60 Minutes segment on sugar

[Dimitri Dziabenko]

Frankly, I think Alan Aragon has pretty much completely debunked Lustig's alarmist stance:

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/0...tose-alarmism/ (WFS)

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/0...armism-debate/ (WFS)

If you prefer to watch videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMc0_...A&feature=plcp (NOT WFS, cursing)

This video is actually a great comment on the ridiculousness of the study. They fed one of the groups 150g of PURE FRUCTOSE, which to get in real life, you'd have to consume something like 300g of sucrose. To get that much, you need to drink 3L of soft drinks...A DAY! Additionally all the subjects were overweight/obese and sedentary. If you exercised for more than 3.5 hours a week, you could not participate in this study! David, you have to admit this set up is ridiculous.

@ Darryl: Thanks a lot for compiling these, I'll have a look at them in a while.

[Logan Hunt]

Interesting video, thanks for sharing.

[David Meverden]

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

This video is actually a great comment on the ridiculousness of the study. They fed one of the groups 150g of PURE FRUCTOSE, which to get in real life,

No, read the transcript again. It wasn't pure fructose, it was high fructose corn syrup ("We found that the subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup had increased blood levels of LDL cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. ") the same sweetener in soda, and, as I've discussed already, the level of consumption is NOT a purely hypothetical: it's reality for around 15 million Americans.

[Dimitri Dziabenko]

Originally Posted by David Meverden

No, read the transcript again. It wasn't pure fructose, it was high fructose corn syrup ("We found that the subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup had increased blood levels of LDL cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. ") the same sweetener in soda, and, as I've discussed already, the level of consumption is NOT a purely hypothetical: it's reality for around 15 million Americans.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21952692 (WFS)

SUBJECTS/METHODS:
As part of a parallel arm study, overweight/obese male and female subjects, 40-72 years, consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Energy expenditure and substrate utilization were assessed using indirect calorimetry at baseline and during the 10th week of intervention.

Here the same author fed them 25% fructose, not that I don't think 25% HFCS wouldn't be good enough. I also think the original one had fructose, HFCS and glucose groups.

Frankly, I am getting a bit tired arguing over this, since we seem to be going in circles, with you failing to acknowledge that what they did was extreme. Your retort: there are 5% of Americans who do this, so it's not that extreme. I personally think that if you drink so much sugar that you need to buy two seats on the airplane, no money needs to be wasted to verify that your dietary habits are subpar.

Here is what this study proves:

Consumption of 25% of fructose or HFCS, ie. in the amounts consumed by the fattest 5% of Americans, is bad for your health. Consumption of 6-12 cans of non-diet coke (depending on the study) a day for weeks at a time, is bad for you.

All of which proves absolutely nothing about moderate intakes. And it certainly doesn't entitle Lustig to say that sugar or fructose or HFCS is toxic.

[Dimitri Dziabenko]

http://news.yahoo.com/zealand-womans...HRlc3QD;_ylv=3 (WFS)

Harris' partner, Chris Hodgkinson, testified that Harris drank between 8 and 10 liters (2.1 and 2.6 gallons) of regular Coke every day.

That's a lot of coke, even for one of Stanhope's studies.

[Luke Seubert]

Originally Posted by Katherine Derbyshire

This is more or less exactly my point of disagreement with the Paleo people.

No one claims that the modern American diet is healthy. But Americans only started getting fat in large numbers within the last 100 years. So you'll find the problem in changes within the last hundred years, not the last 10,000.

Katherine, allow me to point out a few factors which I think you are missing.

Yes, Americans started getting more fat about 100 years. But the current obesity epidemic really started to take off over the past 30 years. What we are seeing now is something on a different scale altogether. Obesity rates increased in the early 1900's, but stabilized until the late 70's/early 80's. Since then, they have shot up quite a bit. So let's appreciate that we are seeing two different obesity surges here, which may share many causes but which may also have some different causes.

The Paleo folks argue that about 30 years ago, upon advice from a Congressional sub-committee that was not scientifically validated, Americans replaced saturated fat in their diet with sugar, HFCS, and hydrogenated vegetable oils. Excessive consumption of these very non-Paleo foods is very likely a major cause of the current obesity epidemic.

