What happens to your brain when you stop eating sugar

http://qz.com/353138/this-is-what-happens-to-your-brain-when-you-stop-eating-sugar/

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

203 194 11 years ago

Selfcommit• 11 years ago

These are extreme experiments, of course. We humans aren’t depriving ourselves of food for 12 hours and then allowing ourselves to binge on soda and doughnuts at the end of the day.

I guess the author is completely unaware of the lifestyle of many Americans? (Myself included). 12 hours is not a short span at all, when you consider time between going to bed and first meal. Plenty of sugar to be found in all American meal options, doubly so if you add soda to any meal / throughout the day.

draugadrotten• 11 years ago

The author may have been making an attempt at irony.

cheepin• 11 years ago

Why are there no referenced human experiments? Low/No carb diets have been around for ages. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to get good data on something this basic. The claims made in this article are pretty significant, why do we only have rat behavior to observe?

ddebernardy• 11 years ago

Best I'm aware, all diets, whether low carb or high carb, cut down on sugar sources if followed properly.

Also, there is [data for humans](http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Sugar-The-Bitter-Truth-16717) but nutritionists are only slowly coming to conclusions.

static_noise4• 11 years ago

Most of all they are cutting down on total calories. It seems that for most people total calories are more important than the carbohydrate/fat-ratio.

iopq5• 11 years ago

There are actual studies. For example, there is no negative effect on health eating 100g of sugar a day. But above a certain amount you do start to run into problems with the amount of fructose your liver has to deal with.

pestaa• 11 years ago

Reference intake for sugar is about 90g.

http://www.foodlabel.org.uk/label/reference-intakes.aspx

I find it difficult (but also fun) to resist all the treats.

ribs• 11 years ago

My guess is because it's bullshit. Detoxing off sugar. Give me a break.

pjbrunet2• 11 years ago

I thought the article was going to show brain scans ;-) I gave up sugar in high school because nothing else was working on my acne. It was difficult but you can replace sugar with maple syrup, honey and fruit. After a while the craving goes away and the effect for me was pretty much permanent.

tlarkworthy• 11 years ago

those are all sugary replacements for sugar. That's not going to affect your brain chemistry at all. The 'difficulty' was a nocebo.

TTPrograms• 11 years ago

I can't see how honey, fruit, or maple syrup would be much different from any other simple carbs. As far as I've seen there's not been much difference determined between sucrose and fructose metabolism, for example. The big difference would be in cutting out all simple carbs, I would think, and then in cutting out carbs in general and going full ketogenic.

doctorcroc• 11 years ago

The complex sugars in fruits and honey are different from table sugars because of the way they are metabolized by your body. They don't spike your insulin as much, and can also add essential nutrients to your diet. Nothing in dieting (and life for that matter) needs to be done on the extremes, oftentimes common sense and moderation prevail.

superdude• 11 years ago

How does sugar affect acne? And how are those sugary substances any better than other sugary substances?

iopq5• 11 years ago

It doesn't, and they're not. But it's possible he lowered his intake of things like soybean oil by not eating sugar.

alashley• 11 years ago

I break out in pimples any time I eat sugary, carb-rich foods. A few weeks without these foods, and I have no issues at all.

pjbrunet2• 11 years ago

Repeated exposure to certain things cause an allergic reaction. Acne, fatigue, headaches, allergies come in many forms. I can't say for sure it was the sugar. All I can tell you is, I gave up sugar. (And other things, keep reading.) You come up with an educated guess and test it. In the case of the food allergist, he generally knew what foods caused acne problems for other people. Basically, you're using the process of elimination combined with an educated guess. If you completely eliminate sugar from your diet and you still have acne--then you know sugar isn't the problem. (I went to a dermatologist first, tried a number of prescriptions--no effect.) The food allergist worked. The food allergist explained, it's not the sugar by itself. The sugar is one component of a reaction, creating conditions for the acne. At the same time as giving up sugar, I also gave up dairy and yeast/bread. Maybe extreme but it worked. I went about two years without dairy! No ice cream, no cheese! Lots of salads and oatmeal LOL.

peteretep6• 11 years ago

Anecdata: I've stopped drinking alcohol (3 years), and I've stopped smoking (~10 years), but giving up candy, sweet pastry, or anything that's got significant refined sugar in was too much. I managed it for six months, and then broke down, then three months, and really I haven't tried again.

Interestingly, when I came at it from a slightly different angle ("mindful eating") and allowed myself as much of anything I wanted eaten mindfully, my natural desire tapered off, and I eat a lot less sweet stuff these days.

chrismealy2• 11 years ago

Nine months ago I quit sugar to see if that would help my chronic sinus congestion (it did). I had a killer headache for about two weeks, then I was fine. After my pants started falling down I noticed I'd lost a ton of weight. I lost 25 pounds and I still eat a ton of carbs.

peteretep6• 11 years ago

Yeah, I lost a ton of weight too. Felt great. Just wish I could have stuck to it.

doctorfoo2• 11 years ago

That's interesting - I have chronic congestion. How much sugar did you eat before you quit? What did "quitting" mean to you? (Just no sweets/cakes/biscuits, or did you go more extreme - no chinese food!?)

Sami_Lehtinen• 11 years ago

Caffeine? Got rid of it too or not?

peteretep6• 11 years ago

A few times, and using decaf coffee + caffeine pills, and then decreasing the dose of the caffeine pills - it's pretty pain free.

