Coca-Cola and sugar

That's a very formative article Mamie.

In one way it is so blindingly obvious about the role sugars have played in rising obesity levels, that it is incredible (almost criminal) that organisations like the British Diabetic Association continue to offer advice they do.

Yes, Keys fraudulent 'science' has not helped at all. All the more reason for real education so that people can think critically for themselves, especially government 'advisors' and 'experts'–hollow laugh. However, I still maintain that the message to eat more healthily has been coming across. What are instructions to eat more fruit and veg, to have less sweet stuff (why could I be so easily persuaded to give up sugar in my tea and coffee back in 1974 if there was no 'message' about the insidiousness of sugar?), and to have a balance of protein-rich foods, fatty foods and vegetable foods in our diets, has always been there. My grandparents knew it, my parents knew it, my generation knew it, my kids know it.

People who keep whining that the message to eat healthily has not always been loud and clear are just kidding themselves and trying to blame someone else for their lazy approach to their health, or making excuses for others if they themselves have followed the message. I'm not saying it's not hard here; I'm just taking a tough approach–I think we just have to be tough on ourselves and that self-control, based on knowledge we already have, is what wins in the end. Likewise with smokers, at least for everyone my age or younger. And for everyone about the damage over-indulgence of alcohol.

I find it completely baffling why any young person in Britain chooses to smoke tobacco nowadays. It's the same with overeating. I don't know why people do it but they do, and very commonly, so it must be something very fundamental in our make-up. The explanation about the comparative rareness of sweet foods until recently but the 'pleasure' and even usefulness of sugar's quick energy-boost gets the closest.

I've been doing a lot of reading since The Times started their exposé of Coca-Cola and I'm coming to the conclusion that sugar is addictive.

This is a complete volte-face for me even though I've been following a low carb diet for months now and know first hand how much better I feel, I still didn't accept that sugar can be addictive. Now I am convinced that, given the quantities many consume on a daily basis, that it probably is.

There is quite a lot of solid scientific research into its effects on areas of the brain using rats and mice

Wilma
I found it easy but why not order from the library and see what you think? Then no money wasted if it isnt your style.

elizabethb thank you. I was going to look for it in the library and then I realised I could look inside the book on Amazon. I think it will be fine. I am just not sure whether to choose John Yudkin's book or Robert Lustig's. Lustig is a Yudkin believer and his book is more up to date, but he's American and the book is written from the American point of view. And then there's David Gillespie, who has written several books about the subject and is regarded as one of the experts. Choices, choices. Will sleep on it.

"Diet is actually much more important than exercise in weight loss (80:20 is normally quoted)."

Jeremy Vine questioned this yesterday on R2, because he's been losing weight hand over fist since he went on the dancing show. The doctor said that that figure is more about psychology than biology, it just reflects how difficult it is to persuade people to exercise, not how difficult it is to lose weight.

"I haven't changed my exercise regime Crun (gardening, walking, swimming, keep fit, adult ballet) but have lost over three stone"

But this isn't refuting my argument. If you are exercising, then that's a stimulus to prevent your body from reducing it's metabolism, my assertion is that your body will try to lower it's metabolism if you do no exercise, in which case that would just make the job of losing weight harder.

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. I have now maintained my weight over 8 months by continuing the low-carb way of eating. It wasn't difficult to lose weight and it isn't difficult to stick to the regime either.

To continue the discussion about calories, I thought this was an interesting article yesterday about a new calorie counting gizmo.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/19/calorie-counting-machines-lose-weight-scio
It includes this section on calorie counting:
"......Now this may sound like nutritional heresy. Indeed, the NHS still informs us that knowing how many calories are in our food is “the key to a healthy weight”, a proposition reiterated daily by well-intentioned healthcare professionals, health charities, and assorted loyalists who adhere to the gospel that weight can be boiled down to an arithmetical calculation of calories in and energy out (calories burnt). As their clients get fatter and fatter while dutifully counting calories, exercising more and studiously eliminating saturated fat from their diets, some health practitioners may be quietly troubled by the nagging thought that this nutritional tablet of stone is irredeemably flawed. But if this jaded doctrine were to be revised, the public might conclude that the advice doled out by supposed experts over the years has been wrong, and how embarrassing would that be?."

