion of energy we get from protein tends to stay stable, whatever our diet.
Why should this be the case?
I honestly don't know. But I know from research I have read that too much protein, just as too little of it, is bad for your health. So if that has little or nothing to do with the amount of energy you get from protein, it must be for some other reasons.
Originally posted by twhitehead It shouldn't be the case and is clearly untrue.
It does seem pretty odd unless we are missing something here.
One would naturally think that if you eat x amount of protein, it would have a fixed y number of calories that would surely all enter your body into your blood stream and eventually be all broken down and turned into energy one way or another even if initially it was not directly turned into energy but was turned into some of your muscle protein or other bodily proteins.
Originally posted by humy I honestly don't know. But I know from research I have read that too much protein, just as too little of it, is bad for your health. So if that has little or nothing to do with the amount of energy you get from protein, it must be for some other reasons.
Not enough fats or carbs. This was explained by survivor man when he was eating rabbit/hare.
Originally posted by googlefudge One problem is that much nutrition 'research' is only funded by companies wanting 'science' to back up their
product claims.
And while they probably mostly don't deliberately distort the science, they tend to pick scientists who already
support their product [for whatever reason] even if those scientists are a fringe minority.
This, among other f ...[text shortened]... ather than nutritional research and there are enough concerns with that to keep them
occupied.
And while they probably mostly don't deliberately distort the science
Fail. They do. You cannot have read through the article before writing that.
Those keen to argue the merits of Science, its Popperian integrity and rigorous falsifiability, must come to terms with the sheer corruption of science in the past century.
While this article focuses on the deficiencies of nutrition science, it does not extrapolate to consider the association with the food industry which sponsors too much of the research and the extent to which American government in particular is in the pocket of corporate interests. Publicly funded research in Europe was producing contrary evidence which American interests worked hard to suppress.
Originally posted by humy It does seem pretty odd unless we are missing something here.
One would naturally think that if you eat x amount of protein, it would have a fixed y number of calories that would surely all enter your body into your blood stream and eventually be all broken down and turned into energy one way or another even if initially it was not directly turned into energy but was turned into some of your muscle protein or other bodily proteins.
if you eat x amount of protein, it would have a fixed y number of calories that would surely all enter your body into your blood stream and eventually be all broken down and turned into energy one way or another
Our bodies do not passively ingest and retain everything we eat. You must have noticed that we eliminate quite a lot. We identify our requirements in response to information about our internal state. The problem with sugar and refined carbohydrates generally is the way they confuse our body's information systems. Here is the key paragraph:
prewar European researchers would have regarded the idea that obesity results from “excess calories” as laughably simplistic. Biochemists and endocrinologists are more likely to think of obesity as a hormonal disorder, triggered by the kinds of foods we started eating a lot more of when we cut back on fat: easily digestible starches and sugars. In his new book, Always Hungry, David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, calls this the “Insulin-Carbohydrate” model of obesity. According to this model, an excess of refined carbohydrates interferes with the self-balancing equilibrium of the metabolic system.
Far from being an inert dumping ground for excess calories, fat tissue operates as a reserve energy supply for the body. Its calories are called upon when glucose is running low – that is, between meals, or during fasts and famines. Fat takes instruction from insulin, the hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar. Refined carbohydrates break down at speed into glucose in the blood, prompting the pancreas to produce insulin. When insulin levels rise, fat tissue gets a signal to suck energy out of the blood, and to stop releasing it. So when insulin stays high for unnaturally long, a person gains weight, gets hungrier, and feels fatigued. Then we blame them for it. But, as Gary Taubes puts it, obese people are not fat because they are overeating and sedentary – they are overeating and sedentary because they are fat, or getting fatter.
Notice how eating low fat foods can result in substituting far more dangerous alternatives to fat in order to recover flavour; specifically sugar, which is poisonous. That is why government advice to eat a low fat diet helped to spark an obesity epidemic.
Originally posted by lemon lime Aha, I knew it... a conspiracy to get me to stop using sugar.
Correct. Remind us why you would want to continue using sugar?
Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in modern diets, is a “poison” culpable for America’s obesity epidemic.
A year or so before the video was posted, Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia. Afterwards, a scientist in the audience approached him. Surely, the man said, you’ve read Yudkin. Lustig shook his head. John Yudkin, said the scientist, was a British professor of nutrition who had sounded the alarm on sugar back in 1972, in a book called Pure, White, and Deadly. “If only a small fraction of what we know about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive,” wrote Yudkin, “that material would promptly be banned.”
Originally posted by finnegan Correct. Remind us why you would want to continue using sugar?
Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in modern diets, is a “poison” culpable for America’s obesity epidemic.
A year or so before the video was posted, Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia. Afterwards, a scienti ...[text shortened]... terial used as a food additive,” wrote Yudkin, “that material would promptly be banned.”
Well, for one thing not all sugars are created equal. I only use turbinado cane sugar now instead of white or brown... brown sugar is often just white with some molasses put back in. I don't like the sugar spike I feel with the strictly white (over processed) sugars.
I'm usually suspicious of any organized campaign telling me what I should eat and avoid eating. For example, I don't trust people who tell me tobacco is a killer but smoking pot is okay. Yeah, right... there's no health risk smoking dope if you like smoking dope.
The same goes for certain foods. I'm tired of listening to people who don't bother to think about what they're saying when crusading to ban or discourage particular foods... and if you look close enough, you can often find political motivations behind some of those claims that have nothing to do with health benefits vs health dangers.
Originally posted by lemon lime Well, for one thing not all sugars are created equal. I only use turbinado cane sugar now instead of white or brown... brown sugar is often just white with some molasses put back in. I don't like the sugar spike I feel with the strictly white (over processed) sugars.
I'm usually suspicious of any organized campaign telling me what I should eat and avoi ...[text shortened]... ions behind some of those claims that have nothing to do with health benefits vs health dangers.
The BBC, a higly respected and almost parental source of advice to the British public, offers recipes to use corn syrup at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/corn_syrup
Corn syrup recipes
A common ingredient in the US, corn syrup is made by adding enzymes to corn starch, which turns it into a thick syrup of dextrose, maltose and/or glucose. It comes in two flavours – dark and light. Light corn syrup is very sweet, like golden syrup while dark corn syrup is similar in flavour to molasses. Corn syrup is used widely in the food industry for sweetening soft drinks, alcohol, ketchup and pickles.
In the light of the evidence cited in that Guardian article, what would you say about the continuing promotion of such recipes without the slightest hint of grounds for concern? Indeed, it is normalised by assuring us that it is a common ingredient in so many foods (so how could that be a reason to worry??)
I sort of recognise the passive aggression in your determination not to be told what to eat or what not to eat but why can't you see that the problem here is we are not only encouraged to eat this sh it, we are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid eating it as it is squirted into so many different foods in utterly insane quantities?
07 Apr '16 15:275 edits
the sugar consiracy
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