

Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture) - chipsy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

======
gregwebs
This guy is a great presenter. The hypothesis behind the damages of fructose
actually gets worse than what is presented here, as fructose is implicated in
the creation of toxic AGE. For a more in depth overview of the science behind
fructose that is accessible, I would recommend Good Calorie, Bad Calorie by
Gary Taubes. Aside from fructose, I would actually recommend that book to
anyone concerned about their health.

I think it is important to differentiate between normal (hunter-gatherer)
levels of fructose consumption (< 5% of total calories, normally closer to 1%,
except perhaps in the summer when fruit is more abundant) and the amount we
are eating today. That is, if fructose is harmful, the dangers only seem to
manifest at the high levels of intake seen today.

Pragmatically, we may not need to be concerned about fructose at all, as
eating refined sugar is obviously bad for health, so it should be eliminated
anyways. (You need vitamins and minerals, and refined sugar doesn't have
any!). Unrefined sources of sugar are not very good nutritional resources
either.

Tragically, the damages of fructose may have been multiplied by the government
recommendations to replace saturated fat intake with polyunsaturated fat.
[http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and...](http://high-
fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and-corn-oil.html)

~~~
earl
I have to second this recommendation. Everybody concerned about nutrition
should read

* Good Calorie, Bad Calorie;

* The Omnivore's Dilemma

* The End of Overeating.

In order: the science of fat and weight, as best as can be explained today;
what's in your food, and what you should be eating; and how companies
influence your eating decisions and how to take control of them.

In particular, the last book summarizes research showing that, for certain
people, there is a reward conditioning feedback mechanism in the brain
triggered by the intake of fat, sugar, and salt. see
[http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating-
th.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating-th.html) for
a longer review. In particular, if you have lots of willpower elsewhere in
your life but struggle controlling your food intake, I can't recommend this
book strongly enough.

In any case, I think everybody should read the above 3 books; you'll be a long
way closer to being a well informed consumer of food and of it's effects on
your body.

~~~
stephen
Good Calorie, Bad Calorie was great, except that 90% of it was a history
lesson where he explains, in a very detailed manner, how other nutrition
theories of the last 100+ years were wrong.

Anybody know of another source that describes the book's views on fat
metabolism, blood sugar, etc. but is shorter and more to the point?

Not only for my own benefit to review, but I have a hard time recommending
Good Calorie, Bad Calorie to friends who are only marginally interested in
nutrition, but would still benefit from reading the book's core ideas in a
distilled form.

~~~
gregwebs
I have wondered the same thing, but most people's first response is they can't
believe that the government and scientists have it so wrong, and the only way
to truly explain that is to talk about the history. Perhaps there is a middle
ground, though, or there could be a smaller version that referenced the larger
version. Taubes is working on a much shorter version of GCBC.

~~~
stephen
Awesome that he's working on a shorter version. I poked around his site after
finishing the book to suggest just such a thing. Thanks for the heads up.

------
pg
I highly recommend watching this.

~~~
rarrrrrr
The natural health community has been screaming this for decades. Few take
heed.

My family has spent many years studying human health. The well-researched
conclusions are so far from mainstream American beliefs that the ignorant
dismiss them as absurd.

I'll get down voted, but in the interest of countering groupthink, here are
some examples anyway:

\- Food basics: Avoid hydrogenated oils, sodium nitrite, MSG/yeast extract,
artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup, all artificial sweeteners, all
grains that aren't whole. Replace sugar with agave nectar or stevia. Know the
smoke points for the cooking oils you use an don't exceed them.

\- Any multivitamin which packages B12 solely as "cyanocobalamin" is cheaply
manufactured. Quality vitamins package hydroxocobalamin. You'll probably have
to look online or at health food stores to find good quality vitamins. Many of
the options sold at pharmacies are little better than candy.

\- As much as 60% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. The body makes it
in response to skin exposure to direct sunlight (not through glass.)
Sufficient vitamin D reduces risk of nearly all cancers by around 70%. Why
isn't the American Cancer Society screaming this message?

\- A cup of blueberries a day is more effective at reducing cholesterol than
current pharmaceuticals. Tastes better, too.

\- Eating refined carbohydrates depletes the supply of B vitamins. For women,
this contributes to the discomfort of menstruation.

\- A number of plants have strong cancer prevention or anticancer properties.
Examples: turmeric with black pepper, maca root, garlic.

...a few thousand more little details.

