Sugar

[Apollonius]

The cover article in the latest National Geographic, an American publication that many of you will be familiar with, is called Sugar Love (A not so sweet story):

The average American consumes nearly 23 tea spoons of sugar a day, which works out to 77 pounds per person of added sugar each year.


It's not just an American problem:


Top consumers of refined sugar

Brazil 122 lbs.
Russia 88
Mexico 77
Egypt 70
European Union 70



There are nearly 8 teaspoons of sugar in a 12 oz. can of cola. But sugar is now added to nearly everything. Low-fat yoghurt has over 6 teaspoons of added sugar in an 8 oz. serving. There are 3 teaspoons of sugar in a 1.77 tablespoon portion of ketchup.


By comparison, to eat 22.7 teaspoons of sugar, you would have to eat:


7 red apples
454 eggs
1,135 cups of rice
27 ears of corn

[Apollonius]

For years we've been warned of fatty foods, but they are actually not even as dangerous as sugar.

... And in the 1960s the British nutrition expert John Yudkin conducted a series of experiments on animals and people showing that high amounts of sugar in the diet led to high levels of fat and insulin in the blood-- risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. But Yudkin's message was drowned out by a chorus of other scientists blaming the rising rates of obesity and heart disease on cholesterol caused by too much saturated fat in the diet.

As a result, fat makes up a smaller portion of the American diet than it did 20 years ago. Yet the portion of American that is obese has only grown larger.

About half of sugar is glucose, half is fructose.

... although glucose is metabolized by cells all through your body, fructose is processed primarily in the liver. If you eat too much in quickly digested forms like soft drinks and candy, your liver breaks down the fructose and produces fats called triglycerides.

Some of those fats stay in the liver, which over long exposure can turn fatty and dysfunctional. But a lot of the triglydcerides are pushed out into the blood too. Over time, blood pressure goes up, and tissues become progressively more resistant to insulan. The pancreas responds by pouring out more insulin, trying to keep things in check. Eventually a condition known as metabolic syndrome kicks in, characterized by obesity, especially around the waist; high blood pressure; and other metabolic changes that, if not checked, and lead to type 2 diabetes,w tih a heightened danger of heart attack thrown in for good measure. As much as a third of the American adult population could meet the criteria for metabolic syndrome set by the National Institutes of Health. ...

... According to Johnson and his colleagues [at the American Heart Association] ... excessive sugar isn't just empty calories; it's toxic.



... "The reason you're watching TV [or, Apollonius adds, glued to your computer] is not because TV is so good, but because you have no energy to exercise because you're eating too much sugar".

[...]

If sugar is so bad for us, why do we crave it? The short answer is that an injection of sugar into the bloodstream stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to heroin and cocaine. All tasty foods do this to some extent-- that's why they're tasty!-- but sugar has a sharply pronounced effect. In this sense it is literally an addictive drug.

We note that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that limiting sizes of soft drinks, as was briefly tried in New York City, is unconstitutional.


Yet sugar kills more Americans than all illegal drugs put together, by far.

[Simple Minded]

Thanks for posting Apollonius!

I recall reading an article quite a few years whose author who claimed that if sugar were discovered tomorrow, it would be classified as a narcotic.

Maybe so....

[Typhoon]

Too much simple sugar leads to the body being insulin-challenged.

Worth learning about the Glycemic Index

[Azrael]

70 pounds of refined sugar per year in Egypt? I guess they aren't starving after all.

[Apollonius]

Yeah.

If you look at obesity figures, there's a lot of it in Egypt.

Of course it still doesn't mean that they're healthy, anymore than Americans are healthy. And I suspect there are a lot of people in Egypt who don't even have much access to sugar.




BTW, the figures for Brazil are high mainly because they use so much sugar for fuel.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Puts a new twist on Stevenson's "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest" chant.

It would be interesting to compare sugar, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and Splenda as sweeteners. Very small amounts of sugar can do some miraculous things to cuisine, especially onions.

[Typhoon]

NEJM | Glucose Levels and Risk of Dementia

Conclusions
Our results suggest that higher glucose levels may be a risk factor for dementia, even among persons without diabetes.

[Typhoon]

Yeah.

If you look at obesity figures, there's a lot of it in Egypt.

Of course it still doesn't mean that they're healthy, anymore than Americans are healthy. And I suspect there are a lot of people in Egypt who don't even have much access to sugar.

Egypt | 62 pct of population overweight, 17 pct diabetic

I recall that in Malaysia I could not drink some of the local soda/pop drinks as they were too sweet for me.

3.4 million or 14.9% Malaysians are diabetics

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

In 20 years, we are going to look back and not be able to believe that we ate as much sugar as we do today. It will be like watching Mad Men and trying to understand how people drinking bourbon and chain-smoking at 10 am got through their days. Sugar is a poison, but people don't realize it because its effects are chronic, not acute. I mean, everything in moderation, and I get down on a cupcake from time to time, but eating loads of sugar as a matter of course every single day is nuts, especially just shoving it into your face with no mediator, as in sugary drinks. I'm no health nut, but that lavender is terrible.

My general rule is if you're going to eat it, make sure it's worthwhile or meaningful. So if I'm having a creme brulee after a good meal, great. But pass on the Snickers bar, it's not like it's so good you can't do without it. If Ibrahim makes me a batch of cookies, wonderful. But pass on the stale Mrs. Fields at the 7-11 that only sound good because you missed lunch.

[Typhoon]

Sugar is a poison, but people don't realize it because its effects are chronic, not acute. I mean, everything in moderation, . . .

Well, sucrose [sugar] is hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose. Glucose is what powers living organisms, so sugar is not quite a poison

Moderation, as you noted, is key. Many people simply consume far too many calories relative to their lifestyle.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Sugar is a poison, but people don't realize it because its effects are chronic, not acute. I mean, everything in moderation, . . .

Well, sucrose [sugar] is hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose. Glucose is what powers living organisms, so sugar is not quite a poison

Moderation, as you noted, is key. Many people simply consume far too many calories relative to their lifestyle.

As a forum, we are becoming a bunch of old farts.

[Simple Minded]

As a forum, we are becoming a bunch of old farts.

I not only welcome the inevitable...... I am fortified by it!