Sugar (Read 1109 times)

Daily recommended allowance for sugar: 0 grams Some portion of your daily caloric intake should come from carbohydrates. Sugars are simple carbohydrates. There are also complex carbohydrates, which are basically long chains of sugar molecules. It is better to consume relatively more complex carbohydrates and/or simple carbohydrates in the context of fibers or complex carbohydrates. Bananas contain simple and complex carbohydrates. Apples contain simple carbohydrates and fiber. Candy and Coke contain only simple carbohydrates. The complex carbohydrates and fibers slow the absorption of sugars from the gut, allowing your body the time to handle them. Without the slowed absorption, your blood sugar level peaks fast, then drops. This has the effect of dulling your body's cells to the effect of high sugar levels and high insulin levels, which can lead to diabetes and obesity if repeated chronically AND causes you to become hungry again quickly after the sugar load. This is why a 50 calorie apple can fill you up better than a 250 calorie candy bar. Some debate whether simple sugars have different effects based on their source and molecular structure. A good current debate is whether the sugar molecule in high-fructose corn syrup is any more or less likely to cause obesity than the sugar molecule in table sugar. Regardless of where we ultimately find the truth, most simple sugars added to processed foods are not going to be healthy and are not going to be provided in the context of complex carbohydrates and natural fibers. And, rather than try and science it up in this way, I find it better to keep it simple: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

High fructose corn syrup is the devil!

But it's gotta be healthy, it's made from corn!!

Come on--you know what they say about it!

Heh.

If we have something to blame and vilify then we are not responsible, right? It's the HFCS in that 6 pack of coke we drank and the two packages of twinkes we ate today day that made us fat, gave us diabetes, made us impotent or insert what ever. http://www.sweetsurprise.com/?q=news-and-press/articles/HFCS-highly-fattening-crappy-science

Wow. That's some straight propaganda there. Nice find r2farm! Crazy how low an industry will stoop just to continue its own unethical practices.

Crissman, right on. HFCS, however, is not pure (neither is sugar). Here is how I see it: 1. In large part due to subsidy, HFCS is very cheap to produce and is now found in many foods that traditionally would not have been sweetened at all (e.g., saltines), thereby increasing those foods' caloric density and the chance they will promote obesity. 2. Because HFCS is so cheap (i.e., cheaper than sugar), some foods cost almost nothing to produce, so it makes financial sense to sell them in great bulk. The Big Gulp softdrink is an example. Buyers perceive a good deal and retailers make money when large volumes of Coke are sold cheap. The downside is that people consume more calories. With more expensive sweeteners, this is less likely to happen. 3. HFCS is present in a lot of processed foods. Processed foods are generally less healthy than natural or whole foods primarily because they are less likely to contain fiber, micronutrients, complex carbohydrates or because they are relatively more calorie dense or have a lower satiety index (i.e., they are less likely to make you feel full or satisfied). In this case, HFCS suffers from guilt by association; it is an indicator of a problem, not the cause of the problem. 4. HFCS is produced from commodity corn, which itself requires nitrogen-based plant fertilizers to produce in adequate quantity in much of the country. Sugar is produced from sugar cane, which grows more readily, but which requires relatively more petroleum to transport into our country. 5. HFCS is not kosher for passover, so I have to avoid it for the next 8 days. You would be blown away by how hard that is to do without eating only single-ingredient whole foods. As before, if you are eating whole foods that are unsweetened and which have fiber and complex carbohydrates, this discussion is unnecessary. If everybody ate that way, there would be no demand for sugar or HFCS. But the chocolate ice cream would not taste as good. Don't get me started on noncalorie sugar substitutes.

(I had some french fries today at lunch)