What is the name of your group?

I remember reading something along the lines that our bodies have a horrible time breaking down HFCS, requiring significantly more insulin to process (with obvious implications). Is this a well-studied issue?

I have a hard time imagining HFCS still being a legal sugar substitute 20 years from now, regardless of the strength of the corn lobby.

Thoughts?

HFCS isn’t all that much different that sucrose (table sugar). Sucrose contains 50 percent fructose; HFCS contains 55 percent fructose. The body treats them about the same. The problem with HFCS is that it works better for many food processing than does glucose, and, consequently, makes its way into many foods that weren’t sweetened before the advent of HFCS.

Take Care,

Razwell

Thanks.

Self:
I am a healthy, active, 38 year old female. I have followed a restricted carbohydrate, sufficient protein way-of-eating with great since September 2007. I have restricted daily Effective Carbohydrate consumption to a maximum of 30 grams daily (after subtracting the fiber content from the total carbohydrate content in the diet). I eat saturated fat as it occurs naturally in the meat, chicken, fish, cheese, cream, butter and eggs I eat every day. I also eat olive oil, avocado, and nuts. I eat non-starchy vegetables and some fruit occasionally – mostly berries and citrus. Fat is typically about 60% of my daily intake, protein makes up about 20% and carbohydrate about 10%. I exercise 4-6 hours per week, usually a mix of strength training and cardiovascular exercises.

My results – I’ve lost 35 lbs. – probably more than that in fat and gained a great deal of lean muscle. I reduced from a size 16 to a size 6, from an ‘obese’ to a ‘normal’ body fat range. I ran my first 5k about 7 months after starting the regimen whereas when I began I could barely run for 5 minutes without becoming totally winded. I am the smallest I’ve been in my adult life, as well as strongest. I have a great deal of energy and am very happy.
When I followed the commonly recommended eating guidelines of low fat, high carbohydrate along with moderate exercise, I experienced consistent weight gain over many years. Only under a restricted carbohydrate – sufficient protein- abundant fat eating regimen was I able to reverse that pattern.

Mother:
My mother is 62 years old in good health. She is not, and has never been, obese or significantly overweight. However, she used to suffer from weekly yeast infections requiring medications 3-4 times per month. About six years ago, she and my father began following a restricted carbohydrate diet (prior they ate low fat, low meat, high fruit and complex carbohydrates). Within a week of changing her eating plan to the low carb way, her yeast infections completely stopped and have never recurred since – for six years now. She enjoys great health and an active lifestyle. She remains thin – the high carb/low fat diet did not make her fat, but it was having other symptoms of detrimental effects on her health. Low carb/sufficient protein/high fat completely fixed that.

Father:
My father is 61 years old, 5’5” and currently weighs 174lb. Other than losing close to 50lb in the first year of changing to low carbs (six years ago), his HDL cholesterol went from 40 to averaging 110, his triglyceride count went from 109 to 78, he is very physically active and feels great and healthy. He has a family background of severe diabetes and heart disease (both sides!), and since changing to this life style has enjoyed a clean bill of health and got rid of his chronic “heartburns”. He eats 10% of calories from carbohydrate, 30-40% from protein, and the rest is fat (not restricted, including saturated fat).

Conclusion
Thank you for collecting this information. I hope that significant changes will result in the recommendations to the American people to stop the horrendous obesity epidemic that is caused, I believe, by the consumption of processed sugar and starchy foods and excessive carbohydrates from grains. I would recommend Americans restrict carbohydrate consumption to no more than 20% of daily calories and vastly increase their healthy fats (including saturated fat) and protein consumption.”

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One BIG deal is that we have made alot of progress with low carb products (but all that low fat awfulness STILL lines the grocery store shelves!) but I still have to order many low carb products from the excellent site: http://www.carbsmart.com Stores STILL do not consistently carry Dreamfields pasta, Pepperidge Farm low carb bread, and a host of other low carb cereal, grain and other excellent products. This continues to be very frustrating to me. When an abundance of lowcarb and no sugar/very low sugar products can be found easily in food stores, then we will have a chance @ impacting the public eating habits @ large.

When I started out, few of these products were available. Low carbers on internet sites got together and invented ways to make alternatives. And by the way, there is good research support now for the value of internet support groups. This was certainly true for me. Lord knows, I had to run from the local dieticians!

As for my recs, aside from “institutionalizing” low carb as low FAT has been hammered into the culture @ large, they are the following:

Easy things like what my brotherinlaws’s Int. Med MD tells patients: If it is WHITE, don’t eat it – ie., sugar, bread, potatoes, rice. This can be an excellent start.

