Cutting Sugar From my Diet entirely
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RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Start reasonably and cut refined sugars for 2 weeks and see how you feel. Make sure you are not replacing with a bunch of artificial sweeteners. Due to a health issue I had to cut refined sugars but still use honey agave and natural sugars in fruits and vegetables. My goal is to stay under 30g a day. Think that is about as close as I can get to "no sugar" and eat a complete diet. (2100 cal/day)
How would cutting refined sugar help a health issue if you are replacing it with natural sugar?
Your body doesn't care where it comes from. Sugar is sugar.
Your body does care.
Refined sugar is broken down by the body differently than natural occouring sugars. Refined sugars are made of bonded sucrose and glucose and when they are processed by the body it dramatically increases insulin production. Or in my case fuel for bacteria production. Consuming 30g +/- of sugar daily is pretty low considering a 12oz can of coke contains 40g.
Got a link to some science on that?
1) Refined sugar (table sugar, also called sucrose) is made of glucose and fructose. Guess what honey is made of? Glucose and fructose. Guess what high fructose corn syrup is made of? You guessed it - glucose and fructose.
2) The body digests/metabolizes all sugars (refined or natural) into monosaccharides (chiefly glucose), regardless of their source. Sugar is sugar.
How your body metabolises naturally occurring sugars is different from how it metabolises artificial or processed/refined sugars. They did a study of artificial honey versus natural honey where the artificial honey had exact same ratio of glucose to fructose molecules. What they found was that the body treated the two honeys significantly differently. Too, in studies of the Kuna people who get the majority of their calories from fruit, there are no sugar related diseases and their body mass remains lean. Further studies have shown that the same molecules of sugar are processed differently...for example the fructose eaten with fruit was processed differently from HFCS...and actually that pure fructose was toxic.
https://chriskresser.com/is-all-sugar-created-equal/
Where are these studies?
Your link is just to a blog by someone who clearly doesn't understand what he is writing about.
The references with the specific studies backing up what he's reporting are embedded in the article. Just click on the end note numbers as they appear by the sentence they refer to. They are in blue font and are hyperlinked. Cheers!RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Start reasonably and cut refined sugars for 2 weeks and see how you feel. Make sure you are not replacing with a bunch of artificial sweeteners. Due to a health issue I had to cut refined sugars but still use honey agave and natural sugars in fruits and vegetables. My goal is to stay under 30g a day. Think that is about as close as I can get to "no sugar" and eat a complete diet. (2100 cal/day)
How would cutting refined sugar help a health issue if you are replacing it with natural sugar?
Your body doesn't care where it comes from. Sugar is sugar.
Your body does care.
Refined sugar is broken down by the body differently than natural occouring sugars. Refined sugars are made of bonded sucrose and glucose and when they are processed by the body it dramatically increases insulin production. Or in my case fuel for bacteria production. Consuming 30g +/- of sugar daily is pretty low considering a 12oz can of coke contains 40g.
Got a link to some science on that?
1) Refined sugar (table sugar, also called sucrose) is made of glucose and fructose. Guess what honey is made of? Glucose and fructose. Guess what high fructose corn syrup is made of? You guessed it - glucose and fructose.
2) The body digests/metabolizes all sugars (refined or natural) into monosaccharides (chiefly glucose), regardless of their source. Sugar is sugar.
How your body metabolises naturally occurring sugars is different from how it metabolises artificial or processed/refined sugars. They did a study of artificial honey versus natural honey where the artificial honey had exact same ratio of glucose to fructose molecules. What they found was that the body treated the two honeys significantly differently. Too, in studies of the Kuna people who get the majority of their calories from fruit, there are no sugar related diseases and their body mass remains lean. Further studies have shown that the same molecules of sugar are processed differently...for example the fructose eaten with fruit was processed differently from HFCS...and actually that pure fructose was toxic.