That said, some non-Paleo foods are part of the older epidemic too, the one beginning 100 years ago. Paleo folks argue that Industrial Age fats, such as highly processed vegetable oils, are part of the problem. Fats like margarine were not widely consumed until about... wait for it... 100 years ago.

Yes, yes - I know - correlation is not causation. My point is that some of the non-Paleo foods we eat weren't introduced into the diet 12,000 years ago with the Neolithic Revolution, but within the last 100 years, and in the case of most wheat, within the last 50 years.

Huh? Wait... what? Humans have been eating wheat for 12,000 years you say? What do you mean it has changed?

It has. The wheat that most people ate 10,000 years ago was einkorn, not modern wheat. Beginning about 50 years ago, scientists began a major breeding program to improve wheat yields using old-fashioned crossbreeding techniques. They succeeded in improving yields tremendously, but in so doing they substantially changed the genetics of wheat. Just how big were these changes? Einkorn has 14 chromosomes, while modern wheat has 42 chromosomes. And there was never any human safety testing done on these new wheat strains - nothing like the safety testing required for modern genetically modified crops.

So modern wheat is very different genetically and chemically from the eikhorn that was eaten by most humans for most of the Neolithic Era. In addition to lots of new and different proteins, modern wheat has lots of gluten and tends to cause much higher blood glucose spikes upon consumption; by comparison to eikhorn.

So, Katherine, when you argue that the Paleo folks are wrong because humans ate Neolithic foods for many thousands of years without ill effect; you are not fully informed of all the facts.

Many of the modern foods we eat are products of the very recent Industrial Age, not the 12,000 year old Neolithic Age. Neolithic man never ate corn oil. Or chicken nuggets. Furthermore, many of the grains we eat were never consumed by Neolithic humans. Those grains are no longer grown on a large scale. Instead, we have just in the past few decades created entirely new grains, many which have not been safety tested for human consumption.

To find out more about this fascinating and revolutionary change in grain agriculture, please refer to the following article:

Wheat Belly by Matt Sutherland (WFS)

By the way, I think there is also a strong socio-economic component to our current obesity epidemic. Since around 1979, working class wage rates have stagnated while housing, medical, education, and transportation costs have risen. As a result, lower income America has shifted to cheap calories. This too has had a major knock-on effect on health and obesity rates. Fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables are more expensive relative to disposable income and harder to access for lower income Americans, than for the upper middle class and the wealthy. There is strong correlation between poverty and obesity, not just in America, but in many places of the world. Cheap foods are not necessarily healthy foods. Cheap food may provide enough calories to survive, but it won't provide enough quality nutrients to thrive.

[Katherine Derbyshire]

Nothing in your post is news to me. I have never argued in favor of margarine, or HFCS, or chicken nuggets.

Rather, I vociferously object to the tendency of Paleo advocates to put all bread, all dairy products, and even fruit and starchy tubers on the same level. Particularly since I see so many people who follow that advice and then wonder why they have no energy and are failing to make progress in their training.

Katherine

[Katherine Derbyshire]

Incidentally, the wheat story is a bit more complicated than you suggest. Too complicated to go into here, but for example, pastas and Middle Eastern flatbreads are generally made with durum wheat, which dates to 7000 BC.

Katherine

[Dimitri Dziabenko]

Originally Posted by Luke Seubert

Excessive consumption of these very non-Paleo foods is very likely a major cause of the current obesity epidemic.

Very true, but you must realize that the focus should be on excess rather than on consumption. Your argument is, just eliminate everything that people overconsume and weight loss shall be yours. Substitute foods people shouldn't eat much of with foods people should eat, but don't and you shall see health improvements. No duh, obviously, neither Katherine nor I are going to dispute that.

What I don't like is this Paleo focus on "complete elimination." Especially for active individuals/athletes, it's misguided. A very active 200lb male cannot fulfill his daily requirements with broccoli and tomatoes and "fruit in moderation."

If you are going to argue that grains are unhealthy in ANY amount, no matter how perfect the rest of your diet is, show evidence. And "caveman did it" is not evidence.

