Fructose consumption keeps on rising worldwide, despite the fact that a many studies clearly demonstrate that consuming excessive amounts of fructose (primarily in the form of high-fructose corn syrup) is the fastest way to destroy your health.
Half of the U.S. population over the age of two now consumes sugary drinks on a daily basis, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Unnecessary calories from fructose-laden drinks and processed foods of all kinds can quickly add several pounds a year to your weight and rob you of your health. Over the last several years, fructose has been revealed as a major culprit or exacerbating factor in:
Elevated uric acid levels, which can result in gout and/or metabolic syndrome | Intracranial atherosclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the arteries in your skull) | |
Tubulointerstitial injury (injury to the tubules and interstitial tissue of your kidney) | Obesity and related health problems and diseases | Arthritis |
A Calorie is Not a Calorie...
Dr. Lustig, a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at UC San Francisco, has been on the forefront of the movement to educate people about the health hazards of sugar. He's a compelling speaker and does an excellent job of laying down the facts in an easy to understand manner.
One of the main problems with fructose is that it is isocaloric but not isometabolic, meaning that while you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or any other nutrient, including glucose, the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. This explains why calorie counting doesn't work. You simply have to consider the quality or source of the calories into account in order to successfully lose weight and mantain it.
Fructose metabolism is quite different from glucose (dextrose) metabolism in that it places the entire burden on your liver, and this accounts for many of its devastating health effects. Furthermore, people consume fructose in enormous quantities these days, which has made the negative effects that much more profound. Without getting into the very complex biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism, it is important to have a general understanding of how your body handles these sugars.
Below is a summary of the main differences between glucose and fructose metabolism, which explains why that fructose is by far the worst type of sugar there is:
· After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.
· Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is "burned up" immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.
· The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.
· Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs (Free Fatty Acids) into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.
· When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!
· The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.
· Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating, meaning the “Satiation” signal is interrumpted so you continue eating
Interestingly enough, glucose has been found to further accelerate fructose absorption, so when you MIX glucose and fructose together, you absorb more fructose than if you consumed fructose alone! This is yet another important piece of information for those who want to make a better effort at controlling their weight.
Anyone who still tries to tell you that "sugar is sugar" in an effort to defend high fructose corn syrup is seriously unaware of the current research, which clearly demonstrates that there are major differences in how your body processes these sugars. The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, along with a long list of associated chronic diseases.
Check out the videos called “Interventions to Reduce Sugar Consumption” and "The Trouble with Fructose: a Darwinian Perspective" by Robert Lustig, MD on the site that manages most videos.
DR. Lustig gives out his ideas for how to curb the consumption of sugar, according to Dr. Lustig, efforts at educating the public have failed, and he believes the government must intervene, and essentially force the people to change their ways. In response, De Coster, writing on LewRockwell states:
"He believes that a massive policy of taxation, regulation, and interdiction, at both a societal and an individual level, is necessary to force the reduction of sugar consumption. He has, in fact, called for a global policy to eradicate sugar addiction. Lustig is not calling for a few misplaced laws, here and there, to protect you from yourself. Rather, he is trying to justify a global crusade against freedom of food choice on the basis that "our toxic environment cannot be changed without government/societal intervention."
Among Lustig's suggested interventions are controls on advertising and marketing, government counter-campaigns (taxpayer-funded, government propaganda), and raising prices via actual price fixing and/or taxation. Moreover, he advocates a policy that mimics the iron law of alcohol policy – reducing the availability of sugar-based products by way of age limits for purchase ("carding kids for Coke"), licensing and zoning controls on sales outlets, and regulating the hours of operation and density of fast food outlets through a series of government-issued permits."
Is government intervention the solution to this problem? What do you think?
De Coster that Dr. Lustig's ideas sound a lot like the invocation of the new Food Safety Modernization Act, which stands poised to do far more harm than good. I think there's a real danger in trying to regulate or tax ANY kind of food out of existence. After all, it's not the sugar in and of itself that is toxic—it's the MASSIVE doses that people consume, and honestly... personal responsibility and educated choice needs to enter the picture sooner or later. Your diet, after all, is front and center when it comes to taking control of your health, which is something everyone needs to do if they truly want to live a long and healthy life.
I believe the current situation can change, but enough people need to understand the simple truths of healthy eating and refuse to buy sugar-laden processed foods and pass on the daily sodas. Earlier this year, Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard-affiliated pediatrician wrote a commentary in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association), offering his suggestions on how to turn this disease-producing diet trend around. These are reasonable ideas, but I don't think we can sit around and wait for government to fix this mess. Instead, do what you can to help educate others
His suggestions include:
· Restructuring agricultural subsidies
· Regulating the marketing of food to children
· Adequately funding school lunch programs
· Using existing and future technologies to allow the food industry to retain profits while producing more healthful products
How to Reverse the Obesity- and Related Chronic Disease Trends
I believe there are two primary dietary recommendations that could make all the difference in the world for most people, leading to a swift reversal in the horrific disease trends we're currently facing:
1. Severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and
2. Increasing healthy fat consumption
I recently wrote about this recommendation in-depth, so for more details, please see This Substance Fools Your Metabolism - and Tricks Your Body into Gaining Pounds. If you want to shed excess pounds and maintain a healthy weight long-term, and RADICALLY reduce (and in many cases virtually eliminate) your risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, then get serious about restricting your consumption of fructose to no more than 25 grams per day, with a maximum of 15 grams a day from fresh fruit. If you're already overweight, or have any of these diseases or are at high risk of any of them, then you're probably better off cutting that down to 10-15 grams per day; fruit included. (Dr. Mercola)
What do I think?
The fact that health advocates suggest that sugar consumption, the type of sugar and the amounts should be controlled by the government shows a desperate measure in their effort to make people well.
The “massive education” they mention that does not work if a result of the media marketing campaigns that are paid by powerful Food Corportations whose main concern is power, money and control, not the people’s health.
The sole idea of living in a World that “regulates” our food intakes is a taste of a total lost of freedom of Choice, but it is in a way what we are experiencing right now, all the media campaigns have lead us to buy, consume and relieve in all that they “integarte” in our brains and that has been our Choice, we are already “slaves and servants” of powerful corporations that gain more power and money at the expense of our health and the health of our loved one.
Isn’t it time to ragain control over our health? To be the captain of our own boat? Let’s wake up to our own and rightful power, our free will, to our own intuition. Let’s conect back to oursleves!!
Many, many Blessings to you always!
My Green Lady
