Sugar in my Diet

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  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
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    goldthistime wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    goldthistime wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    goldthistime wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    dmfitness324 wrote: »
    sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, so please try to stay under your daily amount. Sugar is also linked to obesity and heart disease. I challenge you all to 2 weeks free from processed sugar and limit yourself to only 1-2 fruits per day. I did this and you may find that you have more energy throughout the day, less cravings for sugar (remember it's addictive!) helps with weight loss :)

    This is among the most disgustingly ignorant claims I have ever heard/read.
    If sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, you couldn't just quit eating it. Also, if sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, the sugar in fruit would as well (sugar in fruit is glucose, fructose and sucrose just like what is added to candy and other foods).

    There is literally no evidence at all from any peer reviewed scientific studies that demonstrate that sugar is (or is even likely to be) addictive in humans. There are studies that show that starved mice would rather eat sugar than narcotics but that just shows that mice value survival more than a good trip.

    When people say that sugar activates the same "pleasure center" of the brain as cocaine, they do so either not realizing (or deceptively omitting) that literally everything that is pleasurable does this. That includes kissing, petting puppies, running and taking a good pee.

    The thing with cocaine is that it not only "activates" the same receptors, it hijacks them entirely so that they no longer work properly, thus pleasure becomes harder and harder to experience without it.
    Sugar does not do this!

    Have you ever been around an addict? Seen one? Talked to one?
    I have. It's not pretty.
    Comparing the devastation cocaine inflicts on a person to what happens when a person eats sugar (it's readily metabolized in a healthy manner and provides energy for physical and mental activity) is quite frankly offensive.

    Okay guys. This poster has received 11 woos and many posts disagreeing vehemently with them. Message received long ago I would think. I'm on my phone but this looks to be only this person's 3rd post on MFP. He/she is new to the community. The phrase "disgustingly ignorant" seems needlessly harsh.

    A long history on MFP is not necessary for knowing better than to consider the effects of sugar and cocaine to be the same. Also, there are lurkers who need to see that what this person says is flat wrong.
    My own long history on MFP has taught me that a person who makes such ridiculous claims is not likely to see the error in their own claims so I'm not too concerned with whether or not they think my rebuttal of their intellectual dishonesty is "needlessly harsh."

    I don't understand why you'd think it was "dishonesty". If I held your opinion I might go with something like "You've been misled".

    I didn't say it was "dishonest." I said it was "intellectual dishonesty" which (taken from the wiki) is "a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of, usually in a self-serving fashion."
    In other words, they know full well that people do not suffer the same effects from eating sugar as they do from using cocaine (basic reasoning and everyday observation of how people respond to the different substances makes this clear) and yet they lay aside their own knowledge and logical reasoning to make an absurd claim.
    To say that sugar and cocaine have the same effect on the body is intellectually dishonest.

    I will definitely grant you that cocaine and sugar do not have the same effects on the body and it was inappropriate to state that. And your definition of intellectual dishonesty would be justified if this statement were truly self serving. But what does this poster have to gain? Is it not more likely that they themselves have been misled by someone else who truly has intellectual dishonesty?

    The definition says "usually self serving." Selfish gain is not a prerequisite for intellectual dishonesty.

    But in this case, however, it could easily be argued that claiming sugar is as dangerous as cocaine is self serving in that it supports the belief/argument that sugar should be avoided and/or eliminated from one's diet. It protects their previously held beliefs (however wrong those beliefs are).
  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,214 Member
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    zachbonner_ wrote: »
    goldthistime wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    dmfitness324 wrote: »
    sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, so please try to stay under your daily amount. Sugar is also linked to obesity and heart disease. I challenge you all to 2 weeks free from processed sugar and limit yourself to only 1-2 fruits per day. I did this and you may find that you have more energy throughout the day, less cravings for sugar (remember it's addictive!) helps with weight loss :)

    This is among the most disgustingly ignorant claims I have ever heard/read.
    If sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, you couldn't just quit eating it. Also, if sugar has the same effect on your body as cocaine, the sugar in fruit would as well (sugar in fruit is glucose, fructose and sucrose just like what is added to candy and other foods).