~~~
JulianMorrison
You do realize that agave nectar is basically pure fructose, right?

Also, MSG has been unfairly accused. Wikipedia says "a statistical association
has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions, even in studies with
people who were convinced that they were sensitive to it".

~~~
hachiya
A natural form of MSG is found in one popular variety of edible seaweed:
kombu.

Interestingly, some canned beans, e.g. Eden Organic (unsalted), come with
kombu in the can.

All the debate over things like artificial/alternatives sweeteners and MSG
seem like a severe case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The issue of
which sweetener to use is not so big as _how much_ of any of the sweeteners.
And for those who eat a diet of only whole foods, the answer is even easier:
none.

The controversy over issues like these has the general public all worried
about things they don't need to worry about so much, instead of being
concerned about things they really should be, e.g. what foods make up the diet
and their nutrient density. Worrying about MSG in my junk food, organic vs.
conventional pizza, or HFCS vs. cane sugar soda, is not likely to have much
benefit if these items make a regular appearance in my diet.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Glutamates are in Kombu, soy sauce, Parmesan, Marmite, peas...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid_(flavor)#Sources>

------
rdouble
Jack LaLanne tried to warn us about this 50 years ago:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJVEPB_l8FU>

------
chipsy
I was struck by the allusion Lustig makes to sugar being as poisonous as
alcohol. It makes ours look like a world of drug fiends.

~~~
gregwebs
This is an interesting anecdote from someone who claims to have cured his
alcohol abuse problems by going low carb. [http://fathead-
movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-pr...](http://fathead-
movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-primal-mind-primal-tools/)

~~~
shiny
The paleo diet is awesome. I've lost a considerable amount of weight on it,
and feel and look much better.

Also, a diet with staples like grass-fed beef, pastured butter (or any other
healthy animal fat), avocado, and fish is my kind of diet. No more forcing
down bitter grain or soy products in fruitless attempts to go "healthy". Plus,
my meals are so substantial and high in fat that I only need to eat once or
twice a day.

For anyone interested, there's a lot of good paleo sites out there, but I'd
start with <http://paleonu.com> and <http://freetheanimal.com>

And if you can, pick up Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

------
nearestneighbor
Someone will have to answer for sapping and impurifying our precious bodily
fluids!

------
scotty79
Eat food. No too much. Mostly plants.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
The whole video is about how fructose is toxic. Many, many plants are rich in
fructose. It's not as simple as "eat plants." A modern variety apple or orange
is a blast of fructose.

It's also perfectly healthy to eat predominantly meat, organs, and dairy if
the animals are properly pastured. So the "mostly plants" claim makes little
sense without a lot of qualification.

~~~
scotty79
'Mostly plants' refers to the only piece of diet world that has been proven by
science. If you eat more plants you have lower risk of many severe diseases.
That's all we know about diet for sure. The rest is guesswork and wishful
thinking.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
I assure you "mostly plants" has no scientific backing. There are plenty of
randomized intervention studies introducing more fruit and vegetables into
diet and they all show a null result. Well controlled studies within
populations also do not show any longevity advantage to eating more
vegetables.

~~~
scotty79
To my knowledge there were numerous studies confirming that eating plants
often lowers risk of diseases such as cancer.

Maybe you can achieve similar effect with some other precise diet but eating
mostly plants is the easiest way to improving your health and lower you
calories intake.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
Go try and find a randomized intervention where more vegetables improved
health. Many have tried, all have failed.

