Sugar link between heart disease and diabetes risks explored

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-12-18...risks-explored/

Metabolic syndrome has been known for a couple of decades at least. No excuse for not delving into it further.

Absolutely right. It is the metabolic disease: high insulin/insulin resistance driving both diabetes and heart disease and causing those other symptoms like obesity, high blood pressure etc. Lowering blood sugar with meds is treating only a symptom of the problem and does not address the root cause of the disease allowing it to continue unabated.

Since starch turns into sugar, starting in the mouth, that needs to be emphasized. Most people and healthywholegrain-pushers (including the ADA, registered dieticians, nutritionists & doctors) interpret "sugar" to mean table sugar, candy & sugary drinks.

Agreed. More farcical hair splitting in this ongoing chicken or egg argument that is likely encouraged by the sugar industry. Many people don't get that ingested carbs become sugar. Nice way to obfuscate and confuse.

Yes, that whole Complex Carbs Con, as I call it.

I grew up with that "brown bread is better than white bread" mindset, but never did anyone say "NO bread" is the best of all!

Ah, but it's soooooooooo profitable.

Thankfully, we know better around here.

Bob

When one considers the effect of sugar on the whole endocrine system, its status as a DRUG is obvious.

You get high, you have a crash, you want to do it again. It's the same brain receptors involved. And it has long-term, deleterious, effects.

It first struck me, scientifically speaking, when I read Good Calories, Bad Calories. I was aware, dealing with a recovery from my Eating Disorder, that I was binging on sugar because it was a cheap drug I could afford. When Gary Taubes quotes early researchers reassuring each other that something as MARVELOUS as sugar couldn't be BAD for us... they sound like addicts.

Sugar (candy) is still being promoted as being good food. The Snickers commercial tells how eating a Snickers bar takes away the hangry feeling nad makes you happy again.
https://youtu.be/dbpFpjLVabA

What is terribly insidious is how nearly everyone sees it as "essentially harmless."

Sure, we shouldn't "eat too many sweets" but that is defined as entire pies or cakes, so anything less is OKAY.

Sugar is present in the milk mothers nurse their babies with, so I can't necessarily say it's evil or a drug. That would make all female mammals who reproduce drug pushers.

I also think sugar and the craving for sweets is a product of evolution.

For billions of years, fruit, the non-processed, "natural" form of sugar ripens right before the starvation season (winter in temperate climates, the dry season in the tropics).

The hunter-gatherers who had a taste for sweets gorged themselves on the ripe fruit, and put a lot of fat on their bodies. Those who could store enough food in the form of body fat were the ones most likely to survive the starvation season and pass those sweet loving genes on to the next generation. Those who didn't care for sweets perished.

The problem is after the innovation of agriculture and the ever increasing ways to store and redistribute food, most humans have defeated the starvation season. That's a good thing. But we still have that genetic sweet loving instinct that was instilled in us by evolution.

So without meager foraging in the starvation season we get fat.

Do I consider the craving for sweets a drug? Not strictly but perhaps in the broad sense of the word.

Do I consider the access to sugar 365 days a year with no starvation season to counter the effects of that sugar harmful? You betcha!

The fact that corporate agriculture and food processing/distribution both dominate the advertising stream and have infiltrated the very agencies that were formed to protect our health like the FDA, AHA, and so on has done nothing but make profits for those companies at the expense of shortening the lives of those consuming their products. In a way it's mass murder for profit.

That sweet and high glycemic starchy stuff looks great and tastes great but you have to remember, that stuff will kill you. Slowly but when you are on your death bed dying before you are ready to go, you can't undo those sweet treats.

Bob

I didn't think sugar (sucrose = glucose + fructose) was present in breast milk, I thought it was mostly lactose which doesn't contain fructose. Turns out there is a little fructose, and only a little lactose in breast milk. It's mostly glucose.

But the concentration of fructose in breast milk seems directly correlated to the weight gain and fat gain in infants by 6 months of age.. It also correlates with lean mass and bone mass. So it's kinda hard to say if its a good or a bad thing, at least in breast milk.

This study was from 2017--


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...2xdFZrfYxfLzrGC

"Dietary sugars have been shown to promote excess adiposity among children and adults; however, no study has examined fructose in human milk and its effects on body composition during infancy. Twenty-five mother–infant dyads attended clinical visits to the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center at 1 and 6 months of infant age. Infants were exclusively breastfed for 6 months and sugars in breast milk (i.e., fructose, glucose, lactose) were measured by Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and glucose oxidase. Infant body composition was assessed using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry at 1 and 6 months. Multiple linear regression was used to examine associations between breast milk sugars and infant body composition at 6 months of age. Fructose, glucose, and lactose were present in breast milk and stable across visits (means = 6.7 μg/mL, 255.2 μg/mL, and 7.6 g/dL, respectively). Despite its very low concentration, fructose was the only sugar significantly associated with infant body composition. A 1-μg/mL higher breast milk fructose was associated with a 257 g higher body weight (p = 0.02), 170 g higher lean mass (p = 0.01), 131 g higher fat mass (p = 0.05), and 5 g higher bone mineral content (p = 0.03). In conclusion, fructose is detectable in human breast milk and is positively associated with all components of body composition at 6 months of age."

Oops sorry, breast milk sugar is mostly lactose. 7.6 grams of lactose (glucose + galactose) per ml equals 7600 micrograms per ml, way more than the glucose and fructose.

So its kind of amazing, even though fructose concentration is 1000 x less than the rest of the sugars in breast milk, it controls the growth rate of the infant. I guess it's a super growth hormone and not just empty calories..

We need to be careful. A child breastfeeding for two years in no way equals the sugar pushed on children from other sources.

A child solely breastfed grows much differently than other children . Pediatritians use two different growth charts because of the difference. The children are naturally smaller and leaner, not to mention the mouth structure and dentition develops fully and correctly ie. no braces.

So lets be careful to not confuse the sugar in breast milk with the crap fed to children from the get go.

Especially as breast fed children tend to become lean adults, compared to the alternative.