Addicted to sugar? Read on...(sorry long post)
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MsMonny
Posts: 183
Well, I finished reading a book the other day called "Sweet Poison". Has anyone else read this book? If not, it is certainly an important read for anyone addicted to the white stuff.
I was addicted, maybe I still am as it is only Day 4 without it, but I know I will never touch sugar again - not in huge quantities that I have in the past.
I will give you a few insights into the book. It is really an indepth book with biochemistry etc, so I can only give you the basics, which will give you an idea what it is all about.......
So, sit down, have a cuppa (with no added sugar LOL) and read on.....
Firstly, sugar is made up of two simple sugars - glucose and fructose. Now, there are only three important simple sugars - glucose, fructose and galactose. All the other 'sugars' are simply combinations of these three.
i.e. Lactose is half glucose and half galactose; Maltose is two glucose molecules joined together.
Simple sugars like glucose and fructose are present in nature in their uncombined form. Most fruit contains some sucrose, some fructose and some glucose (but to our body sucrose is just a bundle of more fructose and glucose).
GLUCOSE is by far the most plentiful of the simple sugars. All foods (protiens, carbs and fat) is eventually converted to glucose in our body (unless it is an excess and then it is converted to fat if not used).
GALACTOSE is present in only very small quantities and is found mainly in dairy products in the form of lactose. Did you know that about 70% of the worlds adult population are lactose intolerant? Thats another story I am not famililar with!
FRUCTOSE is relatively rare in nature. It is found primarily in ripe fruits, which is why it is called fruit sugar. Fructose tastes about 60 % sweeter than glucose or galactose.
These three sugars make up a vast majority of the food group we call carbohydrates. The only other significant carbohydrate is cellulose or 'fibre'. We don't use fibre for energy.
This is what food breaks down to....
Bread - contains mostly carb - breaks down to glucose + fibre
Milk - contains mostly carb + fat - breaks down to glucose + galactose + fatty acids
Meat & Nusts - contains mostly protien + fat - breaks down to glucose + amino acids + fatty acids
Fruit - contains mostly carbs - breaks down to glucose + fructose + fibre
Vegs - contain mostly carbs - breaks down to glucose + fibre
Everything we eat is just glucose in disguise, wrapped up with fibre and fatty acids and vitamins (as well as fructose, but that is talked about later).
For all but the last few hundred years, really sweet foods have been difficult to find. The sweetest food was fruit and that was only occassional and, depending on where we lived, rare. The only other way for a sugar hit in nature was to battle it out with the bees for their honey. Honey is 40% fructose but back then it wasn't harvested and bottled neatly on our shelves!!
The book goes on about 'Theories on Fatness" and looks at all the diets from way back in 1800's when the odd person would be 'over-weight' (not obese - obesity didn't exist) and also about our bodies and how it produces insulin in the pancreas, the enzymes that break down glucose etc etc.
I will skim over this because I would have to write the whole book BUT there are a few important factors for us addicts.
When we eat, our blood-glucose levels increase as the food is broken down into its component molecules and absorbed into the bloodstream. The pancreas produces the hormone, that controls the amount of glucose in our bloodstream, called Insulin(a powerful hormone whos primary function is to reduce glucose concentrations in the blood). The first and most obvious way to do this is to use the glucose as fuel - insulin acts as a chemical enabler that allows the cells to absorb and then convert the glucose to energy. Type I diabetes is when people are unable to produce their own insulin because the specialist cells in the pancreas have been destroyed by their own immune system.
Insulin also has some appetite control properties - it helps stop us eating when we have taken in sufficient energy. Once insulin is in the bloodstream, it interacts with special receptor cells in the brain (hypothalamus). These receptors are continuously sampling our circulating blood. When it detects insulin in the blood it tells the brain we have had enough to eat. This fullness signal only lasts for as long as there is excess insulin in the blood, so only short term. It is enough to make us push our food away but we can fight it and continue eating. To maintain the full feeling longer, insulin triggers the release of the hormone leptin, another long-term appetite suppressant.
Leptin is produced in the fat cells. In a healthy body, the more fat you have the more leptin in your bloodstream. This should mean that we should be feeling full for longer and we would gradually use up our fat stores. The only trouble is that something about it is clearly not working because we are getting fatter!!
