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Suzanne
10-28-11, 9:21am
It's good to see this information getting into the mainstream!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-dolgoff-md/added-sugar-health_b_913788.html

The doctor's math is a little off: if 100 calories of sugar equates to 6 teaspoons, then 130 does not equate to 3! Be that as it may, the amount of sugar being eaten by children is truly shocking. The only way, as I see it, to really limit sugar to healthy amounts, is to buy whole, single ingredient foods, and cook at home. I remember reading that the amount of sugar that tips the balance toward inflammation and all its evil offspring is 2 teaspoons.

Mrs-M
10-28-11, 9:44am
Absolutely true, Suzanne. Quite often, when I come across a new food product or something that I feel is an above average product (quality related) I think, "if only they used 50% less sugar in it". The old mentality of, "more is not better" needs to start being adhered to by the manufacturing industry. Great article.

HappyHiker
10-28-11, 11:03am
Thinking back, I wish my parents--and I--knew more about nutrition when I was growing up in the 1950's and 60's. My lord, I drank soda pop by the gallon, ate grease by the ton (cheese steaks, French fries, fried everything!)

As a result, I had lots of cavities, acne, and was often sick with ear and throat infections. Poor miserable teen-ager...had I only know to eat a more healthy diet...

I'm sure healthier these days now that I eat very modest amounts of sugar and a lot more whole foods and vegetables.

CathyA
10-28-11, 2:49pm
Everything seems too sweet, too salty. I've noticed that even things sweetened with artificial sweeteners are too sweet. We're some kind of weird, we humans.

loosechickens
10-28-11, 3:42pm
I remember reading somewhere that in 1900 the average per capita consumption of sugar (and other sugar type products, such as honey, etc.) was something like 5-10 pounds per person per YEAR. And now it's up there at something like 150 pounds per year. No wonder we have the obesity and diabetes problems we have.

The thing I notice is that the more sweets someone eats, it seems like the less they taste the sugar, so things have to be sweeter and sweeter. When you eat very little sugar, your palate's ability to register the sugary taste is so much more intense that even slightly sweet things often taste TOO sweet. It's no hardship any more for me to pass up most dessert type things out in the world. One bite, and it is so sicky sweet that I can't eat any more.

It's the same with salt.....the prepared stuff is just too salty, always, once your palate is used to using less.

Rosemary
10-28-11, 6:26pm
loosechickens, it is very true about adapting to super-sweet stuff. When we've traveled in Europe, on return absolutely everything here tasted like sugar/corn syrup. DH works with quite an international crowd here and they like the things I bake because they don't just taste like sugar.

domestic goddess
10-28-11, 6:47pm
Although I have a sweet tooth, I don't eat sweets all that often, compared to some I have seen, and then they are usually home-made or the less sweet store bought items. Sugar isn't really a problem for me, but salt surely is. Most already prepared items are way too salty; no wonder high blood pressure is rampant! Your palate easily adapts to overly sweet and salty tastes, but your body sure lets you know when you've overdone. There are others in this household that consume a lot of sugar, salt, and hot (pepper) flavors, to the exclusion of the more subtle herbal flavors. I blame smoking, at least in part, for this; they seem to have just overloaded their taste buds to the point that flavors have to be very strong to even register with them.
I don't like to eat out anymore, because everything is just too salty to eat.

Marianne
10-29-11, 8:19am
Although I have a sweet tooth, I don't eat sweets all that often, compared to some I have seen, and then they are usually home-made or the less sweet store bought items. Sugar isn't really a problem for me, but salt surely is. Most already prepared items are way too salty; no wonder high blood pressure is rampant! Your palate easily adapts to overly sweet and salty tastes, but your body sure lets you know when you've overdone. There are others in this household that consume a lot of sugar, salt, and hot (pepper) flavors, to the exclusion of the more subtle herbal flavors. I blame smoking, at least in part, for this; they seem to have just overloaded their taste buds to the point that flavors have to be very strong to even register with them.
I don't like to eat out anymore, because everything is just too salty to eat.

X2, here. DS#1 makes his food unbelievably hot and spicy. On the flip side, I'm the sugar hound.

Rosemary
10-29-11, 8:26am
Ugh, yes on the salty restaurant food... I am always parched after eating out.

domestic goddess
10-29-11, 9:11am
I'm just talking about our household. It may be different in other households. But here, it just has to be hot. No other flavor is required.

JaneV2.0
10-30-11, 11:55am
I love spicy food. I was enthralled by onions and garlic as a child when I discovered them, and it grew from there. I'm convinced all they serve in the Bowels of Hell Cafeteria is bland food. Maybe scalloped potatoes and chicken pot pie.

