Telling lies to children (and their parents)

Nestle's lawyers have demanded that I correct this post - see the correction before you read on.

They must have some very strange strawberries growing in the patch over at Uncle Toby’s place. The aged gent apparently grows fruit which is around 72% sugar. Now those would be sweet little strawberries indeed.

The average strawberry growing in the ground round these parts comes in at only 4.6%. Perhaps Nestle (the owner of Uncle Toby’s) has had a scientific breakthrough. Because they are now heavily promoting a product which contains ‘1 Serve of Fruit’ in every snack, but manages to pack almost 16 times as much sugar in.

‘Nutritionist’ Lisa Guy is very happy with the new Fruit Fix. As a ‘busy mum’ she’s found a nutritious snack (which is '99% fruit ingredients') that she can feel good about feeding to her children.

Really? Let’s take a quick look at how a Strawberry Fruit Fix (SFF) stacks up against the strawberries it theoretically contains:

Protein: Strawberry 1% SFF 1.3%

Fat: Strawberry 0% SFF .5%

Sugar: Strawberry 4.6% SFF 72.7%

Fibre: Strawberry 2% SFF 7.3%

Well I guess they have about the same amount of protein ...

I’ve become pretty good at seeing how, with just the right shade of rose coloured glasses on, a marketer can spin the description of junk food into healthy kids food, but this one defies even my best efforts.

Apparently the folks over at the National Heart Foundation were able to exercise their imaginations to just the right degree, because they’ve bestowed one of their highly prized ticks on this product.

On what planet is a ‘food’ which almost entirely consists of sugar, able to be described as a healthy and nutritious snack for children?

Given what we know about the addictive qualities of fructose, perhaps the name Fruit Fix is no accident. Nestle, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Naturally, I've lodged complaints with the Advertising Standards Bureau and the ACCC.

Breaking your sugar addiction - Part 6

Walt Disney once said “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”  And that is the point we have arrived at in this series on how to break a sugar addiction.

In the book I tell of the ‘cold turkey’ approach I took.  At the time I wrote that I was basing it on a case study of one. Me.  Now thousands of people of broken the sugar habit and hundreds of them have written to tell me of their experiences.  And none of it has changed my mind.

Every person that has told me of going cold turkey has ultimately managed to kick the habit.  There’s nothing fun about the withdrawal period but it does end.  And once it does they are completely free from the desire to eat sugar ever again.  A plate of Bikkies holds all the attraction of a plate of raw broccoli.

Those that try to ‘eat sugar in moderation’ find the going much harder.  They find the cravings just as strong for months on end.  They feel deprived every time someone else is eating sugar.  They barely lose any weight and they feel pretty awful pretty much all the time.  Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

Addiction works by developing a reward and punishment system.  As soon as you stop taking the addictive substance its euphoric effect begins to decline, creating a mild depression in the process.  It feels like an emptiness (or even a boredom).  It doesn’t hurt but as it accumulates it makes you crave the hit that you know will relieve it.

Eating sugar in moderation is the worst of all worlds.  You’re not eating enough to truly relieve the craving (and so no reward for you).  But you are eating enough to maintain the dopamine response that keeps the addiction circuit alive in your brain.

They don’t get heroin addicts off the ‘gear’ by giving them smaller doses of heroin and you won’t get unaddicted to sugar by eating smaller doses either.  I stand in awe of pharmaceutical companies that have convinced smokers to become addicted to lifelong supplies of their nicotine patches rather than lifelong supplies of cigarettes – that is truly a marketing miracle – But I guess technically they are cured of smoking.

No, the way to become unaddicted to sugar is to start today.  I suggest a last supper of your favourite sugary treat.  Go on.  Get that Mars Bar or that can of coke.  Sit down and consciously enjoy the very last time in your life that you will eat (or drink) sugar.  Really enjoy it, right down to the last morsel.  Enjoy the hit.  Enjoy the pleasure of a full blown addiction response as the dopamine and the endorphins course through your brain.

Now stop.  You will henceforth not touch a food containing sugar.  This will not be fun.  But starting is half the battle.  Hold the line.  There is no moderation.  You have stopped poisoning yourself.  If you can just get past the next few weeks of danger, you will enjoy the health Big Sugar has sucked from your life to date. 