High levels of fatty acids in the arteries block the action of leptin in much the same way they block insulin. Insulin Resistance means that your immediate control is impaired and will eventually lead to Type II diabetes. Leptin Resistance means that your body loses the ability to tell when it has enough to eat ove the med to long term. The presence of fatty acids in the bloodstream (created by fructose) dulls the effect of insulin. This means we need to make more insulin to respond to the calories we are detecting. Over time, as we become more and more insulin resistant, we can eat more and more without feeling full. Insulin Resistance is just one step closer to Type II Diabetes.
I would love to delve into the biochemistry but I feel that I would be able to hear your snoring so I will just get to the main point about all this - FRUCTOSE.
In laymans terms, the body doesn't have a register for recognising fructose. In the pancreas, fructose calories are largely invisible. Insulin release is not triggered by its consumption, only glucose. If we eat a diet high in fructose, the fructose will be converted directly to fatty acids and, in turn, body fat. It isn't used like glucose for energy.
BTW - it only takes 2.5 calories to convert 100 calories of fatty acids into body fat. It takes 23 calories to convert 100 calories of protien or glucose into body fat.
Now, every piece of food we consume stimulates the release of one or more of the 'enough to eat' hormones. There is one substance that does not stimulate the release of any of the 'enough to eat' hormones and that is FRUCTOSE. Fructose skips the fat-creation control mechanism in the liver and is directly converted to fatty acids (then fat) without passing through our major appetite-control gateways (insulin- carb hormone and CCK -fat and protien hormone). Fructose is also invisible to our built-in calorie counter (hypothalamus) in the brain.
Nearly every gram of fructose is converted into FAT!!! This puts fat into our arteries!!
Well, you are probably wondering about fruit and veg?? These have fructose in them and they are healthy!!
An apple has about 8% fructose by weight. It has the highest percentage of fructose in the fruit world. Watermelon has about 4% fructose, banana has about 7%. The average apple contains about 2 tsp sugar. It also has fibre!! This is the important part. It seems that the fibre in the fruit helps the fructose through the body PLUS how many people can eat heaps and heaps of fruit?? Not the average person, because of the fibre! It fills us up.
Think about the juice that we drink - it is just fructose and water with a bit of vit C! All the fibre has been taken out. There are alot of oranges and apples in one glass of juice - more than we would eat if it was in its NATURAL form.
NATURAL! Thats a good word. Sugar isn't natural, no matter how many big businesses would like to tell us it is. Sugar cane is natural but we have PROCESSED that sugar cane into a MAN-MADE product. Dont' see many people picking a bit of sugar cane to eat as a snack.
There is also, for my American friends, the HFCS! Us aussies don't have this in abundance because we have a great big sugar cane industry over here and it never really took off.
HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) is very low in cost to make and has fast become the primary sweetener for manufactured foods. But it is still a sugar and still has high amounts of fructose in it.
Most of us are buying the 97% fat free foods in a hope that we can cut out the fat and get slimmer. Many of us are going to the gym. We are trying hard to get slimmer but we are getting bigger and bigger by the year. Is it our will-power (some, maybe)? Sure if we eat too much and not exercise we will gain weight but it is the hidden sugars that people don't know about that is doing alot of damage. Check out the low fat or fat free versions compared to the full fat versions of food. There will definately be more sugar in the 'diet' version because the company has to make it taste good somehow!!
I went for a walk through the shop the other day and it was like a mine field. Yes, products do say they have sugar but is it lactose, glucose, sucrose, fructose, maltose etc???
For example....
A carton of whole unflavoured milk has 4.7g per 100ml of sugar. So a litre of plain milk contains 10 teaspoons of sugar!! AAaaahhhrrr!!! NO, WAIT!! that sugar is lactose and as we now know, it is glucose and galactose. Our bodies can easily deal with these sugars.
What about a chocolate milk? A litre of choc milk has about 100g sugar. By a process of elimination we know that 47of those grams comes from lactose. The rest is table sugar. So the choc milk contains 26.5g of fructose. Wouldn't it be easier if the label actually had a gram or percentage for the fructose?
So, what do you do??
David Gillespie, the Author of the book, said there are 5 rules that will help you in the sugar minefield....
Rule 1 - DONT DRINK SUGAR... If you are thirsty, drink water, milk (if not lactose intolerant), green tea etc. Always check the labels and see if it has added sugar in it. Beer, most wines and 'neat' hard liquor is okay. Dextrose (remember that name) is only made up of glucose and that is what they sometimes call 'beer sugar'.