I have mostly settled on a triple-espresso in the morning and then a cup of tea at lunchtime as a reasonable and effective dosing that I don't think is causing me sleep or health problems.

Dewie2• 11 years ago

That wasn't mentioned, so why would you ask that?

300bps• 11 years ago

Until December 2013 I drank about 300 calories of soda per day. I also ate a good amount of candy. I have never had a weight problem in my life but at my yearly physical I found my triglycerides were 248 when they should be below 150.

I immediately stopped drinking soda, replacing it with water and unsweetened green tea. The first two weeks were rough, constantly craving a soda. Then it stopped and almost all the cravings were gone.

In my annual physical in December 2014 my triglycerides were 107. The only change I made in that year was to stop consuming soda/candy/desserts. Not consuming refined sugar was never a diet for me though; it was more of a permanent lifestyle change. I can't imagine having a soda now.

max-a• 11 years ago

could you elaborate how did you get into >mindful eating ?

peteretep6• 11 years ago

I read this book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Chocolate-yo-yo-dieting-weigh...

Aimed at middle-aged British women, but it was a good book.

yurymik2• 11 years ago

If you ever decide to try again, try replacing sugary snacks with meaty ones. Want a cookie? Eat a pepperoni stick. Want a slice of cake? Have some cheese. Fatty foods keep you satiated so the whole idea of sugar seem repulsive.

peteretep6• 11 years ago

I have tried both strict Paleo and the keto diet, and not found this to be true in practice

Jun8• 11 years ago

Your comment actually made me doubt myself so I looked up the correct plural form form anecdote: it's anecdotes or anecdota. But I saw that most probably you made a well-placed pun on the quip "The plural of anecdota is not data", commonly attributed to the economist Roger Brinner (http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...).

wutbrodo5• 11 years ago

"Anecdata" is a commonly-used colloquialism in fora like these (i.e. around people who are comfortable commonly using the word "data").

ekianjo• 11 years ago

Most of us prefer sweets over sour and bitter foods because, evolutionarily, our mesolimbic pathway reinforces that sweet things provide a healthy source of carbohydrates for our bodies. When our ancestors went scavenging for berries, for example, sour meant “not yet ripe,” while bitter meant “alert—poison!”

There is absolutely no basis/source for this. There are in nature a number of foods that are palatable and even taste good and which are extremely toxic/lethal to humans. I rather think the association between taste and proper food is largely coincidental more than anything else.

iopq5• 11 years ago

Actually it's because our taste is not a perfect poison detector, it's SUPPOSED to filter out foods that are good for you and those that aren't, but it's a heuristic model, it's not perfect.

GeneralMayhem• 11 years ago

Pitcher plants are also brightly colored and, I'm sure, look delicious to the insects they eat. Evolved heuristics aren't perfect.

adrianN• 11 years ago

Toxic berries are not toxic because they want to be eaten (by the species for whom they're toxic), whereas pitcher plants look tasty because they want insects to land on them.

guelo2• 11 years ago

It's all so confusing since sugar and carbs are in all fruits and vegetables and grains. What are we supposed to eat? I think all the "sugar is toxic and always bad" stuff is too simplistic and a better understanding will hopefully emerge.

onewaystreet2• 11 years ago

When it comes to food it's a good bet to assume that all absolutes are wrong.

pyre• 11 years ago

Isn't that statement itself an absolute?

vlasev5• 11 years ago

Actually, thermodynamics is absolute and adhering to the laws of thermodynamics is a certainty. You can estimate your daily caloric needs on your basal metabolic rate combined with a multiplication factor based on your daily activities. Then you can estimate how much you eat. Within a small error you will be consuming and expending known amounts of energy. Eat less than you use and you'll end up losing mass whether it's fat if you are more active or muscles and fat if you are inactive. It won't be reflected 1-to-1 in the scale measurements and your size but over the long run you'll lose weight.

fredsted3• 11 years ago

You're supposed to eat a moderate amount. Fruits and grains aren't that healthy. Most vegetables don't contain any carbs/sugar. Oh, and lots of meat.

guelo2• 11 years ago

Vegetables most certainly do contain sugar and carbs. The division between fruits and vegetables is more cultural than botanical or nutritional.

001sky• 11 years ago

A carbohydrate is any calorie not from fat or protein. You are eating them with all fresh foods, basically.

lisper2• 11 years ago

It's all about the quantities and the delivery mechanism. An apple has about 20g of sugar, about the same as half a can of coke. But two apples come with fiber and vitamins where a can of coke doesn't. That fiber will help you feel full. The coke won't. In fact, the pure refined sugar in a coke will make you feel hungrier.

Also, not all sugars are created equal. Fructose is much worse for you than glucose, so sucrose (which is half glucose and half fructose) is much worse for you than starch, which is long chains of glucose molecules. Also, because your body has to work to decompose starch into glucose, that too will make you feel full longer.

But by far the best thing you can do is replace sugar with non-saturated fat. Fat is not the enemy, sugar -- and fructose in particular -- is the enemy.

kristiandupont• 11 years ago

Fat is not the enemy, sugar -- and fructose in particular -- is the enemy

I tell this to myself and anyone who wants to listen so I believe it but it bothers me that this is just the current "fact". A while ago, the opposite was "true", and who knows what we will all be thinking in the future? That, I think, is the most depressing thing about nutrition advice.

harshreality2• 11 years ago

Most fruits don't have that much fructose to begin with.

https://thorfalk.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/healthy-fruits-fru...

huehue• 11 years ago

I might not be the average HN user, but I have to choke down ~4500 daily calories in order to maintain both weight and athletic performance, and doing so without simple sugars would be a pretty difficult task, not to mention if I suddenly started drinking oil instead as per advice.

