Raisin Hell
Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Are Mums really United in their love of Margarine?
Monday, October 31, 2011
Let those who cause the pain, pay the tax
Thursday, September 15, 2011
It's time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid of Public Health Dogma
People defending our right to continue eating sugar (‘in moderation’ of course) frequently waggle their fingers at the studies and say just because it kills a rat doesn’t mean it will harm a human. One defender of the white stuff, Dr Jennie Brand-Miller, recently went so far as to suggest that sugar doesn’t do us any direct harm at all.
There’s a good ethical (and legal) reason that human studies are few and far between. The ones that have been done have inevitably resulted in immediate harm to the human subjects. A study where the expected outcome is to harm the participants makes lawyers nervous. I guess that’s why you don’t tend to see studies on what happens if you don’t open the parachute.
But the science needs to be done. There really is no other way to combat the incessant ‘sugar in moderation’ chant of the processed food industry and its toadies. Thankfully a few US Universities are prepared to push the envelope.
Just last week a team from Vanderbilt University’s paediatrics department published the results of their year-long study into the effects of fructose on Rhesus Monkeys. Their stated aim was to “induce insulin resistance” (the first step on the path to Type II Diabetes) in a primate using the same methods which are so successful in rodents.
The Vanderbilt folks chose Rhesus monkeys because they are physiologically similar to us and they develop the same chronic diseases that we do (and they are far less picky than humans about being locked in cages for 12 months). Dr Bremer and his team studied a group of 29 adult male monkeys aged from 12-20 years (approximately equivalent to human ages of 36-60).
At the start of the study, all the monkeys had perfectly normal blood glucose levels and were otherwise fit and healthy. The diet for the duration of the study was standard monkey lab chow (designed to give them all the nutrients they need in a healthy mix which is 59% Carbohydrate, 30% Protein and 11% Fat). They were also given access to up to 500ml per day of Kool-Aid. The monkeys could consume as much (or as little) of the food and Kool-Aid as they wanted.
Kool-Aid is a fruit flavoured powdered sugar drink mix sold in the US. The closest Australian equivalent is Tang (which is really just Kool-Aid with a multi-vitamin chucked in). The Kool-Aid delivered up to 75g of pure fructose a day to the monkeys. I say ‘up to’ but the reality was that the monkeys drank the Kool-Aid and then topped up their calories with chow. They weren’t going to leave any of the good stuff in the tin.
Unfortunately for our furry friends, they were never healthier than when they hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. Four of them developed Type II diabetes between 6 and 12 months after starting. The rest of them were well on their way to the same destination (with blood glucose and insulin readings that would have had them on the latest anti-diabetes drugs if they had been humans).
They put on weight (an average of 9% of their starting weight), the percentage of their body which was fat increased by 15%, they ate more of everything, exercised less and their blood lipids were a mess.
Their fasting triglycerides (a strong risk factor for heart disease) increased by a whopping 87%, HDL (good) cholesterol decreased and LDL (bad) cholesterol increased (by 14% each). In other words these critters were also on the fast track to a heart attack.
The experiment would have been better if they’d had 29 monkeys eating nothing but chow to compare the results to. But there is no evidence to suggest that monkeys on a standard lab chow diet ordinarily develop these symptoms (and certainly not in less than a year).
The researchers set out to give diabetes to a group of primates (with an almost identical metabolism to ours). All they did was allow them access to a sugar which is plentiful in our food supply. They didn’t test chemicals on them. They didn’t inject them with drugs. They just fed them with the same stuff we give our kids. And they achieved their aim – four had diabetes and the rest were on their way – in less than a year!
Still not enough to get you to step away from the Froot Loops? Still not ready to believe, ‘till they do this to humans? Then you’re in luck, because a human study has also just been released.
This time, a team at the University of California convinced 48 healthy (human) adults to consume four cans of soft drink a day for two weeks (about the same as one in 20 Americans do every day of their lives). Some of the soft drinks were sweetened with glucose, some with fructose (the two halves of sugar) and some with High Fructose Corn Syrup (55% fructose, 45% glucose).
