A Real Video About Sugar (Better than 60 Minutes drivel)

[Dimitri Dziabenko]

If you come down to it, dig through all the debate as to what people really should be eating, you basically come out with the same advice that my grandma in a small village in the Ukraine (who doesn't know anything about performance nutrition) was telling me 15 years ago:

Some meat (she raises it herself), fish and fruit. Tons of different veggies and some nuts. After a hard day of working in the field (farming), you'd have a nice dinner with some potatoes but if you didn't do anything, you don't get potatoes. In the Soviet Union, they also used to force fish oil down the throats of the kids.

Frankly, I think if my grandma knows it, most people know it as well. I doubt people actually believe that twinkies or chips (or Paleo cookies ) are good for them, problem is that people don't (a) think about things rationally (b) have actual control over their food intake. True, there are some crazy low-fat, all soy dieters that need a bit of re-education, but frankly there are so many different factors going into the problems we have today, you can't just say it's sugar and nothing else.

Fun fact: A friend of mine works at a food company and he has recently come up with an idea (that he's trying to patent) for a potato chips bag which instead of remaining closed when you roll it up, slowly opens over time as if to suggest to the person to keep eating. Here is another issue: bright people are going into these food companies and using their smarts to make high calorie foods more addictive.

It's a complicated issue, which is why I really hate it when Lustig and Taubes reduce it to a single ingredient. While cutting all sugar out will reduce calories and make people lose fat, it's still intellectually dishonest, because fruit has sugar (and not really that much fiber, just look at a banana).

[Katherine Derbyshire]

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

Fun fact: A friend of mine works at a food company and he has recently come up with an idea (that he's trying to patent) for a potato chips bag which instead of remaining closed when you roll it up, slowly opens over time as if to suggest to the person to keep eating. Here is another issue: bright people are going into these food companies and using their smarts to make high calorie foods more addictive.

That's a big part of it. Real food has very little marketing budget. Michael Pollan talks about "the silence of the yams." A typical grocery store has aisles full of loud, splashy, packaging just jumping off the shelf, and meanwhile the meat and produce pretty much just sit there.

He also puts a lot of blame on the undermining of traditional food cultures. When people grow up eating out of boxes, there's a big barrier that someone who grew up helping in the kitchen just doesn't face.

Katherine

[Sean Dunston]

Originally Posted by Katherine Derbyshire

That's a big part of it. Real food has very little marketing budget. Michael Pollan talks about "the silence of the yams." A typical grocery store has aisles full of loud, splashy, packaging just jumping off the shelf, and meanwhile the meat and produce pretty much just sit there.

He also puts a lot of blame on the undermining of traditional food cultures. When people grow up eating out of boxes, there's a big barrier that someone who grew up helping in the kitchen just doesn't face.

Katherine

Very good point, Katherine.
I'm a member of several forums - one of them being motorcycle related, and we just hit that topic a week or two ago.
We joke in that forum that 90% of the community bears a striking resemblance to santa claus (big black boots, beards, fat bellies and suspenders to hold up their pants)... anyway, whenever the topic of health or nutrition crops up, I try to throw them a few nuggets.
One guy in particular wanted to fight over the fact that it is both cheaper and easier to buy frozen dinners, where he knows he's going to get "a well balanced and nutritious" meal than it is to buy fresh meats and vegetables to cook them. Granted - it may be easier for him to nuke a meal, or heat it in the oven, but there is no way in Hell that I am accepting the fact that it is cheaper to do so, or that the packaged food, with all of its additives (mostly salts, sugars and other chemical preservatives) are as nutritious or well balanced as you'd get from fresh ingredients.

[Luke Seubert]

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

Frankly, I think if my grandma knows it, most people know it as well. I doubt people actually believe that twinkies or chips (or Paleo cookies ) are good for them, problem is that people don't (a) think about things rationally (b) have actual control over their food intake. True, there are some crazy low-fat, all soy dieters that need a bit of re-education, but frankly there are so many different factors going into the problems we have today, you can't just say it's sugar and nothing else.

Dmitri, your grandmother is right about what constitutes a healthy diet. But you are giving most people way too much credit for intuitively sharing her wisdom.

Most people, most of the time, go along to get along. Whatever behaviors are presented to them by their surrounding culture, they adopt just to get by. It's the easiest way to get through life with a minimum of hassles. Your grandmother's culture happily presented her with a pretty sensible diet, so she inculcated those good habits to her benefit.

However, most people in most cultures which have adopted the modern global industrial diet, aka Standard American Diet; eat that diet without much thought. It is just sooooo easy to eat what everybody else eats and not think about it.

People who do stop and think, and then make hard choices and stick to them, enjoy a much healthier diet. But it isn't easy, swimming against the tide.

Ironically, having spent a full year now consuming a pretty strict Paleo diet, my respect for vegans and vegetarians has gone up considerably, even though I profoundly disagree with their dietary choices. I appreciate how hard it is to be, as George Carlin so aptly called it, "a fussy eater" (NWFS). He quite correctly called fussy eaters a big pain in the azz.

And that is what I have become, relative to the people and food culture which surrounds me. In fact, I regard myself as a bigger PITA than any vegan. I'll eat meat, but I am annoyingly fussy about what kinds of meat - lean, whole cuts only please, preferably grass-fed, hormone-free, organic, free-range, blah, blah, blah. I am likewise fussy about all sorts of other foods. At least vegans can eat junk food like everybody else, so long as it is organic potato chips with sea salt.

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

It's a complicated issue, which is why I really hate it when Lustig and Taubes reduce it to a single ingredient. While cutting all sugar out will reduce calories and make people lose fat, it's still intellectually dishonest, because fruit has sugar (and not really that much fiber, just look at a banana).

