There you go.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=402898

Regarding the fructose hypothesis. I lost my faith in it when I realized two things.

1) It so happens that the carbohydrate metabolism of rats is different enough from that of humans in order to make a direct relationship regarding fructose very difficult.

2) The best "evidence" we have against fructose comes from research on rats with a diet of 60% pure fructose by calories. No humans would ever get 60% of their intake from fructose molecules alone.

Noting that the poison is in the dose. On an isocaloric diet in humans, fructose could not be shown to have the effects observed in rats.

Here is an article on the subject where Dr Lustig actually made an appearance in the comments section:
http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/...ctose-alarmism/
and a follow up:
http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/...larmism-debate/

Check out this study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/

It's the best evidence exactly because a high dose was used. Had the rats been given a diet of only 10% fructose, the observed results probably wouldn't have been intense enough to be clearly detected, but it doesn't mean there is no effect. Anyway, the study above is worth checking out (humans, 25% fructose).

The carbohydrate hypothesis, rather the fructose hypothesis since it's the fructose in sugar that is really harmful, acknowledges that it takes time, 20 years to be precise, for the fructose to do its damage. The same hypothesis also acknowledges that this incubation time period can change depending on the dose. If the dose is higher, the time period becomes shorter. And wouldn't you know it, we now see younger and younger people getting sick with diabetes type 2, the type that used to be reserved for adults. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we eat more and more sugar in the form of HFCS. It don't matter that it's HFCS, what matters is that we eat more sugar, including HFCS.

Like I said, the fructose hypothesis is merely one aspect of the carbohydrate hypothesis.

Reading myself just now I had this funny feeling that I used this same argument somewhere else. Why do I have to use this argument again if it makes so much sense? Ah, it's the human nature. If we don't repeat it, it don't stick.

Thanks man!

I must have missed something. I read Taubes's book and I didn't get from it that insulin was bad. This isn't religion, it's not like it's the devil, how ridiculous.

I got from it that the body, like most everything else that we can measure, has cycles, and one cycle insulin rules that stuffs in both energy (fat) and nourishment to cells, and then the rest of the cycle gradually pulls them out (fat for energy, and the efforts of cells to maintain life).

And when you force the body into only one part of the cycle nearly all the time -- the high-insulin part -- it begins having serious side-effects from the unbalance. Namely, that all the things that *need* to happen during the rest of the cycle -- like the release of fat cell content for energy -- aren't happening enough then.

Getting fatter is only one of the problems stemming from it. It's just the most visually obvious one.

If adipose tissue is a key part of the immune system, then there are other ways to make yourself fat too, I'm sure -- enough drinking can probably do it, for some people, via the liver. I'm sure there are other ways to damage one or more organs sufficiently that the dysfunctional, 'adaptive' survival response of the body, utilizing the adipose tissue's immunity functions as a crutch, can probably help make you fatter.

The fact that something, somewhere, can make you fatter and it might not be carbohydrates, doesn't invalidate the hypothesis that carbohydrates drive insulin which drive fat.

Or the rather blindingly obvious idea that if you jack your blood sugar up so insulin is high all the freaking time, you're going to have the predictable side effects that come with extended high insulin and these issues aggregate over time.

That doesn't make insulin 'bad'.

It means 'way too much' on the food intake of things that elevate it too high and too often on one hand, while providing insufficient nutrition for the body on the other, and not allowing enough of the other half of the body's natural biochemical cycling in the process, is not healthy. Why this point would even be arguable is beyond me.

I might add, and I understand there is probably not such intent behind it, but it is breathtakingly arrogant, rude, and patronizing to imply that if other people quote or say they agree with the words of someone who made a good point in a good way that needed making for a long time, that they are all mindless idiot cult fans just parroting. To do this in the context of then quoting and agreeing with the words of someone else is hilarious in a rather black way.

PJ

Eating carbs per se does not result in what you described here. We have to eat too much in order for this cycle to be like that. Now what contributes to us eating easily too much is another mater, but it's certainly not carbs per se.

I don't understand this part.

