Coca-Cola and sugar

DH went on a low carb diet (though I do wonder about his intake of free cake at work when he's starving in the afternoon because he's had no breakfast, provided by fellow workers ), but he can't have been eating fewer calories than he had been eating (or rather, than he needs) because he hasn't lost weight.

But I do think you do have to be very wary of a paper where the scientists have a link with he food industry. Or drug industry of course. But they have to declare the interests now by law I believe.

There are different types of carbohydrates too - the sugar ones which are broken down at once and provide instant energy for exertion and the slow-release ones that fuel you more slowly and for longer. The sugary type get all the publicity at the moment.

I'm not defending anyone wilma and I didn't say you had said anything about lies. I was using a figure of speech.

Why would he not have breakfast Bags? Low-carbing normally involves a good breakfast; eggs, bacon, full-fat yoghurt etc.
I honestly can't say whether I am eating fewer calories than two years ago because I just eat as much protein, fat and above-the-ground vegetables and leave out the carbs.

Should have been ...as I want and leave out the carbs.
I think the point about burning carbs first and leaving fat is that if people are constantly topping up on sugary drinks and sugary fatty snacks then they won't burn off the fat. If there are no carbs to burn off first then the fat goes. This is obviously a gross oversimplification of complex processes.

So it is the constant topping-up that does the damage. I agree with that.

Yes I think if you look at what has changed over the last thirty years, it would be a) the availability processed food and drink with hidden sugar and b) constant grazing. I think because I am only in the UK for about eight weeks a year now, that I really notice all the fast food outlets and the people constantly eating when out and about. We used to get told off for being greedy, didn't we? Now I hear lots of "oh go on you deserve it", "I need cake", "treat yourself" etc.
France isn't that that far behind in the obesity stakes, but it is still rare to see people eating between meals and in most cafés round here you couldn't get a cake if you wanted one.

”Sorry Crun, I don't quite follow what you are saying there. I put on weight slowly and over several years during the menopause without changing my diet or exercise regime. It was only when I went on a low-carb diet that the weight came off, easily and consistently over a year.”

As I said above, your own experience is not relevant to my argument because you’re exercising, and I’m referring to people who do no exercise.

”Trouble is, we, the consumer, have very little idea as to how to separate the added stuff out from the naturally-occurring stuff.” Read the labels.

” So what does the Government mean when it lectures us on "cutting out sugar?".” SACN report on carbohydrates and health.

”Does it mean cutting out added sugar?” YES!
”Cutting out tomato soup and beans, which have added sugar? ” YES!
”Cutting out fruit, which has fructose? ” NO!
”Cutting out milk, containing lactose? ” NO!
”Cutting out bread and spuds, containing carbs that turn to sugar? ” NO!
”What exactly does the Govt want us to do? Does anyone know? ” YES!
”Does the Govt itself know? ” YES!

” the information doesn't make sense or conflicts with some other message. And sugar is just the latest culprit in a long line of "bad" foods. First there was saturated fat, then salt, now sugar.” These are not conflicting messages, you can reduce added sugar and fat and salt.

”Fruit, another unprocessed food branded as a "goodie" is now no longer so great in the eyes of many due to its high sugar content” Not in the eyes of the SACN.

”Even nuts have come under scrutiny due to their being high in fat.” You can easily eat lots of nuts without getting too much fat.

” I don't think Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast will harm a child.” They contain seven times the recommended amount of sugar, but as Ben Goldacre said : “There’s no such thing as an unhealthy meal, only an unhealthy diet.

” Re sugar and healthy eating, she said what I have been saying all along, that schools are telling kids that too much sugar is bad for them right through from year one. They all know perfectly well.” And yet you’re still advocating education as a solution to the problem?

” Taken to the absurd it would suggest that you could get all 2000 calories a day from fizzy drinks and as long as you exercised them off sgain it would be fine.” Reductio ad absurdum, eating a truckload of fresh fruit and veg would also be fine.