Even at a standard 2500kcal diet half a can of coke still leaves enough room for micronutrient dense foods so I don't see what's the big deal.

Perhaps it's time to stop blaming it on foods.

DanBC• 11 years ago

Why is fructose "much worse for you" than sucrose?

thret• 11 years ago

If you can sit through 90 minutes of what feels a lot like a sermon, this is fairly informative - and I think (?) more or less accurate although there's one glaring math error you can't help but see. Sugar: The Bitter Truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

chillax• 11 years ago

Also check out this critisism:

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-...

Htsthbjig• 11 years ago

Sugars in fruits, vegetables and grains and crystallized sugar are in totally different forms.

Along with sugar, in a fruit you have fiber, basically cellulose and lignine, chitines in fungus like a champignon.

In fruits and vegetables you include thousands of different substances, like vitamins,anti oxidants and anti cancer, co enzymes, and enzymes, aminoacyds and dietary elements absent in crystallized sugar. Those are specially abundant in integral grains, specially if they are germinated, and vegetables , like Broccoli.

Lots of those could get destroyed by storage time, cooking or freezing. So we could believe that we eat well, but actually lack lots of needed substances.

That is the reason too much pre-process(pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs) food is not good for you long term.

Fiber is inert, and we humans could not process it, only some symbiotic cells in our intestines, but they have a very important function: they physically block the maximum sugar concentration release in the digestion.

Concentration is important because sugar is in fact toxic, too much of it will simply kill you. That is what a diabetic is, someone who does not natively release insulin to block the excessive sugar and could die as a result.

Your body needs to control glucose in your blood, too much glucose and you die, too much insulin and you die too because you need glucose.

When you eat artificial sugar dissolved in water, like in a soda, you disrupt the control mechanism of the body because it is so fast spike compared to normal fiber mixed sugar in a fruit that you disrupt the control process.

You are also not eating glucose, but fructose and tissues like those in the liver have to overwork. Some of those could only do one thing at a time, so they need to stop doing important things because you put the body in panic or emergency situation.

You create short euphoric behavior, but also over corrections, too much insulin, then the body enters panic depression, and so on.

SixSigma• 11 years ago

Yeah, it is the processing that does the damage. Notice those sugar containing items you considered are also fat free. What we have in processed foods is fat, sugar, starch and salt, reduced fibre. Not a natural combination.

ssijak4• 11 years ago

My personal experience is that cravings are gone after about 2-3 weeks after I cut simple sugars out (that includes all types of "healthy" sugars and even fruits). After that period I can watch people who gorge on cakes just like I watched people smoking after I quit and see that with different eyes and different thought process then when you are hooked too. It is pure addiction. Also, for me, if I fail and eat one portion of sweets after some time, my brain goes to the swirling path of explanation why it is ok to eat one more and tomorrow again and again... One more fix, and another...

Also when I do not eat sweets and junk for a few months your taste changes and can feel stuff you could not feel before. Once after a few month I ate one bag of small chips and almost puked from it how it tasted then after my taste "cleared".

Simple sugar is really more poisonous and addictive than some of the banned drugs, but the problem is that the most people do not think that way and most people know next to nothing about foods which is sad. Also when you go in to the shop there is almost not one thing without sugar in it, food industry is sick today, excpecially in USA where they are using high fructose corn syrup in every item they produce.

tspiteri• 11 years ago

Simple sugar is really more poisonous and addictive than some of the banned drugs

Saying that eating large amounts of simple sugar is worse than small amounts of some of the banned drugs is one thing. But saying that sugar is poisonous, or simply worse than banned drugs, is a little too much.

vlasev5• 11 years ago

That's especially true since our bodies essentially run on glucose. Supplying food closer to that state means faster utilization, which in turn helps a lot in situations of physical exertion. I would love to see the rat experiment repeated for athletic rats, where they train an hour a day or more.

ssijak4• 11 years ago

Ok, maybe a bad choice of wording, or maybe not if you think about it. Definition of poison "In the context of biology, poisons are substances that cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism." I think we could agree that eating 200-300gr cake filled with sugars IS causing disturbances (certainly more than a 150gr peace of fish and 150gr salad) that are bad and when you repeat eating that cake we all know where that leads to and what adverse effects it has on the body and mind. Compare that adverse and permanent damage that sugar can cause to damage that for example LSD was proven to cause (none). And you can go to jail for taking LSD, but on the other hand we subsidies sugar production and we empower bad behaviour of eating junk food in many ways. For example I watched yesterday that in UK many people who are not sick, they just are overeating and are overweight so they can not work now are given large amounts of money and housing. There are people that are using that help for decades and are not working, not loosing weight and not expected to, they are put in the category with really disabled people (which is really sad, this people can help themselves and people without limbs cant grow another.. or maybe it just shows the power of sugar addiction for some people).

Sammi3• 11 years ago

But large amounts of sugar will make you sick. Hence it's poison (in the large amounts we eat it in).

shiggerino2• 11 years ago

This, I can't imagine anyone reaching toxic levels of glucose in their bloodstream by oral means, as nausea and vomiting are symptoms of hyperglycemia, preventing further intake.

Though I might underestimate people's addiction, maybe there are IV glucose junkies out there now?

collyw5• 11 years ago

Everything is toxic in high enough doses, even water.

