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.
Thanks for the link, that is pretty cool, and seems potentially like one of the best sweeteners. I guess I have never really looked at molasses because nobody eats it anymore. If my understanding is correct it is more concentrated in minerals because it has the minerals that have been removed from the table sugar. So it is also a type of refined sugar, but nutrients have actually been added instead of taken away.
I tend to stay away from these kinds of factory produced foods. You have to put trust in the manufacturer not to be adding chemicals, etc.
But maybe this could be a healthy part of the diet. The fructose is bad or sugar/refined carbohydrates is bad theories have not shown that the health problems could instead be caused by a lack of nutrients in the sugars we consume.
Actually, I shouldn't call it accessible since it is extremely detailed (and long). But now without purpose, as this is what is required to make a solid scientific case. It is easy to follow as long as you can maintain an interest in the subject at hand.
I must admit eventually I became of suspicious of "Good Calories, Bad Calories", too - who says he didn't handpick the studies to quote, like everybody else? The format of the book was very weird, just this stream of quotes. Not very pleasant to read at all.
Accurately summarizing other sources is how you develop a well-referenced argument. If a quotation can work as a summary then all the better. It is not a format we are used to, but it is how you build a case based on evidence.
For GCBC, I think it is important to differentiate between demolishing the bad fat/cholesterol/salt, good fiber hypothesis, and proposing the new carbohydrate hypothesis. GCBC debunks these weak hypothesis. However, all it can do is propose a new hypothesis given (as admitted by the author) the small amount of research available that directly supports that hypothesis.
It is pretty apparent that he is not cherry-picking. First of all, the book wouldn't need to be as long! Seriously, this represents an absolutely enormous investment in time that as you point out just ends up turning off readers.
Normally a cherry-picker will stoop to low quality sources of information. When demolishing conventional wisdom, Taubes sticks to all (yes all, there aren't that many) of the high quality large-scale studies that actually matter (but goes through the history of lower quality information that lead to the available hypothesis). Again, he admits that the evidence is weaker for his carbohydrate hypothesis.
I think he admitted himself to cherry picking somewhere - everybody would be cherry picking... In principle I have nothing against "more" references, however, in that book it is so much that it becomes once more impossible to check up on it. You can only give in to the sheer number and size of references. Personally I find that a bit unsatisfying and unnecessary. I would have preferred concentration on a few core points.
Good point. Maybe he should have had a couple concentrated chapters at the beginning of the book, and then used the rest as a historical reference. If you want to check up on his arguments against the current dogma just check on his analyses of the the few high quality large scale studies that have been done.
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... 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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think these books are in harmony with each other at all, what was your take on combining the knowledge?
The Omnivore's Dilemma, or at least the statements of its author, Michael Pollan to to eat low in the food chain are predicated on the idea that eating animal is bad for you, which thoroughly debunked (at least with respect to fat or saturated fat) by Taubes.
Taubes is also a fierce advocate that weight issues normally have little to do with willpower over overeating and everything to do with eating too many refined carbohydrates.
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...