Suzanne
11-1-11, 8:13pm
Back to sugar: this time it's "Fruit" drinks which not only contain only 5-10% fruit, but are - you guessed it! - mostly sugar. At last we're getting figures as well - children should not have more than 3-4 teaspoons per day of added sugar.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlene-schwartz-phd/added-sugar-drinks-_b_1066962.html

I was left shaking my head in amazement at the author's amazement that the big companies make promises not to target kids with advertisements and then do it anyway, and at the deliberate misleading appearance of healthiness for these drinks. These companies MAKE MONEY out of selling sugar; why on earth would they not use all means possible to sell as much sugar as possible? People's health is of no concern at all; it's the bottom line that counts. Only a strong vote with the feet will bring religion to these companies.

JaneV2.0
11-1-11, 9:28pm
I read somewhere recently that there is no fruit in fruit roll-ups. I assumed they similar to the fruit leather one might dehydrate at home. My mistake. But there's lots of sugar in them, apparently.

Suzanne
11-1-11, 11:08pm
Right! Here's a link to the no fruit in fruit roll-ups story: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/10/no-fruit-in-fruit-by-the-foot-general-mills-sued-over-snacks.html

Jemima
12-3-11, 11:52pm
Most commercial spaghetti sauces taste like candy to me. I've even noticed a sweet taste to Zatarain's boxed mixes of Cajun dishes.

Mostly I cook from scratch, but when I buy things I check for any sort of wheat, rye or barley content, so I'll just start checking everything for sugar as well. Inflammation is not a good thing.

Suzanne
12-6-11, 9:23am
So, "fruit drinks" contain hardly any fruit, and some have more sugar than soda - what's healthy about that?
http://dsc.discovery.com/life/sodas-evil-twin-the-dangers-of-fruit-drinks-infographic.html

Acorn
12-6-11, 12:35pm
I find it really difficult to eat preprepared foods because they don't taste like what they should taste like - at least to me.
Frozen chicken burritos taste like salt, packaged cookies taste like sugar and preservatives, those frozen lasagnas just taste like chemicals to me...
Once your palette gets accustomed to home cooked food it is very difficult to revert back to convenience foods.

Suzanne
12-7-11, 7:05am
Yet more sugar: if you eat, or give your children, cold cereal, you might as well put out a bowl of sugar and a spoon!
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/30057

madgeylou
12-7-11, 7:09am
Yet more sugar: if you eat, or give your children, cold cereal, you might as well put out a bowl of sugar and a spoon!
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/30057

wow -- i can't believe some of those cereals consist of more than 50% sugar by weight!

i mean, i can believe it, but it's wrong!

Rosemary
12-7-11, 7:57am
This type of by-weight analysis works for other foods, too - cookies, crackers, yogurt, etc - anything with multiple ingredients, really. Serving size on snack items is usually around 30g. Divide the grams of sugars by the serving size in grams to yield the % sugar. e.g. 15 g sugars per 30 g serving size would be 50% sugars. Note that some of these may be naturally-occurring, as in fruits or dairy. But they're still sugars of some form or other.

JaneV2.0
12-7-11, 10:41am
And since starches are easily broken down to glucose by salivary amylase, cereal is really just sugar in a bowl.

Suzanne
12-7-11, 8:13pm
4 grams of sugar is 1 teaspoonful. Women, according to the ADA, should limit themselves to a maximum 6 teaspoons/day. Children, I remember reading recently, should have 3-4. And Jane is right: processed starches break down into sugar practically on impact in the stomach, with some starting to convert in the mouth.

Jemima
12-7-11, 9:20pm
Anyone know if honey is as harmful as sugar? Or the natural sugar in fresh fruit and dried fruit? How about whole-food type carbs, like brown rice or homemade bread from whole-grain flours?

Tiam
12-7-11, 11:14pm
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/07/143270513/bonbons-for-breakfast-most-kid-cereals-pack-enough-sugar-to-be-dessert

pony mom
12-7-11, 11:52pm
I LOVE sugar!!! I may have this wrong, but I read somewhere that years ago, soda contained sugar and because of this, you only wanted to drink a certain amount of it. Now, with high fructose corn syrup, your body craves more and more of it.