~~~
dingle
These studies aren't randomized interventions, but I think it's a bit of a
simplification to say that all have failed.

"Dietary and lifestyle determinants of mortality among German vegetarians"
found that "A longer duration of vegetarianism (> or = 20 years) was
associated with a lower risk, pointing to a real protective effect of this
lifestyle"

"Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review" states that "the evidence
for a protective effect of greater vegetable and fruit consumption is
consistent for cancers of the stomach, esophagus, lung, oral cavity and
pharynx, endometrium, pancreas, and colon. The types of vegetables or fruit
that most often appear to be protective against cancer are raw vegetables,
followed by allium vegetables, carrots, green vegetables, cruciferous
vegetables, and tomatoes"

"Nutrients and food groups and large bowel cancer in Europe" found that "most
vegetables, including pulses, were inversely associated with cancer of the
colon and rectum."

------
pkrumins
I watched it a while ago but I did not understand what was the key idea that
he wanted to say.

Okay, the corn syrup is just fructose, and as I understood from the lecture
it's equivalent to poison so we should avoid it.

But then sugar from plants and fruit also contains fructose! For every gram of
natural sugar there is half a gram of fructose. If we eat natural sugar it
seems equivalently bad? I don't get it.

So what does the lecture tell? Does it say we shouldn't be consuming sugar at
all? Or should we only be consuming glucose part of sugar? Or what?

Can anyone explain?

Thanks!

~~~
gaius
IIRC T-nation had an article on this. Fructose in an apple is OK because the
fibre etc means it is absorbed more slowly. The body isn't designed to have a
huge amount of fast-digesting carbs dumped into it in one go - even if the
total calories are the same.

------
voidpointer
This was really very interesting. I for one was mostly ignorant to the big
difference there was between glucose and fructose. Also the bit on ethanol was
quite interesting in itself.

The fact that HFCS is made from normal corn syrup (almost 100% glucose), which
is processed into fructose seems almost ironic.

------
dustineichler
If you want the jist of this lecture, around 1:15:00 is a good place to start,
he rants about Gatorade and McD's. Otherwise, it's O-Chem(?) up to that point.
Very interesting stuff. Less Fructose, more Fiber. Less Frankenburgers, more
Fruits.

~~~
dustineichler
He also mentions the paleolithic diet as a cure of type 2 diabetes. Link here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet>

~~~
CamperBob
Ah, yes. To live longer, eat like people who were lucky to see the far side of
30.

------
Freebytes
Wow. I just read a lot about sugar last night. I wanted to know if glucose was
truly the only sugar the brain needed. I found that processed sugars are used
almost immediately by the body; whereas, the sugars from natural sources are
released at a later time in smaller quantities. I read an article that stated
that these large doses of sugar cause a sudden, large increase in insulin
which can actually starve the brain from getting all of the sugar it needs as
the body tries to dispose of excess sugar. It was a very interesting series of
articles that I might hunt down again and post on HN at some point.

------
jeremyw
So this is another odd failure case for science, where researchers from many
areas selectively ignored (since the 1970s, let's say) a roughly-worked-out
biochemistry. Add political chilling effects and mix.

Given that there aren't particularly impervious ties in either political party
to sugar/carbs (activists being health advocates on the left and anti-subsidy
advocates on the right) I hope this set of research pathologies gets a kick in
the pants when sugar support detonates.

~~~
camccann
The sugar lobby is the corn lobby, because that's where most refined sugar
comes from. In other words, Midwest farmers, particularly in Iowa. See the
problem now?

~~~
jeremyw
Understood -- I'm saying there are growing factions in both parties that will
make these old allegiances obsolete.

------
johnl
If you are going to see grandparents this holiday, a good discussion might be
to ask them about their sugar consumption, prevalent health problems now and
then, and compare those to your own. Bet there is a big difference.

~~~
CamperBob
If they're honest, what they'll report is that their own grandparents died
about 20 years younger than they are now.

