Sugar blaming fat...

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Pretty much on the money. Sugar is as close to poison to your body as it gets. And this from someone who believes in getting LDL cholesterol down as much as possible. Sugar may actually be worse. It really is an inflammatory substance that does damage to your arteries. That is the good part of statins: they significantly reduce inflammation in arteries. They can be prescribed for this alone.

Unfortunately for me is that lately I have developed a craving for gourmet liquorice lol.
 
This is the problem with industry funded research. Inherent conflicts of interest. Unfortunately as research universities get their budgets butchered, industry funded grants will become more prevalent.

Al I hate to disagree with you but everything is toxic in the wrong doses. Sugar actually is good for athletes immediately after a hard event and even Robert Lustig the biggest anti sugar advocate has said this. Sugar is also toxic in the presence of excess calories. Beyond that, the mechanisms for why sugar is not heart healthy are not well understood. So things have to be taken into context. I am not saying drink soda and eat cake as a normal lifestyle choice. I personally try to avoid all processed foods. But demonizing one ingredient seems to be a long tradition in nutrition research which is why it's a mess.
 
Sugar is not bad for you; neither is fat (if you actually ate a fat-free diet, you would have about three months to live). It's the quantity that is the issue; when sugar is in 80% of the items in the average US supermarket, there's the problem.
 
Originally Posted By: KrisZ
There is plenty of research available from the 50s and 60s before big corps started intervening. They all put sugar on par or even worse than fat on the effects on the cardiovascular system.


In the 1930s, Walter Kempner did experiments putting people on low fat, sugar/white rice diets and it reversed their diabetes. Head scratching isn't it?

My takeaway from that is not that everyone should go on a fat free sugar/white rice diet (which is how standard nutrition researchers and journalist would interpret it). Rather the composition of your overall diet matters a heck of a lot.

It's like broccoli. Great vegetable. But some bonehead scientist can always put people on a 90% broccoli diet for six months. Then the subjects will be unhealthy with probably messed up thyroids. A few subjects will probably even be dead. And then they will declare that brocooli is toxic and bad for you.

Yes, that is an extreme example, but unfortunately, this is how a lot of nutrition research works. Step 1: Totally OD the subjects on a single ingredient. Step 2: Watch adverse health outcome. Step 3: Declare ingredient bad for you.
 
Originally Posted By: Johnny2Bad
Sugar is not bad for you;


There is sugar, and then there is sugar.

Naturally-occurring sugars are less harmful, as I understand it, for two reasons:
1) Sugars present in food are accompanied by the micro and macro nutrients inherent in the food; thereby balancing the sugars - be they fructose, lactose, glucose, etc. - with everything from vitamins and minerals that affect how we metabolize calories to other macronutrients that direct how our bodies metabolize calories to digestive enzymes and other subtleties that affect the efficacy of our digestion.
2) Sucrose (table sugar), chemically, is an insanely simple sugar. Its absorption into our system is so fast and so hard that our bodies are compelled into states of insulin spikes and wildly varying energy levels. There is a growing body of research on this phenomenon that paints a scary picture of what it does to our brains, among other elements of our bodies.

Table sugar of the processed kind is bad, bad news.
 
BTW, I predict that when the anti-sugar fad ends, protein will be next. We've cycled through fat, and carbs/sugar. Protein hasn't had it's day yet. But MIT just recently fired the first salve showing that what really fuels cancer cell growth is not glucose but amino acids.

Got my popcorn ready.
 
Originally Posted By: Balrog006
Originally Posted By: sciphi
And in other news, water is wet, dogs bark, and plants crave Brawndo.


Water?!? Like from the toilet?


I know!

That's gross!

And, Brawndo has electrolytes!
 
A colleague once described it this way: Consider three building blocks of food - sugars, fats and protein. We have evolved eating natural stuff with sugar/protein (eg nuts) and fat/protein (eg meat) but in nature there ain't no doughnut trees (sugar and fat together). It is a huge generalisation, but as a rule of thumb makes some sense.
 