Rule 2 - DONT SNACK ON SUGAR.....well, duh!! But surely one or two little cream biscuits won't hurt. Well, each cream biscuit has 14g of sugar in it. Eat two of those and you are pumping 6g of undetected fatty acids directly into your arteries!! Instead eat healthy non-fructose added snacks.
Rule 3 - PARTY FOOD IS FOR PARTIES.....think about it - cakes, icecream, jellies, doughnuts. The list is endless but you wouldn't eat these everyday. When at a party you can either decline or accept - the choice is yours but if you feel like you will offend, then eat a bit but don't overdo. That little bit in the whole scheme of things wont make you get diabetes. Just like eating an apple with fructose in it wont.
Rule 4 - BE CAREFUL AT BREAKFAST....dried fruit seem to be a healthy option but I know I can eat alot of dried apricots compared to the non-dried version. Many cereals have dried fruit in it and this bumps up the fructose level enormously!! There is a 'complete oven-baked muesli' on the shelf that has nearly 30% sugar in it. Yuck. Label reading is a must. In one of his books, The Sweet Poison Quit Plan, he has a recipe for a muesli that uses nuts, oats and seeds. You can easily make your own by eliminating dried fruit etc.
So, when you are label reading, if it has under 5g of sugar to the 100g, then it is okay to be a part of your diet. For example, weet-bix has 2% which is good, corn flakes has 4% which is not too bad but Sultanas and Bran has 17% and Nut Corn Flakes has 16%.
Rule 5 - THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOOD SUGAR!..... Watch our for marketing tricks like 'contains only natural sugar', or 'no added sugar'. Read the label once again and remember honey is 40% fructose (sugar is 50% fructose). 'Reduced fat' also bad. For example, peanut butter full fat version has 8% sugar compared to the low-fat version with 13% sugar.
Whats your alternatives to sugar??
Pure Glucose is also a good alternative. It isn't a manufactured chemical, it tastes sweet, it contains no fructose, it won't make you gain weight, it won't destroy your appetite, it won't give you diabetes or tooth decay (the fructose does that). What the supermarket sells as pure glucose is called DEXTROSE. It is used by the home brewer in beer making. Dextrose is a little more than half sweet as sugar and looks a little like fine powdered sugar. David has also got recipes for cupcakes, pancakes etc that use only Dextrose. The dextrose does take up more liquid in the batters, so more liquid is needed plus it doesn't have that 'crunch' factor with biscuits. But, hey, I am happy to have a substitute for those times when I need one!!
You also have the Artificial Sweeteners available but I for one am steering clear when I can because I am not too convinced that they are good for you in the long run.
Have you fallen asleep yet??
I do apologise for the loooong post but there is soooo much I had to say. If you can get the book, then do. It will change your world too.
If you are not addicted to sugar, then you will probably realise you don't actually eat that much in your day to day life. But if you are, then maybe this might be the information that you needed.
I don't know if I am allowed to promote another website. If I am, then I will post his blog and forum, so you can get to know a bit more about this.
Hope this was happy reading and not too much 'over your head' type of stuff.
:flowerforyou:
I was addicted, maybe I still am as it is only Day 4 without it, but I know I will never touch sugar again - not in huge quantities that I have in the past.
I will give you a few insights into the book. It is really an indepth book with biochemistry etc, so I can only give you the basics, which will give you an idea what it is all about.......
So, sit down, have a cuppa (with no added sugar LOL) and read on.....
Firstly, sugar is made up of two simple sugars - glucose and fructose. Now, there are only three important simple sugars - glucose, fructose and galactose. All the other 'sugars' are simply combinations of these three.
i.e. Lactose is half glucose and half galactose; Maltose is two glucose molecules joined together.
Simple sugars like glucose and fructose are present in nature in their uncombined form. Most fruit contains some sucrose, some fructose and some glucose (but to our body sucrose is just a bundle of more fructose and glucose).
GLUCOSE is by far the most plentiful of the simple sugars. All foods (protiens, carbs and fat) is eventually converted to glucose in our body (unless it is an excess and then it is converted to fat if not used).
GALACTOSE is present in only very small quantities and is found mainly in dairy products in the form of lactose. Did you know that about 70% of the worlds adult population are lactose intolerant? Thats another story I am not famililar with!
FRUCTOSE is relatively rare in nature. It is found primarily in ripe fruits, which is why it is called fruit sugar. Fructose tastes about 60 % sweeter than glucose or galactose.