I once tried sugar-free ketchup. Never again : P

Suzanne
12-8-11, 9:34am
Sugar is sugar, regardless of its source, and many honeys on the market nowadays are made from sugar. Beekeepers give their bees enormous blocks of candy, which the bees trustingly make into a honeylike substance. Even real honey is still mostly sugar. Dried fruits can contain very high amounts of sugar, especially things like dates. The sugar in fruit is fructose, which doesn't do the big insulin spike thing, but does go directly to the liver where it's processed into triglycerides, and fructose is implicated in afflictions like gout. Mercola suggests limiting fructose intake from fruits to 15 - 25 grams a day, which is still a reasonable amount of fruit if you pick low-fructose varieties. This link has a handy chart: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/20/sugar-dangers.aspx

Grain foods are a hot topic in the food world; I think it very likely that some people are fine with grains, and some are not. People of northern European ancestry have a very high incidence of caeliac disease and gluten intolerance, for example, with people of eastern European descent don't. Mummies of ancient Egyptians of high class show many of the diseases we see today: diabetes, gross obesity, heart disease, for instance. Much is made of high-class Egyptians eating meat, but most researchers totally overlook the fact that the upper classes ate white bread - they got much bigger rations of grains, and could afford to have their slaves sift their flour to whiteness - and also 32 enormous sweet teeth! Honey in the wine, honey sweets of all descriptions.

Here's an interesting overview of the history of sugar cane: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-08/865539599.Sh.r.html

Many totally natural substances aren't necessarily good for us! Nicotine, arsenic, and hemlock leap to mind.

Ponymom, research has shown that sucrose is less damaging than fructose, but too much sugar of any variety is harmful; excessive sugar sets up inflammation throughout the body, and inflammation is increasingly suspected of being the root cause of heart disease. Also, in the 1940s research on sugar consumption - long before the invention of high fructose corn syrup - convincingly demonstrated a link between high sugar consumption and colon cancer.

Most humans love sugar; we're biologically driven to seek it out and consume it. However, during our evolution, sugar, even in the form of fruit, was scarce, and for humans, seasonal. It made sense then to gorge whenever we found ripe fruits, because that allowed us to lay down fat stores for the winter. Think of bears, gorging on fruit and honey in fall, so they can get enough fat to survive a winter without any food at all! Today, humans can, and often do, stuff themselves with sugar daily, starting off with a glass of sugar syrup called fruit juice for breakfast, along with a bowlful of sugar called cold cereal. Our bodies were not designed for constant overloading with sugar, and the results are the booming diseases of civilization.

Here's a link to experiments with rats, comparing fructose, sucrose, and plain water. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7396/is_333/ai_n57274953/

Rosemary
12-8-11, 9:43am
Whole grain flours are not the same as whole grains. Compare the glycemic index of, for instance, whole wheat flour vs wheat berries, for an illustration:
http://rosemaryevergreen.blogspot.com/2010/04/health-news-and-whole-foods-diet.html

Even all rice is not the same. There are 2 primary starches in rice; the type that dominates in the short-grain 'sticky' rices is digested more quickly and has a higher glycemic index.

Suzanne
12-8-11, 9:48am
I love your site, Rosemary! I'll be visiting frequently!


Whole grain flours are not the same as whole grains. Compare the glycemic index of, for instance, whole wheat flour vs wheat berries, for an illustration:
http://rosemaryevergreen.blogspot.com/2010/04/health-news-and-whole-foods-diet.html

Even all rice is not the same. There are 2 primary starches in rice; the type that dominates in the short-grain 'sticky' rices is digested more quickly and has a higher glycemic index.

leslieann
12-8-11, 10:41am
Yes, Rosemary, your work made me take a hard look at what kinds of "whole grains" I thought I was eating. It just didn't seem right that suddenly so many products on the grocery shelf said "made with whole grain" and so of course that means flour. When I eat grains instead of flour (rice and oats instead of bread and crackers) I feel different. Of course that is also comparing wheat to other grains and I never really trust a sample size of one, even (or especially) if it is my personal experience. Anyway, I just wanted to say that your work, on the blog and posting here, over the last year, has had an impact on how I think about food and on how we eat at our house.

leslieann
12-8-11, 10:43am
AND I realize that I have been trying to fool myself with the natural sugars. I have consumed a lot of dates over the last six months. My chocolate habit was minimized but I may have actually increased my sugar consumption. It is amazing (to me) how easily I can fool myself. It is really like addict brain, making rationalizations and substitutions. Sugar in any form is NOT my friend but I struggle to keep away from it. If I can make it for three days then much in life seems better, including my concentration and capacity to make decisions. Oh, and my typing......

