Whoops! You are saying you do not need sucrose in your diet. Nava is saying you do need glucose, which you get from, among other things, digesting the starches and fruit sugars of your fruits and vegetables. While I suppose that it’s technically accurate to say it’s not an essential nutrient, in that the body’s energy can be derived from metabolizing other substances and AFAIK it’s not essential to health, foods containing organic compounds that digest to glucose are so ubiquitous, and the body so thoroughly adapted to the metablolism of glucose for energy, that it would be the veriest nitpick to make the non-essential claim.
Ah, the ol’ glucose-sucrose switcheroo! 
Fats are not broken down for energy in the digestive tract. Fats are broken into small globules and emulsifed by the bile create by the liver and enzymes from the pancreas. The lipid molecules are transported - still as fat - out of the digestive tract into the mucosa cells lining the tract where they aggregate back into globules and go into the lymphatic system and bloodstream.
Actual conversion of fat to make energy occurs rght at the point of use. There is a complex system of moving fats around the body (including storing it, and unstoring it) but to use fat, it goes into the bloodstream and is transported into the cell that will use it, where it is converted into ATP, carbon dioxide and water by the mitochondria. ATP is the powering molecule of the cell.
Sadly it does go pretty much straight into your bloodstream. And although you won’t get an oily slick on any dripping blood, if you take a blood sample and centrifuge it down, you will get a layer of lipids sitting on top. The only reason you don’t get the oily slick in a drop of blood is because the globules are too fine.
Hunh.
Consider my ignorance fought.
I know about ATP, and I had a vague understanding that bile is involved in breaking down fats, but I thought that still all happened in the digestive system post-stomach i.e. somewhere along the intestinal route.
One thing I’m still confused about from **glowacks’ **post: The assertion that trans fats are not broken down for energy.
That would make trans fat a calorie-free food additive, and I know that’s not right.
Can anyone explain that part to me?
sucrose is NOT glucose. Glucose can be created by my body [attempting to] break down the base carbs, which as can be provided by wheat which is not really known as a sugar bearing plant …
Though I will admit that as a diabetic, i tend to get my carbs as vegetables and not fruits, slows down the whole glycemic issue and makes it easier to deal with my recalcitrant pancreas.
I’m quite well aware of the distinction. If you go to the grocery store and buy “five pounds of sugar,” what you’ll get is sucrose.
But in a nutritional context, “sugar” means any five- or six-carbon poly-hydroxy compound or a dimer thereof, most of which get transformed to glucose in the digestive/assimilation process. My comment is that it would be nearly impossible, even if you wished to do so, to eliminate “sugar” in the broad sense – all carbohydrates, which will break down to glucose or another monohexose in the digestive process, even if it is a complex carb to begin with. (Starches are considered better than sugars nutritionally, not because they’re assimilated differently, but because the longer period to break down starches means you avoid spikes in blood glucose; they’re assimilated over a longer period and more steadily than sugars.)
No, you do not. Your body makes sugar from the fats and proteins and extracts it in the other forms in which it’s found in food, even assuming that you somehow managed to eat zero carbs. Sugar doesn’t need to be acquired in “table sugar” form (which is a glucose dimer), but to give just one teeny weeny example, RNA stands for “ribonucleic acid.” The “ribo” refers to “ribose,” a monosacharid; i.e., sugar.
Do you ever eat liver? One of its most important functions is the storage of glucose, in the form of long chains.
You do need sugar. What you don’t need is candy.
Now I want some candy.
Just make sure it doesn’t have any trans fats…
Come on, Nava. Neither I nor aruvqan were saying anything about blood sugar. You do not need to take in any dietary sugar whatsoever for your body to manufacture the necessary amount of glucose to feed your brain etc. Obviously. Otherwise the large number of people who have lived and do live entirely or nearly entirely on animal products would be dead.
I believe that the excess consumption of dietary sugars (and starches) has a toxic effect on the human body. The standard American diet contains well beyond what I would consider an excess.
That’s not what you said the first time. You never mentioned “excess amounts.”
Water’s MSDS indicates it can produce suffocation. True… but definitely not what one should worry about when buying a 5-liter bottle, is it?
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Define toxic. If by “toxic” and “excess” you mean “will get fat and maybe die from obesity-related illness”, then toxic is the wrong word, and it’s also true that proteins, fats, and alcohol have the same effect.
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If you mean that there is some sort of biochemical reaction that actually causes some sort of poisoning or something, can you provide a cite for this assertion?
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Carrots, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and almost all fruits contain significant amounts of sugars, and it strains the imagination that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is going to be toxic.
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If you mean sucrose specifically is toxic, it’s a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule stuck together with an easily broken bond (breaks down in mild acids and saliva, and by digestive enzyme in almost all people). What is the mechanism that makes sucrose toxic?
liver? blargh …not since I stayed at a friend of my grandmothers when my parents were out of the country and I was 12 years old … I couldn’t avoid it.
And I am adamant, I do not do sugar. When I eat [random carb] I an not consuming the concentrate of any material that can be considered sugar.
What my body does with that innocent bit of celery is NOT sugar, it is a natural breakdown in my body to glucose. I try to avoid premade convenience foods at all costs because of the propensity in the US to add sugars to pretty much everything.
My loaf of bread is flour, water, salt, olive oil and yeast. My body will break it down into all sorts of things, one of which is glucose. If I do not burn that amount of glucose off, it gets converted into fat and stuck to my ass. If for some reason I do not consume enough calories, I will metabolize that fat back into glucose [and hopefully I will get something to eat before I start to work on my muscle mass]
I do not need sugar, I need [as I stated before] a certain amount of protein, a certain amount of organic non animal matter, and a certain tiny amount of fat. I do not need sugars in the form of honey, plant based syrups [maple, birch, cactus] or extracted sugars.
Get it right, I am eating foods to be metabolized, I am not eating sugar or any added sweetener [other than non-nutrative sweeteners, which is fairly rare. I am a salt/sour person] I do not need sugar, I get proper complex carbohydrates generally in the form of whole grains and vegetables with an occasional portion of fruit to balance out minerals and vitamins. My body works with healthy building blocks to extract and fabricate what my body needs.
Im a klutz, Id be more worried about dropping it on my foot :rolleyes:
Though too much water makes for lots of pee, and you can shed minerals that influence your heart muscle, so you can give yourself serious health issues by stripping out potassium and magnesium. [well, also zinc, I believe. ] I know that every time I have been given a diuretic they load me down with these HUGE potassium suppliments also.
hm, there are a number of plants that we eat that have toxins in them.
Rhubarb stems are ok cooked, but the leaves have oxalic acid, which can be toxic in the wrong dose [heavy laxative also] - many plants that have a sharp acid taste have oxalic acid, like water cress and clover.
Potatoes, Peppers, Tomatoes are all solanaceaes, the leaves and stems are toxic, and the green part of the potato is also toxic. Technically capsicacin is a poison that causes chemical burns, and tomatoes are linked to arthritic type symptoms by some nutritionists for people with certain food allergies.
Celery has a chemical called apiol that is toxic, and can cause miscarriage in significant amounts. Many people are also sensitive to celery. I am one of them, eating more than a couple stalks makes my lips go numb and tingly. There are other compounds in celery that can affect blood pressure, and androstanone that is a steroid that occasionally gets touted as a pheromone and aphrodisiac.
Many of our meds are plant derivatives, and as was pointed out there is a fine line between food/med and poison.