------
nearestneighbor
I watched the whole video. I thought he was going to explain why they put salt
in coke, but it seems he never did. Was he just implying that they are trying
to get people to drink more?

~~~
onoj
salt is hygroscopic - it sucks water from your body making you thirsty / sets
off a mechanism which makes you feel thirsty. This is why beer and coke etc
have salt in them (also explains free peanuts and pretzels in bars)

~~~
m_eiman
Salt also tastes good, which is why people _want_ to eat/drink it (and there's
probably an evolutionary reason for this - the body needs it). Try peanuts
without salt, it's not quite the same.

~~~
nearestneighbor
Besides those who lived by the sea, where could our ape-man ancestors find
salt?

~~~
m_eiman
In the blood of other animals, apparently. <http://www.salt.org.il/main.htm>

The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets, suggests that it was hard to
find - a significant mental reward was required to make us make the effort to
find it.

~~~
hachiya
Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they
were hard to find?

Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were
not hard to find.

Availability and use of fruit in our diet long ago is hardly anything new. It
certainly was not hard to find.

<http://www.health101.org/art_diet2.htm>

    
    
      Research Yields Surprises about Early Human Diets
    
      Teeth Show Fruit Was the Staple
    
      By Boyce Rensberger
      May 15, 1979 issue of the New York Times

~~~
m_eiman
_Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they
were hard to find?_

Assuming that nothing in how the body works happens for no good reason:

The fact that we enjoy it means that our body rewards us for eating it,
something that most likely means that it's something the body wants us to do.
If it was abundant, though, that'd make us eat too much of it (which is what's
happening today) unless there was something to stop us. With salt it's
possible to eat too much: that makes us feel bad. That suggests that salt was
abundant, otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system. The lack of a counter
system for sweets suggests that it wasn't abundant, at least not to the degree
that we could eat enough of it to prevent us from reproducing.

 _Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were
not hard to find._

Eveything we digest is converted to sugar, be it fruits, bread or meat.

Regarding the link:

That some of our ancestors two million years ago might have, or might not
have, eaten mostly fruits doesn't say much of anything about how Homo Sapiens
work. In the article they say that even the Homo Erectus were omnivores, and
that was 1.5M years ago. Things have happened since then...

~~~
hachiya
First you speculate that salt was not easy to find:

    
    
      > The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets, 
      > suggests that it was hard to find.
    

Then you claim salt was abundant:

    
    
      > With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us
      > feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant, 
      > otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system.
    

Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or
not?

Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than
(poor) speculation. The link I provided above is just one example showing that
fruit WAS abundant, as regardless of what those creatures were, fruit was
easily accessible.

It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about
just about anything to reach just about any conclusion.

~~~
m_eiman
_Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or
not?_

I revised it to abundant, but not as abundant as say air or water.

 _Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than
(poor) speculation._

Of course it is. However, you also need to take into account that (most)
natural fruit is far from the sweetness of the cultivated fruits we can buy in
the stores today. Compare wild apples to shop apples, for example.

 _The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS
abundant_

It _might_ have been abundant 2M years ago, where those ancestors lived. That
says nothing about what happened the next 2M years, which is a significant
period of time in evolutionary terms (at least 100k generations). If something
changed, e.g. there was less fruit, the ancestors might have started eating
other things - maybe become omnivores (like the next step in the chain towards
Sapiens, the Erectus). Sounds like something that fits pretty well with what's
known about our ancestry.

Going back to an arbitrary point in our history and saying that that's when
Things Were Right(tm) and ignoring what's happened since then is no better
than my speculations. At least choose at time nearer to now if you're going to
do that, maybe 10k years ago when the latest major change in our diet
occurred? Even that is 500 or so generations ago, so we should have had at
least some chance to adapt to a farmer's diet. And by the way, the farmer's
diet is what's allowed us to get where we are today in terms of civilization.

 _It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about
just about anything to reach just about any conclusion._

It's fun! Doesn't actually say a whole lot without actual research though.

