When the mainstream finally comes around to something, I guess it’s big news.
Last week, MSN.com trumpeted a “new study” that showed “sugar is definitely toxic.” Why did we need a “new” study on this, as I have been telling my readers this for years. For instance, see this article from 2008, which is just one of many.
Looking back through the my archives, in 1998 I wrote about the misguided trend toward low-fat, low-cholesterol diets, calling it a “medical media conspiracy” that may “be the most successful and complete deception of our time.”:
Incidentally, America is not getting fatter inside or outside because of fat consumption. Americans are getting fatter because of sugar and/or carbohydrate consumption. Fat does not make fat. Sugar makes fat. While America is avoiding fat like the Black Plague, they are consuming sugar like there is no tomorrow.
And I see in my notes more on this from the 1980s.
For the new study, Dr. Robert Lustig, from the department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, collected diet data from 43 Hispanic and African-American children aged 8-18. After compiling detailed food questionnaires, Lustig and colleagues designed a special diet for each child that eliminated sugar but matched the number of calories each ate each day.
After nine days, the children went from being insulin resistant (a precursor state to developing diabetes), to insulin sensitive. The children’s overall fasting blood sugar levels dropped by 53 percent, along with the amount of insulin their bodies produced since insulin is normally needed to break down carbohydrates and sugars. Their triglyceride and LDL levels also declined and they showed less fat in their liver.
Unfortunately for the study participants, Lustig replaced their sugar with starches. He admits the diet he gave them wasn’t healthy. Just think how much their blood sugar would have dropped had they been fed real food. From the article:
The diet he provided the children isn’t considered ideal from a health perspective — starches are still a considerable source of calories and can contribute to weight gain. But Lustig relied on the starches to prove a point in a scientific study — that the effect sugar has on the body goes beyond anything connected to its calories and to weight. “I’m not suggesting in any way, shape or form that we gave them healthy food,” he says. “We gave them crappy food, sh***y food, processed food — and they still got better. Imagine how much even better they would have gotten if we didn’t substitute and took the sugar out. Then they would have gotten even better yet. That’s the point.”
But then the article goes off the rails.
Some experts are concerned, however, that the findings may shift attention away from what they consider to be the more fundamental issue — that overall, we’re eating too much. “Too much calorie intake is still the biggest problem,” says Dr. Mark Corkins, professor of pediatrics at University of Tennessee Health Science Center and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on nutrition. He notes that the study involved children who were obese already and consuming too many calories.
As I have also told you, it’s not how much we eat, but what we eat. We are suffering from what I call full belly starvation. I base this on the fact that the standard American diet is high in calories and very low in nutrition. This is the diet that builds an obese population, a sick population, and — above all — ensures an early death.
Americans are consuming a diet of high-calorie, low nutrition food. The opposite, a low-calorie, high nutrition diet of whole foods, is the road to good health, longevity and weight loss.
Below is a good chart to go by. The object is to choose foods with the highest nutrient density while avoiding the lowest nutrient density foods as much as possible.
Highest nutrient density = 100 points
Lowest nutrient density = 0 points
Points
| Type of Food | Examples |
100 | Dark Leafy Vegetables | Kale, mustard greens, collard greens, Swiss chard, watercress, spinach, arugula |
95 | Other Green Vegetables | Romaine, bok choy, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, string beans, snow peas, green beans |
50 | Non-Green Nutrient-Rich Vegetables | beets, eggplant, mushrooms, onions, radishes, bean sprouts, red and yellow bell peppers, radicchio, cauliflower, tomatoes, artichokes, raw carrots |
45 | Fresh Fruits | strawberries, blueberries, other berries, plums, oranges, melons, kiwifruit, apples, cherries, pineapple, peaches, pears, grapes, bananas |
40 | Beans | lentils, kidney, great northern, adzuki, black, pinto, split peas, edamame, chickpeas |
30 | Raw Nuts And Seeds | sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flaxseed, almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts |
25 | Colorful Starchy Vegetables | butternut and other squash, sweet potatoes, corn, turnips |
20 | Whole Grains/ White Potatoes | old-fashioned oats, barley, brown and wild rice, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, bulgur, whole-grain bread, white potatoes |
18 | Fish | |
15 | Fat-Free Dairy | |
15 | Eggs | |
15 | Wild Meat And Fowl | |
8 | Full-Fat Dairy | |
6 | Red Meat | |
6 | Refined Grain Products | |
3 | Cheese | |
1 | Refined Oils | |
0 | Refined Sweets | Cookies, cakes, candy, soda |