I notice that you changed the text in the parents post from "some banned drugs" to "banned drugs", making the common mistake of grouping them all together and treating them as one category. (To me this indicates a fair amount of ignorance on the subject.)

Heart disease is the biggest killer in the UK, and I am assuming many other developed countries, so it could be could be easily argued that anything that causes obesity should be labeled more harmful than say psilocybin mushrooms, which I believe have very low toxicity. Just because they are banned, doesn't make psilocybin mushrooms harmful.

colechristensen2• 11 years ago

The sickness is industrial food uses mass amounts of sugar, artificial sweeteners, fat, salt, and manufactured 'flavor' to hide what was otherwise made to taste terrible in the process of being engineered to be easy and shelf-stable (and to a degree to exploit human food-psychology).

Sugar, fat, and salt are all essential to a healthy properly functioning body – it is just that industrial foods give you these things in unhealthy proportions and in foods deprived of much of their original nutrition.

Artificial sweeteners can also do weird things to your taste and metabolism.

A big source of the problem? Caffeine. Not it's slightly addictive stimulant properties, but it's bitterness which has to be covered up by extreme amounts of sugar and carbonation.

zaroth• 11 years ago

I don't agree with your last point, but very much do agree that we become acclimated to the high levels of sugar. Just last year I was eating a lot more sweet than I do now, usually in the form of a Starbucks or a Jamba juice. I cut that out completely, (not caffeine, just caffeine from Starbucks) and haven't had anything from either place in many months.

Last week the kids needed a snack and we stopped at Jamba. I ordered my old regular, Orange Dream, which I split in 3, and when I took a sip of mine, I literally spit it out. It had somehow become disgustingly sweet to me, I couldn't even drink it, just threw it away.

As we were walking back to the car I was just shaking my head, thinking, how the hell could I have ever liked that?!

Lawtonfogle• 11 years ago

One I've noticed is that the more I eat dark chocolate (and the darker it is), the less I like milk chocolate.

ewams• 11 years ago

Do you not eat fruit at all? I do not eat sugar often (cakes, cookies, desert, candy, etc) but I have fruit all the time.

ssijak4• 11 years ago

I do not eat fruit when I am on a diet to lose weight. Just clean diet (meats, eggs, nuts, lots of vegetables, few types of oils and butters, mostly no dairy, no fruits (maybe a little of berries), no junks...) and exercise. Fructose is metabolised different than glucose and is bad to eat when trying to lose weight, you would not die of course or something like that, it would just slow the process. But otherwise when losing weight is not a primary goal I eat fruits, but max 1 fruit per day or equivalent of berries or other smaller fruits.

nether• 11 years ago

Simple sugar is really more poisonous and addictive than some of the banned drugs

This is ridiculous. Marathoners, mountain climbers, and other endurance athletes survive on simple sugars during their activities, mainly in the form of maltodextrin energy gels. Maltodextrin is classified as "complex," but it's metabolized so quickly it might as well be simple. That's why it's used in sports.

collyw5• 11 years ago

I think using these during intense activity is probably somewhat different from sitting in front of the couch eating chocolate every night. I personally don't have much of a sweet tooth these days, but I do get cravings for sugar when I do a long bike ride, or climb a mountain.

signa11• 11 years ago

my personal experience in this regard has been that after i took up running (3 times a week, approx 3-4 miles each), my sugar intake has dropped to very close to zero (with an occasional once-month-type deal of a single candy). even those colas with 'zero-sugar' appear too sweet, and the regular ones are just bleh...

overall, a good thing i hope :)

sfjailbird• 11 years ago

Same experience. When I run regularly (one to two times a week) I have no desire for sugary or fatty foods. Instead I crave fresh fruit and vegetables.

I am sure this is a type of hibernation reflex, where, with inactivity, the body wants stuff that packs a lot of energy for storage (dense with fat and/or sugar).

Consequently, I focus only on getting exercise and let my diet take care of itself - it always does.

withdavidli• 11 years ago

Sugar withdrawl is real

So true. It happens to me within 1-2 days of cutting out refined sugar. Headaches and sluggishness, but goes away within the week. My dad tried it and got bone/joint aches. He got into a habit of eating a bowl of ice cream every night, I think it's better now, but when eating ice cream helps your bones not ache...

Withdrawls to certain foods happen so quickly. Middle of last year I switched from water to tea, was drinking like 6 bottles a day and didn't think anything of it. Weekend hit, didn't have tea in the house and got headaches the entire time. Caffiene withdrawl x_X. I don't even depend on caffiene (no coffee kind of guy).

johnward5• 11 years ago

I don't really notice withdrawal. I do have cravings for about a week then they go away. What I really notice when I'm on a keto diet is if I have a cheat meal with carbs I get a kind of high feeling in my brain. Seems like some kind of dopamine response because I equate the feeling to how I felt taking Wellbutrin once (which has a dopamine effect). Drinking alcohol has even a worse effect. Where I could normally drink 4-5 rum and coke before really feeling drunk. Now two of them will make me drunk enough that I wouldn't drive.

static_noise4• 11 years ago

Carbohdyrates like starches are polymeric sugars. They are easily broken down by enzymes. They don't taste very sweet unless they are very short. Between white flour and glucose powder there is little difference except for the taste. Demonizing sugar is of little use when the other carbohydrates are ignored.

