Fructose As Culprit In the Obesity Epidemic 821
drewtheman writes "According to an interview with Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology from the University of California, San Francisco, fructose, once touted as diabetic-friendly because it doesn't raise insulin levels directly, could be a major culprit for the obesity epidemic, high blood pressure, and elevated blood levels of LDL in Americans and others worldwide as they adopt American-style diets. Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar and up to 90% of high-fructose corn syrup, both ingredients found in copious quantity in most American prepared foods."
Isn't that at obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Isn't that at obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
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Given that the human body is one of the most complex systems we have ever encountered, it's not surprising that in many instances the logical "X in = X out" doesn't apply. Anyone who has ever tried controlled, as scientific as possible dieting can tell that eating the same amount X calories per day every day for months produce wildly varying results in the same person, even if said person keeps
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Fructose is primarily metabolized by the liver. The increased levels of fructose in the liver result in massive changes for the worse in the way the body processes sweetners and leads to a much greater induction of insulin resistance.
That is, in an otherwise healthy population of adults, the increase in diabetes and obesity will be much greater with high fructose corn syrup than with the equivalent amount of regular sugar.
Ever since hearing Dr. Lustig give a talk on the su
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If you're having success with your diet, I imagine it's your common s
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:5, Informative)
Just check out this research study [64.233.179.104] that estimates that subtracting the benefits of the quotas/subsidies from the costs (i.e. consumer/producer benefits of lower costs minus "oh but the poor farming corporations!") leaves the American economy almost billion dollars per year better off.
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Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that some people's mothers are busy working two or more jobs and don't have time for anything besides a McDonalds quality dinner.
http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/ [typepad.com]
Voluntarily eating at/below the poverty level will change your perspective.
That foodstamp challenge is BS (Score:5, Informative)
Using that as a staple, you find that you now have more to spend on other things. You also will discover that rice is quite healthy.
Now please don't think I'm arguing that people should have to live off of a couple bucks a day for food, but realise that these congress people aren't doing it right. When it comes to really cutting food budget, you don't go to White Castle. You concentrate on materials which are cheap and have good calorie content. Rice is essentially the unbeatable champ in that area and hence forms your staple (it is not such a coincidence that it often forms the staple of diets for people more poor than is even conceivable in the US). Beans also work well, especially when purchased bagged and not canned, and they supply protein. Beans and rice, though not glorious, are just about enough on their own to sustain you.
If they are serious about seeing how to live on an extremely low budget for food, they should at least make an honest effort.
Re:That foodstamp challenge is BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Try getting enough servings of fresh green vegetables for a family of four on a budget.
Here's a hint:
Fresh spinach for four ($12) ($9 if you can find the unbagged bunches, seriously!)
Broccoli for four ($3)
Tomatoes (four large) ($3)
I could go on and on.
The "poor" lifestyle staple of rice and beans (arguably probably the most cost effective way) with enough veggies doesn't exist.
You CANT get enough good veggies on that budget. You could get low quality frozen. Or if you are lucky get one of those local "farm share" subscriptions ($30 per month for half share of random crap squash, who the fuck needs a whole case of squash at a time?) The idea you can get tasty veggies for cheap is simply bullshit.
Re:That foodstamp challenge is BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Those prices are in the States? I've read that all the foods that are actually good for you to eat do NOT get subsidies, while corn and other grains (mainly used to feed pigs and cattle) get the subsidies. See Slow Food for more information. [slowfoodusa.org]
We import our vegetables except for July and August, and they are still cheaper than that what you listed. In fact, buying only fresh fruit, veggies, and meat will make my grocery bill about 30% to 50% lower than if I buy processed foods. We import from the USA and and S. America.
Re:That foodstamp challenge is BS (Score:4, Insightful)
However, what a lot of folks don't realize is that this applies (for the exception of artifical market pressures generated by subsidies) mostly to chain stores that have min/maxed their business model to cater to customer tastes. As people get more accustomed to eating garbage, stores just put more of that crap on the shelves. For instance, I had to stop shopping at the local Safeway simply because the produce was routinely rotting in the bins since nobody was buying it. Stand outside for five minutes and you can easily see that few folks here know how to take care of themselves - it's just cart after cart of microwave dinners and sugar filled "juice-boxes" and ramen for the kids.
One thing I have done is to go to "ethnic" grocery stores where everything is substantially cheaper, rather than shopping a large chain grocery store. Mark my words: immigrants know how to eat! The produce is plentiful and fresher, the meat is half the cost and tastier, I can get "exotic" ingredients unavailable elsewhere... who cares if nobody speaks English? In the case of the local Korean market, there's even a fishmonger where they'll clean your fresh fish however you want. The hispanic/latin markets around town also routinely have stuff like plantain and avacado for half of what you'd pay at the "normal" store.
Cash-only staples stores (like Aldi) are another way to go, but I haven't gone that route in 7 years. They're awesome for budget shopping. I'd imagine that non-gourmet co-op stores might also be good move for most people.
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The frustose is from Corn Syrup, not sugar cane.