Suzanne
12-8-11, 8:29pm
Hot off the internet: intermittent low-carbing beats the Mediterranean diet in weight loss and reducing insulin resistance! http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-low-carb-diet-20111208,0,605981.story

JaneV2.0
12-10-11, 11:50pm
I was with my beloved when that came on the news and we saw it on two channels. First, I wondered aloud how long it would take for the MSM to bury it. Then, some time later I asked him if he had indeed heard the same thing I did. I'm sure it will be spun (they're still doing the "demon saturated fat" song and dance) and spun until the truth melts on the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Suzanne
12-11-11, 12:40pm
Sadly, it's very true that Big Food will do its utmost to smear and bury the truth about manufactured foods. However, there is hope as long as even a few people read and disseminate the reports, and change their food-buying habits!


I was with my beloved when that came on the news and we saw it on two channels. First, I wondered aloud how long it would take for the MSM to bury it. Then, some time later I asked him if he had indeed heard the same thing I did. I'm sure it will be spun (they're still doing the "demon saturated fat" song and dance) and spun until the truth melts on the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West.

ApatheticNoMore
12-11-11, 1:36pm
I think you could probably do a lower carb modified mediterranian (mostly just less grains). Legumes - well that depends on how much they agree with you or not.

The thing about many Mediterranian recipes is they are tasty, easy to prepare and parts of the Mediterranian diet just make intiutive sense. Lots of butter as fat = I did not feel well even using grass fed butter and so on. Lots of olive oil as fat = I feel fine. So I eat a lot of olive oil, not as much as some in the mediterranian but nontheless.

JaneV2.0
12-11-11, 4:33pm
Really, you can incorporate lower-carb eating into a wide variety of frameworks. Seems to me there's plenty of fish, fowl, shellfish, and meats of all kinds in traditional Mediterranean diets--the real ones, not the ones cooked up by nutritionists and others with books to sell--along with vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other health-giving foods.

Rosemary
12-12-11, 8:10am
Indeed, the lower-carb diet is easy to integrate. DD and DH love pasta; I make it for them every couple of weeks. I have a little of the sauce and a chicken sausage on top of sauteed zucchini and other vegetables, which I really enjoy and which they would never eat. So it works out for all of us, with very little additional prep time (5 minutes to slice a few veggies; saute in a pan without oil; add seasonings as the moisture cooks out).

Likewise, when we have burritos for dinner, I eat my burrito filling as a salad - chopped cabbage, shredded carrots, black beans, spiced shredded chicken or other meat, etc.

leslieann
12-12-11, 8:23am
Rosemary, thanks for those ideas. I know I need to focus on decreasing carbs in my diet. I feel better when I do. But I struggle with letting go of those delicious (sweet) root veggies...sweet potato, beets, carrots, onions. I think I need a middle of the road place...I ate old version Atkins for a couple of years ten years ago. I felt great, lost all my urges to binge (sugar does that to me, and maybe even natural sugars from root veggies?) and of course lost weight. However, ten years later I am through menopause, added back about 30 pounds, found myself intolerant of dairy and wheat, and waffling about what to do....so let's have some more dark chocolate. I do know that is NOT the answer. Back to the produce aisle!

HappyHiker
12-12-11, 8:58am
Thanks Rosemary, for you creative ideas on healthy ways to reduce simple carbs. It's out of the box thinking--I love the sauce, proteins and the spices that usually go on pasta or in a burrito, but now I'm going to try them your way--on top of veggies instead of pasta or in a flour wrapper. Sticking with my oatmeal for breakfast, though.

JaneV2.0
12-12-11, 12:33pm
I'll give up onions when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/artists/snoozer/zomby.gif

If you miss pasta, shirataki noodles are pretty good in Asian-influenced soups and stir-fries. Some people use zucchini strips or spaghetti squash. Cauliflower makes an excellent stand-in for rice. Most starchy foods are just extenders anyway, and you can use vegetables just as well--and get a nutrition boost at the same time.

ETA: A lot of people work root vegetables and dark chocolate into LC/paleo plans.

There is much more to controlled-carb eating than Atkins induction, which is a short-term very low carb regime designed to get the metabolic ball rolling, so to speak, not necessarily a blueprint for lifetime eating (though there are people who seem to thrive on it long term).

Rosemary
12-12-11, 2:59pm
Oh, I am middle-of-the-road, too! I just limit grains and especially sugars (aside from fruit). And by limit, I don't mean eliminate - but grains are very far from the basis of our diet. I don't seem to have any problem with legumes or root vegetables.