Then.  All of a sudden.  The desire will vanish.  I know it sounds strange, but it just plain goes.  Bang.  Just like that.  And you will never want the stuff again.  It’s hard to make it sound believable until you yourself have experienced it (you have after all spent your life addicted to this substance and known no other reality), but it really does happen.

I know this all comes across a little evangelical – but honestly you are taking the most life changing decision you will ever make – you need a little preaching for that.  Good Luck!

How fructose causes erectile dysfunction

Good news!  They’ve discovered a treatment for – ahem - ‘erectile dysfunction’.  I bring this to your attention because if you don’t regularly, drive (especially with small children in the car on roads which have billboards), watch television, listen to the radio or read the newspaper, this will have surely escaped your notice.

And it’s not a moment too soon.  The number of men suffering this malady is skyrocketing at a rate only equalled by the growth in obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease.  There aren’t many studies on it (men seem strangely shy about participating in such research). But we don’t need boffins in white coats when we have public sales data on the ‘cure’.

There are drugs that really do help and so their sales are a reasonable approximation of the need.  The most famous is Viagra, which first hit the market in 1998.  In the first year Pfizer, the drug’s maker, sold US$1 Billion of the stuff.  By 2006, it was moving around US$1.6 Billion worth of Viagra a year. 

You don’t get to keep a honey pot like that to yourself for long.  Bayer and Eli Lilley launched competitive offerings (Levitra and Cialis) in 2003.  By 2006 they were moving a combined US$1.5 Billion worth of the drugs (for a total market size of $3.1 billion per year).  They estimate that that the combined customer list for all three drugs is over 300 million men worldwide. Current estimates put the number of US men affected at about 20 percent of the male population.

One of the more recent studies on the causes of erectile dysfunction confirms you are more likely to suffer from it if you also suffer from heart disease, hypertension or diabetes.  

Viagra, Levitra and Cialis work by encouraging the production of nitric oxide, a critical element in making all the relevant muscles relax enough to encourage inbound arterial blood flow and the squeezing shut of the veins to keep the blood in place long enough to be useful (so to speak).  In other words they temporarily fix the lack of nitric oxide which causes the problem in the first place.

Tell me you’ll be surprised to find that one of the many side-effects of fructose consumption is a massive decrease in nitric oxide production.  Go on, tell me, I dare you.  It should also then come as no particular surprise that erectile dysfunction is so closely aligned with the other symptoms of overindulging in fructose, namely heart disease, obesity and type II diabetes and that the number of men needing assistance is also increasing.

The trouble with drugs like Viagra is that while they do definitely work, they require a prescription.  Which would be fine if it was a ‘woman’s issue’.  But for men, that’s akin to suggesting we take out a front page ad about our – ah- issues.  Playing on men’s reluctance in this regard, a new industry in alternative solutions (of the nasal delivery kind) has sprung up to service the need for discretion.  The nasal delivery drugs are apomorphines which have been very soundly proven to be barely effective (when compared to Viagra), but that doesn’t stop people paying upwards of $4,000 for them.

Well gentlemen, the news really is good.  I have a solution which doesn’t require a prescription for Viagra or for you to drop 4 Large – stop eating fructose.  There that wasn’t so painful was it.

Free Public Lecture tomorrow (Brisbane)

If you're not from Brisbane (or don't plan going there just to hear me blather on), then feel free to ignore this post.

For everyone else, I will be holding a free public lecture on the evils of fructose on Wednesday May 13 at Morris Hall, Churchie, Oaklands Parade, East Brisbane.

Its free to attend (and Churchie have kindly offered to supply drinks and nibblies beforehand as well as the use of the hall), but you must let them know you are coming by emailing schoolevents@churchie.com.au.

Kick off is 5:30pm for a 6pm start and I should only be able to manage to drone on for one hour (max).

I look forward to seeing you there if you can make it.

Breaking your sugar addiction - Part 5

When I decided sugar was no longer going to be part of my life, I went cold turkey on it.  Well, actually I didn’t.  I did indeed stop eating (and more particularly in my case, drinking) sugar, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay good money for a bottle of water instead of my traditional Pepsi (or 6) a day.