These three sugars make up a vast majority of the food group we call carbohydrates. The only other significant carbohydrate is cellulose or 'fibre'. We don't use fibre for energy.
This is what food breaks down to....
Bread - contains mostly carb - breaks down to glucose + fibre
Milk - contains mostly carb + fat - breaks down to glucose + galactose + fatty acids
Meat & Nusts - contains mostly protien + fat - breaks down to glucose + amino acids + fatty acids
Fruit - contains mostly carbs - breaks down to glucose + fructose + fibre
Vegs - contain mostly carbs - breaks down to glucose + fibre
Everything we eat is just glucose in disguise, wrapped up with fibre and fatty acids and vitamins (as well as fructose, but that is talked about later).
For all but the last few hundred years, really sweet foods have been difficult to find. The sweetest food was fruit and that was only occassional and, depending on where we lived, rare. The only other way for a sugar hit in nature was to battle it out with the bees for their honey. Honey is 40% fructose but back then it wasn't harvested and bottled neatly on our shelves!!
The book goes on about 'Theories on Fatness" and looks at all the diets from way back in 1800's when the odd person would be 'over-weight' (not obese - obesity didn't exist) and also about our bodies and how it produces insulin in the pancreas, the enzymes that break down glucose etc etc.
I will skim over this because I would have to write the whole book BUT there are a few important factors for us addicts.
When we eat, our blood-glucose levels increase as the food is broken down into its component molecules and absorbed into the bloodstream. The pancreas produces the hormone, that controls the amount of glucose in our bloodstream, called Insulin(a powerful hormone whos primary function is to reduce glucose concentrations in the blood). The first and most obvious way to do this is to use the glucose as fuel - insulin acts as a chemical enabler that allows the cells to absorb and then convert the glucose to energy. Type I diabetes is when people are unable to produce their own insulin because the specialist cells in the pancreas have been destroyed by their own immune system.
Insulin also has some appetite control properties - it helps stop us eating when we have taken in sufficient energy. Once insulin is in the bloodstream, it interacts with special receptor cells in the brain (hypothalamus). These receptors are continuously sampling our circulating blood. When it detects insulin in the blood it tells the brain we have had enough to eat. This fullness signal only lasts for as long as there is excess insulin in the blood, so only short term. It is enough to make us push our food away but we can fight it and continue eating. To maintain the full feeling longer, insulin triggers the release of the hormone leptin, another long-term appetite suppressant.
Leptin is produced in the fat cells. In a healthy body, the more fat you have the more leptin in your bloodstream. This should mean that we should be feeling full for longer and we would gradually use up our fat stores. The only trouble is that something about it is clearly not working because we are getting fatter!!
High levels of fatty acids in the arteries block the action of leptin in much the same way they block insulin. Insulin Resistance means that your immediate control is impaired and will eventually lead to Type II diabetes. Leptin Resistance means that your body loses the ability to tell when it has enough to eat ove the med to long term. The presence of fatty acids in the bloodstream (created by fructose) dulls the effect of insulin. This means we need to make more insulin to respond to the calories we are detecting. Over time, as we become more and more insulin resistant, we can eat more and more without feeling full. Insulin Resistance is just one step closer to Type II Diabetes.
I would love to delve into the biochemistry but I feel that I would be able to hear your snoring so I will just get to the main point about all this - FRUCTOSE.
In laymans terms, the body doesn't have a register for recognising fructose. In the pancreas, fructose calories are largely invisible. Insulin release is not triggered by its consumption, only glucose. If we eat a diet high in fructose, the fructose will be converted directly to fatty acids and, in turn, body fat. It isn't used like glucose for energy.
BTW - it only takes 2.5 calories to convert 100 calories of fatty acids into body fat. It takes 23 calories to convert 100 calories of protien or glucose into body fat.
Now, every piece of food we consume stimulates the release of one or more of the 'enough to eat' hormones. There is one substance that does not stimulate the release of any of the 'enough to eat' hormones and that is FRUCTOSE. Fructose skips the fat-creation control mechanism in the liver and is directly converted to fatty acids (then fat) without passing through our major appetite-control gateways (insulin- carb hormone and CCK -fat and protien hormone). Fructose is also invisible to our built-in calorie counter (hypothalamus) in the brain.
Nearly every gram of fructose is converted into FAT!!! This puts fat into our arteries!!
Well, you are probably wondering about fruit and veg?? These have fructose in them and they are healthy!!
