I’m sorry, but Lustig seems like a ridiculous zealot there.
Even based on what he’s saying, sugar is not toxic. Consumption of too much of it can lead to you getting fat due to the way your body metabolizes fructose.
But, again, it hinges on your eating too much of it.
You may consider this similar to alcohol, but we don’t regulate alcohol because it makes you fat. We regulate it because it makes you DRUNK. Also, your body actually does regard alcohol as a toxin, in that alcohol can actually kill things. You can disinfect things with alcohol.
The simple fact that your liver metabolizes fructose doesn’t mean that fructose is a toxin.
And it’s certainly not like tobacco, which is basically all toxins mixed with one of the most addictive substances known to man (nicotine).
I’m still thinking that the reason so many folks are getting fat, is because they are consuming too many calories, and not exercising enough. The fact that those calories come in the form of extremely easy to process sugar just exacerbates the problem, but I think you’d still have a problem if you consumed way more calories than you were spending, even if those calories came in a better form.
Saying sugar = easy calories and easy calories = ill health is totally sound. Saying “sugar = poison” or “sugar = easy calories = poison” is either wrong, or metaphorical. If it’s metaphorical, whatever, fine, but say so.
I’ve never liked the rhetoric of “evil calories” vs “good calories” because it implies that a surplus of good calories won’t kill you in a mathematically predictable way, which it will.
Public health wise, getting rid of sugar is inarguably good. Telling people that sugar emits gamma rays or whatever, not so good.
Speaking as a chemistry graduate, everything is toxic in certain amounts. In the case of sugar, we could stand to see perhaps some restrictions on how much can be added to relatively unrelated foods simply to make them taste better without making them ‘sweet’.
Not all of it. There is a certain level of consumer responsibility here. We look at the peanut butter labels and if it says anything other than “Ingredients : Peanuts” - we don’t buy it.
And you know what? Some of us have used Jif or Skippy all of our lives. And that actually tastes good to us. I’ve gone to places that ground peanuts into a thick goop that ends up with oil on the top. I’ve also bought organic cashew butter, almond butter and the like.
But nothing tastes as good as the manufactured brands to me. Go figure.
I used to go out with a girl that insisted that we ate as close to a macro-biotic diet as possible. You know what our guilty pleasure was? Almond butter on rice cakes.
I’d rather eat nasty tasting crap that was healthy than delicious nubbits of ambrosia that turned me into a disgusting waddling mass of jiggling flab. It’s because I care about me.
I have no opinion on the regulation of sugar. As to it’s toxicity, Lustig talks only about fructose, and be backs up his claim with actual science. I think fructose is no more a toxin than alcohol but I can see how both could be labelled toxins. But of a red herring though.
Eating fructose is not the same as eating carbs; it is metabolized very differently. You will not get fructose from carbs. Your body does not need fructose, and in any but small amounts it will actually do damage.
Pollan got it right I think; eat food, not too much, mainly plants.
It’s not just peanut butter, though. It’s everything, as noted elsewhere. Go look at canned or packaged fruit cups sometime - note the “no sugar added” stuff. In other words, that can of diced peaches which is already damn sweet has more sugar added. And so does tons of other stuff that nobody would consider sweet. Unless you have a health problem that leads you to educate yourself to avoid sugar, you have no idea how much you are taking in even if you avoid the obvious sources like pop, candy, and cookies. And most of the time our schools do a pretty piss-poor job of teaching us about a healthy diet. I had some great teachers growing up, but when diet is a day spent once a year at most in your P.E. class, you aren’t coming away with much.
Are there people with toxicity issues on anything like the scale of people with too-many-frigging-calories issues, though?
Pollan got it right I think; eat food, not too much, mainly plants.
I don’t know why this line’s always annoyed me so much, but wheat, corn and rice are plants. The “not too much” part theoretically covers his ass but if you eat a calorically appropriate amount of high-energy, low-protein, low-fat plants you will be undernourished and ferociously hungry (and therefore likely to not stick to your calorie target.)
If it is toxic, it’s not very toxic… but it seems it can lead to all kinds of chronic problems. I think Lustig ties the rise in heart disease to the rise in fructose consumption? It’s been a while since I watched his presentation.
It’s by no means settled; I think the only thing that is pretty well settled is that fructose is not good for you.
I don’t know why this line’s always annoyed me so much, but wheat, corn and rice are plants. The “not too much” part theoretically covers his ass but if you eat a calorically appropriate amount of high-energy, low-protein, low-fat plants you will be undernourished and ferociously hungry (and therefore likely to not stick to your calorie target.)
I don’t see anywhere where it is recommended that you do not eat any wheat, corn, or rice at all, or that you shouldn’t eat plants that provide you with lots of fat.
I think Lustig ties the rise in heart disease to the rise in fructose consumption? It’s been a while since I watched his presentation.
But I think that link is simply being made by virtue of the fact that consumption of fructose tends to go hand in hand with consumption of too many calories, which causes obesity, which leads to heart disease.