To make high-fructose corn syrup, fructose content is actually fortified by treating the syrup with an enzyme that converts some of the glucose into more fructose. That is, the "high fructose" is by design.
Cane (or beet) sugar, sucrose, is a molecule consisting of a fructose and a glucose molecule joined together. It splits up into its component sugars (50% fructose) pretty much as soon as it hits your saliva and gastric juices.
Honey is also mostly fructose and glucose, but they're not bonded together as i
Well maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
/ and no concept of portion control.
Re:Well maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
Corn syrup, or fructose used instead of sugar means that for most people, they are under fed as far as their body is concerned and telling them. This is why it is an issue. If regular sugar was used, the body's kill switch for eating would kick before a person ends up spending "every waking hour stuffing their faces with lard". Cause after all, what is lard but a form of sugar. Same with startches. Your body is good at sending signals to eat when it is deprived of something. And people are being deprived without knowing it.
Now lets look at some more effects of fructose, low insulin means low amounts of energy which means the bodies metabolism slows down which means more food gets stored as fat while the body is sending signals to eat more. Do you see a cycle here that is more then some fatass stuffing his face because he can? I hope so otherwise the entire idea of the article is waisted on the space between you eyes and ears.
And for the record, In america, you don't need to be eating donuts, candy, soda pop, and cakes to get the fructose. It is happily embeded in canned soups, frozen foods and all sorts of other things like the breakfast cereal that is supposed to be good for you. Chances are, if you don't make it from scratch, you will come into contact with it.
And in other news......... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I keep hoping that with the high corn prices, the food producers will switch back to sugar.
We are all being used as lab rats to test the safety of food additives. Like lab rats, many will end up dying needlessly as a result.
Re:And in other news......... (Score:5, Informative)
Why? HFCS and Sugar breaks down to the same things in the body. Every study I've seen shows that HFCS is no more dangerous than Sugar. Studies that only look at the Fructose show that high amounts of Fructose is dangerous. The HFCS in soft drinks and sport drinks is not high in Fructose. The "High Fructose" part of "High Fructose Corn Syrup" means it has a high content of fructose compared to corn syrup itself (which has next to no fructose).
In fact, a happy paper [nih.gov] at the NIH says pretty much this.
Re:And in other news......... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, fruits have the exact same fructose in it. Why are fruits better? For one, they come with other nutrients. For another, to consume the amount of fructose in a glass of coke, you'd have to eat a whole bushel of apples. The logistics prevent you from overindulging in fruits, while soda's are all about overindulging.
Re:And in other news......... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is the corn sirup, that both contains high amounts of carbs, and will leave you hungry after drinking it.
Scaremongering I tells ya! (Score:3, Interesting)
Corn is the one of the most powerful forces in America. This will get filed away with global warming as libral propaganda.
I gave up HFCS for new years... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I gave up HFCS for new years... (Score:5, Informative)
I personally gave up HFCS and MSG to the best of my ability about 9 months ago. I'm still too fat (probably all the beer I still drink) but I do feel much much better. That near continuous run-down feeling is gone now. So is that all to frequent feeling after lunch like a bad flu was coming (buzzing in my head, hot flash, sweating, tightness in the chest, congested feeling).
I'm sure someone will respond saying there's no scientific proof that MSG and HFSC are bad for me and that I'm a fool for trying to not consume them. That's just fine... call me a fool. I feel better not eating them and that's reason enough - placebo effect or not.
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A must read NYTimes story on corn & corn syrup (Score:4, Interesting)
Next up-- ethanol!
Not that I'm a skeptic... (Score:4, Informative)
On another note, there have been plenty of studies already demonstrating how nutritionally bad fructose is bad for an individual. Here's a compilation I found awhile back of the cons of using fructose so widely in consumables: http://curezone.com/art/read.asp?ID=32&db=6&C0=17 [curezone.com]
Rule of Thumb (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway the argument is a bad one (and remind me of the argument of people saying "oh god they are adding chemicals in our food") If you took normal organic growing food and we told you the list of stuff inside it, you would not understand half of it, still that would not make it more or less dangerous. 2-oxo-L-threo-hexono-1,4- lactone-2,3-enediol is an example of it. Naturally I could call it L-ascorbate too. Or maybe vitamin C. The problem are not that people don't understand what the smallest ingredient part in ppm or milli% of their food composition is, the problem is that people ignore totally the composition of the main ingredient, like fat, and refuse to do sport, and eat a lot during the day way way more than is necessary for their activities, and not equilibrated. It is a LIFESTYLE problem. It ain't one signle factor but a combination of many. And no, the ingredient you can't pronunce without having being in university ain't the problem.
Old News... (Score:2)
That fructose corn syrup ain't free. (Score:3, Interesting)
In Soviet Russia CIA spoils Cuban sugar for you.
Have you US cubicle jockeys ever thought about how much you are locked into corn syrup?
A few sick fat 'end users' will not stop the protectionism, tariffs and congress critters.
You have a huge set of new tax credits, grants and loans flowing into big corn for 'ethanol'
Then you have state subsidies.
Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life and own the world?