    There is literally no evidence at all from any peer reviewed scientific studies that demonstrate that sugar is (or is even likely to be) addictive in humans. There are studies that show that starved mice would rather eat sugar than narcotics but that just shows that mice value survival more than a good trip.

    When people say that sugar activates the same "pleasure center" of the brain as cocaine, they do so either not realizing (or deceptively omitting) that literally everything that is pleasurable does this. That includes kissing, petting puppies, running and taking a good pee.

    The thing with cocaine is that it not only "activates" the same receptors, it hijacks them entirely so that they no longer work properly, thus pleasure becomes harder and harder to experience without it.
    Sugar does not do this!

    Have you ever been around an addict? Seen one? Talked to one?
    I have. It's not pretty.
    Comparing the devastation cocaine inflicts on a person to what happens when a person eats sugar (it's readily metabolized in a healthy manner and provides energy for physical and mental activity) is quite frankly offensive.

    Okay guys. This poster has received 11 woos and many posts disagreeing vehemently with them. Message received long ago I would think. I'm on my phone but this looks to be only this person's 3rd post on MFP. He/she is new to the community. The phrase "disgustingly ignorant" seems needlessly harsh.

    You're wrong. He spreads misinformation every day. Every post I see by him is pseudoscience or broscience.

    Do you mean dmfitness324 or someone else? He made his first post Jul 24th and posted three times today. Not exactly every day. There's this one admittedly contentious post, and two extolling the virtues of IF, and one harmless post about vitamins I think. Doesn't seem to be someone we need to shun.

  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
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    earlnabby wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    Personally I found tracking fibre instead more useful and informative. Sugar is just a sub-set of carbs.
    It would be an awful shame to reduce your fruit consumption for no good reason.

    Me too. I am T2Dm and am managing my disease through diet and exercise. My A1C is in the normal range.

    I do not track sugars because it is meaningless to do so, even as diabetic. Why? Total carbs are the most important number, not how those carbs are divided up. I am on no medication so I do not need to know how many of my carbs are sugars and how many are fiber in order to calculate a dose of insulin. I DO need to count my total carbs to make sure I stay under 160 grams per day.

    Yes, I do track fiber even though it is also a subset of carbs. My Dad died of colon cancer so eating a minimum of 25 grams of fiber each day is an important part of my preventative measures.

    Just wanted to point out that while it's not important for a diabetic to separate out sugar from other carbs, fiber is quite different. Fiber does not raise blood glucose and should not be counted against your total carbs when figuring out the effect on blood glucose.

    Speaking for myself, fruit raises my blood glucose hardly at all, while refined flour and rice shoots it up. But every diabetic is different. I have friends with such a low tolerance for natural sugars that they have to avoid tomatoes and onions. That's why frequent testing is helpful for diabetics, even non-insulin dependent ones.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited August 2017
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    JustSomeEm wrote: »
    psuLemon wrote: »
    VintageFeline wrote: »
    stevencloser wrote: »
    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    psuLemon wrote: »
    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    krishnip wrote: »
    I am very careful with the amount of sugar I take in but the majority of my sugar comes from the apple and grapes I eat. Do I need to count this for the amount I am sugar I am allowed to take in?

    Only if you are into counting what you eat. Counting is a good thing at least until intutive eating become a way of life for you after you count for a while and learn what foods fatten you up and what foods leads to natural weight loss/maintenance.

    @krishnip best of success. Remember it is the Way Of Eating that works for you that is right for you. We are all different and do well often eating very different diets from another person that is being successful.

    Specific foods don't fatten people up or lead to natural (whatever that means) weight loss/maintenance. The total amount of calories consumed is what is responsible for weight management.

    OP you will find that without a medical reason to specifically limit sugars, the natural sugars in things like apples and grapes have no bearing on your actual results. MFP doesn't differentiate between natural and added sugars so while there are important guidelines to keep an eye on the total consumption of calories from added sugars, it often is a red herring to chase for weight loss. Many seasoned posters with no medical reason to restrict sugars ignore that metric in their diary or replace it with something more meaningful for them like fiber.

