Hi,
Periodically, Dr. Appleton lectures. Usually this lecture is titled Licking The Sugar Habit. The link below leads to a Powerpoint File that is a companion piece to the lecture.
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© 2010 Nancy Appleton, PhD and G.N. Jacobs
We have all read, seen or listened to some variation of Hansel & Gretel from the Brothers’ Grimm. A witch lives in a deep forest luring children with an edible house and sweet treats hoping to fatten them up for her cannibalistic urges. The children turn the tables as befits fairy tale heroes and get out alive.
Well, according to the newest research from Princeton University published officially in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior[i] and for the mass market in Science Daily[ii], Hansel and Gretel would be even fatter, slower and more lethargic eating today’s sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup because the weight gain from HFCS is far greater than ordinary sucrose. This would put the outcome of tricking the witch into her own oven in doubt.
HFCS is a corn derivative that typically has 55-percent fructose, 42-glucose and 3-percent other larger sugars. It is cheaper than sucrose in the United States where it is easier to grow corn than sugar cane or sugar beets. Sucrose is a naturally occurring blend of equally balanced fructose and glucose. HFCS replaced sucrose in the early 1970s and the rate of obesity as a population percentage has doubled from 15 to 33-percent since then according to CDC figures cited by Science Daily.
The researchers conducted two experiments. One compared male rats eating rat chow and HFCS water to similar rats eating rat chow and sucrose flavored water. The weight gain was described as “much more” for the rats eating the HFCS water. The really interesting fact about this study: the sucrose water was highly concentrated at levels similar to the few sodas sweetened with sucrose still in the US marketplace, but the HFCS water was half the concentration of the typical HFCS soda.
The second study lasting six months looked at high fructose corn syrup versus water. Here the rats ballooned up with 48-percent weight gains over rats just eating food and unsweetened water. The researchers described the high-fructose corn syrup rats as obese.
“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” researcher Miriam Bocarsly reported. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.”
The researchers speculated on the reasons why HFCS might be more fattening than sucrose. Apparently, fructose molecules in sucrose are bound to glucose molecules and take longer to hit the bloodstream than the fructose in HFCS, which aren’t bound to anything. The researchers also mentioned that fructose seems to be processed in the liver into fat, while sucrose is metabolized by insulin from the pancreas and is more readily used as an energy source.
“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” says psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese—every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”[iii]
The researchers cite previous research articles that show fructose affects hormones like leptin that work with insulin to control satiety, the feeling of being full. This excerpt from the abstract says it all – “The combined effects of lowered circulating leptin and insulin in individuals who consume diets that are high in dietary fructose could therefore increase the likelihood of weight gain and its associated metabolic sequelae. In addition, fructose, compared with glucose, is preferentially metabolized to lipid in the liver.”[iv]
Not feeling full induces more eating. In the meantime, we can imagine Hansel and Gretel being fed soda and other fructose-laden foods and winding up in the witch’s meat pie. End of story.
[i] Bocarsly, ME, et al. “High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristic of obesity in rats: Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels.” Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.pbb.2010.02.012
[ii] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322121115.htm viewed 3/30/2010
[iii] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322121115.htm viewed 3/30/2010
[iv] Elliott, SS, et al. “Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Nov;76(5):911-22.
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© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs
We are always asked about sweeteners since we really don’t like sugar. Our answer is always we give limited support to Stevia and nothing else. We tell people who are healthy and still can walk away from the hot fudge sundae that Stevia is much better for you than sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup and the whole list of sugar alcohols and products of “Better Living Through Chemistry” that appear as multicolored packets on the restaurant table. We tell sick or addicted people to break the active phase of their sugar addiction and heal awhile before switching to Stevia.
Stevia, a plant-extract originally from Central and South America has been used as a sweetener for several centuries. It has been described alternately as either 30 or 300 times as sweet as sugar. Stevia has slowly gained popularity as an alternative to sugar, even though it wasn’t marketed, until recently, in the U.S. as a sweetener, but a dietary supplement. We can thank the FDA for this bit of Orwellian Newspeak. A food or drug is either safe or it is not.
As of September 2009, the Food and Drug Administration has given support to two Stevia products, Truvia and Purevia, for use as a sweetener in sodas and other drinks. Approval of Stevia as a food sweetener is still pending, but once the camel’s nose is in the tent things will happen automatically. What changed for a government organization that used a 1985 study that described Stevia as a mutagenic agent in the liver (possibly carcinogenic)?
Apparently, Coca-Cola and other large manufacturers of drinks and sodas have twisted some arms of the regulators, because as more people grasp Sugar Bad, Stevia Good Big Soda needs to give the people soda that appears healthy to keep up sales. Trust a corporation to turn something potentially helpful in moderation into something you still shouldn’t consume.
We will point to the “Hard Facts About Soft Drinks” chapter in our latest book, Suicide by Sugar to inform the reader that no soda is safe to drink. The primary culprit after sugar: phosphoric acid. Putting that much phosphorus into your body does as much damage to the Calcium-Phosphorus ratio as we have always said from the beginning of Dr. Appleton’s career. We also described phosphoric acid as an industrial solvent possibly able to clean toilets and kill insects.