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On the other hand... (Score:4, Informative)
The HFCS used in most soft drinks is (I believe) 50% fructose. It is metabolised almost identically to sucrose: there is an initial enzyme that splits sucrose into glucose and fructose at similar ratios to the contents of the corn syrup, after that the metabolism is identical. It seems unlikely therefore that there is any substantial difference in health effects, and most of the studies quoted in the wikipedia article linked from the main story tend to agree with that.
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um no (Score:5, Insightful)
Fructose comprises of table sugar and corn syrup? (Score:2, Funny)
Fructoses are simple monosaccharides. I don't remember them having corn-atoms
Re:Fructose comprises of table sugar and corn syru (Score:4, Informative)
When A comprises B, it means A is within B, whether it is in whole or in part.
When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part.
Consider another verb for a simpler example:
Baked dough makes cookies.
Cookies are made of baked dough.
Personal experience... (Score:4, Interesting)
And all I did was remove HFCS from my diet.
I suspect since the anti-cholesterol medicine has an effect on the liver, and apparently HFCS is mostly processed by the Liver, has something to do with my weight gain once on the meds.
Now this article suggest other sugars also contribute. I suppose I need to further reduce my sugar intake.
But here is a HFCS tip: Bread! I would buy bread that didn't have HFCS in it and git used to which brand I'd buy. Then I discovered that all the bread I was buying had the ingredients changed to include HFCS. And this I discovered after the cola industry said they would stop selling their HFCS drinks at schools. I guess the HFCS industry simply shifted what they include it in. So the school kids still get it????
Nasty corn industry!!
Seems to me the corn industry needs to be heavily taxed where teh tax is used for health care..... like cigarettes..
What is with High Fructose Corn Syrup? (Score:4, Interesting)
So its not quite true to say that America are shipping the crap that is High Fructose Corn Syrup on the rest of the world, its actually that AMERICAN companies are using that on AMERICANS and using more natural ingredients outside of the US. This appears to be due to costs (its cheaper to use HFCS in the US, as sugar imports are penalised) meaning that the world's richest economy is using the cheapest and crappiest ingredients.
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So, I read this post and others and got curious. Going through random pulls of my cupboard I found most of my dry food (bread cereal) contained either HFCS or simply labeld corn syrup.
Wow!
By eating better I have lost weight and as a middle aged IT professional trying to stay fit that is good. Armed with what I have read this morning I can now be on the lookout for foo
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Awesome report (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Lustig says:
So if we eat significant fiber with everything we ingest does everything become low GI? Or what? This will definitely make me eat French bread (if that has bran?) and no more white bread (which I have known is a "slab of sugar" but didn't really use that knowledge). And what is a compact source of fiber? I doubt you could drink a cola with HFCS and neutralize its evil with a graham cracker (if that has bran in it?) but what's the score there?
2. The experiment in which a drug was administered to children whose brains could not detect leptin resulted in the kids spontaneously working out, doing sports, eliminating soda from their diet, etc. I'd like to know what the kids thought / felt during the study, and want to know if we can "fool" ourselves into doing the same kind of activities and getting a similar effect, in effect bootstrapping a similar kind of health benefit without taking the drug Octreotide. (and what is that drug, sounds pretty strong!)
3. Extremely refreshing and seemingly sensible comments about why it is important to exercise. This has got to be massively important for geeks. Personally I had an obese father who as a doctor unfortunately must have been an ultrageek since he didn't want to do any sports that could hurt his hands (since he couldn't do surgery). He got diabetes. I've been heavy (not astoundingly, but overweight) since I was little and he encouraged me to sit in my room and play with my Apple II all summer I remember well, and now after he got diabetes and bypasses he said "turns out I was wrong, exercise is important!" I coulda killed him!
So anyway this is quite important and felt like a revelation: While calories are one thing I thought exercise was basically to boost the metabolism to burn food faster. Well this article says exercise increases skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity (so less insulin is made so less blood sugar is shunted into fat), lowers cortisol (which is a "megastress hormone" that the article says triggers deposition of bad fat, and finally detoxifies fructose.
These are all awesomely understandable reasons why you gotta exercise and at least to me at this moment it makes me want to throw this glass of diet cola (who cares! anything unhealthy!) off the table and never look a piece of white bread in the face again. Now we need some "best practices" or programming style guides that include exercise with this info in it, of course optimized for maximum concentration and efficiency with minimum weight gain.
Re:Awesome report (Score:4, Informative)
The right way to eat wheat bread is the way that was traditional until the rise of the steam baked industrial rapid rise loaf. That is,first, a slow fermenting rise, usually overnight. This makes the bread both lower GI index, and also more digestible. Second, flour which is not whole wheat but is relatively high extraction. This the so called grey flour of traditional French bread. Until modern times, when people talked about 'white' bread, what they meant was bread without the bran, a greyish color, but containing the germ.
The extraction rate varies from 75% or less for conventional white flour to 85% for brown but not wholewheat flour. In countries where bread is the staple, the extraction rate is usually in the low eighties and this is probably the sensible level. The rate in the US during WWII was raised to 80% - similarly in the UK, or perhaps a little higher. It would be a dramatic step forward for modern diets if it could be placed at that level today.