If you have cravings you should limit your intake of total carbohydrates per hour (starting with sugars and simple carbohydrates). Complex carbohydrates should also be kept low. Protein and fat are not too bad. The body can use both sugar and fat for fuel. Everybody has a different body and different needs depending on genes and activities. Don't demonize food. Sugar as such is not evil.

Try a fruit - but not more than a handfull at a time.

Drink a glass of soda - but not more than once a week and preferably before doing exercise.

Eat a bag of chips - on friday with a group of friends.

vlasev5• 11 years ago

Between white flour and glucose powder there is little difference except for the taste.

That's not the only difference. Simpler carbs are processed faster than more complex ones. This plays a big role in the body's chemistry after eating.

static_noise4• 11 years ago

What I wanted to express is that white flour which is usally used in industrial food is a simple carbohydrate and its digestion is so fast that it doesn't really make a difference compared to pure glucose.

Complex carbs are less bad - but still, eating too much of them is not good.

Sammi3• 11 years ago

Fibers (very long/complex carbonhydrates) actually retard the intestines ability to process simpler carbonhydrates. That's why it's ok to eat a lot of fruit, cause they have the right mix of simple and complex ones.

static_noise4• 11 years ago

Yes, I forgot fiber. In Europe they are not counted as carbohydrates because they are indigestible. In the US you can subtract fiber content from total carbohydrates. Yes, fiber helps slowing digestion down and thereby reduces the height of spikes in the blood sugar level. But No, it's not OK for everybody to eat a very high amount of fruit because it may still be too much easily digestable sugar.

Fruit as such is no saint - partially because our current crops are optimized for sweet taste.

mrfusion• 11 years ago

I've always heard that but I've never been able to find an explanation of how fiber actually does that and to what degree?

could I take fiber supplements before eating dessert to minimize the impact, lower the calories absorbed?

agumonkey2• 11 years ago

Recently tried to avoid processed food, and it was almost a revelation.

Raw food with no additives (oil, vinegar, any kind of sauce):

  - is quite rich in taste, that taste is good AND bad
  - meaning it's pleasurable but your brain is gonna be sick of very fast.
  - you can't over eat

This resonnates with R. Lustig talks [2] IIRC saying that processed food tricks your brain into "hunger" by coating things into fatty sugary content.

----

  [1] I don't know how well founded his ideas are
  [2] you won't eat 5 carrots or 1 kg of salad

WARNING: May be completely subjective bias, or just biological clock changing my senses.

saiya-jin3• 11 years ago

extra virgin olive oil, or good balsamic vinegar is great addition to any +- raw food... in fact, especially oil helps digestion of vitamins soluble only in fats.

oliv__• 11 years ago

Give me a break. The paternalism on HN sometimes...

cssmoo• 11 years ago

I was fortunate enough to be broken during a tonsilectomy. I woke up and couldn't stand anything sweet at all and it made me feel instantly sick. It has baffled many a doctor but they reckon its down to the anaesthetic and/or oxygen management. Yay to brain damage...

Unfortunately I was hooked on sugar at the same time so cue epic battle of addiction vs hatred of what I was addicted to.

Took two weeks to get over the cravings. Now the sweetest thing I can eat is a banana. Lost 35kg in six months though which cured a couple of problems I had. Dumping sugar albeit forcibly is one of the best things that happened to me.

shiggerino2• 11 years ago

Chocolate capital of the world being in the United States? I take exception to that.

creepyelemental• 11 years ago

That made me laugh, too. It isn't like you could even say it's true in a business or evil corporation sense, either. Nestle have that covered.

saiya-jin3• 11 years ago

Yeah stroke me too as very US centric view. From european view it's more about Belgium & Switzerland (for me personally Suisse, which has better chocolate, Belgium rules in pralines)

johnward5• 11 years ago

I'm not even sure you can call what hershey makes chocolate.

vidarh• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure a lot of what they make can't legally be marketed as chocolate in Europe.

cylinder2• 11 years ago

Especially Hershey, PA, home of the worst chocolate in the world, Hershey's. Yuck.

So tired of Americans proclaiming everything here as the greatest in the world / world champions / best in the world - far from it! And I'm American.

205guy• 11 years ago

Anyone with a kid knows that the body's first addiction is sugar.

dschiptsov3• 11 years ago

It will become even more weak and dull, because the consciousness it produces is to dump to learn how a carbohydrate metabolism works and what are the sources of glucose and other simple sugars.

The idea is about the balance - proper ratios - not too much, not too little - just enough. The idea as old as humanity.

The problem is not the sugar, it is wrong eating habits, developed due to some methods of the food industry which, of course, tries to maximize its profits, including aggressive marketing of products with to high salt and/or sugar or fat concentration. This is what is wrong - amounts, concentrations and ratios.

The more correct answer is - avoid packaged, processed foods in favor of simple cooked raw foods, mostly veg. It is what some Nepalese and Tibetan tribes (actually everywhere around the world) do.

Also consumption of carbohydrates or any other substances cannot be considered seriously or studied without taking into account the behavioral patterns. If a typical couch potato is eating high calorie, high fat meals, intended for a docker or a peasant after full day of intense work, well, no matter sugar, he or she will end up in a well-chair. Same would happen to a vegan docker (there is zero of vegan Sherpas in a whole Himalaya).

Balance is the key word. It is ancient word. It is a cornerstone of the Yoga (which, surprise! is not about wearing cute yoga pants and forming fingers into mudras). The modern word is homeostasis has the same meaning.

prostoalex3• 11 years ago

Obesity is most prevalent in countries without overdeveloped food supply chains and food marketing apparatus.