An apple has about 8% fructose by weight. It has the highest percentage of fructose in the fruit world. Watermelon has about 4% fructose, banana has about 7%. The average apple contains about 2 tsp sugar. It also has fibre!! This is the important part. It seems that the fibre in the fruit helps the fructose through the body PLUS how many people can eat heaps and heaps of fruit?? Not the average person, because of the fibre! It fills us up.
Think about the juice that we drink - it is just fructose and water with a bit of vit C! All the fibre has been taken out. There are alot of oranges and apples in one glass of juice - more than we would eat if it was in its NATURAL form.
NATURAL! Thats a good word. Sugar isn't natural, no matter how many big businesses would like to tell us it is. Sugar cane is natural but we have PROCESSED that sugar cane into a MAN-MADE product. Dont' see many people picking a bit of sugar cane to eat as a snack.
There is also, for my American friends, the HFCS! Us aussies don't have this in abundance because we have a great big sugar cane industry over here and it never really took off.
HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) is very low in cost to make and has fast become the primary sweetener for manufactured foods. But it is still a sugar and still has high amounts of fructose in it.
Most of us are buying the 97% fat free foods in a hope that we can cut out the fat and get slimmer. Many of us are going to the gym. We are trying hard to get slimmer but we are getting bigger and bigger by the year. Is it our will-power (some, maybe)? Sure if we eat too much and not exercise we will gain weight but it is the hidden sugars that people don't know about that is doing alot of damage. Check out the low fat or fat free versions compared to the full fat versions of food. There will definately be more sugar in the 'diet' version because the company has to make it taste good somehow!!
I went for a walk through the shop the other day and it was like a mine field. Yes, products do say they have sugar but is it lactose, glucose, sucrose, fructose, maltose etc???
For example....
A carton of whole unflavoured milk has 4.7g per 100ml of sugar. So a litre of plain milk contains 10 teaspoons of sugar!! AAaaahhhrrr!!! NO, WAIT!! that sugar is lactose and as we now know, it is glucose and galactose. Our bodies can easily deal with these sugars.
What about a chocolate milk? A litre of choc milk has about 100g sugar. By a process of elimination we know that 47of those grams comes from lactose. The rest is table sugar. So the choc milk contains 26.5g of fructose. Wouldn't it be easier if the label actually had a gram or percentage for the fructose?
So, what do you do??
David Gillespie, the Author of the book, said there are 5 rules that will help you in the sugar minefield....
Rule 1 - DONT DRINK SUGAR... If you are thirsty, drink water, milk (if not lactose intolerant), green tea etc. Always check the labels and see if it has added sugar in it. Beer, most wines and 'neat' hard liquor is okay. Dextrose (remember that name) is only made up of glucose and that is what they sometimes call 'beer sugar'.
Rule 2 - DONT SNACK ON SUGAR.....well, duh!! But surely one or two little cream biscuits won't hurt. Well, each cream biscuit has 14g of sugar in it. Eat two of those and you are pumping 6g of undetected fatty acids directly into your arteries!! Instead eat healthy non-fructose added snacks.
Rule 3 - PARTY FOOD IS FOR PARTIES.....think about it - cakes, icecream, jellies, doughnuts. The list is endless but you wouldn't eat these everyday. When at a party you can either decline or accept - the choice is yours but if you feel like you will offend, then eat a bit but don't overdo. That little bit in the whole scheme of things wont make you get diabetes. Just like eating an apple with fructose in it wont.
Rule 4 - BE CAREFUL AT BREAKFAST....dried fruit seem to be a healthy option but I know I can eat alot of dried apricots compared to the non-dried version. Many cereals have dried fruit in it and this bumps up the fructose level enormously!! There is a 'complete oven-baked muesli' on the shelf that has nearly 30% sugar in it. Yuck. Label reading is a must. In one of his books, The Sweet Poison Quit Plan, he has a recipe for a muesli that uses nuts, oats and seeds. You can easily make your own by eliminating dried fruit etc.
So, when you are label reading, if it has under 5g of sugar to the 100g, then it is okay to be a part of your diet. For example, weet-bix has 2% which is good, corn flakes has 4% which is not too bad but Sultanas and Bran has 17% and Nut Corn Flakes has 16%.