And guess what? That’s right, the result was exactly the same as for the monkeys. The blood fat measurements (which point to heart disease) started going in the wrong direction for the fructose and HFCS groups (and nothing happened to the glucose group). No-one was given diabetes, but it was just a 2 week study.
Try as they might, researchers have never been able to get results like these by feeding people fat or stopping them from exercising. But these latest studies could barely be more definitive on whether there is danger in that thar can of soda.
Eat fructose and the only question is when you will develop diabetes and heart disease. If you happen to be a Rhesus Monkey (well done, you, for being able to read this) you have as little as six months, if not, you might get a bit longer. But have no doubt, it will happen.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Glycemic Index has passed its use-by date
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
How Fructose makes us Unhappy.
The primary anti-depressant drugs available in Australia (Cipramil, Luvox, Prozac, Lovan, Aropax and Zoloft) all work by targeting the serotonin system. They give the brain more time to absorb the serotonin. Some other drugs (Ecstasy, Amphetamines and LSD) work by enhancing the amount of serotonin we produce (but you might find it tricky to get a prescription for them).
We like dopamine. It is our reward drug. Frequent hits of fructose mean frequent hits of dopamine. This leads inevitably to fructose addiction and that is exactly the mechanism used by other man-made opiods (like nicotine and cocaine). The trouble is that it seems the upregulating of dopamine at the expense of serotonin can become hard-wired if we allow it to go on for long enough. And once we’re addicted, we cant help but let it go on for long enough.
We don’t run into that many bears on a daily basis (well, I don’t). Fructose was once about as common as a bear encounter, but is now embedded in almost every processed food we buy. And it has an addictive quality as powerful as nicotine (so it isn’t exactly going to harm sales now is it?).
We are now on a constant drip of fructose. That means we are on a constant cortisol (and therefore dopamine) high. This in turn continuously impairs our ability to absorb serotonin, the one substance that can turn our mood around.
I'll be talking more about the link between Fructose and Depression at the upcoming conference on Happiness and its Causes - June 16-17 at the Brisbane Convention Centre.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
How Diabetes drugs stop us losing weight (and do nothing but delay the inevitable)
Monday, March 21, 2011
Selling the ‘cure’ with the disease
Last month Pharmacare Laboratories released (what it undoubtedly hopes is) a game changer in the children’s vitamin supplement market. Its Nature’s Way Vita Gummies embed vitamins in delicious sugar filled gummies. And just for good measure they have former Olympian (and now Biggest Loser host) Hayley Lewis pushing them on the teev.
Shouting about the vitamin benefits of a food while blithely ignoring the other 99.99% of the product is not a new tactic in the processed food industry. Streets want every child to get their ‘afternoon calcium’ (and Vitamin B12 and Phospherus) from their Paddle Pop Moos. They proudly proclaim every single ice-block has the calcium of ‘1 Glass of Milk’ but leave the fact that it is 20% sugar to the small print.
Nestle would rather the kids get their daily calcium (and magnesium) from its (Heart Foundation approved) Milo Duobreakfast cereal (30% sugar) or a nice (Heart Foundation approved) chocolate Billabong (18% sugar). Really health conscious kids are encouraged to get “50% of their wholegrain target” by chomping on some Uncle Toby’s Oats, So Tasty for Kids (30% sugar).
For that after breakfast snack, Kellogg’s wants you to feed your young iron-men Nutrigrain Bars and perhaps give the other kids some nice (Heart Foundation Ticked) K-Time Twists (both 37% sugar). And don’t even get me started onLCM’s (also 37% sugar) and their schoolyard commercials.
I guess you could (almost – at a very big stretch) justify that kind of marketing if there was any evidence (whatsoever) that the average Australian needed any more of those Vitamins or minerals. Vitamin supplements have only been part of our food supply since just before the second world war. Prior to that our Grandparents and their grandparents managed to struggle through life without any supplementation at all.