” According to this publication, it didn't matter really what you ate as long as you didn't exceed 1000 calories per day.” Sudden death associated with very low calorie weight reduction regimens.

” if the total number of calories taken in exceeds the total number of calories used, the net result will be that the excess is stored as fat and weight gain.” If the total number of calories taken in exceeds the total number of calories used, the body is forced to make a decision: does it store the excess as fat, or excrete it. I’ve never seen any information about how the body makes that decision.

The basics of healthy living aren’t much in dispute, and don’t change much:

Eat plenty of variety
Cut down on added salt fat and sugar.
Eat plenty of fruit and veg.
Get plenty of exercise.

The problem is that people are always looking for easy answers, and there’s always a quack waiting in the wings with another simple answer at a price, and if they can sell it with a conspiracy theory all the better.

There’s no need to cook everything from scratch in order to eat healthily. My diet already meets the new reduced sugar recommendations simply by not buying all the things most people don’t want to give up: cakes, chocolate, fizzy drink etc. There’s also more to a healthy diet than what you eat and who cooks it: quantity is also a factor. If you’re overweight your ‘healthy’ diet isn’t healthy at all.

crun I find it relatively easy to count calories but much harder when cooking from scratch. I think this is why my own eating is a bit disfunctional: I just eat foods where I can easily count calories. These foods are not always the most healthy-a McD, for example, has its calorie content displayed and the homemade soup plus bread doesn't. It's almost impossible to estimate calories in home cooking, for me.

I existed for years-perhaps 20- on about 1000calories a day. I haven't got the willpower now. I was thin, but not that thin! I think I may have buggered up my metabolism...

You might find this analysis of the SACN report interesting Crun.
www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/07/sacn-report-carbohydrates-health/
You will note in particular the interesting section on conflicts.

Oh no! Not bloody Zoe Harcombe again. Is she really qualified? Has she put out any scientific papers out to prove the point on which she sells her books?

This:

Zoe Harcombe sells diet books. This week in the Daily Mail she was explaining that fruit and veg are actually no good for you. There’s a fascinating conversation to be had about the evidence base on the relationship between diet and health: would you start with Zoe’s work?

We all rely on heuristics, or shortcuts. Trusting an authority is one. Zoe boasts in the Mail that she is “studying for a PhD in nutrition” but she admitted to me, tediously, inevitably, that she’s not registered for a PhD anywhere (although she is thinking about doing one in the future).

Does it matter? We read a precis of research as a shortcut, but once you lose trust, to double check whether someone has fairly represented an entire field, you’d have to read that field’s entire canon, and after many years of work, whatever your other conclusions were, the strongest would be that any timesaving benefit from reading a precis has plainly been annihilated. Given that this is the case, I know it’s harsh, and you may disagree, but in a busy world, I’m not sure I see the point of a Zoe Harcombe.

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 29 January 2011

Are you disputing her analysis of the paper, Jingl? Do you not find the conflict of interest section somewhat alarming? Would you draw different conclusions from your analysis of the SACN paper?

Yes I saw that too. I think the 2011 date of Ben Goldacre's comments is relevant. She seems to have a lot more support from the scientific and medical community now judging by the comments on her analyses.
I haven't read her diet books, so I can't comment on those.

Pity she wrote all those diet books before she started working on a PhD. Which sh seems to be working for at the moment. Talk about cart before the horse.

I don't really care to be honest.
This is the bit from Zoe Harcombe's blog that interests me.

"Conflicts:
The conflicts of interest among panel members long preceded this report. Channel 4 ran a programme on the 20th January 2014 highlighting the food industry funding received by “the chief scientist looking at the sugar question” – Professor Ian MacDonald of Nottingham University. Channel 4 Dispatches discovered that since 2012 he had resumed working for two food and drink giants: sitting on two advisory boards for Coca Cola and one for Mars. As the programme released noted: “He also receives funding from Unilever which is the world’s largest ice-cream manufacturer.”