Yes I'm aware of this study. They had to drink a glucose or fructose solution on top of their regular isocaloric diet. Which means that these fructose or glucose molecules were an excess energy source. So the body had to store it. It can store fructose as lipids (not too far from the liver) and glucose as glycogen or lipids practically anywhere in the body.

Now I understand in this context how fructose is different than glucose, BUT we must realize that this stored energy will be used and not stay stored if you do not have an excess of energy. The effect of fructose will only add up over time if you are constantly in an excess energy state.

But don't you see that anything can become toxic if the number is high enough?

I personally think that David Kessler is closer to the truth.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...9042602711.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandst...t-sugar-kessler

Nobody was forced to drink anything to caloric excess. Those were ad libitum diets. The subjects were just given a different food to incorporate into their regular diet. They could have had less of other foods to acommodate the calories from the drinks, and probably did so to a degree.

The fructose theory explains why we are in an excess energy state all the time: because fructose fails to inhibit appetite, because it impairs leptin's and insulin's ability to inhibit appetite in the hypothalamus.

Sure, and the point is that our symptoms are a lot like the symptoms of fructose excess.

I read his book and like his theory too. It doesn't contradict anything that anybody else has said about fructose so far. About his advice, I totally disagree. I think we should let our hypothalamus do its job and control our portions and calories automatically. If your hypothalamus wants you to eat more than you currently do, you bet not eating junk food is going to be very, very hard. But once you quit these high-sugar, high-fat, nutrientless foods, your appetite should normalise and you should be able to eat as much as you want and keep a stable normal weight. In principle.

The guy talks about something called "fonzies" and chocolate and calls it food. See my point now Patrick? What else do you call food that isn't?

The definition of food is "that which nourishes".
The guy's definition of food is "that which I feed my animals and makes them feel good, or not".

Funny, laughing causes dopamine secretion yet we don't call that food.

What's your definition of food, Patrick?

Flash quiz. Why do we call it "pet food"?
Answer: To distinguish it from human food.
So what do we call human food?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/food

Maybe, just maybe if what we eat doesn't actually sustain life, provide energy or promote growth regardless of how much we eat, just maybe it ain't food. I'm just saying.

What I described was 'eating too much' carbs for that cycle to be like that, so your answer didn't contradict me that I can see.

I see your point however that an innocent carb standing alone never killed anybody. It's the massive over-ingestion of them that kills. And we don't yet know what causes that, though we have some ideas.

I know that if I take so much as one teaspoon of milk into my body I am craving dairy, sugar and carbs all day, and I'm "driven" about it. Eating grain-based foods won't have quite the same effect, it's more subtle but longer term, yet the same end result. With those factors out of my diet I don't care much about food except when I'm legitimately stomach-hungry. I can barely work up to 1500 calories a day since I eat mostly meat. Yet with either let alone both of those factors in my diet, my eating is pretty much limited only by the number of hours in a day, convenience and how much money I have. Of course it's possible these things are not affecting anyone else the way they do me, and that either these items or simply the 'internal body reaction' to something in the same way, is unrelated. It's taken me many years to gradually understand and be aware enough to recognize it. But our culture has managed to make nearly every meal into something containing one or both of those components, often in quantity. Our snacks contain one or both most the time (or serious sugar). I think if people grow up ingesting all this and considering it food, it's not surprising it's a hard habit to break.

I think that the whole definition of toxic, addictive substances as 'food', and having them so permeate the entire culture, has got to have at least something to do with the problems we see.

PJ

Basically, Patrick, what you're saying is eating more food transforms this food from a substance that "sustains life, provides energy, and promotes growth" into something that makes us fat, sick, weak and stupid. Never mind that the starting qualities are so diametrically opposed to the ending qualities. Just how much more food are we talking about here?

Agreed, I confused with another study.

Last time I seriously looked into the fructose hypothesis there was not enough evidence for it to explain the obesity epidemic by itself. That was at least a year ago. I'll have to check into this again.

Martin, that's your definition of food. Here is what is more commonly used as a definition of food: "Food is any substance or materials eaten or drunk to provide nutritional support for the body or for pleasure."