https://chriskresser.com/is-all-sugar-created-equal/
Abstract
Studies suggest that honey has less influence on serum glucose concentrations than monosaccharides and disaccharides. This study aimed to confirm these findings conclusively by comparing directly the effects of honey, an identical sugar solution, and oral glucose tolerance (OGT) test solution on serum glucose, insulin, and C-peptide values in healthy subjects. Twelve healthy men with a mean age of 27.7 years, a mean body mass index of 23.2 kg/m(2), and no history of metabolic disorders participated in the study. Subjects underwent OGT testing to establish values and exclude preclinical diabetes. One week later they were randomly assigned to basswood honey or a glucose-fructose solution (honey-comparable glucose-fructose solution). The following week subjects were given the other solution. All solutions contained 75 g of glucose. Serum glucose was measured before drinking test solutions and every 10 minutes for 120 minutes afterwards. C-peptide and insulin were measured at 60 and 120 minutes. Serum insulin and C-peptide values at 60 minutes were significantly lower for honey. The mean serum glucose concentration was also lower for honey, but direct comparisons at the various times showed no statistically significant differences between solutions. However, the area under the concentration-time profile for glucose response was lower for the honey than the honey-comparable glucose-fructose solution. Honey had less effect on serum glucose, C-peptide, and insulin values than the honey-comparable glucose-fructose solution. Further study to elucidate underlying mechanisms may be worthwhile, as may investigation of the implications of these findings for diabetic patients.
This is the only information in all of those links that even mentions honey vs artificial honey. That is not a study. They don't know what the n=12 ate before hand or any thing else meaningful.
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You might still be eating a lot of sugar now. Why don't you eat a little less and see how that goes? Just cut out the high sugar, few nutrients stuff for now and keep some fruit and tons of vegetables in. I'm on 17 grams of sugar a day at the moment and still include them. Sugar is not the devil here! You can check todays food diary if you like (there's nothing else in there as I just wanted to check how I was doing exactly). Fruits are delicious and healthy. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.1
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I'm considering cutting sugar completely out from my diet.
As others have asked, do you mean added sugar or all sugar? Edit: oh, from your comment about fruit it does seem you mean ALL sugar.
I think the latter is not a good idea, because sugar is in vegetables, fruit, dairy, and a variety of other foods (sweet potatoes, even a small amount in things like eggs). There are a small amount of people (so called carnivores) who eat only animal products and still are probably not sugar free (small amount in eggs, they may still consume dairy that has it), and some extreme keto-ers will consume 5 or so grams (NOT necessary to keto), but both of those require cutting way down on or out foods like vegetables, which again seems to me really counterproductive and not a good idea for the vast majority of people -- certainly not if you don't have specific health issues but merely are curious about not eating sugar or think if lower sugar is good lower still or none would be best. It doesn't work that way -- focusing on sugar is really beside the point, I'd focus on diet quality (amount of added sugar can be related to that). If you think it would be easy because you currently are not getting a lot of sugar from sources such as vegetables (you can check your diary and see), I'd actually recommend increasing those.
I did cut out added sugar for a while. For me it wasn't really about adding sugar to things (I never do, and unless I'm baking often don't even own any -- this is just personal taste and habits), but cutting out mostly things that obviously had added sugar (ice cream, chocolate, mango chutney, dried cherries (maybe less obvious, but it's hard to find them without it added), and things that happened to include it (most smoked salmon, bread--although I rarely eat that anyway and wasn't at all at the time for other reasons, sriracha, variety of things that I bought even though it was pretty easy for me since I mostly cook at home--I basically started being better about always bringing lunch and not buying it for a while, even though I have a lot of healthy options for purchased lunches).
Anyway, when I did it, it was because it was an experiment to see how hard it would be, and also because I was working on emotional eating and found it easier to just say "no sweets." I thought it was valuable for me as an experiment, and I learned that given the way I ate it wasn't very hard for me, but afterwards I decided to add sweets back in moderation and not worry about the relatively small amount of sugar I got by using sriracha and eating smoked salmon and buying an occasional (delicious) sandwich with french ham, gruyere, avocado, jalapenos, and mango chutney, on housemade bread or the like.
So if you want to experiment with it, I'd just advise knowing what your goals are.
I have cut out sweets for a period of time a couple of subsequent times and seen that my added sugar amounts became vanishingly low, but because I don't eat many packaged products with added sugar I saw 0 reason to worry about stuff like the sugar in sriracha. (I don't think hidden sugar is really a significant thing, and it's definitely not in my own diet.)
Now I am actually quite low on sugar overall because I am trying very low carb, but even so it's not uncommon to have about 20-25 grams just from vegetables, dairy, a bit from nuts and eggs, and tiny amounts of added sugar from, again, things like sriracha, maybe balsamic vinegar. Getting more than 20 just from vegetables always feels like a positive to me, since I think eating vegetables is important.