The thing is, nobody seems to agree on sugar and its effects on the body. Sugar is everywhere-in carbohydrate, in fruit, in alcoholic drinks. Honey is sugar, any sort of syrup is sugar. So I think it's a bit disingenuous of the powers-that-be to hector people on giving it up when the stuff is so ubiquitous and can't be avoided.

I've read both the Lustig and Yudkin books and it seems that the real culprit sugar-wise is the processed stuff that is added, particularly to drinks. There are also other foods-like certain child-friendly yogurts and foods marketed as low-fat-that are marketed as healthy, when they contain copious amounts of sugar. Even if you avoid certain notorious drinks, chances are you're still going to be consuming oodles of sugar without realising it.

There's even recent research to suggest that the sugar found in alcohol is somehow less harmful to the body as it metabolises differently.

Even Mary Berry's "sugarless" carrot cake (as featured on BO last night) is not sugarless! It contains agave (?) syrup instead of added sugar but Mary, bless her, doesn't seem to notice that agave syrup is, in fact, sugar (albeit in a different form). So not perhaps as "healthy" as La Berry thinks.

What happened to "everything in moderation"?

Some compassion is needed. Never forget the psychological issues around food and feeding children. They can become a big problem in some cases of overeating and anorexia.
It can be very difficult to shed inbuilt hangups about food. Not all obesity is just about greed and overeating.

about the agave thing!

That is so typical of that awful 'Bake-off' programme!

that is a link after the

Yikes! I was given a bottle of Agave Nectar at my exercise class as a free sample of a healthy alternative and have been sprinkling that sh*te everywhere! Even in my little grandson's muffins a couple of weekends ago. Double yikes. I shouldn't be so darn gullible.

I don't think you can use the example of Jeremy Vine in Strictly as proving that exercise is just as, if not more than, important in losing weight. The people on Strictly are doing what amounts to a very intensive exercise programme - I doubt that the majority of people would have the time or inclination to embark on this. I don't believe a few brisk walks, an exercise class or a bit of jogging would equal what the Strictly contestants are going through.

granny to be fair, I think there IS a difference between stuff that's marketed as "healthy" like agave and the processed white stuff -something to do with the way in which it metabolises. It's still sugar, though, along with the substances with -ose on the end such as fructose, sucrose, glucose, dextrose etc. Trouble is, we, the consumer, have very little idea as to how to separate the added stuff out from the naturally-occurring stuff. And sugar in some form is pretty much everywhere and not easily avoided, with the best will in the world. So what does the Government mean when it lectures us on "cutting out sugar?". Does it mean cutting out added sugar? Cutting out tomato soup and beans, which have added sugar? Cutting out alcohol, which is sugar in yet another form? Cutting out fruit, which has fructose? Cutting out milk, containing lactose? Cutting out bread and spuds, containing carbs that turn to sugar? What exactly does the Govt want us to do? Does anyone know? Does the Govt itself know?

Well, I for one haven't a clue and I doubt many others do either.

I think a reasonable starting point might be, "eat real food and avoid adding sugar".
If you want to lose weight or lower your blood sugar through a low-carb diet then you will need to look at other food, but there is a wealth of advice out there. It isn't difficult to find.
I don't think the Government has come up with any advice yet, has it?

I think the confusion all stems from when the agricultural industry in the USA found a use for the waste products of growing corn. That's where corn syrup came from and when sugar started to be added to processed food on a major scale. 30/40 years ago before this obesity crisis existed, we ate very little processed food. This changed gradually and as we started eating more processed food, we started eating more sugar because it was an ingredient of processed food - all kinds, savoury too.

It's easy to see how much sugar we add to tea and coffee, but unless you eat only fresh food you prepare yourself, you will probably be eating more sugar than you realise. There are so many kinds of sugar, so that doesn't help. Plus the myth that natural sweeteners are better doesn't help because sugar is sugar.