Rule 5 - THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOOD SUGAR!..... Watch our for marketing tricks like 'contains only natural sugar', or 'no added sugar'. Read the label once again and remember honey is 40% fructose (sugar is 50% fructose). 'Reduced fat' also bad. For example, peanut butter full fat version has 8% sugar compared to the low-fat version with 13% sugar.
Whats your alternatives to sugar??
Pure Glucose is also a good alternative. It isn't a manufactured chemical, it tastes sweet, it contains no fructose, it won't make you gain weight, it won't destroy your appetite, it won't give you diabetes or tooth decay (the fructose does that). What the supermarket sells as pure glucose is called DEXTROSE. It is used by the home brewer in beer making. Dextrose is a little more than half sweet as sugar and looks a little like fine powdered sugar. David has also got recipes for cupcakes, pancakes etc that use only Dextrose. The dextrose does take up more liquid in the batters, so more liquid is needed plus it doesn't have that 'crunch' factor with biscuits. But, hey, I am happy to have a substitute for those times when I need one!!
You also have the Artificial Sweeteners available but I for one am steering clear when I can because I am not too convinced that they are good for you in the long run.
Have you fallen asleep yet??
I do apologise for the loooong post but there is soooo much I had to say. If you can get the book, then do. It will change your world too.
If you are not addicted to sugar, then you will probably realise you don't actually eat that much in your day to day life. But if you are, then maybe this might be the information that you needed.
I don't know if I am allowed to promote another website. If I am, then I will post his blog and forum, so you can get to know a bit more about this.
Hope this was happy reading and not too much 'over your head' type of stuff.
:flowerforyou:
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Replies
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THANK YOU! and i'm going to get this book. seriously, makes sense now that you have broken it down. also going to look for dextrose!0
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Interesting! My boyfriend is starting to brew his own beer so hopefully we will have dextrose around the house. Would you mind posting some of the recipes? Thanks for the info!0
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Thanks for this post! I recently limited my sugar intake for a few weeks, and felt great. It's crept back into my diet, so this was a good reminder to be more watchful of what goes in my mouth!0
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Excellent post. HFCS is a huge problem. In addition to being unbelievably bad for you it is also extremely addictive. This is why food companies love it. Its like the crack cocaine of the food industry.0
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can't thank you enough for this! I have a BIG sugar problem:( it's like a drug.....hope you post that link! I am sure you can write it here...THANK YOU!!! going to have to look for that book....0
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Thanks for sharing! Where did you get his book? It's a little pricey on his website.0
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Awesome info! I've been sugar free since January 2nd and today was the first day that I didn't actively feel like I would steal a piece of candy from a baby if given the chance. Almost all my sugar grams come from veggies, and I'm starting to feel great! This info just makes me remember that I'm making the right choice!0
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Thanks for taking the time to post all the detail. Sugar and sweets are also a huge problem for me but once I get off them I feel so much better. I'm learning that I can't just have a little bit becasue it starts my cravings all over again. I have to quit cold turkey and so far since Jan 1 I've been good!0
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Thanks for sharing! Where did you get his book? It's a little pricey on his website.
Hi CricketKate
This is an Aussie book (I am in Australia) and I picked it up at the local book shop. It is really worth the money, believe me. I have both because it is good to know about it but equally good to know what to do as well!
I hope you can get one cheap online.
:flowerforyou:0 -
Thanks for all your encouragement in my topic. I was nervous in writing about it as I don't want to come across all 'know it all' BUT I just needed to shout it out to the world I guess!!
Here is the link to the forum....
http://sweetpoison.myfreeforum.org
Here is his blog.....
http://www.raisin-hell.com/
Dont you just love the name of his blog LOL!!
I have yet to read the blog but I know there is a link to his Youtube videos.
As for some recipes, there are recipes on the forum that you can look at. I don't know if it is plagiarism if I write down the recipes from his book to here. Can someone let me know??
:flowerforyou:0 -
Excellent post. HFCS is a huge problem. In addition to being unbelievably bad for you it is also extremely addictive. This is why food companies love it. Its like the crack cocaine of the food industry.
EXACTLY!! The book also goes into the Big Money of it all and it is absolutely disgusting that Huge Companies will put money before people. Hell, as David said, they could all change to dextrose in their ingredients, but then it wouldn't be as addictive, as sweet or as profitable.
And you see people walking around like zombies not knowing that this is what is happening. Sad and sickening, really.0 -
Excellent post. HFCS is a huge problem. In addition to being unbelievably bad for you it is also extremely addictive. This is why food companies love it. Its like the crack cocaine of the food industry.