The same points apply to rice bran, which also should be avoided. It is striking that traditional cultures with long histories of healthy eating invariably mill rice and refine wheat, but never try remove oat bran. Both wheat and rice bran are better used by feeding to poultry, when the conversion into high quality protein is a much better use for it than irritating the human bowel to no nutritional effect.
Oat bran is in a completely different category. It does not irritate the bowel, and its nutrients are available. I believe the same to be true of spelt.
Its worth remarking that probably one of the main causes of obesity is the obsession with the low fat diet. Without any real evidence, we have embarked on a gigantic nutritional experiment in the Anglo Saxon countries over the last 30-40 years. We have gone from diets which were reasonably balanced in terms of saturated fats and complex carbohydrates, to ones which attempted to eliminate all saturated fats. However, the natural and normal craving for some fats has led to the substitution of polyunsaturated fats for saturated. There is no evidence that this is healthy, and much that it is far worse. In addition, since the available high carb foods are highly refined, we have then substitued for potatoes, rice and pasta, much sugar, including fructose. The result is a diet far worse than what we started with, and one which our evolutionary history has never prepared us for.
It is not an accident that this has happened at a time that the health food movement has metamorphosed into the supplements industry.
So what should we eat? Liberal amounts of meat, fish eggs butter and full-fat, non-homogenized milk. Absolutely no refined vegetable oils. Moderate amounts of mono-unsaturated vegetable oils (olive and peanut). No corn oil, safflower oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, margarine. Liberal amounts of vegetables of all sorts. Liberal amounts of sourdough bread made with coarse white flour. Similarly pasta. White, not brown, rice. Parboiled is OK. Fruits in season. And fruit juice, if at all, in great moderation.
Exercise well, and stay off the scales! Because the other great cause of obesity in Western society is the practice of dieting, which, as many studies have shown, simply leads to long term weight gain.
Personal Experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Summary of article (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly people aren't taking the time to read the article (I'm shocked), so here's a summary of the fructose info...
Our consumption of fructose has gone from less than half a pound per year in 1970 to 56 pounds per year in 2003.
high fructose corn syrup came on the market after it was invented in Japan in 1966, and started finding its way into American foods in 1975. In 1980 the soft drink companies started introducing it into soft drinks and you can actually trace the prevalence of childhood obesity, and the rise, to 1980 when this change was made.
it's not the calories that are different it's the fact that the only organ in your body that can take up fructose is your liver. Glucose, the standard sugar, can be taken up by every organ in the body, only 20% of glucose load ends up at your liver. So let's take 120 calories of glucose, that's two slices of white bread as an example, only 24 of those 120 calories will be metabolised by the liver, the rest of it will be metabolised by your muscles, by your brain, by your kidneys, by your heart etc.. Now let's take 120 calories of orange juice. Same 120 calories but now 60 of those calories are going to be fructose because fructose is half of sucrose and sucrose is what's in orange juice. So it's going to be all the fructose, that's 60 calories, plus 20% of the glucose, so that's another 12 out of 60 -- so in other words 72 out of the 120 calories will hit the liver, three times the substrate as when it was just glucose alone.
fructose [does] three things that are particularly bad in the liver. The first is this uric acid pathway that I just mentioned, the second is that fructose initiates what's known as de novo lipogenesis...Which is fat production...Excess fat production and so VLDL [the bad form of cholesterol], very low density lipoproteins end up being manufactured when you consume this large bolus of fructose in a way that glucose does not, and so that leads to dyslipidaemia.
And then the last thing that fructose does in the liver is it initiates an enzyme called Junk one, ...and when you initiate Junk one what happens is that your insulin receptor in your liver stops working...that means your insulin levels all over your body have to rise.
put all of this together and basically you've got a feed forward system of increased insulin, increased liver fat, liver deposition of fat, increased inflammation -- you end up with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. You end up with your inability to see your leptin [**leptin tells your brain you are full**] and so you consume more fructose and you've now got a viscious cycle out of control.
In fact fructose, because of the way it's metabolised, is actually damaging your liver the same way alcohol is. In fact it's the exact same pathway, in fact fructose is alcohol without the buzz.
Another well refrenced gem (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to coin another useless acronym. Where's The Fucking Article!
Misplaced priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'd certainly like people to eat well, and I'd like the companies that produce our food to do so more ethically and with a greater concern for our well-being as consumers. But if someone wants to eat donuts and soda, that's their choice, and who am I to deny them that choice?
Glucose-fructose syrup is worse still. (Score:4, Informative)
In the end, greater stress on a body system results in it wearing out sooner, hence the epidemic of adult-onset diabetes.
High-fructose corn syrup is NOT the same as sucrose. People with sucrose intolerance [wikipedia.org] lack the enzyme and cannot properly digest sucrose.
Don't blame fructose. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Regular sugar triggers insulin and makes you feel full. Fructose doesn't, but contains the same amounts of calories as regular sugar. We have a digestive system that is very good at telling us how much to eat to not gain weight, but if we feed it the wrong things, it will not tell us.
