Why your government sugaring the pill is actually killing you.

Even before I went on a health kick and became a Personal Trainer, I had a mistrust of processed sugar. Whilst my kids only gave up sugar totally once we decided to go paleo, I had always limited their intake.  Also, whilst I am by no means a great cook (awful, some might say) I do always cook from scratch so we have always limited our intake of added sugar in sauces and savoury processed foods.

A recent article in the Guardian makes me very glad we have avoided processed sugar, generally fructose, so much.

On the whole, the sugar that is added to fizzy drinks, cakes and other processed foods is high fructose corn syrup.

This processed fructose is literally poison!

This article in the Guardian puts the scientific spin on this.

In a nutshell, this article shows how dangerous fructose is and how the government and food giants are trying to use misunderstood terminology to put a positive spin on a very negative thing.

The European Food and Safety Agency states that sucrose is better for you than glucose because it has a lower glycemic index.

This is irrelevant.

Glycemic index measures the rise in blood glucose, not blood sucrose!

'Yes, fructose has a low glycaemic index of 19, because it doesn't increase blood glucose. It's fructose, for goodness sake. It increases blood fructose, which is way worse. Fructose causes seven times as much cell damage as does glucose, because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster; and it releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals (such as hydrogen peroxide, which kills everything in sight). Indeed, a 20oz soda results in a serum fructose concentration of six micromolar, enough to do major arterial and pancreatic damage. Glycaemic index is a canard; and fructose makes it so. Because fructose's poisonous effects have nothing to do with glycaemic index; they are beyond glycaemic index.'

• Robert Lustig
• The Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013

Glycemic index is not the issue - here's why:

'Glycaemic load is where it's at. This takes into account how much of a given food one must eat to obtain 50 grams of carbohydrate. The perfect example is carrots. Carrots have a high glycaemic index – if you consume 50 grams of carbohydrate in carrots, your blood sugar will rise pretty high. But you would have to eat 1.3lbs – 600 grams – of carrots to get 50 grams of carbohydrate. Highly unlikely. Any high-glycaemic-index food can become a low-glycaemic-load food if it's eaten with its inherent fibre. That means "real food". But fructose is made in a lab. It's anything but "real".'

• Robert Lustig
• The Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013

Here is why sucrose is so nasty and why the idea that something is safe, offering positive health benefits even, based on eroneous science is so dangerous.  

The food industry is fond of referring to a 1999 study showing that liver fat generation from oral fructose occurs at a very low rate (less than 5%). And that's true, if you're thin, insulin sensitive, fasting (and therefore glycogen-depleted), and given just fructose alone (which is poorly absorbed). Conversely, if you're obese, insulin resistant, well fed, and getting both fructose and glucose together (like a sizable percentage of the population), then fructose gets converted to fat at a much higher rate, approximating 30%. In other words, the toxicity of fructose depends on context.

• Robert Lustig
• The Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013

Here is the entire article.