That “Idiot” has published dozens of papers on the subject, including ones in such prestigious peer-reviewed publications like British Journal of Nutrition and the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v61/n1/abs/1602486a.html
How many peer reviewed papers have you published?
The experiment you pooh-pooh was carried on in conjunction with: *The project includes a talented team of collaborators from New York University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Stanford, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Western University & Lawson Health Research Center in Canada, and several researchers from the National Institute of Medical Research in Tanzania. * He had a hypothesis, and he tested it- that’s science.
The dude knows his shit- both literally and figuratively.
That cite doesn’t say anything to support your claim that “HFCS has a extremely low satiety index (much lower than sugar).” Most HFCS has only 5% more fructose than table sugar.
I completely agree with you here though.
Yes it does:The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight, this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain.
And stop arresting parents for sending their children outside or off to the park to play.
Obviously you don’t understand the difference between glucose and sucrose. HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) have nearly identical amounts of fructose.
I work in a semi-factory job and even those jobs where one must be on a line the amount of physical labor involved has decreased due to increases in automation and ergonomic initiatives. Ex. less lifting and bending. Many of our line workers just monitor a machine. Even in construction things have changed. Ex. nail guns vs. using just hammers. And there is more and better equipment to use.
When people eat too much or eat the wrong food it is not so unlike those of us who drink too much or engage in other destructive behaviors. We are obviously lacking somewhere else and use our vices in an attempt to make us feel better.
Mapping the exact way our chemical compounds are produced and what produces them would be impossible at this time but is not really neccessary, we have a good working knowledge of how to supply ourselves emotionally in areas we are lacking but for some reason we seem to lack the resources or the availability od such activities seems evasive.
Doing more to give the everyday person more access to healthy productive social enviroments would help immensely with the war on obesity.Within 5%, but “Obviously you don’t understand” how the body treats Fructose is different than Sucrose.
*Free fructose is absorbed directly by the intestine. When fructose is consumed in the form of sucrose, it is digested (broken down) and then absorbed as free fructose. As sucrose comes into contact with the membrane of the small intestine, the enzyme sucrase catalyzes the cleavage of sucrose to yield one glucose unit and one fructose unit, which are then each absorbed. After absorption, it enters the hepatic portal vein and is directed toward the liver…Excess fructose consumption has been hypothesized to be a cause of insulin resistance, obesity,[43] elevated LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, leading to metabolic syndrome.[44] In preliminary research, fructose consumption was correlated with obesity.[45][46] A study in mice showed that a high fructose intake may increase adiposity.[47]
Although all simple sugars have nearly identical chemical formulae, each has distinct chemical properties. This can be illustrated with pure fructose. A journal article reports that, “…fructose given alone increased the blood glucose almost as much as a similar amount of glucose (78% of the glucose-alone area)”.[48][49][50][50][51]*
*Cane sugar and beet sugar are both relatively pure sucrose. While glucose and fructose (the two components of HFCS) are monosaccharides, sucrose is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose linked together with a relatively weak glycosidic bond. The fact that sucrose, glucose, and fructose are unique, distinct molecules complicates the comparison between cane and beet sugar (sucrose) and HFCS
*
AFAIK the US is the only place where high fructose corn syrup is omnipresent, because of subsidies/tariffs on corn (maize) vs sugar. And even though the US is leading the industrialized world in obesity rates, some of the rest (like the UK) isn’t far behind. So it doesn’t seem that HFCS is the smoking gun.
And the obesity problem has gotten enough attention that IF there were a smoking gun, it would have been found by now. My personal belief (as in, it sounds convincing to me, but there’s not enough evidence to be sure) is that food palatability is a big contributor to the problem: today’s food just tastes so good that it’s hard to eat just a little of it.
Exercise is only a small part of the picture. You can’t outrun a bad diet. Specific types of food may contribute, but aren’t the answer by themselves. For any type of “bad” food, it’s easy enough to find normal weight people that regularly eat it.
But one thing is for sure: if you drink sugary (soft) drinks every day, that does NOT help. So either get rid of those or switch to the artificially sweetened type.
Another is portion size. I’m convinced obese people who haven’t seriously tried to diet have no idea what reasonable portion sizes are. This is something we can teach kids, both academically and by example.
Yet the curves increasing over the past decades parallel each other as do many of the disparities based on race, ethnicity, education level, and income.
When I’ve been in Europe I’ve been impressed by the acceptance of body types and have never seen the fat shaming that occurs here. So I guess cite please for the claim otherwise.
I’ve published a few papers more than you I suspect … but just a few. I am a clinician not an academic. Nevertheless he is still an idiot and any academic group that endorsed that as an experiment is also being dumb.
