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: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!
Well maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
/ and no concept of portion control.
And in other news......... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:1, Insightful)
Guess what: everybody knows tobacco is bad for you, and excess sugar is bad for you. Anybody who tells you "eat/drink/smoke this, it's safe" should trigger your bullshit alarm and make you wonder whom exactly this person is paid by. What's more, good common sense should tell you that levels of sugar and fat modern westerners consume can't be good for health. Just like inhaling smoke, it's just completely obvious that the human body wasn't designed for this. If you let lobbyists win over common sense, you deserve to be fat.
Ever been to Mexico? Germany? Russia? (Score:0, Insightful)
Ever been to Mexico? Germany? Russia? God damn there are a lot of F-A-T F-U-C-K-E-R-S there. And man, are they U-G-L-Y to boot.
um no (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Good god, another silver bullet solution! (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate "silver bullet" articles.
Fructose has been known to be not diabetic friendly for ages now. Where's the news?
One way or another, fructose is but one of the reasons for obesity. There are plenty of ways to get obese and, yes, shockingly, the most common ones include eating all sorts of calorie rich food without giving your body a way to expend those calories (the other include illnesses messing with the ability of the body to metabolize properly).
You know the laws of thermodynamics. Energy doesn't come from nothing (much to Steorn's [steorn.com] shock), and doesn't become nothing.
People prefer there was a simple way they could eat pizzas and coke all day long and sit on their asses, and just flip a switch, and it's all gone!
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:2, Insightful)
You have 80,000 or so meals in your life, and they may as well be good for you and great tasting.
Sugar? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Personal Experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 vegetables, mainly boiled (stews and so on), a little oily fried fish, lots of pickles, hardly any meat (and I don't think I had sushi even once while living with them, although of course we did have it when we ate out).
The father of the family seemed to spend most of the time he wasn't working out picking wild herbs and plants, fishing and hiking, obviously a very healthy lifestyle.
It's really no wonder they all live to be 90.
Rich.
Another well refrenced gem (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to coin another useless acronym. Where's The Fucking Article!
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:2, Insightful)
That and I imagine lots of fat people spend a lot of time on their asses watching TV...
Re:Thank ADM, Cargill and their lobbyists. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Most Americans live that long too (Score:3, Insightful)
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 producing or procuring food, so at least for a little while, we should be proud that the leading cause of death currently is an abundance of inexpensive food.
It's not like it's catching. If you're in a room with fat people, you're not going to also get fat (unless you adopt the same diet and exercise regimen of course). So the key thing here is not to blow things out of proportion with panicky knee-jerk actions.
The most important thing we can do is to remove what I call the "fat safety net." Those damn scooters they give to people who can't walk. Apparently, being too heavy for your own knees is considered disability enough to get a subsidized scooter, which obviously isn't going to help you get less fat.
News Flash: "Too Fat to Move" isn't a disability. It's a self-control problem. Go to the damn pool and wiggle around a bit. And get infected with tapeworm. From what I've seen it looks a lot safer and reversible than gastric bypass...
Not to mention the airlines not charging double for people who clearly need two seats. It's all well and good for the airlines to try to be compassionate with people who are sensitive about their weight, but if their weight is oozing into seat-space I've paid for, then the airlines are being compassionate at my expense and not their own.
Misplaced priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Passing on sugar is a very good start. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
Baby Food (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:2, Insightful)
Many societies (Asian, Italian) have fewer obese people than America does, however they eat carb-rich diets, so what you're claiming is really bunk.
The real problem is that HFCS is deadly, and cane sugar is not. Artificial sweeteners as well as unnatural HFCS is the real culprit to tricking the body into a starved state, which consequently causes obesity. Unprocessed, or lightly processed foods are closer to what nature intended, and that is what our bodies process best.
Re:Most Americans live that long too (Score:3, Insightful)
Astute observation.
Don't blame fructose. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Misplaced priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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:from the "no shit" dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real cause of the obesity epidemic (Score:1, Insightful)
By the 'stroke of a pen' tens of millions of people who were previously considered healthy are now considered overweight to obese.
Instant 'obesity epidemic' and taxpayer money pours in.
Re:Misplaced priorities (Score:1, Insightful)
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.