Anyway, TLDR version: for health reasons, I personally think it makes sense to limit added sugar, as if you are eating high amounts (relative to total calories) it probably comes from sweets or other lower nutrient foods, but I don't see a particular health reason to say ALL should be removed. I do think there can be personal reasons that it makes sense for an individual. (If you aren't eating much other than what you already removed and think it would be easy, that's probably not you, but if you want to understand where it is coming from, that might be interesting.)4 -
pure fructose was toxic.
https://chriskresser.com/is-all-sugar-created-equal/
As Kresser says, and as I'd hope we all know, you never eat pure fructose, though. Sucrose is 50/50 fructose and glucose, HFCS is 55/45, and fruit itself has a variety of percentages (including uncombined fructose). Therefore, I wonder why you think this is relevant.5 -
Saying that fewer carbs is always better is what is not supported, at all.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/making-the-case-for-eating-fruit/?_r=0 (quotes Lustig, among others).4 -
Fairlieboy wrote: »Reading through these comments show many are confused, or ill-informed. Attacking Chris Kresser or other bloggers is pretty pointless. Nutrition is not maths. Humans are biological. It is called biochemistry, not chemistry. We have more bacteria than cells, and there is still a lot unknown. Four years ago I decided I wanted to live healthier, but was confused about the apparent myths and confusion from medical and dietary /lifestyle. So I read over 100 books. 2000 published, peer reviewed papers about what was best current evidence based lifestyle and diets. I wrote and self published a book called the Take-Out Diet as part of the study for myself.
Regarding "sugar". There is fat, protein and "Saccharides" as the 3 foods we eat. Saccharides are a class of biochemicals that go all the way from mono-saccharides (glucose or fructose), disaccharides (eg. Sucrose, maltose) through starches all the way to complex saccharides such as leafy vegetables (broccoli). The evidence is clear and unequivocal regarding health. Minimize sugars. The only question is to what level. Just like alcohol.
If you have a can of soda (coke) a day, in a year you will be 1kg heavier. Take 20 years and wonder why you are 50lbs overweight. If you look at people who drink this or more then their livers histologically look just like an alcoholic. They have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which looks identical to alcoholic fatty liver disease, with identical health risks. Fructose is now know as the culprit because 80% of the metabolism is in the liver. C.f. Glucose is metabolised everywhere. And the simple process is this. Sugar raises insulin levels. Insuline is needed to metabolize the sugar to glycogen or fat. But the increase in insulin increases appetite. Not much but enough so you eat more. Subtly.
If you buy my book, all of those references are there. Alternatively try books by Gary Taubes, or John Yudkin, or David Gillespie, or Prof Robert Lustig, all of whom have written detailed, documented books about the damage that added sugar has done to western diets and contribution to obesity. What most non-science people do not realise is that there will be science studies that are inconclusive, or show the opposite as the experiment had flaws in the methodology, so it can be very confusing. Lastly, there is documented evidence that the food and beverage companies have actively lobbied, and deliberately misled.
Minimise "Added sugar". If the food product is more than 3% (3 gm per 100gm); avoid. (For milk products add 5gm as lactose is naturally there). Avoid having more than about 2 pieces of fruit per day. World Healthy Organization now say no more than 5% of daily calorie intake = 6 teaspoons of added sugar (25gm). Remember this is with severe opposition by food and sugar lobbyists. Most informed scientists say if should be no more than 10gm.
You're quoting Drs who get laughed at by their peers.
Can you link these peer reviewed studies that show non alcoholic fatty liver disease is caused by fructose?
I notice that you only mention sugar raising insulin, what did your research show about protein spiking insulin?14 -
If you have a can of soda (coke) a day, in a year you will be 1kg heavier. Take 20 years and wonder why you are 50lbs overweight.
Lots of people could have a can of soda a day and not gain weight - as long as it fits in their calorie level.
Or conversely they could eat ,say, 2 apples a day for a year and gain 1kg if takes them over their calorie level.
Silly comment is really silly.
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I hope the people talking about the toxicity of fructose aren't eating apples then.12
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stevencloser wrote: »I hope the people talking about the toxicity of fructose aren't eating apples then.
oh yes- doh
Perhaps I will edit my comment to "If they ate a grilled steak every day and it took them over their calorie level..... "
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Too, in studies of the Kuna people who get the majority of their calories from fruit, there are no sugar related diseases and their body mass remains lean.
I had not heard of the Kuna people so i looked them up - they are an indiginous people of Panama and Colombia.
I expect they lived a traditional lifestyle, consuming far more whole foods and far less calories and being far more active than the average person in modern western countries - hence, surprise surprise - they tend to be leaner.
I would think that is far more likely explanation than simply their diet is high in fruit.
