More News on Sugar
I have often stated that my position on the consumption of sugar is that of a center moderate.
I don’t think we have to go so far as to totally eliminate sugar from our diets because sweet things are nice!
On the other hand what I worry about is the sheer volume of added sugar that is being put into the average person’s diet without he or she actually know it is there.
I have a friend who is very intolerant to sugar because of a health problem and for him navigating through the world whilst remaining relatively sugar free is almost a full time task.
Just go to the supermarket and flip the pack of just about any product to read the ingredients and sure enough you will find added sugar of some description.
Maybe it is disguised as fructose or some other name or even corn syrup but sure enough it will be there.
Now the latest craze has been the news of a connection between sugar and the development of cancer.
Not really certain about it myself but in all honesty does it surprise you that cancer is on the rise along with the consumption of sugar?
For a little more data on the subject there is a link below to an article but my preference is the video I have added for this week.
Although it is a little long it is well worth looking at because it is a bunch of academics doing their level best to simplify the research that has been done on the effects of sugar.
It’s not too dry (but yes, it is a little dry!) but one of the best ways to demystify a subject like this is to get up to pace on the science, the only problem with that is the science!
At least at the conference they recorded they de-science it all a bit!
Facts about Sugar – How Sugar Impacts your Health
Even Young Doctors Suffer!
It’s interesting to see a modern take on a doctor’s experience from attending college and accepting things as they are through to realizing all is not quite what it seems.
Here’s a great list of things from a doctor’s point of view that illustrate so well what is wrong with the way we look at nutrition these days.
For a long time it was enough to simply accept what was on the label or what the food producer told us about that product because more often than not, it was fine.
Unfortunately in this modern era of mass food production the lies have been coming thick and fast for a long time now and even when those lies are exposed it often falls on deaf ears.
Why?
Because we are yet to reach the point of realizing that the lies have become the norm, that big food will say whatever it needs to say in order for us to just accept the crap they are dishing out.
The evidence is everywhere that we are getting sicker from our food as time passes yet because we have not developed a cynical enough attitude we are like children who keep falling for the same trick over and over.
Only in America?
Seriously, only in America could it be possible to have people explain to you that they are eating vegetables on a regular basis only to discover that what they are referring to are fries and tomato sauce.
How could it be possible to dumb down a population so comprehensively ?
I can remember seeing one of Jamie Oliver’s forays in America trying to get school lunches on to a more healthy footing.
It was simply amazing to watch him quiz junior high school students on the origins of the food they were eating without any thought whatsoever.
They were shocked to discover that fries were actually made of potato and that those potatoes actually came from the ground!
Then there were the looks of horror when they found out that hamburger was made out of cows!
And to top the whole thing off… the requirement for the school lunches was to have a certain portion of vegetables and that this requirement was fulfilled by the addition of… wait for it… pizza!
Yup, the administrators were allowed to add pizza as being part of the vegetable portion.
Madness.
Multivitamins?
Here’s a more in-depth take on the consumption of multivitamins.
Is it definitive? No.
Unfortunately there is so much confusion in this area that has been created by vitamin manufacturers, the medical research profession and food manufacturers that really who knows?
No real independent studies free from bias exist so yet again we find another area of nutrition that is so polluted with opinion that no answer exists.
So where does that leave us?
Well in my opinion (and that’s really what we need, another opinion!) I think that of course vitamins play a huge role in overall health.
At least that part has been established.
Whether or not vitamin supplements help generally comes down to whether or not you really need them and the best was to not need them is with a healthy and balanced diet.
Got Calcium?
I especially wanted to take up a point in this recent article from the Harvard Health Blog because it contains a perfect example of crazy science leading to an even crazier conclusion.
Now the overall article is about how effective calcium is in preventing bone fractures or at least protecting you from them under normal circumstances.
The study itself found absolutely no connection between the level of calcium intake and the incidence of bone fractures.
In other words your “knowledge” that lots of calcium in your diet makes strong bones is not true.
My real interest in this one is that the aforementioned “knowledge” was my knowledge too!
That’s what my mom told me so it must be true!
Well it turns out not so much.
Anyway, the really interesting part comes when we look at how that whole calcium and strong bones thing started in the first place and remember, your recommended daily dosage of calcium came from the same place!
Well it turns out it came from a study of a group of elderly French women who had their calcium intake controlled and their bone density measured on a regular basis.
From that study it was established that calcium supplements were helpful.
So then the medical and nutritional world concluded that we all should have X amount of calcium per day based on the experiences of a bunch of French women in their eighties.
It of course kind of tracks OK as a story but when you get down to it the whole thing is nonsensical.
Of course from that study they could make recommendation for elderly French women but to apply it across the board to the entire population is just nuts… yet that is exactly what happened!
Now we are discovering that people taking too much calcium, people who don’t really need it are at risk from heart attack, stroke, kidney stones and gastro problems!
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