I don’t see anywhere where it is recommended that you do not eat any wheat, corn, or rice at all, or that you shouldn’t eat plants that provide you with lots of fat.
Fructose is not some crazy man made chemical. It’s naturally present in fruits and vegetables.
Timex and I appear to be on the same page about fructose/HFCS/sugar in general; it is worthwhile to fight its consumption, the fructose kinds are a little bit worse than cane sugar but vastly less than is made out. The greatest (but least tractable) problem is ghastly caloric surpluses, but public health promoters are well aware that “eat less” and “count your calories” are non-starters when it comes to public messaging. It’s like telling people to sleep less or quit sex for a month.
Unused “fossil-fuel-like” simple and complex sugars (carbs) are very easy to eat too many of without feeling full. Nobody could eat 2500 calories of very lean meat at a sitting without exploding and I suspect even 2500 calories of fat - although far easier to get down - would at least make me feel like a disgusting crisco-entity who should rethink his life. But eat 2500 calories of wholesome bread or rice or whatever? Comparatively easy. In practice, massive calorie bombs aren’t the problem, and usually you’re talking about carbs and fat together, anyway. (If you ever want to be horrified, learn how many calories you can comfortably eat at a sitting in the form of pizza. A day’s worth is trivially easy.)
The point I’m belabouring is simple (glucose fructose etc) and complex (carbohydrates) sugars go down very easily, and unlike fat, they - especially healthy looking carbs - don’t shoot up big red flares that say “you are doing something hilariously bad for yourself.”
I don’t see anywhere where it is recommended that you do not eat any wheat, corn, or rice at all, or that you shouldn’t eat plants that provide you with lots of fat.
No, and a ton of excellent diets could easily be fit under the rubric of “not too much, mostly plants.” My point is that a lot of either bad/unsustainable diets can also. To my mind “not too much, with appropriate protein and fat” is nutritionally a more bulletproof lifestyle epigram. (If perhaps less attuned to environmental or moral sustainability, both of which are reasonable reasons to try to reduce meat consumption.)
EDIT: In other news I’m now one of the 50 million loudmouths on the internet with All The Answers about nutrition. It’s a subject that’s interested me for a few years and I did do actual research-review perusals in the relevant journals, besides enjoying some success with losing weight. I usually manage to stop myself from hitting “submit post” after writing a manifesto, but couldn’t help myself this time. I no longer have access to a scholarly database, but those who do can at any rate find some good stuff about the HFCS vs. other simple sugars business.
Mmm yes that’s a wonderful fallacy; if it occurs naturally in food it must be ok! Or even good!
Cyanide can also occur naturally in food. I am not sure you’d want to then go ahead and inject large amounts of it into everything you eat and drink.
Glucose and fructose are metabolized differently; they are simply not equivalent. Glucose can be metabolized anywhere in the body, whereas fructose is metabolized in the liver only and can have deletrious effects on it, amongst the other problems it can cause.
In any case if you eat a normalish diet with no added sugar you get all the glucose you need and more from carbohydrates and natural sugars. You get some fructose too from fruits and vegetables but your body does not really need that.
My statement regarding the natural occurrence of fructose wasn’t meant to suggest that it was OK to consume as much as possible, but merely that its a toxin we must avoid is kind of nuts.
The mere fact that its metabolized by your liver doesn’t mean that its poison.
Fructose is both metabolized differently, used differently (the body can not use it for many of the things it uses glucose for), and is high calorie. Have read the lab papers for a while, in part since I do have a rare gene disorder, that means I can (literally) fall apart if all my sugar intake is changed from glucose to fructose. So yep, there are some people that do have disorders that cause fructose to be even worse. Ironically, I need glucose more than average - so nix HFCS, eat home-cooked preferably whole kernel grain foods (aka carbs) for me.
I used to work in research, and due to the rare gene, a lot of my old contacts still feed me papers and results. Fructose is quite rough on the system, even without my gene. “Toxic” though is scare tactic language. There is always the snarky chemist joke of people dieing from di-hydrogen monoxide poisoning … and yes absolutely you can!
But scare tactic language aside, fructose has a lot of issues besides the calories. Many of those issues are minimized by eating it in small doses with large amounts of fiber for people with normal metabolisms … so err like in an occasional fruit … not in a banana cream split sundae nightly … The fact HFCS is in everything, esp. low fiber foods is indeed a metabolic issue for normal people beyond the calories, as if they weren’t enough.
Indeed. It will be even more hilarious when various tax authorities impose “fat” taxes on soda pop. Fucking the taxpayer at both ends, as per usual.
Also, screw the UCSF assholes like Lustig. This is not a problem that requires government intervention. You’ll just piss off people and the government will screw things up, like with the food pyramid/plate or saturated vs trans fats. Just get out there and create a social campaign to promote awareness. Its not like many don’t see the problem. Get them info on how to combat it and change their diets and stop trampling on liberties.