According to http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/23/obesity-in-world-... "the top ten most obese nations were overwhelmingly pacific islands, with American Samoa taking the top spot with almost 75% of the population reported as obese and Nauru and the Cook Islands coming in at second and third places with 71.1% and 63.4% obesity respectively."

As far as couch potatoes, the closest research that's available is this - http://www.economist.com/node/9527126 and if you look at the list of top "couch potato" countries, some have high obesity rates, and some dates, so the correlation is inconclusive at best.

dschiptsov3• 11 years ago

Obesity is most prevalent in countries without overdeveloped food supply chains and food marketing apparatus.

My eyes are telling me a different story.) But I live in Asia most of the time.

huffingtonpost? economist? research?) Give me a link to something on coursera or edX at least.)

Most of diseases are imbalances in homeostasis. The causes of such imbalances could be genetic or acquired. Most of the later ones could be called habits or conditioning, and could be treated by appropriate CBTs - by corresponding changes of behavior and habits to return back to the balance.

This is the basis of ancient medical sciences (at least in India), which served humanity very well, except, of course, the cases of bacteria and virus caused diseases, which is quite different kind of an imbalance due to activities of an external parasite.

There is a good starting point - https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition

Keep in mind that it is slightly biased by being "American middle class".)

b3n• 11 years ago

I don't think you should read too much into the obesity rates of the pacific islands, their small populations means you're mathematically more likely to get extreme results. It wouldn't surprise me if the nations with the least obesity rates were also the pacific islands.

collyw5• 11 years ago

Mexico has a higher rate of obesity than the US according to some reports I have read, but having been to both, there is something more I have noticed.

Yes, you see a lot of moderately fat Mexicans, but when you go to the US, there are people that get big on a level that you don't see in Mexico. I am fairly sure the figures would reverse if it was "morbidly obese" being measured rather than "clinically obese".

ilija1392• 11 years ago

So what happens?

roel_v• 11 years ago

Does anyone know if artificial sweeteners (aspartame etc) have the same effects? Why can't I find any recipes for cooking with aspartame instead of sugar? (I tried but couldn't find any)

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

Aspartame is much, much sweeter than sugar (it actually has the same calories/unit mass as sugar) and sugar does more than provide sweetness in recipes (especially chewier things like cookies). Aspartame also degrades at baking temperatures. So it just isn't a good substitute.

Maybe try sucralose, which you can just swap in for the same amount of sugar (Splenda is a famous brand).

taternuts• 11 years ago

Splenda does have a version of the product specifically for cooking - it seems to have a lot of 'filler' to get it to the similar consistency and volume of regular sugar (1 cup of sugar being as sweet as 1 cup of the cooking Splenda). That being said, it's best to just avoid the stuff when you can. I've found eating things with tons of Splenda in it can be pretty gross - I experimented with it a bit years ago when I first started going low carb and had bad sugar cravings, but wouldn't touch that stuff nowadays.

saiya-jin3• 11 years ago

simple advice - stay away from that chemical cr*p

fizgig• 11 years ago

I'm into keto. You should give xylitol a try, as it's bulk and texture match table sugar closely and can be used interchangeably. It can cause gastric issues for some in certain quantities.

Debates on /r/keto rage all the time on whether artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response. And if it does, whether or not it is a chemical or psychological response.

The science on the topic seems to be nacent at this point, at least from this layman's view.

The most common recommendation is to simply give up sweets entirely, not just carbs. As one hooked on the Monster Zero line of power drinks, I have a tough time with this myself.

gabemart• 11 years ago

My sugar cravings don't feel like cravings, they feel more like hunger. I can eat a delicious meal of whole foods and be full to the point that it's physically uncomfortable, but I still feel ravenously hungry for sugar. It's like I have two separate appetites.

I am currently in the process of trying to quit sugar.

acd• 11 years ago

The fast food knows this that's why you get free soda refills so you will back to their restaurant and spend more money. I think there is also a similar addiction to fat which would also make evolutionary sense if you were starving. Personally I get addicted to potato chips as long as the bag lasts I wont stop eating.

cma• 11 years ago

In Brazil you don't get free refills. Is the industry conspiracy just passing on free money there?

LBarret• 11 years ago

it is all about value perception. Brazil is less educated/brain-washed in terms of fast food.

scaraffe• 11 years ago

If sugar is bad, why are we wired to eat it more and remember it's taste? Isn't evolution supposed make us live longer?

AmrMostafa• 11 years ago

I think it's because our ancestors didn't have easy access to food in the way we do now. Our bodies are wired to consume and store energy which are necessary for survival in times of starvation.

TomGullen• 11 years ago

First of all, sugar isn't bad, it's bad in the quantities we generally eat it in modern diets. People also generally don't recognise that sugar you put in your coffee is pretty much the same as the carbohydrates in your pasta.

Evolutionary wise, in palaeolithic times sugar was probably very rare (you'd come across a bush of fruit every now and then perhaps but not all the time). Sugar is something extremely beneficial for your body if there's a lack of it in your diet and you're in a daily survival situation, it's pretty much pure energy. So evolutionary wise, when you come across a patch of sugary fruit it's beneficial to eat it all!