If the hypothesis is that the Hazda microbiome is appropriate for all people in all cultures across the world then it a very naive and simplistic one and there is no way that what he did is an experiment that tests that hypothesis.
He is a credentialed and published idiot, but an idiot nevertheless. Okay, more precisely, he is someone who did an idiotic thing. Proves only that educated people can be dumb.
All this is true. But HFCS leads to large portions, which leads to obesity. And of course the rest of the obese world imports a lot of US food. And you are in agreement with Michael Pollan when you talk about how "yummy: modern processed food is- they aim it right at our pleasure centers and with the joys of stuff liek HFCS we keep eating even after we should feel full.
But yeah- there’s no one thing, no one “smoking gun”. HFCS is just a easy target- get rid of corn subsidies and you get rid of some HFCS- it even saves taxpayers money! It’s the one 'easy" target, which is why I am in favor of it.
Probiotics, getting more fiber are also “easy”.
Telling the food industry they can’t make the food tasty? Making kids get off the couch and exercise? Making portion sizes smaller? All good ideas- but hardly easy.
Certainly I am in favor of promoting these things.
But just cutting off the spigot of taxpayer cash to the corn industry could help.
In my case, three or four (in one case, the “publisher” is so small one could dismiss it :p).
And no, that’s not his hypothesis at all.
.…hypothesis I wanted to test was one of microbial extinction, something I believe we all suffer from in the western world and may be at the root of what’s making us sick. Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and Marty Blaser at NYU estimate from their decades of work in the US and among Amerindian populations in South America, that us modern humans have lost a third (or more) of the microbial diversity we once enjoyed. The Hadza data thus far suggest this number could be as high as half. So for me, and my little transplant experiment with a Hadza hunter gatherer still living at microbial ground zero for all humans, I wanted to know if my western diet and lifestyle could rapidly destroy this newly acquired diversity in a short period of time
http://humanfoodproject.com/rebecoming-human-happened-day-replaced-99-genes-body-hunter-gatherer/
microbial extinction
http://www.microbiomeinstitute.org/maria-gloria-dominguez-bello/
Okay. Still dumb. Really amazingly stupid.
N of one in which the you have changed not only the variables of the diet and the lifestyle but the host and all of the genes and immunological history and adaptations between microbiome and host that have occurred over a lifetime.
Following the microbiome in a Hazda tribesman who adopts a Western diet/lifestyle would potentially suggest an answer to the question. He hsn’t even first shown that it is possible under any circumstances to get that microbiome to persist for a reasonable length of time in its full diversity in a host that is not adapted to it and that it is not adapted for, even on a traditional Hazda diet and lifestyle.
BTW reading that link the project that he was there for - studying the microbiome of the Hazda - had the institutional supports/endorsement listed. His little grandstanding self administered fecal transplant bit did not get any institutional approval or endorsement. In fact he specifically notes that
His decision to move forward was his alone.
Quite a few experts are with you there, adding in the other side of the equation as well: low satiety.
Diets that are high in foods that are moderate in palatability and high in satiety are associated both with little obesity and a host of good health outcomes. Diets high in the creations of Big Food Inc., foods that are designed to be hyperpalatable and low in satiety, i.e., hit the brain centers than say “DO THIS MORE.” hard and hit the brain centers that say “FULLA UPPA. STOP.” hardly at all are associated with lots of obesity and lots of adverse health outcomes. The latter also causes actual changes to those very brain centers, including even with prenatal exposure.
I think I’d just tax food at some rate dependent on the number of calories in the item. I’m not sure how exactly, but essentially highly caloric items would have a much higher tax than less caloric ones, or more nutritious ones.
Kind of like Weight Watchers’ points system, only as a taxation scheme, with the first 2 points of every item tax-free, and then on a progressive scale above that. Vegetables and fruits would be untaxed.
So for example, a 12 oz soda might be taxed at 1/4 the rate of a 32 oz and 1/16 of the 64 oz one.
Re fructose - an excellent coverage of the subject is here.
Some very good points made in the article -
The liver can handle a reasonable amount of fructose at a time just fine but there is a threshold to its capacity. Foods with lots of added sugar (and surreal’s point is echoed here) be it sucrose or HFCS, both roughly the same in terms of fructose amount, flood the liver with the fructose all at once. Real foods have the sugars bound up inside structures that are slowly broken down along with fiber (but not just the fiber) which means that the fructose does not reach the liver all at once. Lastly and echoing iljitsch’s point, high amounts of added sugar are one means of making a food hyperpalatable while staying low satiety … which gets those so prone - which are many - to overeat them.
Foolhardy, maybe, but like i said- anyone with that many papers cited is not dumb.