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Thursday 23 June 2011
Sugar not the culprit and Lions make good house pets !
According to Andrew Briscoe President and CEO of the Sugar Association, Inc. sugar is not the culprit ! Evidently it’s all down to that arch trouble maker Gary Taubes trying to flog another book.
Briscoe describes table sugar as a natural wholesome food. The last time I checked it contained nothing other than calories, the last thing the typical over weight at diagnosis diabetic requires. Sugar is about as necessary for good health as cocaine and arguably more dangerous.
Keep kicking butt Gary and good luck with your new book.
http://www.inboxgroup.net/sugar/e_article002113402.cfm?x=bjtDCsh,bhMJkrv2
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7 comments:
Poor Gary gets blamed again. I have his book The Diet Delusion, it's excellent. I'm sure the new one will be just as good.
We must all agree sugar does taste nice and there is enough naturally in food. We do not need extra, look at the damage to our health it's causing.
It surely has to be about education, starting young, before damage is done.
Keep writing the books Gary.
Keep writing the blog Eddie.
Joe
It's not sweet things that are necessarily the problem - as long as they are natural sweet things - whole fruit, dried fruit, raw honey, maple syrup, rapadura, agave syrup, etc. These all, unllike refined sugar, contain nutrition. The substances themselves give the body the tools to digest them with - the nutrients and the enzymes. Sugar doesn't. No nutrients - no tools. The body then has to rob itself of those tools to try and process it (often unsuccessfully). Whilst nutrition is a support of good health, anything that contains 'empty calories' including refined sugar, is a thief of it.
This concept that natural is ok and refined is bad is, unfortunately, quite wrong-headed when it comes to sugar. The evidence is pointing towards the fructose component of sugar - sucrose is 50% fructose - as the biggest metabolic villain. A high intake of fructose has been shown to drive virtually every aspect of metabolic syndrome. The so-called natural sources of sugar are sometimes even higher in fructose than is sugar. Agave syrup, for instance, is very high in fructose. Fruit juice is another example, although not as bad as agave. When these so-called natural sugars are eaten they are quickly broken into their component saccharides - glucose and fructose. This starts literally as soon as they enter one's mouth. In the end, your gut doesn't know if the sugar arrived in a can of pop or an agave-sweetened beverage. It's all the same in the end, from a metabolic point of view.
Bottom line: sugar, in any of its forms, should be avoided.
Jay Wortman MD
"This concept that natural is ok and refined is bad is, unfortunately, quite wrong-headed when it comes to sugar."
I was so pleased to see someone other than me say that! It frustrates me to see this romantic nonsense about food bandied about.
Quite why anyone would think that today's super sweet fruit is natural is beyond me.
We evolved scratching around for food and would have eaten berries and the ancestors of modern day fruit to keep us going between kills. Early strains of fruit would have had only a tiny fraction of the sugar content of today's "sugar bombs".
If it were possible for early man to visit a modern supermarket, he/she would probably think the fruits on offer were toys or adornments. I'm sure any attempt to consume them would result in a spectacularly unpleasant digestive upset!
We've been seduced by marketing men into believing that, what amounts to poison is good for us. It's sad to see people are still being taken in by it.
Ray
Gary Taubes if you are reading this, THANK YOU for telling the truth.
THANK YOU alao to Dr Jay Wortman and THANK YOU to Eddie for this blog.
The truth will out!!
Denise Minger has written a great piece on this subject.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/
you're right Dr J, I should have worded my comment as natural sweet foods 'in moderation'. Perhaps those who haven't been already damaged by the processed and refined foods, may be able to tolerate some of the natural sweet foods and substances in moderation, but those of us with impaired sugar metabolism are unable to process any of it properly, regardless of the form it comes in. There are healthy cultures that eat fruit as part of their diet, but they don't go overboard with it and will only eat it in season.
It is very true that in 'civilised' society, fruit has been hybridised to be far sweeter than its ancient counterparts and that has tended to turn it into a natural form of unnatural levels of sugar!
A friend who lived in Egypt told us that although they don't eat much refined and processed food there, they do eat a LOT of fruit, and - at least in the area he lived in - Diabetes is very rife.
Whilst natural 'raw' sugars unlike refined ones, do generally have the nutritive elements to aid their digestion (and raw live honey can actually be quite healing) even in non-diabetics they should still only be used sparingly. Even the Bible says that 'the eating of too much honey is not good'!
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