Sugar Problems

I've been on several threads on MFP and I've seen them devolve in exactly the same way -- someone asks a question, someone else comments that sugar isn't very good for them and they avoid it, and then about three people get their hammers out and start bellowing about FOOD POLICE and SUGAR HATERS! and PROVE YOUR POINT WITH SCIENCE OR SHUT UP FOREVER!!!

Well, here's your chance, boys: prove to all of us that sugar is just fine for everyone all the time. Go ahead, there's a tornado watch here and I'll be up all night. I'll wait for your Google links or whatever.

Unless you are going to go the "I don't have to prove anything to you" route while you are all up in arms about the other kids on the playground.

Hey! Here's one, also from the New England Journal of Medicine, that finds that similar calorie intakes do in fact have long term weight gain differences based on the source of the calories! This study took place over 4 years, so you know they worked hard at faking these results!

"Eating more or less of any one food or beverage may change the total amount of energy consumed, but the magnitude of associated weight gain varied for specific foods and beverages. Differences in weight gain seen for specific foods and beverages could relate to varying portion sizes, patterns of eating, effects on satiety, or displacement of other foods or beverages. Strong positive associations with weight change were seen for starches, refined grains, and processed foods. These findings are consistent with those suggested by the results in limited short-term trials: consumption of starches and refined grains may be less satiating, increasing subsequent hunger signals and total caloric intake, as compared with equivalent numbers of calories obtained from less processed, higher-fiber foods that also contain healthy fats and protein. Consumption of processed foods that are higher in starches, refined grains, fats, and sugars can increase weight gain."

"Some foods — vegetables, nuts, fruits, and whole grains — were associated with less weight gain when consumption was actually increased. Obviously, such foods provide calories and cannot violate thermodynamic laws. Their inverse associations with weight gain suggest that the increase in their consumption reduced the intake of other foods to a greater (caloric) extent, decreasing the overall amount of energy consumed. Higher fiber content and slower digestion of these foods would augment satiety, and their increased consumption would also displace other, more highly processed foods in the diet, providing plausible biologic mechanisms whereby persons who eat more fruits, nuts, vegetables, and whole grains would gain less weight over time."

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1014296#t=articleBackground

Here's an article (from the same useless major university over in Calilala land, of course), that discusses research that has found a link between sugared soda and cell decay, leading to disease. Of course, this research is only a month old, so it's got to be too new to be true, right?!

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/10/119431/sugared-soda-consumption-cell-aging-associated-new-study

Hey, another American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that finds a strong correlation between high sugar foods and an increased desire to eat more! Or something like that, all that science talk is so confusing.

"Compared with an isocaloric low-GI meal, a high-GI meal decreased plasma glucose, increased hunger, and selectively stimulated brain regions associated with reward and craving in the late postprandial period, which is a time with special significance to eating behavior at the next meal."

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2013/06/26/ajcn.113.064113.abstract

Sugars shouldn’t make up more than 10% of the energy (calorie intake) you get from food and drink each day. This is about 70g for men and 50g for women, but it varies depending on:
your size
your age
how active you are

Check nutrition labels to help you pick the foods with less added sugar, or go for the low-sugar version. Look for the Carbohydrates figure in the nutrition label to check how much sugar the product contains for every 100g.

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DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »

Here's an article (from the same useless major university over in Calilala land, of course), that discusses research that has found a link between sugared soda and cell decay, leading to disease. Of course, this research is only a month old, so it's got to be too new to be true, right?!

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/10/119431/sugared-soda-consumption-cell-aging-associated-new-study

This link took me to a study looking at telomere length in NHANES participants. It concluded that sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter chromosome telomeres (generally a bad thing), but non-carbonated sugar sweetened beverages were not. Additionally, consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (considered a good thing, unless it's a cancer cell).

Hang on......isn't fruit juice full of fructose which Lustig claims is toxic?

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Charlottesometimes23 wrote: »

DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »

Hey, another American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that finds a strong correlation between high sugar foods and an increased desire to eat more! Or something like that, all that science talk is so confusing.

"Compared with an isocaloric low-GI meal, a high-GI meal decreased plasma glucose, increased hunger, and selectively stimulated brain regions associated with reward and craving in the late postprandial period, which is a time with special significance to eating behavior at the next meal."