Exercise reduces food intake. What? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is this guy talking about? Ever since I started regularly exercising I am more hungry, more often. And actually hungry, not the confusion of eating out of boredom when I wasn't in shape. Just look at marathon runners, they need to eat tons of food to give them the energy they need. What this guy is saying seems so counterintuitive. Can anyone explain what he means or he is just crackers?
This is bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
I weighed nearly 300 pounds (around 135Kg for metric folks). I have a huge frame, but there's still around 35Kg of fat that I need to lose. About three years ago I had stopped drinking soda containing sugars, as well as sweet fruit juices. Didn't make even a bit of difference as far as my weight is concerned. Granted I started to feel much better, because my blood sugar wasn't on a roller coaster all the time, but that's about it. I did not make any other changes to my diet, though, so I still consume quite a bit of carbs as breads (and no, I don't eat donuts or sweets every day either).
So I bought a bicycle. So far it helped me to lose about 10Kg. This is not much, considering, but I'm making a slow, steady progress. In a few years I _might_ hit my target weight. Maybe even sooner if I change my diet.
The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that there's no "epidemic". It's that people walk a hundred yards/metters a day and sit on their ass all day. No matter how many calories you consume (within reason), diet alone is not gonna make you leaner if you don't exercise. At least not for long.
"Mindless Eating" (Score:5, Informative)
A book was published about a year ago, "Mindless Eating". It discussed the various factors that cause us to overeat and undereat. (The latter is a serious problem in combat situations in the military. It's one thing for a civilian to lose 20 pounds of fat, it's another thing for a fighting soldier to lose 20 pounds of muscle.)
It's easy to say "eat less/eat healthier", but that requires far more attention than you realize. Marketers are NOT trying to get you to eat poorly, they just want you to buy from them instead of the competitor. If everyone wanted broccoli, there would be broccoli stands on every corner.
Most people want something fast, cheap and filling. Chains have tried introducing healthier fare periodically (e.g., Taco Bell had 'lite' choices for awhile), but they weren't popular enough to be economically viable. But offer a larger standard drink or more fries and your sales climb, so you get a downward spiral that results in a pound of french fries and people drinking 64 ounces of soda.
Worse, this "renormalizes" what people expect. Did you know that coke bottles were originally 8 fl oz? Then pepsi introduced a standard 10 fl oz bottle as a marketing gimmick. Vending machines stabilized things at 12 oz for a while (since you had to stay at the standard size to be sold in the machine), but fast food restaurants competed with each other with larger and larger cups, free refills, etc. You could always buy a smaller size but that's psychologically hard when you get half as much drink but pay nearly the same price.
Ditto coffee. It used to be a cup or two in the morning, perhaps with a bit of cream. Then Starbucks came into the market and the sizes have not only increased, the amount of fat and sugar has exploded. People who would never consider drinking a milk shake every day (or even twice a day!) do this without thinking twice when it's a fancy Starbucks drink. If you want a cup (8 oz) of black coffee... good luck!
I think the most telling story was some guy at a yard sale(?) who asked if the seller had any more dinner plates in a set from the 40s. He was holding a serving platter. Historically dinner plates were around 8", but now they're usually 12" (iirc), or over twice as much area. People tend to fill their plates so we're eating a lot more food without thinking about it. Now look at sit-down restaurant chains (Chili's, Olive Garden, etc.) They're selling presentation so they use larger plates than you have at home, and they fill those plates. It's not an exaggeration to say that they serve 3 or 4 solid servings, nutritionally speaking.
This is gradual enough that most people aren't aware that it's happening, but we are eating a lot more food and finding it harder to eat the correct portions. How often have you seen a 6'+ adult order from the child's menu?
Does this excuse people from TRYING? No, of course not. But arrogant "people should know better" tirades don't help since changes requires us to be aware of the subtle changes that have lead us to the current selections and portion sizes.
Not me (Score:5, Informative)
The Dietary and Nutritional Survey of British Adults, Gibson (1996, p. 405) concluded that "sugars
appear to have a weak negative [italics added] association with BMI that is not totally explained
by confounders such as dieting, under-reporting or the inverse correlation between energy from
sugars and fat."
11 types... (Score:4, Funny)
Ok so you don't, I do, but who is in the 3th group?
Re:11 types... (Score:5, Funny)
Muth be thomebody elth.
Re:Film at 11 (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, excess calories certainly are a problem. But Fructose in large doses has the peculiar (and unintuitive) property that much of it is converted more or less directly to fat rather than energy in the liver. Glucose OTOH is metabolized throughout the body. The body seems to be designed to work with a carbohydrate mix that consists of mostly of glucose derived from starch and sugar plus a bit of fructose from fruit and sugar, as well as (for infants and those of European ancestry) a bit of galactose from dairy products.
The body can convert fructose to glucose and burn it. But only in modest doses. When the fructose level gets high, the bod stashes the excess for future consumption ... as fat.