The need for vitamins only arose because two hideous diseases reached epidemic proportions in the early part of the 20th century. In south-east Asia beriberi was rampant because (it turned out) Europeans had started using steam driven mills to turn brown rice into white rice (and in the process stripping out Vitamin B1). And at almost the same time in the southern United States pellagra was inflicting mass agony because Europeans had decided that treating raw corn with lime (a process the Indians had used for millennia to activate the Vitamin B3) was a waste of time and money.
South East Asians derived almost all their nutrition from rice at the time and poor farmers in the southern United States derived almost all of their food from corn. Messing with those two fundamental food sources resulted in mass deficiencies which led to disease. The only other two significant deficiencies which have (in modern times) resulted in widespread disease are scurvy (if you happen to be locked in a boat without access to anything but dry biscuits and rum for six months) and rickets (if you use too much sunblock).
The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia today have no more risk of being functionally deficient in any vitamin than I do of becoming the Queen (of England that is). Our bodies are extraordinarily efficient at extracting exactly what we need (and no more) from our food (mostly from meat) and excreting the excess. If you are inclined to the I’ll-top-em-up-just-in-case persuasion, the research suggests you are just flushing your money away.
One of the most thorough (but by no means, not the only) recent studies was the Physicians Health Trial. In that study, 14,641 US doctors were followed for 10 years while they took either Vitamin E or Vitamin C supplements, the two vitamins which are heavily promoted as having anti-oxidant (and therefore heart disease related) benefits.
Half of the doctors were actually taking placebos instead, but neither they nor the folks assessing the results knew which was which. The double blind (no-one knew who was taking what), randomized nature of the trial (together with its large size and long duration) means that it is very high quality evidence.
The point of the trial was to figure out whether the supplements had any effect at all on heart disease and stroke outcomes among the participants. And what they found would have been very disappointing for the supplement industry indeed. There was exactly no difference between the heart disease outcomes for any of the groups.
The Vitamin E folks had just as many heart attacks as the Vitamin C folks. And they had just as many as the folks taking nothing. The resounding conclusion from the study is that if any of the participants had been paying for their vitamins, they would have been well and truly wasting their money (for ten long years). While we certainly need Vitamin E and Vitamin C, it seems shoving more of it in our mouths changes absolutely nothing (except the bank balance of the folks selling the supplement).
Similar high quality trials on Vitamin D, Calcium and Vitamin B supplements have arrived at exactly the same conclusion – don’t waste your money. And as the makers of Berocca have just discovered, making claims to the contrary can get your expensive advertising campaign banned.
Despite our extraordinarily efficient efforts at mining food for nutrients, we can damage our ability to use the vitamins and minerals we do absorb. Sugar consumption interferes with copper metabolism which can result in impaired muscle growth (in children) and problems with vein and artery wall formation. It also leads to impaired iodine absorption (and therefore thyroid hormone production) and degrades our Chromium stores (which leads to insulin resistance and Type II diabetes) just to name a few of its more delightful features.
Vita-Gummies (at 23c a throw) are about 8 times the price of garden variety gummi bears (which are aren’t laced with precursors to expensive urine) but they do contain just as much life sapping sugar (something which unfortunately ends up around our waist and not down the drain).
Selling ice-creams and lollies as health food (to children and their parents) when they are in reality a package of pure sugar is unbelievably perverse. Engaging the services of Hayley Lewis’ hard earned reputation to do it is just plain deceptive.
Unfortunately nobody is breaking any laws telling us that a sugar loaded sweet (with a vitamin chaser) is good for us. And so the marketers go to town. But where do we draw the line? Chocolate coated carrot shavings, sold as Vegies the Kids Will Love (no, Nestle that is not a suggestion)? This pathetic game must stop. It’s time for truth in labelling. Surely our children are worth that much.