Coca-Cola and sugar

that is a link after the

about the agave thing!

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

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.

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"?

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?."

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I draw a line between people who are born with a disability or acquire and illness or are involved in an accident, and those who have brought on conditions such as lung cancer or obesity through a lifestyle they chose.

As others have said people need to accept responsibility for themselves.

The relationship between lung cancer and smoking is well established now. So I think is the relationship between serious overeating and obesity surely?

The problem is partly, Bags that people have been hearing the wrong message for years. The research of Ancel Keys on the effect of fats in the body seems now to be accepted as having been seriously flawed. That led to the "low-fat" commercial response (loved by the food industry because lots of money could be made from it) that added hidden sugars to many everyday foods.

This is what happened to Yudkin....

www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/10634081/John-Yudkin-the-man-who-tried-to-warn-us-about-sugar.html

Oh dear susan2014 I really don't like that way of thinking at all. Who is it that determines what is responsible or irresponsible?
Smokers and drinkers cost the NHS a lot of money, as do people who have a lot of children, people who live too long, people who are born with illnesses, disabilities, people who have inherited conditions, people who have been in car accidents.......... Where do you draw the line?

www.gransnet.com/forums/chat/1219781-Virtue-signalling

Irresponsible people who overeat cost you and I millions of pound a year

and responsible sick people face long delays on hospital waiting lists

because of them.

ourworldindata.org/data/food-agriculture/food-per-person/

I think there's an obesity epidemic because, on average, we eat too much.

Food is, relatively speaking, cheaper and more easily available (in developed countries at any rate) than ever before and we have access to far more all the time than ever before. As a species we have not learned yet how to adapt to this.

There's a difference between hearing the message and knowing what to do about it. Why do you think there's an obesity epidemic?

Because, wilmak, I'm wondering why would anyone still be asking for clear messages about healthy eating if they hadn't missed the last few years' couple of decades worth of clear messages?

elizabethb John Yudkin's book was mentioned earlier and I was thinking about buying a copy. But although it gets good reviews, lots of reviewers say it's not easy to read because of its academic style. Can you remember what it was like to read?

thatbags what makes you think people missed the messages?

Still catching up with this thread as I've been travelling all day but I came across the call for a clear message about healthy eating. Erm... I have felt harangued with very clear messages about healthy eating (some of which I disagree with) for years and I don't even have a telly, nor do I listen to the radio much, so I'm a bit puzzled that other people feel they haven't received these clear messages. How have they missed them?

In 1975 John Yudkin wrote a book called Pure White and Deadly. I read it then but unfortunately forgot it. It has been republished and it certainly makes clear that sugar is not just harmless empty calories.
It causes far more illness than alcohol and we dont give alcohol to children after all.

mamie I agree with your post and crun I understand how dieting works, I just don't agree with your statement -

It’s far easier to lose weight by exercising, and for good reasons I think.

No one is saying exercise is not good for you or that it doesn't makes you feel better (through endorphins). I'm glad you found a way to keep your weight steady.

Yes, both eating less and exercising more can have an effect on how much energy your body needs, but the source of that energy is crucial. If you exercise a lot without eating a healthy diet you can still lose weight, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have a healthy body.

Please excuse the length of this post, but it does fit in with the OP

A recent report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine stated evidence now suggests that up to 40% of those within a normal weight (BMI) range will still have harmful metabolic abnormalities typically associated with obesity.

The authors of the report (including a British Cardiologist) describe the public relations tactics of the food industry as chillingly similar to those of Big Tobacco, which deployed denial, doubt, confusion and 'bent scientists' to convince the public that smoking was not linked to lung cancer.

Fittingly given the OP of this thread the report's authors also say

Celebrity endorsements of sugary drinks and the association of junk food and sport must end...

...health clubs and gyms need to set an example by removing the sale of these products from their premises. The health halo legitimisation of nutritionally deficient products is misleading and unscientific...

...Public health messaging has unhelpfully focused on maintaining a healthy weight through calorie counting, but it’s the source of the calories that matters...

...Sugar calories promote fat storage and hunger. Fat calories induce fullness or satiation. The prevalence of diabetes increases 11-fold for every 150 additional sugar calories consumed daily, compared with the equivalent amount of calories consumed as fat...

...And the evidence now suggests that carbs are no better. Recent research indicates that cutting down on dietary carbohydrate is the single most effective approach for reducing all of the features of the metabolic syndrome and should be the primary strategy for treating diabetes, with benefits occurring even in the absence of weight loss...

...The food environment needs to be changed so that people automatically make healthy choices. This will have far greater impact on population health than counselling or education. Healthy choice must become the easy choice...

...It’s time to wind back the harms caused by the junk food industry’s public relations machinery. Let’s bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity. You can’t outrun a bad diet.

I haven't changed my exercise regime Crun (gardening, walking, swimming, keep fit, adult ballet) but have lost over three stone (now down to under 9 stone) by low-carbing over eighteen months.Weight has been stable for six months, cholesterol down, BP down, blood sugar down. Not a diet, just a way of eating that doesn't include refined sugar, potatoes, bread, rice or pasta. No calorie counting ever. Plenty of good fat, butter, olive oil, cheese, milk, meat, fish, masses of veg and some fruit. Real food cooked at home. Not hard at all and no problem sustaining it. OH has lost four stone, got out of pre-diabetes, off statins and is much fitter all round.

Sincere apologies to those who have heard all this before, but this is the diet that the processed food industry and the sugar lobby don't want to talk about. I think it is relevant to the thread.