Here's a link to a lengthy article that addresses all this http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/carbohydrat e_metabolism.htm [medbio.info]
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Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least as long as Fat Land [amazon.com] has been out, but probably a bit longer than that. The story of American obesity is the story of American corn subsidies, which is therefore the story of high-fructose corn syrup and omnipresent, cheaper-than-water soda; and the story of vending machines and fast-food restaurants, 'family-style' Applebee's-like chains that exist solely to help burn off the excess corn stock by selling almost nothing but corn and its byproducts.
Don't tell the presidential candidates though, they have to win in Iowa!
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is something to what you write. But, here in Japan vending machines are absolutely everywhere - really, it's crazy; I walked about 3km every morning to my previous job, in a partly rural area and I realized that there was not a single spot along the route where I could not see at least one vending machine. And there has always been lots and lots of fast-food here as well as takeout meals; many traditional Japanese dishes like soba, onigiri, oden and so on are meant to eat quickly from a counter or street vendor cart, or while going from place to place, and the bento meal is ubiquitous. A traditional Japanese meal, furthermore, is an orgy in "grazing" behavior, with dozens of small dishes to eat in turn.
No, while "fast-food" style serving may contribute to creating bad habits, the main culprit is still what people eat, and how much of it, not how you eat it. Most Japanese meals just aren't very fattening; while you often have some part of the meal that is fatty or calorie-rich, you don't get much of it, while you often do get large amounts of vegetables, pickles and other lean stuff. A steak, for instance, may be 100 grams or so, and be just one dish of a dozen you get for your meal.
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Bubbleman, Bubbleman II and Bubbleman SPACE Flavour.
Sigh, what a country. I miss Japan.
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, you walked about 6 times the distance that might be considered the maximum for an American before getting into a car and driving :) . But yeah, of course, it's what is in the vending machines that counts. Next time you're in the States, see if you can buy something from a vending machine without some type of corn or corn-syrup or corn-byproduct as a major ingredient (sometimes it's even in 'diet' products, which have their own set of health threats). I won't say it's impossible, but it's not easy either. The stuff is cheap as dirt to produce, and has long been known to be extremely efficient for conversion and storage as fat.
Fast-food in the States is essentially cheap food. It's there because its corn-syrup ingredients are so cheap to produce and easy to maintain and transport (bonus: it doubles as a preservative). Most of this vending-machine / fast-food / suburban-feed-bag (TGIFriday's et al.) industry is built around this cheapness and ease. They are symptoms. I would guess that vending machines in Japan are the result of a different economic cause.
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the contents are rather different. In most drink vending machines, most drinks are cold or hot green teas and coffee, with a smaller amount of juices, water and sports drinks. Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Informative)
Carbonated soda is not "very rare". And Coca Cola machines without soda only exist when other Coca Cola machines *with* soda sit right next to them.
Japanese vending machines almost always exist in multiple units - it's actually uncommon to see a single vending machine by itself. In the event that you *do*, that vending machine will *always* have at least one, and usually two or more flavors of carbonated soda. When vending machines are paired together, they have one particular kind of drink in each, so yes, of course you will only find carbonated drinks in one out of the four or five machines in any given spot. But they're always there.
This is a typical single-unit Suntory machine installation:
http://www.japonophile.com/wp-content/uploads/200
And the same for Coke:
http://z.about.com/d/gojapan/1/0/8/2/machine2.gif [about.com]
This is a more common multi-machine installation:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/deai_korea/contents/teacher/
(I know the url says "korea", but that's Japan. Here [tjf.or.jp] is the original page it's from.)
It is true that Japan has much more variety of drink types in their vending machines than we do. But I disagree that their drinks are all that much healthier. Their vending machines contain drinks of the following types:
a) Canned iced coffee - always sweetened
b) Soda
c) Beer
d) Sweetened, processed juice drinks (their equivalent to "Sunny Delight")
e) Iced tea (unsweetened)
Of those, only tea is even remotely healthy and calorie-free. And it's true that it's usually available for those who want it. But then, diet soda is always available at vending machines here too; not as healthy as tea, but at least calorie-free and non-obesity forming. Most people choose something else, in both countries.
Our problem is portion control. The standard bottle size in vending machines here is 20oz. A Japanese canned coffee is I think 7oz. Big difference. We're drinking almost three times the sugar in our sugar drinks as they are, just because we're drinking a lot more of it. (This extends beyond vending machines too; go to McDonald's there and the "large" drink is the same size as a "small" here.)
Combined with the rest of their diet, which is a lot less fatty and rich in calories, and with a lot smaller portions, and of course they're in better shape. Though with the rise of fast food there, they're fattening up now [guardian.co.uk] just like we already have. (Most articles on this are a bit alarmist, IMO - it's still obvious that they're in pretty good shape, but obesity rates are rising.)
It's really not rocket science why we're all getting fat. Too many calories, too big portions. It drives me crazy how people read stuff like "fructose makes you fat!" and think they can just cut out fructose and lose weight. Meanwhile, they're still eating double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fries and two apple pies for lunch and wondering why they're still getting fat. The culprit to gaining weight is calories. That's it. Simple laws of physics. All of these foods that supposedly "cause" obesity do so because they are high in calories and low in nutrients. That includes fructose. The bottom line is you need to control your calorie intake, which means both controlling the types of food you eat as well as the amounts.