I switched to Pepsi Max because it was the one that tasted (to me) the most like sugar.  I didn’t make this decision based on science.  I couldn’t find any that conclusively proved that sugar was addictive (this was 2004) let alone that substituting sucralose (the active ingredient in Pepsi Max) was any less addictive. 

I just knew that I had to stop drinking sugar but that I just couldn’t get out of the habit of wanting a sweet drink, so Pepsi Max it was.

What I found was that swigging the Pepsi Max was only partially satisfying.  It did nothing for how dreadful I was feeling - I was in the depths of sugar withdrawal and had the whole works -headaches, hunger and cravings.  But what it did do was satisfy the habit part of my addiction.  I was in the habit of having a sweet drink whenever I spotted a vending machine or when relaxing on a hot day.  The ‘Max took care of the habit part of things. 

I could still have my sweet drink as per my habit.  It was nowhere near as satisfying, but it was enough to get me through withdrawal.  The habit kept going, but it didn’t make me consume fructose.  After the withdrawal period ended, the habit itself slowly died.  The ‘Max started tasting more and more metallic as my previously fructose-blasted taste buds returned to working order.  After about two months, I just switched to water when I was thirsty.  And by then, the water was actually more refreshing than the (by then) strange tasting ‘Max.

So for me at least, I didn’t trade one addiction for another.  The substitute was not addictive, despite what some particularly excitable websites maintained.  But gee, it would have been nice to have some science to point to before suggesting my experiment was able to be generalised. 

A great little experiment would be to get a group of people and remove their tongues (so you could be certain it wasn’t the sweet taste that was stimulating the dopamine response).  Then give them unlimited access to solutions which were either sugar or sucralose based and note if they developed a preference for either (while measuring the dopamine levels).

Well the good news is that some researchers at Duke University in North Carolina have done just that.  Ok they chickened out on the tongue removing thing and preferred mice over men, but they did manage to obtain a breed of mice that were genetically unable to taste anything.  And guess what – they did in fact develop an addiction to the sugar solution but not the sucralose solution, even though (to them), they both tasted like water.

For me this study confirms that you can safely substitute (at least one) artificial sweetener(s) for sugar to help overcome habit driven access to sugar (see Part 4).  Reassuringly, this backs up my own experience.  But with the good news comes a caution.  Not all artificial sweeteners are created equal.  

Some of them follow exactly the same metabolic pathways as fructose and are therefore likely to be just as addictive.  Some may not be addictive but do damage in other ways.  In fact I can’t rule any out of the ones in this category altogether but there are some which I can definitely say should be avoided.

To help navigate the minefield, I’ve prepared some lists (as always, these are qualified by the weasel words to the effect that this is what I think the science supports at the moment, but it may be subject to new news):

Not addictive and not damaging (but also not sweet until you have broken your addiction):

• Dextrose
• Glucose

Probably not addictive but possibly damaging in other ways (your best bet for substitution to break habits if glucose tastes bland to you):

• Acesulphame potassium (#950)
  
• Alitame (#956)
  
• Aspartame (#951)
  
• Aspartame-acesuphame (#962)
  
• Cyclamates (#952)
  
• Erythritol (#968)
  
• Neotame (#961)
  
• Saccharin (#954)
  
• Stevia (#960)
  
• Sucralose (#955)
  
• Thaumatin (#957)
  
• Xylitol (#967)
  

Probably not addictive but definitely damaging in other ways (see post on inulins):

• Inulin
  
• Litesse
  
• Maltodextrin
  
• Maltodextrose
  
• Polydextrose
  
• Wheat dextrin
  

Likely to be just as addictive as sugar (and therefore to be completely avoided):

• Agave Syrup
  
• Corn Syrup
  
• Fructose
• Fruit Juice Extract
  
• Fruit Sugar
• Golden Syrup
  
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
  
• Honey
  
• Isomalt (#953)
  
• Lactitol (#966)
  
• Maltitol (#965)
  
• Mannitol (#421)
  
• Maple Syrup
  
• Molasses
  
• Sorbitol (#420)
  
• And, of course, Sucrose
  

Next Week – How to start withdrawal.