The way I look at weight loss just now is I need to eat less carbohydrate/sugar than I need so my body starts using up my fat stores to create energy for my body.

What I struggle with is how I move from lots of hidden sugar in my diet to a healthy diet which doesn't make me miserable. As an adult I have rarely eaten a healthy diet and now I am struggling to find a way through the maze of advice, much of which conflicts and is outdated.

Yes, wilma - it's all very well being told to look at packets etc but in reality 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. Foods that are marketed low in fat (such as "healthy" yogurts) are loaded with sugar to make them more palatable. Cheese, which is relatively unprocessed contains huge quantities of 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, albeit in the form of naturally-occurring fructose.
Even nuts have come under scrutiny due to their being high in fat.

It's hardly any wonder people are confused.

It doesn't matter what the government wants. We are capable of deciding for ourselves what is good food. There is masses of easily available nutritional information about the food we buy. Read it, even if it's only on food packets. If, in a list of ingredients, sugar is the first one, that is what there is most of in the thing you're buying. Choose something with a lower sugar content if you want to cut down your sugar intake or even do without that sugary thing.

It's not difficult.

thatbags you keep saying things like it's not difficult and quite frankly it is not helpful. If it was as easy as reading about it, millions of people would not have a weight problem.

I know the difference between healthy and unhealthy food because I have dieted all my adult life, but I am still overweight. Yes, it's because I eat too much of the wrong food and when I go to a slimming class, I can lose weight for a while. But I never get to a healthy weight. I can go to a slimming class and try again, but quite frankly I am not sure if I want to repeat behaviour that was not successful numerous times in the past. So I'm trying to find a different way of moving to a way of eating healthily that I can live with and I know I am not alone, so that's why I have shared my thoughts on here. Preparing healthy meals will be a challenge for me because I don't enjoy cooking, but it is a challenge I'm willing to try.

Please stop saying it is not difficult. Maybe for you it is not difficult, but it is for me and millions of others. There is more to a healthy diet than reading food labels.

I agree with Bags that it is not difficult to work out how much sugar/calories/carbohydrate we consume.

Changing how we think of food, and how we change our behaviour is another matter.

Surely the traffic light system is easy to understand - red amber or green, and the first ingredient on the list is the one there is most of. So if sugar is first and has a red light against it, it has a lot of sugar - enough to make you stop and think.

Wilma; I was glad to read that you don't enjoy cooking...I thought it was just me .

We do only eat fresh food we prepare or have frozen ourselves and don't find that difficult. I admit to enjoying cooking though and so does DH. I use tinned tomatoes (without added sugar), jars of beans like haricots with no sugar and condiments like mustard and horseradish, but pretty much everything else is home-made. It takes as long or as little time to cook as you want it to, but we both managed to work full-time in demanding jobs and cook every night and it has only got easier in retirement.
We eat natural fats and I don't worry about salt, I know how much I am using.
I am not trying to sound smug, but I think preparing and cooking your own food comes into the "no such thing as time, only priorities" category.
Once I had the right information about avoiding sugar, bread, rice, pasta and potatoes and eating moderate amounts of good fats, weight loss was not difficult.
I do not expect schools to take responsibility for teaching cooking, adults (with support where needed) need to learn for themselves. I would have thought our generation is well placed to help and to lead by example. We didn't grow up on heavily processed food full of dubious ingredients created in laboratories purely to make a profit, did we?
There is a massive amount of confusion and ignorance around about diet, partly created by the food and diet industries "experts" and other bodies. I don't agree with Bags that it is easy to fight your way through that. There needs to be a clear and consistent message that is informed by untainted research.

Wilma have you looked at the low-carb support threads on Mumsnet and on here? I realise that the thread on here has been criticised in the past for being "high-falutin'" but the support is there.
Happy to start a new thread if it helps people who are just starting on this way of eating? Or somebody else start one?

I don't enjoy cooking either but I do care what I eat. So I cook.

Anyone who has been dieting all their life and is still overweight needs, I respectfully suggest, to change something because what they have been doing isn't working. That's not difficult to work out either. Saying it's down to personal resposibility is helpful because it's the truth. Nobody else can make one lose weight.