Nowadays we're surrounded by sugar and our diets are saturated with it. The food industries are advertising lies to us all the time. Seen those green cans of Coke with 'healthy' sugar in them? Pretty much complete bullshit!

haffi112• 11 years ago

You could apply this argument to anything addictive, such as smoking...

socksy• 11 years ago

Evolution is "supposed" to make the genome live longer. Managed to recreate? Cool. You've served your evolutionary purpose.

ajuc• 11 years ago

It was scarce, and starvation was more common threat than diabetes.

Also evolution doesn't care if you are happy, healthy, live long, etc. It only cares how good are you at spreading your genes. We only live long because grandparents make kids more probable to live long enough to procreate.

capisce• 11 years ago

We are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers: http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessma...

Also, evolution doesn't care about life span, beyond what is necessary to ensure the survival of genes across multiple generations.

shamney2• 11 years ago

it isn't bad for us at normal levels of modern consumption

paganel• 11 years ago

I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but quotes like the one below give me new and increased empathy for rats and their cause. I know that without us killing them "for science" lots of drugs and medical treatments wouldn't have been discovered, is just that seeing us, humans, forcing anxiety-related feelings on other beings makes me, well, a little anxious.

Naloxone treatment also appeared to make the rats more anxious, as they spent less time on an elevated apparatus that lacked walls on either side.

Monuments dedicated to lab rats like this one (http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1hhyta/a_monument_to_l...) make me just a little bit happier on the inside.

Lio• 11 years ago

Just to be pedantic, that's a monument to lab mice, not lab rats, for their use in genetic research experiments.

If you know what happen to mice used in these experiments then I'm sure you'll agree they deserve their monument.

It's a bit worse than anxiety-related feelings but we do need things like cures to cancers, cystic fibrosis, etc. so IMHO ...it has to be done.

So we try to do it as little as possible and minimise suffering as much as possible. Again, IMHO, it's also one of the ethical arguments for why all information from sequencing experiments should be in the public domain.

shamney2• 11 years ago

why the obsession with cutting out a harmless and tasty part of a normal diet?

spain• 11 years ago

In my experience I cut out a lot of candy, sugars, and sweets from my diet at a very young age and haven't looked back, so I don't have that much experience with the "cravings" or withdrawal symptoms people describe (I don't drink coffee either). I like to believe the reason for this is that my tongue was a little more sensitive than normal and so I often got "overwhelmed" by sugary foods and simply started avoiding them (I still do). Grownups used to tease me about this whenever candy came up, they were flabbergasted that a child would reject candy as a reward or present for doing something. What? A kid that wouldn't do anything for a candy bar? Impossible.

I also avoid soft drinks like Coca-Cola because they produce an almost allergic reaction with my tongue (it aches for the rest of the day) though that might just be the preservatives. As a result I mostly stick to "vanilla" foods and drinks as I like to call them, like plain water and milk.

I might be wrong and still be getting too much unhealthy sugars and stuff from other food, but I'd like to think that it's not so severe since I live in Finland and not the US. I'm also slightly underweight so there's that, though I suspect that might be due to my genes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sort of glad they way things turned out in my case.

rthomas62• 11 years ago

There's been some research that suggests that children, unlike adults, have no limit to the amount of sweetness they will tolerate/enjoy in a food. Maybe your sweetness limit just kicked in earlier than your peers.

oAlbe• 11 years ago

I stopped drinking any kind of fizzy drinks for more than a year now and I don't miss them. Before stopping I used to drink three to six glasses of coke (around 200ml per glass) every day and making two plus two I realized this habit was going to do me harm sooner or later. I wasn't fat nor I had health problems. I just wanted to do something healthy for myself.

I remember that it wasn't hard at all for me to stop. For the first week I kind of craved it, but not even that much. Every time it happened I just started thinking "This is going to make you feel bad and guilty" and the craving went away. It must be said that at the time I was on a diet plan and I was practicing running, counting every single calorie I ate and every single calorie I burnt. Thinking that it took me twenty minutes of running to burn 250Kcals and that a single glass could have given me back almost half of them (105Kcal for a glass of Coca-Cola) was a very powerful motivation.

andy_ppp• 11 years ago

I've decided to give up sugar after reading this. I get the feeling a lot of the interest in eating food is down to sugar rewards. I guess I feel that response of boredom after eating a no carb or sugar meal rather than a small feeling of pleasure is something I should get used to - I don't have to have a reward after every item of food I eat and I hope giving up sugar will make the other rewards I get from doing a good piece of work or say accomplishing giving up sugar for 30 days that much more rewarding.

iriche• 11 years ago

"These are extreme experiments, of course. We humans aren’t depriving ourselves of food for 12 hours and then allowing ourselves to binge on soda and doughnuts at the end of the day."

Have they talked to anyone working with IT? ;)

ujjwal_wadhawan• 11 years ago

I bet this video will make you think - Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

steveplace• 11 years ago

Obligatory rebuttal whenever this video is posted

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

richardwigley• 11 years ago

The article summaries as 'we eat too much sugar', 'here's some science that suggests it can be bad in rodents', and finally 'maybe you should swear off sugar'.

I agree, we eat too much sugar. However, it is a step to go from rodents to humans and they have not addressed it.

We're apes that lived in Africa. We spent a lot of time in trees eating fruit all year around.

We have eyes that are adapted to find fruit - so much so that while most of our furry mammal relatives, like rodents tested in the article, are red-green color blind (dichromats) [1] we are mainly trichromatic, color vision. Trichromatic helps you to pick out a red fruit from a green background [2]. So, for some reason, our ancestors that could see fruit, did better than those that didn't, which was not the case with rodents.