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There's no reason to eliminate all sugars from your diet. Even things like meat have small amounts of sugar in them. Approach it reasonably. Lay off the sweets except for maybe a very small portion of them a day if you have a bit of a sweet tooth. Lay off alcohol, which your body will process into sugar (drunkenness is what happens when you consume more alcohol than your body can turn into sugar). There's been some research suggesting that simple sugars (like glucose and fructose) can be metabolized by the body better than binary sugars (like sucrose and lactose), but basically the comment that sugar is sugar is about right. The whole big to-do in the news and in public discussion about high-fructose corn syrup is simply a late recognition of, and lately an overreaction to, the fact that the difference between simple and binary sugars was overstated before. They're basically the same with perhaps a slight preference for simple sugars.3
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For me, my sugar intake other than that naturally occurring in fruits, vegetables and grain products consists of two cups of coffee in the morning each with a small amount of half and half (containing some lactose) and one scoop of ice cream after dinner (lactose again plus some sucrose). I eliminated other sweets and alcohol; the results have been very good, as I am losing weight without ever really feeling hungry (checking in at about 1300 calories a day, with a maximum of 1710). Yesterday I treated myself to a good-sized (11 oz.) steak without going much over my average, not even close to my maximum.1
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As a New Englander in exile (grew up in Massachusetts, now in Chicago), I have to have my ice cream from time to time!0
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A can of soda a day won't of itself harm you; it just means that you'll have to reduce other calories in your diet accordingly--if you're having that can of soda, the warning in a previous post about gaining 50 pounds in 20 years will apply if you eat the same as you would have eaten without the soda or other high-calorie drink.3
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maybe that can of soda can be your dessert. The calorie content in a soda isn't high for a dessert, and it could satisfy your sweet tooth in place of ice cream or whatever.4
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Previous arguments aside, fruits are lower on the glycemic index, which does make a difference to your body's insulin response. As a diabetic you can run your own science experiments! Eat a tablespoon of table sugar and measure your blood sugar in fifteen minutes, versus eating a tablespoon of fruit sugar as part of some strawberries. The strawberries are handled by your body better, because the fiber and other components of the food moderate how the sugar is digested. Yes, eventually it all becomes the same stuff - but how it gets there makes a significant difference to your pancreas.
One thing this means is that studies have found eating whole fruit actually seems to prevent type 2 diabetes, while consuming added sugars like soda definitely are associated with a higher incidence of diabetes. In addition, fruit contains vitamins and micronutrients which are essential for health, while soda contains food coloring.
Trying to cut out fruit from your diet is a bad idea, there's no benefit to this.4 -
rheddmobile wrote: »Previous arguments aside, fruits are lower on the glycemic index, which does make a difference to your body's insulin response. As a diabetic you can run your own science experiments! Eat a tablespoon of table sugar and measure your blood sugar in fifteen minutes, versus eating a tablespoon of fruit sugar as part of some strawberries. The strawberries are handled by your body better, because the fiber and other components of the food moderate how the sugar is digested. Yes, eventually it all becomes the same stuff - but how it gets there makes a significant difference to your pancreas.
One thing this means is that studies have found eating whole fruit actually seems to prevent type 2 diabetes, while consuming added sugars like soda definitely are associated with a higher incidence of diabetes. In addition, fruit contains vitamins and micronutrients which are essential for health, while soda contains food coloring.
Trying to cut out fruit from your diet is a bad idea, there's no benefit to this.
Coincidentally, people who eat lots of fruit tend to not be overweight while people drinking lots of soda tend to be overweight and being overweight is considered a major risk factor in getting diabetes, so occam's razor...10 -
It's NOT broken down differently. It's broken down the same as say fruit sugar. The body doesn't realize the source. Where's your source from?RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Start reasonably and cut refined sugars for 2 weeks and see how you feel. Make sure you are not replacing with a bunch of artificial sweeteners. Due to a health issue I had to cut refined sugars but still use honey agave and natural sugars in fruits and vegetables. My goal is to stay under 30g a day. Think that is about as close as I can get to "no sugar" and eat a complete diet. (2100 cal/day)
How would cutting refined sugar help a health issue if you are replacing it with natural sugar?
Your body doesn't care where it comes from. Sugar is sugar.
Your body does care.
Refined sugar is broken down by the body differently than natural occouring sugars. Refined sugars are made of bonded sucrose and glucose and when they are processed by the body it dramatically increases insulin production. Or in my case fuel for bacteria production. Consuming 30g +/- of sugar daily is pretty low considering a 12oz can of coke contains 40g.
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