Fructose Metabolism By The Brain Increases Food Intake And Obesity, Review Suggests

"M. Daniel Lane and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have built on the suggested link between the consumption of fructose and increased food intake, which may contribute to a high incidence of obesity"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...90325091811.htm

Valtor

Yikes, I wonder if this research will be duplicated by others.

This isn't going to make me very popular here, but I've been getting a nagging suspicion that glucose is actually pretty harmless. Trouble is, I don't think there are any "real" foods that contain pure glucose (except maybe organ meats?) All plant foods contain a combination of glucose and fructose, as far as I know. Even honey contains quite a lot of fructose.

Personally I agree with you.

Gary Taubes wrote in GCBC about this. It would seem that Taubes hypothesis still fits the facts even if its just fructose that is harmful.

But, like you said, carbs in nature comes with fructose. Even sucrose (table sugar) has fructose.

So like Taubes keeps on saying. Could we please test all this with properly controlled experiments.

Valtor

Well, maybe if your insulin response is normal. But there aren't many places you can actually find glucose all by it's lonesome (maybe none!). It usually comes with fructose. But that also makes me think that non-grain starches (which get turned into glucose) might not be so bad in people with already healthy metabolisms. Perhaps this is why Kitavans (or was it the Tokelauans?) can eat so much starch and still be free of heart disease and diabetes.

I have definitely come to believe fructose is the worst of the two. And that would include the 50% fructose found in table sugar as well as the 55% found in HFCS.

So now I'm curious. I've heard that organ meats have carbs, but I don't know what kind. Can anyone tell me?

Did you know that corn syrup has no fructose? It's only glucose. I did not know that.

Another interesting find:
"One might think that fructose could be converted to glucose and stored as glycogen. This has been suggested many times by health faddists. However, the balance of insulin and glucagon after a meal rules this out. Gluconeogenesis is turned off, glycolysis races forward and fructose is converted to fatty acids. This is the most likely explanation for the increased triglyceride levels found after in people who use "normal amounts" of sugar. Sugar consumption has increased from about 8 kg/year to over 50 kg/year in many societies during the past 150 years. Genetically, we are designed to consume far less! Today's "normal" sugar consumption is, genetically seen, far from a normal sugar intake."

http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%20...rch%202007a.htm

Valtor

Wow, how'd we all miss that? (Articles I looked up said it was "almost all glucose" but didn't give a specific figure.) So it sounds like there actually are plant sugars containing no fructose. Of course, in corn, they occur naturally as starches, glucose polysaccharides, which must be hydrolyzed to produce corn syrup.

So dextrose (D-glucose, the only form of glucose that the body can metabolize) is the same as "corn syrup solids." That's what Ruhlman & Polcyn recommend for meat cures - when you put it that way it doesn't sound quite so bad.

Another thing I had forgotten is that sucrose is actually a disaccharide - a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose bonded together. Glucose-fructose syrup, of which HFCS is one, is different because the molecules are already separate and do not require the body to break them down with sucrase.

It turns out that when HFCS is made, it's often produced at a strength of 90% fructose. It's then mixed with regular corn syrup to produce HFCS-55.

I would really like to know if it's just fructose that causes the metabolic syndrome and not insulin in itself. This way I could re-introduce some starches in my life. I mean, if we use starches without any fructose, maybe it would be enough to prevent the metabolic syndrome.

I can't wait to see this being tested

Valtor

It would be very important for us to research what people with HEREDITARY FRUCTOSE INTOLERANCE are permitted to eat, because it's much more strict than the dietary guidelines given to people with Fructose Malabsorption.

Here is a link to a very interesting page about hereditary fructose intolerance, and there I read that much of the available corn syrup and corn syrup solids is impure, that oftentimes they ADD fructose to it, so it can be VERY dangerous to people with HFI.


http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache...e=UTF-8&strip=1

It isn't much, I think someone overplayed that and it stuck around as an urban legend.

