Maybe Sugar IS the Devil - US Goverment Diet Recommendations
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Carbs can be a good source of energy, vitamins, enzymes, etc even though they are not required for human life in the sense fats and proteins are required. To try and eat ZERO carbs would be too much effort in my book. Keeping my carbs <50 grams daily lets me enjoy the health benefits of nutritional ketosis in my case.
In a legal sense at least in the USA one can use any macro they choose so there is no limit on carbs, proteins and fats. While our government is trying to back walk 50 years of bad science I am not sure anyone is listening.
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FunkyTobias wrote: »Carlos_421 wrote: »juggernaut1974 wrote: »juggernaut1974 wrote: »tincanonastring wrote: »juggernaut1974 wrote: »Couldn't be bothered to read everything so don't know if this has been mentioned. A big part of how unhealthy sugar can be is how your body deals with it. I am diabetic and regulary monitor my blood sugar levels so I have a good idea what is going on. When I was at my worst a bowl of oatmeal with milk would send my bloodsugar into the unhealthy range. Now I have improved my health by losing weight, cardio and weight training. I also only eat sugar from natural sources like fruit and milk. By doing all of this I can enjoy eating double the recommended sugar intake and still stay healthy. I did it for three months and had a blood test. My bloodsugar levels were still in the healthy range although slightly increaded. They rose from 30 to 35. The healthy range is 20 to 42 I think. I'm not saying try and eat loads of sugary things and stay healthy anyway as it is not wise to stress your body with excess sugar intake. It's just interesting to have this information. You can get far ahead of any health risks with the correct lifestyle and occasionaly enjoy treats and stay perfectly healthy. One day I at two whole pizzas to myself so I still indulge. Being fitter and stronger helps you out in everyday life too.
No one disputes that sugar needs to be watched by diabetics. That doesn't not apply to all.
Yeah but it's just you can be even further away from any health risks by at least not eating added sugar. It's not black and white, these things sneak up on people. Once something happens that you can't change you wish so bad that you lived differently.Added sugar has no benefits at all. It's a pure addiction.
Absolutely false.
Ok what are the benefits of adding sugar to food?
Deliciousness.
Healthy food can be delicous. Your taste buds are fried from all the junk. You can recover from this.
They're not mutually exclusive. Or are you under the impression that if someone has, say, one item with added sugar, then that's all they eat?
Well I mean you can get away with a lot of things but they are steps down a dark path. You don't want to find out you are stuck with the negative consequences of your choices. There is a point of no return with health obviously and you don't always see it coming.
Ahhh..the ol' slippery slope logical fallacy. Or did you just perhaps recently see the new Star Wars movie?
No spoilers!!!!
Try and stop me
Star Wars spoiler below
Well played...well played...0 -
medicalnewstoday.com/articles/304941.php
I do not know this source but if the story is based on facts the enzyme could help some of us with sugar related health issues.
Hey the Star Wars spoiler is funny.0 -
jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Oh that's not true.
Alcohol, including sugar alcohol, is usually the first source burned for fuel when present.
Insoluble fiber is usually registered as no calories because the energy content of them is not available to humans.
Soluble fiber is usually put at 2 calories / gram because it represents the average energy derivable from them in human digestion for someone with a normal gut flora. Bacteria break down the fiber and usually end up producing butyaric acid, an MCT that provides energy to humans.
Resistant starch follows a similar digestive pattern, with levels of resistance being from somewhat more digestible than soluble fiber to being like insoluble fiber. I don't believe any good standards exist for measuring the available calories from a resistant starch.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Oh that's not true.
Alcohol, including sugar alcohol, is usually the first source burned for fuel when present.
Insoluble fiber is usually registered as no calories because the energy content of them is not available to humans.
Soluble fiber is usually put at 2 calories / gram because it represents the average energy derivable from them in human digestion for someone with a normal gut flora. Bacteria break down the fiber and usually end up producing butyaric acid, an MCT that provides energy to humans.
Resistant starch follows a similar digestive pattern, with levels of resistance being from somewhat more digestible than soluble fiber to being like insoluble fiber. I don't believe any good standards exist for measuring the available calories from a resistant starch.
Lacking a standard =/= all calories used for energy. These things are not fully absorbed. They, along with their calories, partially pass through without providing anything other than perhaps gas or stool bulk.
And you are wrong about sugar alcohols. Alcohol and sugar alcohols are completely different things.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Sunlight has calories plants can use but not humans, doesn't mean they're unequal to other calories. Show us a calorie humans can absorb that doesn't provide energy.0 -
stevencloser wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Sunlight has calories plants can use but not humans, doesn't mean they're unequal to other calories. Show us a calorie humans can absorb that doesn't provide energy.
??? I don't know how to show someone a calorie. But my reply was addressing the part about all calories providing energy. Show me a calorie that is not absorbed that provides energy.0 -
No. They are both alcohols. Hence the word alcohol. There are a lot of things that are alcohols, many that you wouldn't consume and couldn't provide dietary calories either.Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Oh that's not true.
Alcohol, including sugar alcohol, is usually the first source burned for fuel when present.