Acorn
12-12-11, 3:02pm
Many thanks for sharing the links and information. As someone who is working towards a lower carb diet it is all very helpful. I'm not cutting out all grains, but leaning heavily on oats and barley. I'm also including legumes and root vegetables and will see how it progresses.

ApatheticNoMore
12-12-11, 3:04pm
I love the sauce, proteins and the spices that usually go on pasta or in a burrito, but now I'm going to try them your way--on top of veggies instead of pasta or in a flour wrapper.

Yea I tried things like piece of steak (and never even huge - like 1/3 of a pound and so on), and sauteed chard. Oh we've got a real low carb meal here, we're eating like a real man now! Only I'm not a real man and my finicky digestion never could just take "lump of red meat" for dinner (and it really didn't matter the cut of the meat, the same thing happened with fillets which are tender meat). And I'd wake up time and again with indigestion and feeling miserable at night (ugh, what have I done?). So I started taking my red meat as ground beef in organic sprouted corn tortillas, with guacamole, and veggies (I even have to watch the guacamole as I even seem a little sensitive to it - bizarre I know) and at least I could digest it, when it was well diluted with veggies and carbs. So I started thinking of "lump of red meat" as something that needs some dilution (ground beef also helps in that's it's already broken up and thus kinda predigested I think). But I suppose a small amount of ground beef and a much larger amount of stir fried veggies might accomplish the same thing without grains. Yea it's mostly red meat that's hard for me to digest, not fish and so on, I don't know why, taking more hydrocloric acid maybe?

So when Mediterranian advice goes: eat more fish and less red meat, more olive oil and less dairy (which again too much is not good for me) I just nod, not because of fear of saturated fat, but just because: "Yep! that's my body!". Those Med folks also know how to cook and emphasize greens, and while I think it is possible to overdue the serious greens (not lettuce, you could eat salads twice a day and be nothing but healthier probably, but the *serious* cooking greens with oxalates and the like), I don't think most Americans are at that point in green consumption, or anywhere near.

DonkaDoo
12-12-11, 3:24pm
Sugar is sugar, regardless of its source, and many honeys on the market nowadays are made from sugar. Beekeepers give their bees enormous blocks of candy, which the bees trustingly make into a honeylike substance. Even real honey is still mostly sugar. Dried fruits can contain very high amounts of sugar, especially things like dates. The sugar in fruit is fructose, which doesn't do the big insulin spike thing, but does go directly to the liver where it's processed into triglycerides, and fructose is implicated in afflictions like gout. Mercola suggests limiting fructose intake from fruits to 15 - 25 grams a day, which is still a reasonable amount of fruit if you pick low-fructose varieties. This link has a handy chart: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/20/sugar-dangers.aspx

Grain foods are a hot topic in the food world; I think it very likely that some people are fine with grains, and some are not. People of northern European ancestry have a very high incidence of caeliac disease and gluten intolerance, for example, with people of eastern European descent don't. Mummies of ancient Egyptians of high class show many of the diseases we see today: diabetes, gross obesity, heart disease, for instance. Much is made of high-class Egyptians eating meat, but most researchers totally overlook the fact that the upper classes ate white bread - they got much bigger rations of grains, and could afford to have their slaves sift their flour to whiteness - and also 32 enormous sweet teeth! Honey in the wine, honey sweets of all descriptions.

Here's an interesting overview of the history of sugar cane: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-08/865539599.Sh.r.html

Many totally natural substances aren't necessarily good for us! Nicotine, arsenic, and hemlock leap to mind.

Ponymom, research has shown that sucrose is less damaging than fructose, but too much sugar of any variety is harmful; excessive sugar sets up inflammation throughout the body, and inflammation is increasingly suspected of being the root cause of heart disease. Also, in the 1940s research on sugar consumption - long before the invention of high fructose corn syrup - convincingly demonstrated a link between high sugar consumption and colon cancer.

Most humans love sugar; we're biologically driven to seek it out and consume it. However, during our evolution, sugar, even in the form of fruit, was scarce, and for humans, seasonal. It made sense then to gorge whenever we found ripe fruits, because that allowed us to lay down fat stores for the winter. Think of bears, gorging on fruit and honey in fall, so they can get enough fat to survive a winter without any food at all! Today, humans can, and often do, stuff themselves with sugar daily, starting off with a glass of sugar syrup called fruit juice for breakfast, along with a bowlful of sugar called cold cereal. Our bodies were not designed for constant overloading with sugar, and the results are the booming diseases of civilization.

Here's a link to experiments with rats, comparing fructose, sucrose, and plain water. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7396/is_333/ai_n57274953/

Excellent post.