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It should be noted that colas in Japan (and everywhere in the world except the U.S.) are sweetened with sugar because it is cheaper. In the U.S., due to heavy corn subsidies and import duties on sugar, corn syrup is cheaper, so sodas are made with that instead.
Just as an experiment, I stopped drinking sodas almost entirely a couple of months ago. I found myself eating a lot more (almost twice as much) and my overall calorie intake increased significantly as a result. However, I dropped almost 10 pounds
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That's why I hate Korn! (Score:3, Informative)
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The difference is that Japanese vending machines mainly sell soiled schoolgirl panties.
I'm sure that somebody else is better qualified on that issue and I heard the same story. But my experience from a 2001 visit to Tokyo is quite different. While vending machines are ubiquitous (and a good thing too. Nothing better then some ice cold green tea drink after a hard night of partying on a hungover morning; but I digress) I had to see yet one vending machines selling panties. Used or not.
May be that this is a thing of the past, maybe that we weren't in the seedy enough parts of town to find s
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two beef patties slathered with carbohydrate-rich condiments sandwiched between carbohydrate-rich bread, served with a side of carbohydrate-rich french fries and a 32 oz. cup of high fructose corn syrup. All super-sized because the marginal cost of the ingredients is so low, it is profitable for the restaurants to offer extra portions for a premium.
The innocuous-seeming bun, even, is so loaded with refined carbohydrates that you might as well be eating your hamburger in the middle of a donut sliced in half.
Dang sugary buns. (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhere over the course of this month, you will begin to realize just how much sugar is hidden in fast food. McDonalds and Burger King buns as well as Pizza Hut pizza sauce taste repulsively sweet once you're no longer used to a certain minimum amount of sugar in each meal. I've tried to avoid fast food ever since I did this a few years ago by accident when I tried to switch to only drinking water to save money and lose weight. It's really obscene.
(Unfortunately, after long enough not drinking sugary drinks, you do become used to the flavor and learn to ignore it in fast food again, but it's still an eye opener as long as you remember it.)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Interesting)
The innocuous-seeming bun, even, is so loaded with refined carbohydrates that you might as well be eating your hamburger in the middle of a donut sliced in half.
I know you meant this as a joke, but, as always, life is one step ahead, at least if you go to a Gateway Grizzlies Baseball Game. From the press release on "Baseball's Best Burger" [gatewaygrizzlies.com]
They credit at Atlanta restauarant for inspiration, so a bacon donut cheeseburger is probably older than that. And we need studies to figure out why there is an obesity epidemic?
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No, while "fast-food" style serving may contribute to creating bad habits, the main culprit is still what people eat, and how much of it, not how you eat it. Most Japanese meals just aren't very fattening;
You're on the money here. I'll just add from my own observation a few years ago staying with a Japanese family in the countryside: What you get in Japanese restaurants is not really representative of Japanese food (or rather, of what Japanese families eat). What they ate was a great deal of vegetabl
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I think you're looking at the obesity epidemic the wrong way, though. Every culture until the modern age has had starvation and malnutrition as a leading, if not the leading, cause of death. We've technically still got malnutrition, but not because of any problems in produ
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Astute observation.
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Yup. Convenience isn't necessarily to blame. What do you buy from the jidouhanbaiki? I get Soukenbicha (tea) every frickin' time. My US friends and family who have come to visit over the years all hate it the first time (like I did), and then can't stop drinking it the rest of the trip, and leave wondering why something like that isn't available in the states. It's even a Coca-Cola product.
Something is very rotten in the state of the US when it comes to foodstuffs. I don't really watch my weight tha
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I asked what happens if people don't have enough change on them, I was told that generally they pay a bit more the next time they ride. I'd love to have a system like that here, since it would save a lot of time with people buying bus tickets when they got on at each stop, but I can't imagine it working with the average British person, who would just see it as a way to avoid paying for the service. It seems to be not so much an issue of how law-abiding the Japanese are as the culture of respect.
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just the opposite of greater Vancouver's SkyTrain system. There are ticket machines in the lobby of every station. You buy a ticket before getting on, or you carry your monthly pass with you. There are no turnstiles, and fare fraud is rampant, up to 40% by some estimates. It's not just walking on without paying, but paying for a lesser fare. (You have to pay more to go into a more distant zone.)
Before adding a second line a few years ago, they did a cost/benefit analysis, and decided that it was cheaper to hire more enforcement staff than to install a mechanical enforcement system. So now, when you ride, there's a one in five chance that a pair of enforcement officers are going to get on and check tickets. Almost every time I've seen enforcement officers on the train, they've caught at least one person.
They're usually pretty lenient if a person seems sincere about forgetting an extra zone fare... total BS almost every time, but they want to maintain good PR. But I saw a couple of kids get caught a little while ago, and they must have shared half a brain cell among the three of them. The officer told them she was giving them a break, and they just had to pay the fare upgrade at the next station. They kept mouthing off to her as she checked other passengers' fares. Sure enough, when she pulled them off at the next station, she got out her ticket book.