    Not sure after all of this time why you do not grasp weight management is far more than calories consumed.

    Not sure after all this time, why you do not have the most fundamental understanding of energy balance. It's honestly the most basic science out there.

    I am also unsure why you make these arguments with people far more fit than you. And while fit =/= knowledge, it would suggest they are following basic principles to enable them to achieve those goals.


    OP, it all comes down to energy balance for weight loss. What is important is eating foods to allow you to achieve you goals, improve satiety to help it become a sustainable diet, and address any medical needs. The current dogma of the need to cut sugar/carbs is just that.. dogma. It's no different than the old dogma that fats where bad. Fruits are fantastic for you. They are low in calories, high in fiber, vitamins and minerals and have antioxidants. That increases the amount of volume you can eat, provides sustainable energy and will help keep you body health.

    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/95/4/989

    Sure it is about energy balance. Normally in the animal kingdom energy balance is controlled by hormones not manual math if food choices are not limited.

    Your link is not currently working on my computer.

    ad_234085936-e1486481476991.jpg

    100% the deadlier version of one of my past cats, Dave. My fault, I fed him too much. And he was a piggy.

    To confirm. Animals get fat too. In fact, along with a human obesity epidemic, there is a pet one too.

    My parents have an overweight diabetic cat... and he didn't eat sugar... true story.

    The amount of carbohydrates in cat food can (for some brands, especially dry foods) be pretty high. If the cat was over-eating all those carbs, then color me not shocked to learn about the kitty-diabetes. :)

    Many cats will overeat even without carbs (or with quite low carbs) and will reduce activity if you cut calories. Many control their calories perfectly, whatever they are fed.

    That humans, in an unusual environment of enormous variety and abundance and easy/low cost (including time) accessibility of foods, and often lifestyles that are naturally sedentary if they don't make an effort, end up fat quite often if they don't do something to control how much they eat (doesn't need to be counting) does not surprise me.

    If people go out of their way to eat high cal foods they consider hyperpalatable, and are not active at all -- and Gale, you have acknowledged that was how you lived for a long time -- I am similarly not surprised they get fat. If they remove the foods they find most hyperpalatable, well, that's one way to lose some weight, although personally I find different foods most palatable (not especially sugary ones or carby ones -- although this thread is not a carb one, how on earth did we go off on that tangent -- although I enjoy some of them) and prefer to keep them in my diet.

    But if you had me get all my meals from a talented chef cooking fine dining quality foods and asked him (or her) to cook them for me on a low carb macro ratio, and I was told to eat as much as I wanted, could I get fat?

    No question, I'd gain fast and lots (and enjoy doing it, I'm sure).

    So this idea that it's all about macros and absent some health issue we'd all naturally be thin even if we never thought about what we ate strikes me as extremely strange. (I suspect in Gale's case it's just that the foods he used to eat to excess were particular ones, period, and definitely not the same ones we all desire.)
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited August 2017
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    goldthistime wrote: »
    I liked tracking sugar because it showed me that there was a decent correlation between the amount of sugar I consumed and how hungry I felt on the same number of calories.

    One benefit of tracking is you find out if this is true.

    I increased carbs (mostly by adding back in fruit for summer, plus corn and potatoes and so on, all things I get in abundance in my farm box), and because of all the fruit my sugar is much higher than it had been, and so far absolutely no effect on my hunger level.

    However, from tracking I have noticed other things that affect it.

    OP doesn't suggest that eating fruit or having higher sugar is a problem for her hunger (and I suspect that at least a high portion of those who correlate sugar with hunger are not choosing higher fiber things, like fruit can be, as fiber also often helps with hunger). These are reasons I join those who advise tracking fiber (I do track sugar too since I don't care about sodium--and don't log salt I use in cooking so it's inaccurate anyway--and find sugar interesting).

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