You are right, that singling out one bad ingredient as the end-all and be-all of our dietary ills is poor thinking. There are multiple problems with our diet culture. However, that said, cutting way back on sugar would help a lot - probably more than any other one thing, with the possible exception of trans fats. Combine cutting back sugar with knocking out other unhealthy foods, and we would all be left with a pretty healthy diet. One which, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like your grandmother's diet.

[Donald Lee]

Originally Posted by Luke Seubert

You are right, that singling out one bad ingredient as the end-all and be-all of our dietary ills is poor thinking. There are multiple problems with our diet culture. However, that said, cutting way back on sugar would help a lot - probably more than any other one thing, with the possible exception of trans fats.

Cutting back on processed foods in general would be more helpful than directly trying to cut out added sugars.

[Chris Mason]

Originally Posted by Thom Wendelboe

Corporations craft very careful advertising campaigns and people believe "miracle products" exist that satisfy their cravings, taste great, and are healthy. People have been conditioned to believe that "modern" products and invention can cure all their problems. The best example of this is medicine, which is primarily concerned with curing - as opposed to prevention - symptoms.

It is obviously more complicated then that, but the vast majority of people do not know what they are doing with regards to food and when they try and make a change, they meet a plethora of different dogmas. Unfortunately, the "loudest" of these is often the "low fat" SAD.

Yes, Paleolithic man lived such a long life...

[Luke Seubert]

Originally Posted by Donald Lee

Cutting back on processed foods in general would be more helpful than directly trying to cut out added sugars.

Ironically, Don, we are both right at the same time. You are entirely correct about cutting way back on processed foods being very helpful towards a better diet. I am right insofar as most processed foods have some form of sugar on the ingredient label.

That said, your strategy does help to eliminate a wider variety modern ingredients which are not optimal for good health than just sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. One of the reasons I like my Paleo diet so much is because it accomplishes exactly what you advise - cut way back on processed foods.

[Luke Seubert]

Originally Posted by Chris Mason

Yes, Paleolithic man lived such a long life...

Actually Chris, Paleolithic man had a much longer lifespan than people commonly believe.

First off, let us remember the classic quote from Mark Twain, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, d@mned lies and statistics."

Life expectancy statistics are very deceiving. For example, it is commonly cited that Paleo man lived to only 25 years of age. This deceives people into actually believing that Paleo humans dropped dead at 25 years of age. This is entirely false.

Average life expectancy can be very low in many populations because of very high death rates among newborns and children under the age of 5. Childbirth is quite hazardous without the benefits of modern medical care. Many babies, and young women, die shortly after childbirth in primitive societies. And quite a few children born outside of modern societies die of disease or accident before the age of five. Indeed, high death rates are common all the way through puberty.

The huge number of infant and child deaths heavily skews the average life expectancy number downwards. Anthropologists and archaeologists use a more reliable number, average lifespan, which measures the average age upon death of all people who reach adulthood. Please see the following Wikipedia reference for more details:
Life Expectancy Versus Life Span (WFS)

When we look at Paleo man's average lifespan, some surprising things pop out. Paleo man routinely lived into the 50's and 60's, and even longer. Also, Paleo man enjoyed a longer lifespan than many primitive agrarian societies, which often saw lifespans in the late 40's or early 50's.

Paleo man was actually very strong, fit, and healthy. If he could get past infancy, childhood, and puberty; barring accident he could look forward to a long and robust life. Anthropologists have noted the same pattern in their studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Please refer to the following article for more details:
Life Expectancy In The Paleolithic (WFS)

[Ian Nigh]

Originally Posted by Dimitri Dziabenko

If you come down to it, dig through all the debate as to what people really should be eating, you basically come out with the same advice that my grandma in a small village in the Ukraine (who doesn't know anything about performance nutrition) was telling me 15 years ago:

Some meat (she raises it herself), fish and fruit. Tons of different veggies and some nuts. After a hard day of working in the field (farming), you'd have a nice dinner with some potatoes but if you didn't do anything, you don't get potatoes. In the Soviet Union, they also used to force fish oil down the throats of the kids.

Frankly, I think if my grandma knows it, most people know it as well. I doubt people actually believe that twinkies or chips (or Paleo cookies ) are good for them, problem is that people don't (a) think about things rationally (b) have actual control over their food intake. True, there are some crazy low-fat, all soy dieters that need a bit of re-education, but frankly there are so many different factors going into the problems we have today, you can't just say it's sugar and nothing else.

Fun fact: A friend of mine works at a food company and he has recently come up with an idea (that he's trying to patent) for a potato chips bag which instead of remaining closed when you roll it up, slowly opens over time as if to suggest to the person to keep eating. Here is another issue: bright people are going into these food companies and using their smarts to make high calorie foods more addictive.

It's a complicated issue, which is why I really hate it when Lustig and Taubes reduce it to a single ingredient. While cutting all sugar out will reduce calories and make people lose fat, it's still intellectually dishonest, because fruit has sugar (and not really that much fiber, just look at a banana).

Best darn nutrition post I've read in a good long while. Yea to Grandma!

[Kate Batrak]

Originally Posted by Thom Wendelboe

Corporations craft very careful advertising campaigns and people believe "miracle products" exist that satisfy their cravings, taste great, and are healthy. People have been conditioned to believe that "modern" products and invention can cure all their problems. The best example of this is medicine, which is primarily concerned with curing - as opposed to prevention - symptoms.

It is obviously more complicated then that, but the vast majority of people do not know what they are doing with regards to food and when they try and make a change, they meet a plethora of different dogmas. Unfortunately, the "loudest" of these is often the "low fat" SAD.

NO TO PACKAGED FOODSTUFFS.