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EventsSugar: Hiding in Plain Sight
Here’s a four-minute video on sugar, movie script by Prof. Robert Lustig. In just a few weeks it’s had almost 200,000 views.
The video is short and simple – and mostly for beginners. But it’s worth four minutes.
I object to the over-simplification that fructose is a problem while glucose is the body’s best fuel. Glucose – in too large amounts and easily digestible forms – may also be a problem. And the video disregards the fact that fat is an excellent fuel with many advantages.
Fat and glucose – coming from real unprocessed food – are both good fuels for the body. Fat is a great basic fuel, that goes a long way. Glucose is a rocket fuel for peak performances.
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By all means read the rest of this site and the facts and science behind this approach, and then come back and tell us why you disagree with it; but I am afriad that an appeal to authority simply won't work with us - we want hard facts and science, we want reports in peer reviewed journals. Telling us that you've met someone or read their books and that we should trust you simply won't wash.
Some of us have been here for years and it gets very tiring to have vegans and fruitarians bomb in on us out of nowhere and start lecturing us on why we're wrong. Some might even say that its rude to do such a thing. I would certainly never bomb in on Colin Campbell's website and start lecturing his adherants about an LCHF diet !
Based on reviewing science for a decade now, I converted from a plant-heavy low-fat diet to a low-carb, high-fat diet heavy in animal fat, bone broth, meat on the bone and fermented vegetables. So I changed my mind on the basis of assessing the science.
Campbell throws the word "fraud" at low-carb. He is in essence calling Dr. Eenfeldt and others criminals, and so do you by pushing the book as "The Truth." That bears a very heavy onus of proof. Let's see it. All the book offers is dubious interpretation of ambiguous data. His case to prove fraud would be laughed out of a court of law and should be laughed out of the court of public opinion.
On the other side of the ledger there are reams of studies supporting LCHF in relation to weight management, avoiding and managing disease, metabolic functioning, mitochondrial health and ketones as metabolic signals. Further, there is the clinical experience of countless numbers. Then there is the athletic performance research and experience of Drs. Phinney, Volek and Noakes and the cancer research of Dr. Seyfried and others. Even the US military is turning to research on ketones to enhance human performance.
There is my own significant weight loss, health improvement and reversal of aging signs converting from a no-processed foods diet that was heavy in plants and low fat, to my current keto-LCHF diet. My HbA1c dropped to 4.7, for example. Read the research on HbA1c and various diseases and retention of neural mass, for example. The only downside I've experienced to the keto-LCHF diet is for extreme energy burst athletics, such as intense mountain biking through steep up-and-down terrain for more than an hour, which I easily manage by having some carbs to reload the glycogen buffer and no more. A handful of nuts does the job.
Finally, no one here is saying no one should eat a plant-based diet or that everyone needs to be on an LCHF diet. Most of us here have found we do much better on LCHF and so wish to gain a better understanding of why it works so well for us and how it might be tweaked in ways that are healthful and enjoyable.
One thing many of us have found---by actually measuring blood glucose and monitoring weight effects---is that eating a lot of fruit has the same effect as eating added sugar. That is empirical evidence. Nothing Colin Campbell says in his little book (it is short) alters the blood sugar measurements I take after eating a lot of fruit. Moreover, there are plausible digestive and metabolic explanations as to why blood sugar might shoot up non-linearly after some person-specific threshold of fruit consumption has been met. So the claim that eating unlimited fruit is okay has an evidentiary burden to be met, and I have not seen it. Bare appeals to food "as God made it" or unexplained fibre "mitigation" does not cut it. I have real evidence of glycemic effect and the response is bare rhetoric.