Hannah Sutter did a fuller expose of other committee members here. Notice Jordan cereal – they’ll love the fibre love-in. Mars and Coca-Cola will be really happy that sugar has largely been exonerated and Sainsbury’s will be happy that 80% of the current aisles have been given a health tick.

You’ll have to search hard for the declared conflicts. I asked Public Health England and was directed to the annual report. Check out Annex 5.

The SACN report has a preface by Dr Ann Prentice, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition. Here are her declared interests. I’ve highlighted a few:

Action Medical Research; Aarhus University Hospital; Aquapharm; Arch Timber Protection; Boden Institute for Obesity; British Dietetic Assoc; BUPA Treasury; Cambridge University Hospitals; Christie NHS Foundation Trust; Coca Cola; Cranfield University; Danish Brewers’ Association; Diabetes UK; Electro Sci. Industries; European Molecular Biology Laboratory; HS Pharma; Institute of Brewing and Distilling; Ikon Informatics; Iron Therapeutics Switzerland AG; Kellogg Company; King’s College Hospital LLR-G5 Limited; National Safety Assoc; National Centre for Social Research; Nestle; Playerthree; Shield Holding AG; Thermo Fisher Scientific; Weight Watchers Int; World Cancer Research Fund; The Rank Prize Funds; Thrombosis Research Institute; UCL Consultants; Universitat Rovira; Weight Watchers; York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; pSiMedica."

Just seen this interesting statement: "The fact that obesity levels have continued to march inexorably upwards – despite sugar consumption falling over two decades – is ignored".

Sugar consumption falling? That seems counter to the impression many have that sugar consumption is going up because of so-called hidden sugars.

Puzzled.

heritageihc.com/blog/aspartame-and-weight-gain/

Part of the link reads:
the epidemiologic data suggest the opposite is true, and that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame tend to lead to weight gain. One reason for aspartame’s potential to cause weight gain is because phenylalanine and aspartic acid – the two amino acids that make up 90 percent of aspartame — are known to rapidly stimulate the release of insulin and leptin; two hormones that are intricately involved with satiety and fat storage. Insulin and leptin are also the primary hormones that regulate your metabolism.
So although you’re not ingesting calories in the form of sugar, aspartame can still raise your insulin and leptin levels.
Elevated insulin and leptin levels, in turn, are two of the driving forces behind obesity, diabetes, and a number of our current chronic disease epidemics.

There has been a long -running campaign to vilify non-sucrose sweaters. And the stats I saw, if you take into consideration hidden sugars, do not bear of the assertion that sugar consumption has fallen. But if you mean less people take sugar in tea and coffee........

I think we need to look at every assertion that sugar is not the villain very carefully, there are powerful commercial interests working behind statements such as that.

The writer of the article where I read that is an NHS hospital consultant so he may know a thing or two. I also read, elsewhere, about the problems with insulin that no-calorie sweeteners cause.

’Spect the hospital consultant, and his fellow writer of the article, an NHS dietician, know, for instance, a bit more about nutritional epidemiology than Jamie Oliver does.

This is from one of the comments under the article, which appears on the Conservative Home site.
"I wasn't aware that the report that advocated the sugar tax was conducted by amateurs. It was in fact nothing to do with Jamie Oliver at all, it was commissioned by Public Health England and was endorsed by the chief medical officer".
I have no idea where the figure on sugar consumption comes from, but it seems clear to me that the article has been written by Conservatives supporting David Cameron's veto of the sugar tax.
They are, of course, entitled to do that.
The rest of us are entitled to agree or disagree.

Agreed, mamie. Guess I've just got the wrong impression of JO because I saw so many comments (elsewhere) saying they wished he'd shut up.

I also don't think it's a simple sugar issue though, just as heart disease wasn't and isn't a simple fat issue, in spite of all the hype.

I never listen to him myself. His appearance and his accent and his manner annoyed me the one time I did. Just to be clear