Insoluble fiber is usually registered as no calories because the energy content of them is not available to humans.
Soluble fiber is usually put at 2 calories / gram because it represents the average energy derivable from them in human digestion for someone with a normal gut flora. Bacteria break down the fiber and usually end up producing butyaric acid, an MCT that provides energy to humans.
Resistant starch follows a similar digestive pattern, with levels of resistance being from somewhat more digestible than soluble fiber to being like insoluble fiber. I don't believe any good standards exist for measuring the available calories from a resistant starch.
Lacking a standard =/= all calories used for energy. These things are not fully absorbed. They, along with their calories, partially pass through without providing anything other than perhaps gas or stool bulk.
And you are wrong about sugar alcohols. Alcohol and sugar alcohols are completely different things.
And my point about the standard wasn't that.
There is energy in a lot of things. Like SteveCloser said, sunlight. There is energy in the subatomic structures of all the molecules making up every food, but your body isn't about to perform fusion or fission as a form of acquiring dietary energy, so it would be worthless to talk about the energy available there.
Dietary calories usually based on actual digestible calories. If you cared to look it up, protein actually has an average of 5.7 kCal/g based on the heat of combustion - it ranges from 5.27 to 5.95 for various substances tested by Atwater.
If you want to get even more technical, we actually constantly breath in our energy, as the whole way the chemical reactions happen for most of calories burned is based on respiration with oxygen being a reactant. Yet we don't need to worry about the calories in air or restricting our oxygen to lose weight.
A standard would tell us what the typical amount of digestible calories are in resistant starch because that is what nutrition labels attempt to capture.
Heck, we could say some fats aren't the same as other fats. You want to which ones? The ones people eat when they take Alli or other fat blockers because they're effectively not getting the energy out of those calories either.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »jwclearman wrote: »All carb calories are not equal. Excessive sugar is particularly bad for your health. The best practice is to get the optimal balance of protein, fats and carbs, and try to eat healthy, high fiber carbs from whole grains, etc. (just as it's better to consume healthy types of fat).
please explain how all carb calories are not equal?
calories = calories in that they all provide energy; however, not all calories are nutritionally the same.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. Their calories do not all provide energy to humans.
Sunlight has calories plants can use but not humans, doesn't mean they're unequal to other calories. Show us a calorie humans can absorb that doesn't provide energy.
??? I don't know how to show someone a calorie. But my reply was addressing the part about all calories providing energy. Show me a calorie that is not absorbed that provides energy.
Fiber, sugar alcohols, resistant starch. They all provide energy. Just not to humans.
Food you didn't eat also provides energy, just not to you. Because you didn't eat it.0 -
This thread could use some basic definitions.
1 calorie (1 cal) = the amount of energy it takes to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius
1 kilocalorie (1 kcal, 1 Cal) = the amount of energy it takes to heat 1000 g of water 1 degree Celsius.
The nutritional calorie is actually the kilocalorie.
Alcohol: a hydrocarbon with a hydroxyl (-OH) group bound to a saturated carbon (all single bonds)
Polyol: an alcohol with multiple hydroxyl groups (-OH)
Sugar Alcohol: a polyol formed when a monosaccharide is reduced (e.g. xylose --> xylitol)
Sugar alcohols are generally digestible, but present in such small quantities in foods that their overall caloric impact is small. They are not "alcohol" in the sense of being ethanol that you're drinking to get drunk.
And @stevencloser is right, sunlight is pure energy, therefore calories. We just don't convert it to biochemical energy in our systems, we require plant intermediaries. The calories involved in food as measured on labels are a crude approximation to what's actually going on in our system; we are not bomb calorimeters.
I really wish there was more comprehensive science literacy at the primary and secondary levels, and that everyone would take chemistry and physics in college the way everyone has to take English and physical education.
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snowflake930 wrote: »NO, just NO.
You need sugar.
Moderation in all things.
Overindulging in any food can be bad for you.
Given that refined sugar has only been produced in the last couple of hundred years, I'm pretty sure humans don't *need* it.0 -
This thread could use some basic definitions.
1 calorie (1 cal) = the amount of energy it takes to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius
1 kilocalorie (1 kcal, 1 Cal) = the amount of energy it takes to heat 1000 g of water 1 degree Celsius.
The nutritional calorie is actually the kilocalorie.
Alcohol: a hydrocarbon with a hydroxyl (-OH) group bound to a saturated carbon (all single bonds)
Polyol: an alcohol with multiple hydroxyl groups (-OH)
Sugar Alcohol: a polyol formed when a monosaccharide is reduced (e.g. xylose --> xylitol)
Sugar alcohols are generally digestible, but present in such small quantities in foods that their overall caloric impact is small. They are not "alcohol" in the sense of being ethanol that you're drinking to get drunk.
And @stevencloser is right, sunlight is pure energy, therefore calories. We just don't convert it to biochemical energy in our systems, we require plant intermediaries. The calories involved in food as measured on labels are a crude approximation to what's actually going on in our system; we are not bomb calorimeters.
I really wish there was more comprehensive science literacy at the primary and secondary levels, and that everyone would take chemistry and physics in college the way everyone has to take English and physical education.
