Sugar

Reading all these sweet tooth habits...makes me wonder...if the whole sugar thing is BS as it pertains to Pca...All these cancer survivors are thriving...not that there is anything wrong with that///

Note: Eat equal amounts of white and dark chocolate. They actually cancel each other out you have a net zero calories.

Pratoman said...

PeterDisAbelard. said...
Prato,

We have so many diet theories around here these days that I have trouble remembering who eats what. While NKenny's serotonin theory is interesting, a more straightforward supposition is that you might be getting a little bit hypoglycemic in the afternoon. This can happen if you have an over-vigorous insulin response to your lunch. People learn to self-medicate for that as well.

Before I adopted a lower-carb lifestyle my wife would keep energy bars in her purse to jump start me when I stalled while we were out and about. At home my preferred remedy was a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich on the softest, whitest bread available, served with a glass of cold milk and followed by a 15 minute sit down.

Since I've gone low-carb I don't generally crash in the afternoon.

You might look at the carbohydrate composition of your lunch.

Peter, that may be. I am very low crb all day, till the night. I generally have n egg white omelette with some type of high fiber vegetable in the morning, and fir lunch (when I eat lunch, which is most days) I have a salad. No refined carbs that would spike my BG. WHEN I OCCASIONALLY TEST MY BG IN THE LATE AFTERNOON ITS IN THE LOW TO MID 80’S, EXCEPT WHEN I HAVE AN EARLY BREAKFAST AND NO LUNCH IT GETS INTO THE 70’S.

Good BGs, Bro. But where is the fat? It is hard to not crave something else when the fat is low, for me.

I've read where processed sugar is as addicting as heroin. Since I've been on a statin which raised my glucose level to slightly over 100, I've worked hard to limit my intake of processed sugar and it has really worked. I used to look at how many grams of sugar an item had, but if it was natural sugar like fruit, it wasn't near as significant as if there was added sugar with fewer grams. Processed sugar is the enemy.

Tom

Apparently human craving for sugar goes WAY back.

According to the article below, our primate ancestors developed a yen for natural sugar when "… they evolved to like riper fruit because it had a higher sugar content than unripe fruit and therefore supplied more energy."

Also,

"… sugar offers more than just energy. It helps us store fat, too." (Didn’t know that).

"Our earliest ancestors went through a period of significant starvation 15 million years ago in a time of global cooling. During that time, a mutation occurred that increased the apelike creatures' sensitivity to fructose, so that even small amounts were stored as fat. This adaptation was a survival mechanism: eat fructose and decrease the likelihood you will starve to death."

But in modern times a problem has developed:

"For millions of years, our cravings and digestive systems were exquisitely balanced because sugar was rare."

But now that sugar has become plentiful, massive consumption of it throws off this balance, with numerous resulting problems "… including diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure."

"Our bodies are not adapted to the amount of sugar that we are pouring into them and it's making us sick."

www.businessinsider.com/evolutionary-reason-we-love-sugar-2014-4

CAdogsRus said...

InTheShop said...
Note: Eat equal amounts of white and dark chocolate. They actually cancel each other out you have a net zero calories.

And speaking of theories, I've always wondered why ice wasn't negative calories given your body has to heat it

There are a few studies on ice cream that are attempting to prove that the energy needed to heat the ice cream in our bodies cancels out the calories in the ice cream for a net zero impact on our bodies.

Reltnie said...

Pratoman said...


@Reltnie, are you sure it’s the statin that’s raising your sugar? I’ve had that theory, my doc just shrugs his shoulders. What statin are you on, what dose? I’m on a low dose of Crestor, 10 mg

Not 100% sure, but when I started taking my statin (atorvastatin 10mg) every other day without any real change in diet, my next blood draw had a glucose of 92 down from 105. I then went back to taking it daily and made an effort to avoid processed sugar and 6 months later it was 103. Since taking it every other day only raised my cholesteral from 135 to 155, that's what I'm going to do. Not a scientific study, but what the heck.

Tom

I had a similar experience.
I may ask the Dr at my next visit his thoughts on going to every OTHER day on the Crestor. My Total Cholesterol is like 110 and my LDL is in the 40's

CAdogsRus said...

InTheShop said...
Note: Eat equal amounts of white and dark chocolate. They actually cancel each other out you have a net zero calories.

And speaking of theories, I've always wondered why ice wasn't negative calories given your body has to heat it

The way the caloric content of foods was determined is with a device called a Bomb Calorimeter which is a small, strong metal container suspended in a container of water. Inside the container is a small amount of the dried food and enough oxygen to ensure that it burns completely. They use a spark to light the food on fire and determine how much heat is produced by measuring how much the temperature of the water rises.

That small container is called a "Bomb". That word is generally considered a figure of speech... since the samples of food are quite small... On the other hand there is a lot of energy in a cheeseburger. And with the right oxidizer a serving of ice cream will melt itself, boil away all the water it contains, and burn down your house.

So, yes. It takes energy to heat it up. But there's plenty left over.

PeterDisAbelard. said...

The way the caloric content of foods was determined is with a device called a Bomb Calorimeter which is a small, strong metal container suspended in a container of water. Inside the container is a small amount of the dried food and enough oxygen to ensure that it burns completely. They use a spark to light the food on fire and determine how much heat is produced by measuring how much the temperature of the water rises.

But, PDA, did you know that the very first calorimeter was an "ice calorimeter," a la CAdogsRus's suggestion, to measure caloric content. The method relied on the heat required to melt ice to measure the heat evolved from chemical reactions—they measured how much water accumulated after melting—long before the controlled burns of the "bomb calorimeter" were feasible.

Scholars Lavoisier and Laplace—yes, that Lavoisier and that Laplace—are typically associated with the first use of the ice calorimeter. Sadly, the two brilliant scientists met far different fates: Lavoisier was guillotined as part of the craziness of the French Revolution for having complained that "the state of public affairs in France...has temporarily retarded the progress of science and distracted scientists from the work that is most precious to them." French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange remarked that "it took them only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it." Eighteen months after his Reign of Terror murder, he was exonerated by the government, and his belongings were returned to his widow along with a note which read: "To the widow of Lavoisier, who was falsely convicted". I've seen a re-creation of his lab at Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

Laplace (known as the French Newton) prudently left Paris during the worst parts of the Revolution, but returned to be graced with several titles by his former student Napoleon Bonaparte who seized control as the country struggled to recover from the Revolution's ravages under the unpopular Directory. Having lived so much longer than Lavoisier (his life was >50% longer), his amazing list of scientific accomplishments is more substantial; including his fundamental contributions to the least squares & central limit theorem, the dynamic theory of tides (building on Newton and Bernoulli's work), his (the first) theories on black holes & gravitational collapse, and finally the mathematical transformation which many of us know him by which bears his name. Laplace eventually achieved the esteemed rank of marquis following the Bourbon Restoration.

Anyhow, they used ice because the phase change/heat capacity was understood then, and it became the standard from which all other materials are gauged (the specific heat of water would be defined as 1 cal/(K⋅g)). Ice cream is a blend in which the heat content would vary flavor-to-flavor. Ben & Jerry's Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz has the most energy...!

Post Edited (NKinney) : 6/5/2018 2:16:32 PM (GMT-6)

That made me laugh out loud, TimG. For some reason, it also made me think of that sage advice from nutrition and medical expert Mary Poppins, who said, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Of course, she was speaking metaphorically, but still......