It's not a myth But I don't know what type of carbs it is.

Heart, chicken, 1 heart (raw)
Calories: 9.3
Protein: 0.95g
Carbohydrate: 0.04g
Total Fat: 0.57g
Fiber: 0.0g

Liver, chicken, 1 liver (raw)
Calories: 40
Protein: 5.7g
Carbohydrate: 1.09g
Total Fat: 1.23g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Selenium (20.5mcg), Folate (236mcg), and Vitamin A (6,575 IU)
*Good source of: Iron (2.74mg)

Brains, beef, 4 oz. (113g) (raw)
Calories: 142
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrate: 0.0g
Total Fat: 10.5g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Niacin (5.2mg), Vitamin B12 (12.3mcg), and Vitamin C (18.7mg)
*Good source of: Iron (2.4mg)

Kidneys, beef, 4 oz. (113g) (raw)
Calories: 121
Protein: 18.7g
Carbohydrate: 2.45g
Total Fat: 3.5g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Iron (8.3mg), Vitamin B12 (30.5mcg), Vitamin A (994 IU), and Folate (90.4mcg)

Tongue, beef, 4 oz. (113g) (raw)
Calories: 253
Protein: 16.8g
Carbohydrate: 4.2g
Total Fat: 18.2g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Zinc (3.2mg), Niacin (4.8mg), and Vitamin B12 (4.3 mcg)

Tail, Ox (soup), 1 packet (74g) (dehydrated, dry)
Calories: 280
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrate: 35.6g
Total Fat: 10.1g
Fiber: 0.67g
*Good source of: Niacin (3.3mg), and Vitamin B12 (0.74)

Feet, pork, 1/2 foot (95g) (raw)
Calories: 251
Protein: 21g
Carbohydrate: 0.0g
Total Fat: 17.8g
Fiber: 0.0g

Sweetbreads (thymus), 4 oz. (113g) (raw)
Calories: 267
Protein: 13.7g
Carbohydrate: 0.0g
Total Fat: 23g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Vitamin C (38mg), and Vitamin B12 (2.4mcg)
*Good source of: Iron (2.3mg), and Zinc (2.3mg)

That really isn't much. I have a feeling the carbs in the oxtail soup are not coming from the actual oxtail.

I always thought sweetbreads meant pancreas. According to Wikipedia, that's a secondary meaning, and the primary meaing is the thymus gland.

Yup, I agree that isn't much.

Kitavans don't (or didn't) eat grains. You won't find grain eaters on small islands like theirs. Grains don't grow well in tropical climates other than maybe rice, but they weren't agriculturalists. Their diet is really well documented and I've never heard of them fermenting anything, although perhaps they figured out a way to ferment something into alcoholic drinks. If you come across something otherwise, I'd be interested in seeing it.

Hi there!

On fermentation: as far as I know, you can process many different foods using fermentation methods, they don't have to be grains to warrant that treatment. Relishes, ketchup, vegetables of all kinds have been processed using the lactic-acid fermentation method to preserve them for centuries. I think it's even called "putting up the beans" in parts of the US???

I also recall reading in one of Barry Groves' books about some processing treatment which involved fermentation being used in Africa for some kind of grain or possibly some other starchy food (yams???). It really does seem to be an almost universal phenomenon in cultures which are no longer nomadic, because, using this method, people could store and preserve foods easily, long before refrigeration was available.

When I read about the Kitavan diet on Stephan's blog, I did actually write to him and ask if he knew about whether they fermented anything they ate, but he said he hadn't ever seen anything about whether they did so. He also said he would be interested to know if they did, but in the Swedish guy's stuff, he hadn't found any reference to this.

And whilst I admit that it may in fact be true that accurate records were made of what these people ate, attention might not have been paid to how the foods were prepared: if the researchers didn't think this was relevant, and merely the naming of the foods was enough, they may not have even thought to consider this - possibly very significant - element of their diet.

Just my two cents...

amanda