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Sugar is toxic
I just saw a really neat piece on CNN that was simple to understand and gave some really great hints but of course I can't find it up yet. The doctor also mentioned that cutting out white flour "is a given" she also recommended raw sugar to help wean and the agave nectar or coconut sap sugar which is her personal preference.
This piece is from 60 Minutes.
(CBS News) Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, believes the high amount of sugar in the American diet, much of it in processed foods, is killing us. And as Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports, new scientific research seems to support his theory that sugar is toxic, including some linking the excess ingestion of sugars to heart disease.
Gupta's report aired on 60 Minutes Sunday, April 1. Click here to see the full report.
Americans are now consuming nearly 130 pounds of added sugars per person, per year. Those include both sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And while many vilify high fructose corn syrup and believe it is worse than sugar, Dr. Lustig says metabolically there is no difference. "They are basically equivalent. The problem is they're both bad. They're both equally toxic," he says.
Dr. Lustig treats sick, obese children, who he believes are primarily sick because of the amount of sugar they ingest. He says this sugar not only leads to obesity, but to "Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease itself." Something needs to be done says Dr. Lustig. "Ultimately, this is a public health crisis...you have to do big things and you have to do them across the board," he tells Gupta. "Tobacco and alcohol are perfect examples," he says, referring to the regulations imposed on their consumption and the warnings on their labels. "I think sugar belongs in this exact same wastebasket."
A recent study supports the idea that excess consumption of high fructose corn syrup is linked to an increase in risk factors for heart disease by increasing a type of cholesterol that can clog arteries. The University of California, Davis, study also indicated that calories from added sugars are different than those from other foods. Subjects had 25 percent of their caloric intake replaced with sweetened drinks. Nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope was surprised to see that after only two weeks, "We found that the subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup had increased levels of LDL cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease," she tells Gupta. "I started eating and drinking a whole lot less sugar."
What happens says Stanhope, is the liver gets overloaded with fructose and converts come of it into fat, which gets into the bloodstream to create "small dense LDL," the kind of LDL that forms plaque in arteries. The irony here is that for precisely that reason - avoiding heart disease - a government commission in the 1970s mandated that we lower our fat consumption. "When you take the fat out of food, it tastes like cardboard," says Dr. Lustig. "And the food industry knew that, so they replaced it with sugar...and guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing," he tells Gupta.
And other scientific work shows that sugar could also be helping some cancer tumors to grow because sugar stimulates the production of the hormone insulin. Nearly a third of common cancers such as some breast and colon cancers, contain insulin receptors that eventually signal the tumor to consume glucose. Lewis Cantley, a Harvard professor and head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center, says some of those cancers have learned to adapt to an insulin-rich environment. "They have evolved the ability to hijack that flow of glucose that's going by in the bloodstream into the tumor itself."
What does the sugar industry have to say about this? Gupta spoke with Jim Simon, a member of the board of the Sugar Association. "To say that the American consuming public is going to omit, eliminate sweeteners out of their diet, I don't think gets us there," he says. Simon points out that the science is "not completely clear" and it's wrong to single out one food because the real emphasis should be on long-term reduction of calories, balanced diet and exercise.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57407128/is-sugar-toxic/
Re: Sugar is toxic
I see people on H&F recommend agave nectar or other "natural" sweeteners as some sort of improvement over regular sugar, and I don't understand this at all. To the best of my knowledge, agave is processed like any other sugar, and the word "natural" is unregulated and can mean just about anything. Moreover, apparently AN can be up to 90% fructose, which makes it no better than any other crap sweetener.
I am just starting to read about the coconut sap
reading the title of this post reminded me that i have to check and see if 5 lbs of sugar is enough to make the lemon-orange chiffon cake and the apple-raspberry pie for tomorrow.
i make awesome pie. you're welcome.
Lol
For me the difference is eating a sweet treat and knowing it and eating a piece of bread that unknowingly has it. I dont think the average american knows how much they are consuming and that is the scary part.
I know nothing about it but I'm willing to bet it's not much better.
I'm inclined to agree with eddy. It's one thing to knowingly eat sugar. It's another to not realize it is hidden in typical non-sweet foods. I also think it's shady when producers use different types of sugars so that they can identify them separately on the label and keep them out of the notorious top three ingredients.
I firmly believe it's incumbent upon people to read labels and educate themselves about these things. The problem is that this isn't happening and the consequences are borne by everyone, not just those who unknowingly eat crap.
What would be nice is if the ingredients were categorized and grouped.
That said, I hate the title of the article. You know what else is toxic? Water. My point is that "toxic" seems to be the buzz word of the moment, when in actuality, most everything is "toxic" in the wrong quantity.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
The only natural sweetener that seems to be the *best * is stevia.
The Agave syrup is crap - at least in terms of thinking you are doing something better than sugar or HFCS.
The other *good* natural sweenters are sugar alcohols like Etherol, Malitol and Xylitol. But those have their drawbacks. Malitol can hurt your stomach and I've heard Xylitol is toxic for dogs (like chocolate).
I gave up sugar for Lent and had it again for the first time today. So it's been about a month and a half since I've had any (aside from natural sugars). The first thing I had was a sweetened tea and within a few minutes of drinking it I could feel something warm pulsing through my body. Then I started feeling jittery.
I remember this feeling after every Lent and it's proof to me that sugar isn't good for you even in tiny quantities if it makes you feel this horrible. The problem is that most people have built up such a tolerance to the stuff that they don't even realize that it is wreaking havoc on their bodies. They are just used to feeling horrible.
This reminds me of the people we just stayed with for a couple of days. They honestly believe that they are eating "good wholesome food" but in reality it's 80% variations on white bread with a side of sugar. There were no fresh vegetables in a span of 2-3 days, not even an attempt with the canned mushy kind. It's like 3 and 4 yr olds did their grocery shopping and meal planning.
They made it past 80 so I'll give them that but otherwise they're barely hobbling around, overweight, always complaining of pains and being tired and sleep through the entire afternoon as their sugar crash wears off I guess.
I just had some homemade sauerkraut and butternut squash to recover ....aaaaah, vegetables!
Anyway, I'm glad Lustig is getting the word out via larger media channels.
Refined sugars are not at all like water or salt where the poison is in the dose. A humans' daily refined sugar requirement is exactly zero. Sugar is addictive. And while you'd have to work pretty hard at water intoxication, consuming ridiculous amounts of refined sugar is very easy, especially if someone is used to doing so on a regular basis. Refined sugars are separated from their fibrous, water-containing sources that would otherwise lend protection from overconsumption.
You know how we do
If you have an hour and a half to kill, Sugar: The Bitter Truth
The Doctor goes into the science as to why sugar acts on our livers the same way alcohol does...hence, toxic. Needless to say our shopping habits have changed a lot since watching this video.
I've read that agave nectar is actually worse than many other types of sugar, that whole craze drives me bonkers. Like everything else, sugar in moderation is probably fine, but people just don't realize how much is in everything they buy - considering the epidemic of diabetes, I don't think toxic (at the levels the average diet contains) is inaccurate.
Question is, do you have the ten sticks of butter you'll also be needing?