I suggest we evolved on different diet than what rodents evolved on. Before comparing sugar to an addiction you should reproduce the results on primates - I'd be happy to be in the control group and snack on a Snickers bar ;-)

[1] http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatVision.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_color_vision

thro1237• 11 years ago

I can't find a source quickly -- but I remember reading that many years back (like when we were apes in Africa), the sweetest fruit was probably as sweet as a carrot. We increased the sweetness of fruits through selective breeding to current levels.

cylinder2• 11 years ago

And I imagine the fruits wouldn't be eaten as ripe as they are now - people prefer sweeter fruits, and they sweeten as they ripen. I prefer more sour and tart fruit, so I tend to prefer less ripened fruit.

wnevets• 11 years ago

Not to mention a lot of fruit are loaded with fiber which reduces the glycemic spike.

saosebastiao• 11 years ago

That doesn't explain blackberries which have only been cultivated in the last 100 years, due to more advanced farming techniques. They have been seen as more of a scourge for centuries, because of their knack for strangling other cultivated plants.

rthomas62• 11 years ago

This looks like a pretty good article on that subject: http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

A quick browsing indicates that while our modern fruits are all domesticated, there are plenty of wild, sweet, and large African fruits. Apparently some modern wild berries also have similar sweetness profiles as their domesticated counterparts.

The article points out that one prominent difference that does seem to exist is that wild fruits are harder to eat, due to big seeds, thick and tough exteriors, and lower water content. So you might have to do a lot more work to get the good stuff with wild fruits.

I've eaten wild Muscadine grapes in Georgia that someone found in the woods (I'm not sure if this counts as a wild fruit or not due to potential Native American cultivation, but close enough imo), and they were fairly sweet. They had thick skins and giant seeds in them, so they weren't great actually, but they were sweet.

jdub• 11 years ago

They're also talking about processed and refined sugars, not naturally occurring sugars.

blparker4• 11 years ago

After reading these comments, I'm more confused than entering. Throughout the years, we've constantly been subjected to advertising from fad diets claiming low-fat or low-carb or no-grain or no-sugar or low-whatever is the magic elixir to being healthy and losing weight. It seems that every nutritionist you talk to has a subjective bias as to the key. I understand that the body is an incredibly complex machine, and it's probably impossible to distill things down into a set of manageable steps, but I would just like to know what to eat, what not to eat, some simple science as to why, and not have bullshit or biases injected into the conversation.

zemvpferreira• 11 years ago

I think Michael Pollan summed it up best: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

tomjen32• 11 years ago

Citation needed. Especially about the mostly plants part. We know humans couldn't have gotten the brains we have without eating meat.

Also Aspatarme is likely less dangerous than sugar.

blparker4• 11 years ago

What I've been able to gather over the years (and in this thread) and pretty much what I've incorporated into my diet is the following:

  - Avoid processed foods
  - Avoid added sugars
  - Limit fruit intake (especially those high in fructose) and especially avoid fruit juices
  - Avoid simple carbs (e.g., bread, tortillas, flour) and look to lower carb intake in general (~300g daily limit seems excessive)
  - Eat more meals composed of higher fat/protein and a vegetable (e.g., protein and a vegetable)
  - Fats aren't as bad as people believe

When it's all said and done, I think you're right though. The fact of the matter is we all love carbs and sugar way too much. We need to eat more plants.

wutbrodo5• 11 years ago

People looking for an overriding simple comprehensive rule (or small set of rules) are destined to be confused and disappointed, because we simply don't have one with any degree of confidence. That being said, there are a fair few rules that are common to many of these conflicting diet plans that don't add up to a comprehensive diet plan but can still be applied to your existing diet. See the rest of this thread for examples, but it's _mostly_ common-sense stuff (that is still widely not-followed) like "limit quickly-absorbed sugar/simple-carb intake", "eat lots of vegetables", "eat a hefty amount of good fats (like in fish)", "eat a fixed amount of protein relative to bodyweight". Note that I'm using vague terms here, but a lot of the quantity terms that I'm using are actually directly quantified with not too much variation.

You basically can't go wrong sticking to the simpler rules that are more well-supported, and don't stress too much about the under-determined parts of your diet. For my part (and someone else could follow the same rules and end up with a fairly different diet), I basically eat a certain amount of lean meat or fish, occasional fruits, a middling amount of nuts, a medium amount of carbs with fiber (mostly beans and pulses), and backfill an assload of vegetables. I don't eat simple carbs and do eat the occasional dessert but treat like a special occasion that I know is terrible for me (e.g. like drinking 5+ drinks in a night: I'd be fine not doing at all, I'm aware that it's bad for me, but I don't limit myself to NEVER doing it ever).

blparker4• 11 years ago

Well said.

finnjohnsen2• 11 years ago

I gave up sugar products 3 years. (30 march 2012).

I've had no physical cravings or reactions what so ever. Not the first hours, days or weeks, nothing, ever.

I don't care about the marginal stuff though. Sugar is added to a lot of non-intuitive products. My rule of thumb is - if it is highly probable that the product wouldn't be around if it weren't for its sugar, I don't eat it.

Not everyone has the 'physical addicted' genes I guess. I suspect my "secret" is that I don't allow considering sweets to stay in my brain for even the smallest amount of time. I look away and think about something else. Start a dummy conversation with someone, look at the magazines, pick up my smart phone.

What happens to your brain when you stop eating sugar

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