Since you like to look at the American population, I can show you plenty of other populations (people in Okinawa, Sardinia, etc...) that do consume grains in moderation and have the highest life expectancies. Keyword: in moderation. And moderation, depends on context. Also, I dunno where people get this idea from that Americans reduced their fat intake.

Fat and sugar and calories, everything's been going up and it shows.

[Luke Seubert]

Originally Posted by Katherine Derbyshire

Incidentally, the wheat story is a bit more complicated than you suggest. Too complicated to go into here, but for example, pastas and Middle Eastern flatbreads are generally made with durum wheat, which dates to 7000 BC.

I agree Katherine, my brief piece on wheat was simplified. I had no choice but to simplify to keep an already long post from getting longer. That is why I included the link to that story, which gave more comprehensive details for those who wanted them.

The bottom line, though, is that the most of the wheat we eat today is a food that literally didn't exist 60 years ago. Modern wheat isn't even a Neolithic food, let alone a Paleolithic food. And this new food accounts for much of the growth in medical diagnoses of gluten intolerance and gluten sensitivity.

Originally Posted by Katherine Derbyshire

Nothing in your post is news to me. I have never argued in favor of margarine, or HFCS, or chicken nuggets.

Rather, I vociferously object to the tendency of Paleo advocates to put all bread, all dairy products, and even fruit and starchy tubers on the same level. Particularly since I see so many people who follow that advice and then wonder why they have no energy and are failing to make progress in their training.

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

Very true, but you must realize that the focus should be on excess rather than on consumption. Your argument is, just eliminate everything that people overconsume and weight loss shall be yours. Substitute foods people shouldn't eat much of with foods people should eat, but don't and you shall see health improvements. No duh, obviously, neither Katherine nor I are going to dispute that.

What I don't like is this Paleo focus on "complete elimination." Especially for active individuals/athletes, it's misguided. A very active 200lb male cannot fulfill his daily requirements with broccoli and tomatoes and "fruit in moderation."

I'll respond to both of you at once on this issue, since you are raising similar points.

First of all, I'll repeat what I have stated in the past in these forums: the Paleo diet is very flexible with respect to carbs. It can be a low-carb, moderate-carb, or high-carb diet; depending upon one's needs. Anybody who actually bothers to read, in detail, the scholarly material on the Paleo diet knows this. The two foremost Paleo diet researchers today, Staffan Lindeberg and Loren Cordain, have stated that Paleo man ate a pretty wide variety of macronutrient ratios. Some ate low-carb, but many others did not. Please refer to their books, Food and Western Disease: Health and Nutrition From an Evolutionary Perspective and The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat, Revised Edition, respectively.

So why are Paleo fans so keen on low carb? For a good reason. The vast majority of people interested in a diet need to lose fat. Only a very small minority of people interested in diet are exercising heavily, like athletes and CrossFitters. Consequently, under-informed people apply the fat-loss version of the Paleo diet to people who need a different diet, one which supports heavy exercise volumes.

This is a mistake on the part of people who are ignorant of the finer details of the Paleo diet and sports nutrition. HOWEVAH! This is not a flaw with the Paleo diet itself. To condemn the diet because some of its advocates are ignorant is a logical fallacy, specifically, the association fallacy.

As for low-carb Paleo dieting, I think it is OK for losing a small amount of fat, say 15 or 20 pounds. But anybody who needs to lose more fat than that should NOT follow a low-carb Paleo diet. Long-term low-carb dieting (whether Paleo or not) depresses various hormone levels, lowering the metabolism, while promoting cortisol levels. This leads to the loss of muscle mass and the retention of fat, especially visceral fat. Instead, such people need to adopt a carb-upcycle diet, which has low to moderate carbs each day; and two days a week - two late-day meals featuring large amounts of starchy carbs. The reference for this diet plan is Rob Faigin's "Natural Hormonal Enhancement", a book which I highly recommend for both fat loss insights as well as sports nutrition. Faigin, by the way, does not promote the Paleo diet - he is fine with a wide variety of diets, from vegan to Paleo to Mediterranean. Me? I am following a Paleo version of Faigin's NHE diet with sustained success.