I could imagine a couple of Japanese passengers staring dumbfounded at these morons, who were essentially saying, "Yes, I want a ticket! No lenience for me; give me the maximum penalty!"
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And if you think Canola oil is good for you I suggest you keep reading. Keyword: hydrogen.
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:4, Informative)
Robert Lustig: Well high fructose corn syrup, it should say that, now in Australia for instance the sodas don't have high fructose corn syrup they have sucrose. Well sucrose is half fructose. You know a lot has been made over this high fructose corn syrup being particularly evil. In fact high fructose corn syrup is either 42% or 55% fructose, the rest is glucose. Well sucrose is 50% fructose the rest is glucose. In fact high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are equally problematic.
Norman Swan: Basically table sugar.
Robert Lustig: Table sugar -- that's right. We were not designed to eat all of this sugar, we're supposed to be eating our carbohydrate, particularly our fructose, with high fibre. Well the fact is we have 100 pound bags of sugar that go into the cakes, and the donuts.
Norman Swan: So we don't need to get obsessed on fruit sugars, it's sugar itself, sucrose.
Robert Lustig: Absolutely, it's sugar in general.
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So don't blame the article, blame the summarizer. I've read (but can't link) that the difference between the current American diet and the diet in the 50's is almost exclusively the amount of sugar eaten.
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When you eat granulated sugar or glucose, when the sugar-low kicks in, you'll get hungry again to replenish you bloodsugarlevels, hence you'll search for that candy bar again. Fructose's effect to your bloodsugar is much less, thus will make you eat less.
Also, high fructose corn syrup, is for about half of it glucose syrup, so there you have it.
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Dr. Nick knows best.... (Score:3, Funny)
Bart: You could brush your teeth with milkshakes.
Dr. Nick: Hey, did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College too?
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Homer: So you think you know better than this family, eh? Well as long as you're in my house you'll do what I do and believe what I believe! So butter your bacon!
Bart: Yes father.
Lisa: Mom, dad, my spiritual quest is over!
Homer: Hold that thought... Bacon up that sausage, boy!
Re:Nasty aftertaste (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't like it, you can leave. We don't need no whinny Euro-cans telling us not to devour copious amounts of corn syrup and sugars. And stop calling me an American. America is huge, I just live in the best part of it, the USA. That makes me a Citizen of the United States of America, but you can shorten that down to a CUSA. From now on when you want to badmouth the best nation on Earth, you can address us as Cusans. It's about time we had our own identity.
I think all the corn syrup has gone to my head...
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Re:Nasty aftertaste (Score:5, Insightful)
The one exception is that Britons seem to have some understanding that their food is scarcely better than ours.
Rice Syrup (Score:5, Interesting)
Use rice syrup, which contains no fructose. You can substitute it 1:1 for corn syrup.
I use it to make all sorts of treats, including marshmallows.
Re:Nasty aftertaste (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm an American, but I hate American food. If I could afford it, I'd just shop at the international shops and bring home 50lbs of Japanese snacks. Of course I'm sure your not supposed to eat that in large quantities either, but for some reason pocky and ramen never makes me feel fat.
But more seriously, I think the problem is more cultural than anything else. Most popular American foods are deep fried (Mmmm... Onion Rings) and probably not meant for human consumption (Mmmmm... Pulled Pork Sandwhiches) and that the reason for obesity in America is that we haven't really scaled our fatty foods to match our supply.
As in... These were good for you in the 1920's when the lack of food was an issue for most Americans, but now... Not so good.
We need to focus on just not cooking foods in fat or deep fry them. Plenty of good stuff out there that you can eat a lot of and still not get fat.
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If your appetite is not out of whack, a small Pulled Pork Sandwich or medium portion of Onion Rings will fill you up. Then you're done. It may not be great for you, but it shouldn't be dangerous. On the other hand, if something (fructose or otherwise) has interfered with your ability to feel full after eating a healthy portion,
Passing on sugar is a very good start. (Score:4, Informative)
That's true to an extent, but our bodies are in fact designed to expel unneeded calories. The sensitivity of these triggers seems to differ from person to person, which is one reason some people can eat anything they want without gaining weight, while others can count calories and still become obese.
I was in the latter group. Exercising daily and eating quite well, yet ending up in my mid-twenties at an overweight 230 pounds. It turns out carbohydrates -- and especially sugars like fructose -- cause a rapid blood sugar spike and insulin production, which in turn triggers your body to conserve excess calories in fat cells. At last, I stopped eating less and started eating differently -- no sugars and starches, but plenty of protein and fat -- and dropped 75 pounds so quickly I astonished everyone I knew. Without the carb/insulin trigger, your body naturally uses only the calories it needs and eliminates the rest.
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Huh? News to science - they've long believed that fat is designed to store excess calories against lean times, like pretty much all of the animal kingdom.
(From the remainder of your message it appears you get your information the diet industry, and parrot it without understanding.)