Why sugar, not fat is the enemy

[Jakob]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat

Moreover, there was something else going on. The more sugar we ate, the more we wanted, and the hungrier we became. At New York University, Professor Anthony Sclafani, a nutritionist studying appetite and weight gain, noticed something strange about his lab rats. When they ate rat food, they put on weight normally. But when they ate processed food from a supermarket, they ballooned in a matter of days. Their appetite for sugary foods was insatiable: they just carried on eating.

It certainly rings true to my own experience with the paleo/zone diet.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just been reading that and had thought about posting something on it! But didn't. A lot of it seems to be sensible - but seeming sensible doesn't necessarily make it true, of course. Food is a fashion thing and I guess the pendulum is swinging from low-fat to low-sugar. I think the only certainties are that it's a huge marketing opportunity and that after low-sugar, another such opportunity will be created.

[ferret]

there's a thing on BBC 2 now

edit; the "thing" was the program they were talking about, very interesting,

[hellymedic]

It's been on the BBC News website too.
I don't think either fat or sugar in isolation are the problem.
A mixture of fat, starch and sugar (eg CAIK or PIE) are are great way to get an energy boost when you  need them but can be so seductively delicious that we eat too much and the satiety 'stop' can kick in late.
These high calorie density foods are easy to eat in excess because they are not bulky and are NICE.
Drinking sugar is bad IMO. It's difficult to realise there's as much sugar in a can of Coke as in a handful of licorice allsorts.
Fruit juice is much more abundant than 40 years ago; it's around 10% sugar so we should only drink moderate amounts.

[RichForrest]

Just watched it, was interesting.
Now on iplayer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jxzv8/The_Men_Who_Made_Us_Fat_Episode_1/

[Fab Foodie]

I haven't seen the prog yet, but there are good correlations between a sudden ise in obesity rates coinciding with the 'low fat diet' boom in the early 80s.

[+paul]

I thought the program on BBC2 was very good. I can also recommend the film "Food Inc". As well as going into details of the wide scale use of corn for everything, it also shines a light on the practices used in livestock rearing. The saddest thing about the whole issue is that the farmers are not the ones making the real money - in the film, many of the farmers are forced to bury themselves in debt to meet the requirements set by the food processors, who have the ability to cut them off without reason or recourse.

Quite shocking really.

[ferret]

part two is on tonight BBC2 9pm

[clarion]

...I don't think either fat or sugar in isolation are the problem...

Trust Helly to bring some common sense into it.  It is a silly media conceit to polarise it.

[Chris S]

As we'll find out tonight.

BTW - it's no surprise that Great Yarmouth is the focus tonight. You only have to watch people at GY Tesco for as long as it takes to eat a tray of Sushi on a DIY 200 audax, to realise there is a problem.

[plum]

The saddest thing about the whole issue is that the farmers are not the ones making the real money

I almost shed a tear then. Oh, no, hang on, if they go skint they can just sell one of their Range Rovers.

[+paul]

The saddest thing about the whole issue is that the farmers are not the ones making the real money

I almost shed a tear then. Oh, no, hang on, if they go skint they can just sell one of their Range Rovers.

I can agree with that, when you consider some large scale UK farmers. If you want your food organically grown, I can assure you the margins are tight! The farmers I referred to in the film are based in the US, and their income is <$20000 per year, and they are in debt to more than £250k to keep the business in line with the requirements of the wholesalers. I may be slightly out with the numbers, but you get my drift!

[Marmitegeoff]

Stereotypes are not always applicable: I have friends in Shropshire who are mainly dairy farmers. By the time they got a loan of £80,000 for new milking equipment to meet new legal requirements, despite at the time getting less for the milk than it cost to produce, plus the rental fee for the farm and farmhouse, there is not enough left over for anything but the most modest of cars. Added to which they have not had a holiday in I don't know how many years because no one else will babysit and milk twice a day a herd of cattle for them.

Many years ago (about 30 ) I used to milk cows and was getting 27 -28p per liter for the milk and over a grand for each heifer sold and up to 500 quid for each calf.   Now milk is 17 to 20p per liter and calves are shot, I do not know the price of heifers but would be suprised if it is more than a couple of hundred quid each.

Which other business would survive on getting just over half of the returns they were getting 30 years ago.

Geoff

[simonp]

There have been literally hundreds of animal studies on sugar and body weight/fat gain, most of which were conducted in rodents.  Sugar, when compared to starch in the context of a pelleted diet, can promote body fat gain in rodents in some contexts (9, 10, 11), but in some cases sugar actually leads to similar or even less less fat deposition than starch (12, 13, 14, 15).  Diets high in sugar and fat together tend to be the most fattening of all (16, 17).  The most commonly used fattening rodent diet, Research Diets D12492 (and related diets), is 34 percent fat and 9 percent sugar by weight (60 and 7% by calories, 18).  This recipe was created by trial and error, and it's very effective at rapidly producing obesity in rodents-- more effective than any high-sugar low-fat diet.  We'll come back to why the composition of D12492 is an obesity "sweet spot" in a moment. 

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/is-sugar-fattening.html