Comments on: Sugar and kids: The toxic truth
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- This is not exactly new knowledge, but most people have ignored it. Believe it. Corn sugar is added to so many American foods, it's hard to know what you're eating. Portion sizes, colas, eating five or six times a day--all these are "heavy" factors. The exercise won't get rid of it either.
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- I've got news for you. All foods are "toxic" if ingested over and above the body's nutritional needs. Why would the brain demand more food than it can use to survive? The reason is the brain's appetite regulator neurons within the hypothalamus called the appestat, determine whether we search for or refuse food. Stimulate the anterior hypothalamus and you are driven to seek food; stimulate the posterior hypothalamus and you will refuse food. Low blood leptin levels from fat cells, stimulate the anterior hypothalamus an increase appetite. High blood grehlin levels from an empty stomach do the same and increase appetite. High cortisol levels from stress, increase appetite in the same way.
Now, guess why we have an obesity epidemic. It's due to SLEEP APNEA! How? Because frequent bouts of hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels) from repeated airway obstructions while asleep over decades, results in cortisol surges, drops in leptin an elevations in grehlin, all stimulating the anterior hypothalamus to to drive us to eat everything and anything editable we can get our hands on, including sugar. Too much food, including sugar, is "toxic" because it will result in weight gain and result in being over-weight, obese, morbidly obese and even super morbidly obese.
Question: How do you reverse obesity?
Answer: Test for Sleep Apnea (SA) and when positive, treat it with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) every night for the rest of your life. Now with a normally functioning brain, it will be much easier to get rid of that excess weight and keep it off thru diet and exercise (plus you can avoid diabetes and the multitude of other catastrophic medical complications (too numerous to list here), known to result from SA). - Reply to this comment
- This is a hot topic and the public should be informed about the health issues we're facing in large part due to our diets. As a dietitian, I believe labeling sugar as "toxic" is misleading. Demonizing sugar as the cause of obesity and cardiovascular disease is an over-simplification. This is exactly why the majority of my clients ask me, "So what CAN I eat?" It's frustrating and confusing.
In the 1990s, we were told to avoid fat to control weight; this century sugar is to blame. However, when we single out one specific nutrient, we miss the point. It's the over-consumption of all caloric foods and drinks, not just the consumption of sugar, which can lead to weight gain.
As Dr. Gupta stated, "The body is very smart." It is able to digest sugar into its basic parts no matter the original source - our bodies don't differentiate between sugar in fruit from sugar in soda. Our bodies can also metabolize low-calorie sweeteners, which have been proven safe and, evidence doesn't support these sweeteners increase a person's craving for more sweets. Ultimately, sugar substitutes benefit those trying to control calorie intake, enabling us to enjoy our favorite foods while taking in less sugar.
The solution is to focus on the big picture: a healthy, balanced diet containing a variety of whole foods, moderate portion sizes and regular physical activity. I tell my personal and corporate clients, like Coke, that enjoying sugary treats in moderation can be part of one's diet because a healthy diet is not based on one ingredient. - Reply to this comment
- Unlike most 60 Minutes stories, I'm very disappointed with this one. Our over-use of sugar is a "crisis"? Deaths "skyrocketed" after they discouraged the over-use of fat? Skyrocketed? Really? Our life expectancy has reversed its climb?
Experts were so sure that reducing fat consumption would be good for us. This piece basically heads in the same direction -- "let's get rid of sugars."
I would rather have seen a more balance piece that covered other directly related issues. For example, why in the world wasn't the role of exercise discussed? Compare the treatment of these issues (not targeting just one food) in the free video called "Fathead". It makes the same point about fats, but it does a much better job of pointing out, for example, the very serious bias that commercial interests have introduced into "research" and reports to congress.
Again, I think the quality of this coverage is an exception in the 60 Minutes tradition. You all did an excellent job with the congressional-insider-trading piece. Now dig into congressional pension payments so I feel I have a chance at knowing how much, for example, a middle-aged, one-term House representative gets for the rest of his life (if anything?). What's the current budget -- income and benefits -- for former senators and presidents? Also state legislators and "the average state/federal government retiree?" I've heard about 6-figure incomes for some of them, but the topics are so complex and the rhetoric is so inflammatory -- both pro and con -- that I look to traditional dig-up-all-the- details-available journalism for a good answer. - Reply to this comment
- Interesting program. Unfortunately I was not able to find the published research. Clearly too much sucrose has never been shown to be good for you and multiple research studies have shown that insulin goes up when you eat protein, carbohydrates or fats and animal studies have shown that the link between longevity is inversely related to total caloric intake. The subjects confined to the research center (hopefully not the planned approach for American obesity) were reported to have fat calories replaced by carbohydrate (simple sugar carbohydrates) calories. We are not told how long the study was (or if so I don't remember hearing it) or how many calories participants consumed. We are also not told what happened to insulin levels, triglyceride levels, HDL levels, or anything else for that matter. We are not even told how much the LDL changed. In Ornish's studies, his subjects ate more desserts over time, which resulted in the storage of these excess calories as fat; specifically triglycerides (VLDLc). Since VLDLc is the precursor of LDL, it would be surprising to see substantial increases in LDL and not VLDL. I have looked at MedLine to see if this work has been published and did not find it. Please let me know when and where it will be published in the peer review literature.
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- Interesting that Dr. G makes this sweeping announcement a week after Dr. Oz announced the same findings.
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- LMAO! good one!
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- Thank you so much for this important video. Alternative medicine has promoted this message for possibly hundreds of years, but without mainstream medicine backing it up, it is hard to get the message across to a large number of people. Thank you for using your power to educate the people about real issues that affect them and in which they are in direct control of, every time they eat. We have the power to be healthy and make our children healthy--eat whole, clean foods the way that nature provides them.
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- What the doctor fails to mention in his report is that it is not the fatty food in the hamburger that is the problem, it is the hamburger bun, which is a double whammy. Grains, whole or bleached, convert to sugar in the blood stream. In addition, there is most likely high fructose corn syrup in the bun, which the Dr. already mentioned is in most breads. Take away the bun and you have a rather healthy meal.
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- If a picture is worth a thousand words, than this one speaks volumes ... http://******/awEpYV
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