If that were the case mfp forums could not exist...0 -
Best me to it...
And I am pretty sure the first sugar refineries sprung youn 1500s which is 500 years ago ...0 -
snowflake930 wrote: »NO, just NO.
You need sugar.
Moderation in all things.
Overindulging in any food can be bad for you.
Given that refined sugar has only been produced in the last couple of hundred years, I'm pretty sure humans don't *need* it.
When a person with a scientific understanding of metabolism says 'you need sugar' they are referencing the fact that your body utilizes sugars solely to produce ATP, its energy-storage workhorse molecule. Your metabolic pathways work pretty hard to accomplish this with non-carbohydrate inputs. This is evident when you look at the human metabolic pathways (great reference at Nature)(1) the convergence of the metabolic pathways for carbohydrates, lipids & proteins and (2) several types of cells in your body can only utilize glucose as a source of energy, lacking the enzymes required to convert lipids or proteins to sugars.
There's solid reason why carbohydrate metabolism is central on the metabolic pathway map; and its all driven on glucose. You can force your body into primarily relying on protein & fat as a source of energy, but only within limits; go too far and you wind up with ketoacidosis, which is never, ever a good thing.
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snowflake930 wrote: »NO, just NO.
You need sugar.
Moderation in all things.
Overindulging in any food can be bad for you.
Given that refined sugar has only been produced in the last couple of hundred years, I'm pretty sure humans don't *need* it.
When a person with a scientific understanding of metabolism says 'you need sugar' they are referencing the fact that your body utilizes sugars solely to produce ATP, its energy-storage workhorse molecule. Your metabolic pathways work pretty hard to accomplish this with non-carbohydrate inputs. This is evident when you look at the human metabolic pathways (great reference at Nature)(1) the convergence of the metabolic pathways for carbohydrates, lipids & proteins and (2) several types of cells in your body can only utilize glucose as a source of energy, lacking the enzymes required to convert lipids or proteins to sugars.
There's solid reason why carbohydrate metabolism is central on the metabolic pathway map; and its all driven on glucose. You can force your body into primarily relying on protein & fat as a source of energy, but only within limits; go too far and you wind up with ketoacidosis, which is never, ever a good thing.
The bolded is not correct for the vast majority of people. Only type 1 diabetics, type 2 diabetics who are insulin dependent, and a very few alcoholics ever need to worry about ketoacidosis ( very high blood glucose and very high ketones). People who achieve ketosis nutritionally will not have extraordinarily high ketones, nor will their blood glucose be high.0 -
“There appears to be an underlying assumption that if we can just eliminate the chemical of the decade from the food supply our public health problems will be solved. This intense focus on a single component of the food supply tends to diminish the appropriate focus on the total diet and moderation in consumption.” - As Dr. F. Edward Scarborough, former director of FDA’s Office of Food Labeling, re: “added sugars” on changes to the FDA Nutrition Facts Panel:
There's a lot of politics involved in the sugar recommendations. Enough so that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC 2015) ignored the federal law about using current scientific evidence and data transparency (Section 301 of Public Law 101-445) and instead waved their hands and said, more or less, "well the WHO says so, that's good enough for us!". No carbohydrate metabolism experts were included on the DGAC 2015, and the review period was set to only 3 months for input. In addition, they bypassed the Nutrition Evidence Library entirely in preference of a "fast-track" of recommendations, thus ignoring policies regarding the selection of data in preference for politically selected reviews.
In 2015 the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement on added sugars noting that though added sugars have "no nutritional benefits" (aside from caloric intake, meaning they have no micronutrients) which pointed out the following:At the same time, sugars themselves are not necessarily harmful. Used along with nutrient-rich foods and beverages, added sugars can add substantially to daily calories. Used at extreme levels (i.e. more than 25% to 30% of total calories), sugars can displace other nutrients, resulting in deficiencies. Although added sugars are often presumed to be an independent cause of overweight, this claim has not been proven in studies. The DGA Advisory Committee found that “a moderate body of evidence suggests that under isocaloric controlled conditions, added sugars, including sugar-sweetened beverages, are no more likely to cause weight gain than any other source of energy.” Furthermore, the committee’s evidence review failed to find a causative connection between sugar consumption and type 2 diabetes mellitus, heart disease, or behavioral disorders. Similarly, recent reviews of the relationship between sugar consumption and the nutrient content of the diet found that the
association was nonlinear. Even a moderately high intake of added sugars was not necessarily associated with decrements in dietary nutrient intake. Care should be taken when prohibiting sugar-containing products to avoid compromising overall nutrition among children.
--COUNCIL ON SCHOOL HEALTH, COMMITTEE ON NUTRITION, American Academy of Pediatrics, POLICY STATEMENT Organizational Principles to Guide and Define the Child Health Care System and/or Improve the Health of all Children
Murray, Robert, et al. "Snacks, Sweetened Beverages, Added Sugars, and Schools." Pediatrics 135.3 (2015): 575-583.0 -
oyChihuahua wrote: »@tomteboda - You, I like.
Aye. Much evidence, very based.0
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