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

If you are going to argue that grains are unhealthy in ANY amount, no matter how perfect the rest of your diet is, show evidence. And "caveman did it" is not evidence.

No problem Dmitri. First off, I believe there are some people, possibly even many people, who have the genes, biochemistry, and metabolism to handle grains just fine. And if these people enjoy eating grains as part of a healthy, nutritious diet; more power to them.

But just as many people can eat peanuts without any harm whatsoever, those same peanuts can cause a very serious allergic reaction, even death, in other folks. My evidence that such people exist with respect to other non-Paleo foods is in the following Wikipedia articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectin#Toxicity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption

Now, do I believe that all people suffer from these maladies if they consume these foods? No, I do not. But some most certainly do, as indicated in the articles listed above. And for many others, they suffer these maladies, but with low-grade symptoms allowing chronic consumption and slow, long-term ill health effects. This why the new diagnosis of "gluten sensitivity" was developed. It is a low-grade version of gluten intolerance and the related Celiac's disease.

I am a case in point. Much to my surprise, I have gluten sensitivity, which I never would have guessed after a lifetime of loving pizza, bread, rolls, etc. But then I went on the Paleo diet, starting in May of 2011, and I stayed on it pretty well. However, I decided to break with my diet for a while during the holidays, and so I ate a lot of wheat based foods during Thanksgiving. I was immediately struck with a number of the symptoms of gluten intolerance. The details of my gluten binge may be found in this post to my Workout Log, "The Peaked Perils In Partaking Of Pro Tempore Non-Paleo Provender" (WFS).

Now, my personal anecdote of gluten sensitivity certainly does not prove that non-Paleo foods are bad for all people. However, Dmitri and Katherine, your personal anecdotes of no problems with non-Paleo foods do not prove that such foods are good for all people.

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

Since you like to look at the American population, I can show you plenty of other populations (people in Okinawa, Sardinia, etc...) that do consume grains in moderation and have the highest life expectancies. Keyword: in moderation. And moderation, depends on context. Also, I dunno where people get this idea from that Americans reduced their fat intake.

Fat and sugar and calories, everything's been going up and it shows.

Sardinians do not eat modern wheat. They are eating a much older strain of wheat which doesn't cause such high blood-sugar spikes nor as much gluten reaction. Okinawans eat rice, not wheat, and rice has been found to have fewer deleterious effects than wheat. Moreover, both populations eat a lot seafood and vegetables as part of their diet, along with heart healthy oils. They also exercise a lot more.

Well, all of that was true until recently. As younger Sardinians and Okinawans have embraced the modern Western diet, which is replete with unhealthy foods, their rates of metabolic syndrome, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, etc. have started to go up. Any population in the world which adopts the modern Western diet gets sick within one generation.

Dmitri - you and I actually agree on more than we disagree. Both of us advocate sensible moderation in diet. However, the modern Western diet is in no way whatsoever a sensible diet - it is full of unhealthy, highly processed foods. The Paleo diet might well be an extreme counter-reaction to the modern Western diet, but given how awful that modern Western diet is; I find some good sense in its opposite extremity.

Some people, like you and Katherine, do not need to go to the Paleo extreme. You have genes and a metabolism that allow you to eat a wide variety of foods, some of them deemed not so good by Paleo standards. Good for you. Enjoy a healthy diet with these wider variety of foods.

But some folks like me, maybe even many of us, do not have your genes and metabolism. For us, the Paleo diet is a key component in ensuring our own good health. Please let us do so, and be generous with your understanding if we like to share our good news with others who may benefit from it.

As for the Paleo enthusiasts who lack full knowledge of the diet, correct them by referring them to Lindeberg and Cordain. Better still, read Lindeberg and Cordain for yourselves, so that you better understand the theory and rationale behind the Paleo diet. This will empower you to correct misinformed newbie Paleo fans. And if that doesn't appeal to you, then at least you will have a full understanding of the Paleo diet so as to better critique it yourself. There are some well reasoned and researched flaws in the diet's theory - see Lindeberg's book for details.