Linus Pauling found that elevated insulin levels in any individual artery created arthereosclerosis.

Move the insulin elevation to another artery and the original would clear and the new one block up.
 
Originally Posted By: VeeDubb
BTW, I predict that when the anti-sugar fad ends, protein will be next.


The War on Protein is already afoot: "The China Study"; one of the most oft-referenced pieces of research cited by vegetarians and vegans, indicts an amino acid called Casein (found primarily in animal sources) as a cause of cancer.

My "takeaways" from all of the research I have done into nutrition are these:

1) Eat whole, natural, fresh, seasonal foods and it is hard to go wrong.
2) "Experts" are numerous enough and varied enough in their perceptions and influences that the case can be made for or against pretty much anything... Except sucrose!
3) With apologies to Jethro Kloss, author of "Back to Eden" around 100 years ago, for loosely paraphrasing: "If you're not happy, living a good life, loving and laughing, none of this nutritional advice matters anyhow."
 
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
2) "Experts" are numerous enough and varied enough in their perceptions and influences that the case can be made for or against pretty much anything...!


Yes, indeed. A recent study suggests frequent sex after age 50 will lead to cardiovascular problems in men: http://us.blastingnews.com/lifestyle/201...-001104201.html


Just showing this for educational value. Can't be discussed here due to the no RSP flyover zone.
 
Originally Posted By: weasley
...but in nature there ain't no doughnut trees (sugar and fat together). It is a huge generalisation, but as a rule of thumb makes some sense.


There are numerous natural foods that contain fat & carbs. Avocado, coconuts, olives, to name some. Grains, beans, lentils, etc, contain fat as well.

Even if there weren't any foods that naturally had both fat & carbs, that wouldn't prevent our ancient ancestors from eating fat & carbs together. Just eat an orange and some peanuts, and viola...
 
Originally Posted By: xfactor9
te]

There are numerous natural foods that contain fat & carbs.

Carbs are not the same as simple sugars. All simple sugars are carbs but not all carbs are simple sugars...few are.
 
Originally Posted By: VeeDubb
BTW, I predict that when the anti-sugar fad ends, protein will be next. We've cycled through fat, and carbs/sugar. Protein hasn't had it's day yet. But MIT just recently fired the first salve showing that what really fuels cancer cell growth is not glucose but amino acids.

Got my popcorn ready.


I don't think this will happen. The reason for this is because there are a ton of manufactures not catering specifically towards "protein packs" or these small expensive $5 15grams of protein snacks. On top of that there are always things indicating people need to eat more protein because their intake isn't enough.

But time well tell, no...lol

I think the key to being healthy is moderation. It blows my mind how fat free/ sugar free our society has become. Food tastes like [censored] now. Do you know how hard it is to get normal Greek yogurt where the fat content is 5% or above?? It's like trying to find a unicorn. Everyone has it drilled in their minds that fat is the devil and it will kill you so they want to eat no products that contain fat.

If people educated themselves rather than following all these fads we'd probably take a couple steps forward. Instead we keep getting modified foods that have so many artificial ingredents to mimic what a normal piece of food would have from nature.
That's one thing I love when we travel overseas is the food, actually tastes like food, and fresh at that!

-Nigel
 
Originally Posted By: weasley
A colleague once described it this way: Consider three building blocks of food - sugars, fats and protein. We have evolved eating natural stuff with sugar/protein (eg nuts) and fat/protein (eg meat) but in nature there ain't no doughnut trees (sugar and fat together). It is a huge generalisation, but as a rule of thumb makes some sense.


Yes good point. I can't think of a fatty really sweet tasting fruit. Lots of extreme diets that are high in one and low in the other seem to be able to reverse healthy issues regardless of whether it is low fat/high sugar or high fat/low sugar.

The Kempner/Ornish/80-10-10 high carb/sugar low fat diets seem to work in reversing diabetes and heart disease.

But some of the high fat/low carb/sugar diets also seem to help people with certain chronic issues.

It seems that when you combine fat with sugar, that's when the fireworks start.
 
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