Once the soda and juice manufacturers get their products into the marketplace, eventually Truvia will also be stuffed into the rainbow of packets on the table at our favorite eateries. Presently, that rainbow includes White (sugar or sucrose), Blue (aspartame), Pink (saccharin) and Yellow (sucralose). For purely, aesthetic reasons may we suggest Green for Truvia?
However, we will caution readers against these packs because we suspect that the Stevia in the Truvia packs will be mixed with dextrose or maltodextrin as the first ingredient (largest amount) in each pack as is the case with the other colors in the bin. These are sugar derivatives that will adulterate whatever is good and useful about Stevia. Mixing good things with bad things only ruins the food value of the beneficial as we have said many times explaining why many people are allergic to wheat due to a lifetime association with sugar.
So what is so good about Stevia that we actually are cautiously optimistic about the eventual release of small bags of pure Stevia powder in the supermarket for use in baking, coffee, grapefruit and lemonade? Well, despite the ignominious beginning to Stevia as a sweetener, a study that had been described as being “able to classify distilled water as a mutagen” enough people have used the product that there are health studies that show benefits for many diseases.
A study published in 2000 gave stevioside (Stevia’s active ingredient) to 60 hypertension patients with a placebo group of 49. Results described as significant for reducing blood pressure supplemented similar animal studies.[i]
Stevia’s reputed limited effect on blood glucose naturally led to diabetes studies. A Denmark study took blood glucose readings from 12 type-2 diabetes patients before eating Stevia or cornstarch with their meals and a couple hours later. The Stevia group showed blood glucose levels at least 18-percent less than the starch group, leading to the possibility that diabetes patients have finally found the sweetener that will allow them to have their sweet cake and eat it too.[ii]
But, after the FDA has spent many years trying to keep Stevia out of the U.S. marketplace, we should ask if there are any side effects. A study conducted by the Burdock Group generally supports the safety of Stevia, finding no adverse effects in rats at the massive doses such studies use to determine carcinogenic or mutagen properties of foods.[iii]
And so we give Stevia qualified support because while almost no information has surfaced to say that this sweetener hurts people, we realize that the weak link in any health plan is the patient him or herself. Many of us are unlikely to moderate our consumption of Stevia because so far we just have to have ice cream, chocolate cake or soda. Too much of a good thing isn’t good. But, on the range of things that are sweet but not named sugar, Stevia is a great start.
[i] Chan, P, et al “A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study of the Effectiveness and Tolerability of Oral Stevioside in Human Hypertension” Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2000 September; 50(3): 215–220. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2125.2000.00260.x
[ii] Gregersen S, et al. “Antihyperglycemic Effects of Stevioside in Type-2 Diabetic Subjects.” Metabolism 2004 Jan;53(1):73-76
[iii] Williams LD, Burdock GA “Genotoxicity Studies on a High-Purity Rebauside A Preparation.” Food Chem Toxicol. 2009 Aug;47(8):1831-1836
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aleternative Sweeteners, Diet, Low carbohydrate diet, Stevia, Sweeteners | 6 Comments »
Dr. Nancy Appleton will appear on the radio show Gab with the Gurus on Blog Talk Radio on 10/20/09. Connie Bennett (sugar shock) will interview Dr. Appleton at 2pm EST. Follow this link:
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Doctor Appleton has appeared or will appear soon in radio interviews at the following links:
East West Health Clinic -
My Thin Lifestyle – http://www.mythinlifestyle.com/interviews.php?guest=4&type=previous
1800 Chemist – www.1800chemist.com, click on Health Connection Radio, then Taped Broadcasts
thank you
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© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs
Authors of Suicide by Sugar
http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com
Perhaps, you’ve already read one of the many variations of recent statements on sugar from The American Heart Association? We at Nancy Appleton Books are very happy, so much so that we’ll take a moment to do the Snoopy Dance. On second thought, the dance looks stupid when real people do it.
So, what does the American Heart Association’s instructions that everyone should cut their added sugar intake by 70-percent mean beyond giving Doctor Appleton a moment where she gets to say I told you so sometime back in 1986? Well, that depends on your circumstances, because we think the Heart Association has picked a sugar threshold that is still well above what is best for optimal health, but also represents a vast improvement over how things are done now.
Data collected between 2001 and 2004 and cited in the statement put the average American’s sugar consumption at 22 teaspoons or 355 extra calories of sugar per day. Citing recent studies that generally link sugar to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the association has decided that men on 2,200-calorie diets should cut their sugar intake to 9 teaspoons or 150 calories per day. Woman in similar actuarial brackets assumed to eat 1,800 calories per day are instructed to cut down to 6 teaspoons or 100 calories per day.