EXACTLY!! The book also goes into the Big Money of it all and it is absolutely disgusting that Huge Companies will put money before people. Hell, as David said, they could all change to dextrose in their ingredients, but then it wouldn't be as addictive, as sweet or as profitable.
And you see people walking around like zombies not knowing that this is what is happening. Sad and sickening, really.
No one should be suprised that big companies put money before people's health. Even our governments do the same, how long has the world known that smoking causes cancer and yet it is illegal nowhere.0 -
Thank you so much for this post. I just joined this site on Monday, and never realized how much sugar I'm actually eating until I looked at my stats at the end of the past couple days. It's insane! The stuff is in everything. I'm definitely going to try and be more conscious of the sugar I'm putting in my body because I know it makes me feel yucky.
Thanks again for the great info. I''ll have to check that book out.0 -
First off, thanks for the great topic. This is probably the biggest issue in American health right now: the high sugar content in everything we eat.
I'm not an Adkins Diet guy or anything. But obviously, this is why Adkins works and also South Beach. Cutting out those sugars, hidden everywhere, goes a long way for most average eaters. The trouble comes in that many of the foods on those diets are also high in fat, which has it's own pitfalls.
And eating less food, in general, just isn't always an option. It's a calories in/calories out issue. Fat is becoming the regular way our bodies appear, as we consume the same or more calories, yet our daily lives become physically easier and easier, with less physical work necessary to survive. This is a slippery slope that we are on already, and there's really no answer to solve it. You basically must become an amateur nutritionist to not become overweight. Gone are the days of just eating and not worrying about it.
Combine that with all the other daily pressures we have, and I'm not sure "progress" is what we have attained over the past 2000 years.....0 -
More interesting sugar-free reading can be found on Dr. Scott Olsen's website: http://olsonnd.com/
He has a book called "Sugarettes" which I haven't read, but it sounds interesting.0 -
bump0
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First off, thanks for the great topic. This is probably the biggest issue in American health right now: the high sugar content in everything we eat.
I'm not an Adkins Diet guy or anything. But obviously, this is why Adkins works and also South Beach. Cutting out those sugars, hidden everywhere, goes a long way for most average eaters. The trouble comes in that many of the foods on those diets are also high in fat, which has it's own pitfalls.
Atkins diets are okay in the very short term because as we eat no carbs, our body goes into a ketonic state and it relys on only protien and fat for the glucose energy. This produces alot of uric acid in the bloodstream and after a long while (maybe years? or months?) this leads to tissue damage (particularily highly sensitive tissues such as those involved with eyesight and the kidneys), multiple organ failure and eventually death. Also after a few months your muscles will begin to waste.
I know I certainly won't do this type of diet - a couple of slices of good multigrain bread won't harm anyone and gives you fibre and energy!!
Thanks for your replies!
:flowerforyou:0 -
More interesting sugar-free reading can be found on Dr. Scott Olsen's website: http://olsonnd.com/
He has a book called "Sugarettes" which I haven't read, but it sounds interesting.
thanks for this info - I am going to check it out today. The more info the better!!
:flowerforyou:0 -
Excellent post, thank you for being so comprehensive.
I stopped eating all "added" sugars - the ones found in ingredient lists ending in the suffix "ose" - after I read that animal bone char is used in many refining processes in order to bleach and filter the sugar.
As a vegan that is a big no-no!
Fruits and veg are good enough for me
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Excellent post. HFCS is a huge problem. In addition to being unbelievably bad for you it is also extremely addictive. This is why food companies love it. Its like the crack cocaine of the food industry.
EXACTLY!! The book also goes into the Big Money of it all and it is absolutely disgusting that Huge Companies will put money before people. Hell, as David said, they could all change to dextrose in their ingredients, but then it wouldn't be as addictive, as sweet or as profitable.
And you see people walking around like zombies not knowing that this is what is happening. Sad and sickening, really.
No one should be suprised that big companies put money before people's health. Even our governments do the same, how long has the world known that smoking causes cancer and yet it is illegal nowhere.
The one difference is that we can chose to smoke but we can't chose to eat UNLESS we have knowledge in what we chose to eat. Many people do believe that 'natural' sugar is okay and that fructose is even healthier....how many times do people chose juice over, say, full fat milk because it is healthy?? So many cereals are loaded with sugar but are marketed as healthy.
Yes, Governments have a lot to answer for too!!0
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