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2013/06/26/ajcn.113.064113.abstract

This very small study of n=12 obese and overweight people has little to do with sugar. It's about GI and blood flow in the brain region involved in reward but also behaviour (very different to reward). It's impossible to determine from this study that the high GI food is rewarding.

The first two studies were prospective studies of the same population (nurses) with self reported data, height, weight, food frequency questionnaires. They looked at correlation, which we know, doesn't mean causation. One study showed that generally, more calorie dense food (fried potatoes, meats, refined grains, sugar sweetened beverages) were associated with weight gain. No surprise there. The other looking at genetic susceptibility scores and sugar sweetened beverages with what appears to be very little consideration of confounding variables, and little knowledge of the functional role of the susceptibility genes.

So far Diedre, you haven't proven YOUR point. Lustig articles, n = 12 studies....

I'm glad someone got a point from her posts since all I got is "Sugar is evil and I hate anyone who disagrees with my views! "

MrM27 wrote: »

DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »

I could do this all night! But I'm pretty sure I'm about to get scolded for spamming the thread and anyway, the tornado watch is coming to a close. That was a bad storm but no tornados here! I'm tired, and I'm tired of rubbing your noses in your own poop. I'm sure, just like with my dog, it's not going to do any good, and you'll be back on the forums, cracking down on people with your absolute and unshakable belief that anyone with a bad reaction to sugar is a fear-mongering liar troll hysteric.

(On a more serious note, I do want to thank you for giving me something to think about instead of the storm. It really helped me and I had fun instead of being curled up in terror on the bathroom floor.)

This was my favorite line or all the ones she posted. Especially after reading all the links and realized they didn't support her stance. So much emotion in her posts.

It's a little obvious she didn't read them but instead cherry picked them. Then the time frame in which she posted all of them especially considering how long the first posted study is.

Oh, the poop comment was great wasn't it.

Who's wearing the poop now?

DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »

We are all wearing the poop! We are all rubbing each other's noses in it. My point is that I can post all the links and you can post all the links and we are no closer to understanding each other because I am intractable in my position that sugar in certain forms is really bad for me, and you are intractable in your position that what is true for you must be true for everyone.

So what's the point of you even commenting on posts when people ask for help with sugar? They need help with their struggle with sugar, not snark about what they are going through isn't science.

I will agree wholeheartedly that a great deal of the purported science tossed around on these threads is total bunk. But something is going on with many foods available to us today. There's overeating, which I totally agree with you can be resolved with a bit of will power. But binging isn't a lack of willpower; it's a powerful response to stimulus, and all antecdotal evidence points to sugar as the culprit. If people are having trouble binging on steak and green beans, I haven't seen those posts.

People may not binge on steak but they will binge on cheese burgers and fries. What people tend to binge on is food that is high fat, salt and carbs and those are the ones that all fad diets zone in on in their own way. The high carb/low fat diets tend to say stop eating fat and thus elimnate chips, cookies, cakes, fries, etc while the low carb/high fat tend to say stop eating carbs and eliminate chips, cookies, cakes, fries etc. Hmm, seems that they both tend to arrive at the biggest binge foods in different ways.

Also, notice that no one ever seems to binge on pure sugar or even plain bread or plain pasta -- wonder why that would be if sugar is the only problem rather than say high calorie foods that contain fat, salt and sugar in one big dense caloric ball.

DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »

We are all wearing the poop! We are all rubbing each other's noses in it. My point is that I can post all the links and you can post all the links and we are no closer to understanding each other because I am intractable in my position that sugar in certain forms is really bad for me, and you are intractable in your position that what is true for you must be true for everyone.

So what's the point of you even commenting on posts when people ask for help with sugar? They need help with their struggle with sugar, not snark about what they are going through isn't science.

I will agree wholeheartedly that a great deal of the purported science tossed around on these threads is total bunk. But something is going on with many foods available to us today. There's overeating, which I totally agree with you can be resolved with a bit of will power. But binging isn't a lack of willpower; it's a powerful response to stimulus, and all antecdotal evidence points to sugar as the culprit. If people are having trouble binging on steak and green beans, I haven't seen those posts.

Even if it is a powerful response to stimulus. How do you suppose people get past that? I'm going to go with...will power.