
Being Happy With Sugar  - sizzle
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/being-happy-with-sugar/372220/
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Evgeny
What I personally found out was that if you stay away from sugar and
sweeteners completely, eventually you get used to the new taste and no longer
suffer from lack of sweetness. I didn't think I'll ever be able to drink
unsweetened coffee, but now I'm doing exactly that. More than that, things
that had "normal" taste before (such as soft drinks) will now seem overly
sweet, to the point of not being able to drink them at all.

So maybe instead of asking "what is the best sugar replacement" one should ask
"how do I best get used to not sweetening everything I eat".

(I understand that the article casts doubts on sugar being evil. I still think
that reducing sugar and / or sweeteners as much as possible at the very least
will not hurt you, and most likely will be a bit of a benefit).

~~~
fredsted
I was on no-carb/keto for 6 months. For a while I almost couldn't walk past
the sweets section in the supermarket, but after a couple of weeks, I
completely lost interest in it. I still had a piece of chocolate here and
there, but I could just stop when I wanted to!

I'm still a little sensitive to sweet things. As a child I liked it but after
keto it's not as appealing anymore.

Also, eating sugar makes my teeth feel really nasty.

~~~
lurkinggrue
When I started to fix my diet I had to purge myself of Caffeinated sodas
first. I found the combination of HFCS and caffeine would make me crave junk
food like an addict. I purged myself of the caffeine and ate junk food then
after a few weeks purged the junk food and now I can turn away from the bag of
potato chips without too much willpower.

Having gotten off of physically addictive drugs before I recognized the
feelings and realized how much I had to slowly ween myself off of that stuff.

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dreamdu5t
"Eliminating sugars from a diet can’t constitute playing it safe"

That's ridiculous! There is no nutritional necessity to ingesting sugar. Not
eating sugar IS playing it safe!

My god are people so ignorant as to think eating sugar is somehow part of an
essential diet!?!? We're doomed.

... and by "sugar" we are clearly not talking about eating an apple.

~~~
gizmo
Cutting fruit (fructose) from your diet doesn't seem like a wise choice. I
agree that highly processed foods and sugared snacks/drinks are unhealthy.

~~~
fredsted
You can eat a little fruit once in a while, but it actually isn't important
for your health. Think of it as natural candy. Now, vegetables/greens are
important.

Looking through history, humans only had fruit available a few months/weeks of
the year. Nowadays we can get all the fruit we want.

~~~
huehue
How are vegetables important? They provide little to no energy.

~~~
Evgeny
That's why they are important. :) On a serious note, there is nutrient
density.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_density](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_density)

 _Most commonly, nutrient density is defined as a ratio of nutrient content to
the total energy content. Nutrient-dense food is opposite to energy-dense food
(also called "empty calorie" food). [...] Fruits and vegetables are the
nutrient-dense foods, while products containing added sugars, processed
cereals, and alcohol are not._

This is why replacing added sugar with anything that contains at least some
vitamins and/or minerals is beneficial.

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TTPrograms
I'm fine with not getting my nutrition info from Oz, Gupta and Oprah if that's
ok. I think they forgot to ask Dr. Phil what he thought.

I mean it's more than halfway through the article comparing pop garbage
simplified nutrition before we start looking at any clinical studies.

~~~
hrjet
I thought the article was trying to discredit the pop-nutritionists. To me,
the point of all those quotes and anecdotes in the beginning of the article
was to show the shallowness of their recommendations.

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jbb555
I agree with a lot of the comments here. Just cut way down on sugars of any
kind in general. I cut out about 90% of them about a year ago as part of a
weight loss plan, and I'm sure I feel much better for it (Well, and losing
weight too so no real evidence). I no longer have much craving for sugar and
when I do have some it really tastes sweet now!

~~~
huehue
Sounds like your body is trying to get you back on the good stuff.

Your brain likes sugar. Get over it.

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weavie
These so called experts seem to constantly go back and forth between which
processed foods are good and which are bad for you. The obvious answer is
probably to just avoid processed food all together.

The skeptic in me thinks that these experts are just pawns of the food
industry which needs to push processed food as the potential for
commercialization is much much higher than with natural food. Don't listen to
any of them. Just eat something straight off a tree instead.

~~~
TTPrograms
The very beginning of the article explicitly describes where one of these pop
doctors recommended something just because it was natural (agave nectar) and
ended up taking it back when it turned out just as bad as the artificial stuff
(HFCS).

Thinking that good and bad is as easy as natural and artificial is exactly the
type of bad simplification that end up teaching people that GMOs are unhealthy
and meat is bad for you. Nutrition is complicated, and if you want to
understand it there's no substitute for the research.

Let's also be clear - no one in this article is a _nutrition_ expert.

~~~
weavie
They may call it natural. From Wikipedia[1]

"To produce agave syrup from the Agave americana and A. tequilana plants, the
leaves are cut off the plant after it has aged seven to fourteen years. The
juice is then extracted from the core of the agave, called the piña.[2] The
juice is filtered, then heated to break the complex components (the
polysaccharides) into simple sugars.[Need to cite reference for production
process] The main polysaccharide is called inulin or fructosan and is mostly
fructose. This filtered juice is then concentrated to a syrupy liquid,
slightly thinner than honey. Its color varies from light- to dark-amber,
depending on the degree of processing."

So we have juice extraction, heating to break up the components, filtering and
concentrating. It just shows how far the industry has gone to consider that as
natural.

Or alternatively :

"An alternative method used to process the agave juice without heat is
described in a United States patent for a process that uses enzymes derived
from the mold Aspergillus niger to convert the inulin-rich extract into
fructose.[6] Aspergillus niger, a fungus commonly used in industrial
fermentations,[7] is "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration.[8]"

We have a process to alter its chemical structure, luckily it is "generally
recognized as safe".

Just because someone says it is natural doesn't mean that it is. Natural to me
is picking an apple off a tree and eating it. Some food does need processing.
Meat and some veg needs cooking, but anything beyond that is processed in my
book.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_nectar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_nectar)

~~~
Evgeny
When I read about the "natural" status of Agave nectar, I was immediately
interested in the process of obtaining it. Thanks for placing this info right
here!

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thinkerer
I always think its a moderation and output issue rather than input.

In anyways, sugar fuels the brain!

~~~
wmil
Glucose fuels the brain. Fructose doesn't. And while more research needs to be
done there's a lot of evidence that some people respond poorly to fructose.

~~~
rnnr
Correct. Furthermore, if the subject is in ketosis, there is an adaptation
which your brain becomes 'glucose free'. That's the whole point of keto diets.

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5partan
sitting in front of the computer and reading this article makes you obese,
better do some stretches. i canceled reading it at the half, because i already
felt gaining some pounds:)

