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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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)

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

This is exciting - I feel like I'm finally ready to process some of this information about carbs. I remember how confused I was about it a year ago.

According to Wikipedia, starch is a polysaccharide of glucose only. Fiber, on the other hand, can be a polysaccharide of any old sugar - inulin, for example, is a fructose oligosaccharide.

I wouldn't draw any conclusions about starch from information about glucose. The fact that it's a polymer can make a big difference.

I can't really address this at all. Just curiously watching.
But I will say that in RARE times when I have a little rice (like less than a quarter cup), it has never caused cravings and never seemed to set me back (where NEVER = 3 or 4 times total in my life of LCing).

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.

It's shellfish that has a significant amount of carbohydrate, especially oysters. I can't figure out whether it's glucose, though.