Just so you know, while these “official” recommendations may not be enough for some people to lose weight and become healthier, they do represent threats to the major producers of sugar in our modern diet. A soda manufacturer, for instance, will worry because the average cola tips the scale at 8-10 teaspoons or 130-150 calories. The heart association published statistics that break down our sugar usage to regular soda (33%), sugars and candy (16.1%), cakes, cookies and pie (12.9%), fruit drinks (9.7%), dairy desserts and milk products (8.6%) and other grain-based treats (5.8%).
Even with other categories of foods that deliver sugar to an unsuspecting populace not discussed in this breakdown, a reduction to 9 and 6 teaspoons respectively means many sugar producers may change their business model. We’ll discuss what the heart association left out in a later paragraph.
In her first book Lick the Sugar Habit, Dr. Appleton states that the human body needs only about 2 teaspoons of blood sugar (glucose) per day. Normal consumption of whole fruits, vegetables and grains will provide this amount of glucose without resort to any added sugar at all![i] So you see, 6 or 9 teaspoons of sugar versus 2 teaspoons still means that the heart association people have quite a ways to go before they get our full support.
We also have reason to wonder if the statement writers have based their sugar consumption numbers on statistics that underreport the real story. Statistics on sugar vary between reports depending on who is doing the test and how close they are to the U.S. Government, which until very recently thought nothing was wrong with sugar if you brushed your teeth. In 1989, the Berkley Wellness letter, estimated that sugar consumption in 1985 to be 133 pounds per year or 500 to 600 calories per day per person.[ii] We are already well above the numbers cited by the heart association statement written nearly twenty years later. We have in the years since raised yearly sugar consumption to well over 150 pounds per person per year.
One thing that we can completely agree on with the American Heart Association is the high degree to which soda delivers the most sugar to the most people. Their information says that soda represents a third of all sugar injected into the average diet. Our information may not exactly agree, but still says that we get too much sugar from soft drinks, lemonade, punch and whatever Tang is defined as. We devoted a whole chapter of Suicide by Sugar to soft drinks and other similar sugary drinks.
In 2005, the average American was estimated to drink 35.5 gallons of just regular soda, which when the other categories of sugary drinks are added in comes out to the equivalent of 637 cans of soda per person per year.[iii] We cited a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics made in 2004 that said that all members should advocate for the removal of all sugary drinks from schools. The primary reason was to prevent obesity in children and to make sure that sugar didn’t replace healthy nutrients in children’s diets.[iv]
The Heart Association has come out for sugar reductions and we applaud. But, we find it interesting that the bulk of the recommendations fall against the easy culprits in our sweet diets: soda, ice cream, cake, pie, but not some others that may in the long run be more useful. We understand about birthday parties and the social reasons we eat sugar, even though we assume many people will act like addicts and lose the ability to say “no more today.” But, shouldn’t sugar reductions fall against all sugar producers equally?
As of this writing, Mr. Jacobs holds a Heinz ketchup bottle in his hands with this ingredient list: tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN SYRUP, salt, spice, onion powder, natural flavoring. He also pulled out a can of his generic brand chili where SUGAR and MODFIED CORN STARCH are listed together about in the middle of the list. So far, there is no call on the part of the Heart Association to question the sugar that is in regular processed food that doesn’t need to be there from the point of view of taste.
Mr. Jacobs admits to making compromises with some sugar-laden foods for convenience. He refuses to boil beans and simmer down meat and spices to make his own chili, a recipe that he was never taught, because he already spends too much time in the kitchen some days. He is trying to wean himself off of ketchup as a base for marinara sauce in favor of steamed tomatoes. He reports mixed results. But, these foods aren’t supposed to taste sweet; yet, we see sugar in all of its many names on the labels.
We would suggest to the Heart Association to take a look at the sugar in these processed foods and see if advocating for cans of chili without sugar added would help reduce sugar consumption without being so draconian about the obvious sugar sources. Yes, in a perfect world whole fruit with a tiny bit of cream for the lactose tolerant would replace the fudge sundae, but the short term comfort of these foods is very powerful.
Instead of denying the occasional fall off the wagon doesn’t it make more sense to start with foods that the sugar taste is practically overwhelmed by all the other spices as to be tasteless? Sugar is not a preservative and canned meat is vacuum-sealed, so preservation isn’t the reason for this practice. We hope it isn’t because sugar is addictive, another of our common rants.
Sugar upsets body chemistry and helps cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity and many other maladies. Doctor Appleton has said this for more than 30 years and we feel good that other health groups are now catching on. It is a good day.
http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com
[i] Appleton, N. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988) Pg 13.
[ii] University of California, Berkley Wellness Letter 6, No. 3 December 1989, pp 4-5
[iii] U.S. Department of Agriculture “Food Availabilty: Custom Queries.” www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodAvailQueriable.aspx
[iv] Taras, H.L., et al. “Policy Statement” Pediatrics. Jan 2004; 113; 1: 152-154.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alternative health, American Heart Association, Diet, dietary sugar, Health, Heart Disease, Sugar, Sugar recommendations | 2 Comments »