Duty of Care

In 1932, May Donoghue made legal history. She didn’t mean to. All she wanted was a nice drink of Ginger Beer on a warm August night. Unfortunately her chosen refreshment at the Wellmeadow Cafe in Paisley, Scotland came with a free decomposed snail.

The snail enhanced beverage was manufactured by David Stevenson of Paisley. Snails were not a normal part of his range of aerated waters. And Mrs Donoghue came over quite ill, requiring immediate medical attention. She sought £500 restitution and the case of Donoghue (a pauper) v Stevenson eventually found itself before the House of Lords.

If Ms Donoghue’s beverage were served in a clear glass bottle, a legal rule called caveat emptor (buyer beware) would have kicked into to save Mr Stevenson. But her bottle was opaque and it was impossible to see the snail before drinking the putrefied contents. The result was the birth of new legal principle derived from the Golden Rule (love thy neighbour as you love yourself – the rule is common to most religions). Their Lordships said ‘You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour.’

Clearly the amount of care that the average punter is owed is dependent on how much he knows versus how much the vendor of the product or service knows (or should know).

As we meander through the local shops, we don’t expect most of the people we encounter on the other side of the cash register to hold any particular expertise in health and medicine. Because of this they are unlikely to owe us a duty of care. If I purchase more aspirin than I need in the supermarket, it’s up to me to read the label and if unsure, seek medical advice. Suing Coles, Woolworths or their employees wouldn’t get me very far.

There is however one shop where we rightly have a different expectation. Pharmacies have increasingly set themselves up as drive-by medicos, where we can get the drugs without having to put on a backless gown and engage the stirrups. We like the convenience of access to professional expertise without having to reach for the medicare card.

Our expectations are higher for pharmacists and rightly so. They are not spotty teens barely qualified to drive a checkout. They are university trained, highly skilled professionals. When they tell us we need to take drug X to cure our cold, we believe them without question. In return for our trust, they owe us a duty of care. They owe us a duty to be fully informed about the latest research on everything they offer. They owe us a duty not to sell us any bum steers. Because it is much easier for them to sell us steers of any kind.

In the olden days, the only thing a pharmacist sold you was the stuff your doctor told him to sell you. The only duty the pharmacist owed was not to get the amount wrong (and act as an informal double check on the doctor). When the franchise was extended to over the counter medicines the duty was to ensure we understood what we were buying and how to use it safely. That’s why you get twenty questions when you try to buy aspirin at the chemist.

Now pharmacies are looking more and more like a supermarket. They sell all manner of allied products. Clearly their duty of care for toilet paper or shampoo is no higher than their supermarket rivals. But what about products which are specifically targeted at our health? Is it different when a pharmacist recommends a product to help us lose weight? Of course it is. That is exactly why weightloss products are sold in pharmacies. They sell much better with the implied (or in some case actual) endorsement of a trained health professional.

These “nutritionally balanced” powdered drinks are intended to replace two meals a day for people wanting to carry a few less spare tyres. The shakes can generally only be purchased from pharmacies and some only after a ‘consultation’ with a ‘weight-loss professional’. But there are very few pharmacies which don’t sell shakes of some description with or without the consultation.

The shakes are usually about half fructose, a low GI sweetener. Those in the know have been quietly distancing themselves from fructose for a while now. In 2002 the American Diabetes Association (ADA) reversed its previous advice to diabetics that they should consume fructose. And just last week, a compelling study surfaced in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The UC Davis team persuaded 33 overweight and obese people to try a 10 week diet which was either 25% fructose or 25% glucose. The people on the fructose diet ended up with increased (1.5kg) tummy fat, higher fatty triglycerides (which leads to heart disease) and 20% higher insulin resistance (which leads to Type II Diabetes). None of this happened to the group on glucose.

In other words, Australian pharmacists are leveraging our trust in them to sell a weight-loss ‘solution’ based on feeding overweight people a substance that research shows will make them obese, give them heart disease and encourage diabetes. If that’s not a powdered snail in a packet, I don’t know what is. 

I can hear the class action lawyers warming their briefs already.