Label foods into easy to read/learn categories – STARCHY vegetables vs
low starch/low carb vegetables. USE these terms in teaching and encourage the use of these terms on food package labeling.

Really push for no to drastically reduced sugar intake and TEACH people HOW to read labels and to recognize what constitutes a tiny to very HUGE amount of sugar in a product.

Also teach people strategies such as: IF you are going to eat a high sugar desert or high starch carb item in your meal, or both, and/or drink high sugar alcohol for a SINGLE meal, then do it thusly: Eat equal portions of protein along with your starchy carb and pie, and if you drink that sugary wine too, you must CONSUME IT ALL within 60 mins. This minimizes the damage and weight promoting properties of the sugar spike and attendant insulin spike you will experience. This enables you to experience ONE episode, rather than multiples – as in for fruity wine drinking, then for the baked potato and bread @ dinner and then yet again for the sugary desert.

People need very direct, simple teaching which is reinforced (coached) @ frequent intervals by a public healthcare provider, nurse, MD,internet support group, local support group, etc. And they need to have simple handouts to follow which spell out the basic “rules” and the basic “why” of the science behind them (very simply stated) and the biological consequences.

You must assume (and know!) that most people are NOT book readers. We book readers read Atkins, Eades, etc and “got it.”

Also divide fruits into HIGH sugar/glycemic fruits and LOW sugar/glycemic fruits. Always give plentiful examples.

Give inducements for companies to produce( and label appropriately and clearly!), and for companies to generally stock healthy, low carb/low sugar products. I think the biggest thing that sabotages even successful low carbers (or did alot in the past) was the lack of grain products and healthy low carb snack products and cereals as they progressed. Excellent ones are available, but not in stores, for the most part – Dixie Carb Counters Smaps cereal and Flax-Z hot cereals are wonderful, but I have never found them available on any store shelf. No matter what the food pyramid says, it will be the easy availability of carb-healthful products that will be the deciding factor for learning and adherence for the “masses.”

Additionally, there is alot of “unlearning” to be done, which of course makes it more difficult. The low-fat mantra…

I am a 55 year old woman.

Is consuming very small amounts of trans fat negligible, or is it so dangerous that consuming just a few molecules of it is enough to adversely affect your health?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer.

There has to be at least 1 gram of trans fat in something before it has to be labeled as containing it. The trans fats will have to be listed in the list of ingredients, but not on the Nutritional Facts label.

Consuming small amounts probably isn’t harmful. But if you consume under a gram from a bunch of different sources, the total is a lot more than a gram, so be careful.

What would be considered “reasonable”? Something that the general population will go along with? Or nothing too far from what the USDA will accept? My concern is that by making compromises, the resulting carb level will still be too high for the benefits to be achieved, and then people will claim that low carb does not work, a la Oprah’s prior attempt to “do” low carb. What of the weight gain that’ll surely occur if people try to eat lots of fat while failing to cut carbs to a appropriate level? I’ve witnessed such complications when individuals within a family try to do low carb, and those still consuming lots of carbs then eat higher fat items, side dishes, etc. along with the low carbers. No, the rules of a low carb plan should not be modified to suit what the average person would prefer, or to appear “reasonable.”

http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/10786A.htm

We think he study may not have been published until:

Endocrine Practice
Issue: Volume 8, Number 3 / May / June 2002
Pages: 177 – 183
Title: “RESULTS OF USE OF METFORMIN AND REPLACEMENT OF STARCH WITH SATURATED FAT IN DIETS OF PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES”

The line came from Dr. James Hays, whom I know. He is a huge low-carb advocate.

As you said, Dr. Eades, this in an inane question. It suggests that the only reason to go low carb is to treat specific conditions, but that it has questionable value for all of those other so-called healthy, normal individuals. Funny how the medical establishment didn’t question whether the Food Pyramid recommendations were right for “the population at large.” Isn’t the purpose of eating a low fat, high carb supposedly therapeutic? Don’t people eat that way to either treat or to allegedly prevent obesity, diabetes, and heart disease? The difference between LF/HC and HF/LC is that the HF/LC has actually been proven to BE therapeutic instead of making people unhealthier. Why would it NOT be suitable for the masses? And why does the LC community now have to come up with palatable, watered-down recommendations in order to cajole the USDA into doing what’s right?

My point precisely.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/index.html

now you are (theoretically) no longer ruled by Halliburton Bush Inc. maybe your New Leaders will see Harvard and think “Science” rather than “SATAN!!!!!”

A soundbyte:-

Being fat is bad
Eating fat is good
Eating starch makes you fat