Sugar Turned On Me

High Fructose Corn Syrup, one of my favorite punching bags, has shown up again in a new study that connects the consumption of fructose, a gene called PGC-1 and insulin resistance.

As I’ve ranted before, HFCS is in everything and hard to avoid. It is a liquid sweetener that is easier to transport and use than granulated sugar and is used for its cost effectiveness. It’s also been linked with liver disease and the obesity epidemic, though not conclusively.

This recent study done by Dr. Gerald Schuman of the Yale College of Medicine dealt with the function of a gene called PGC-1 which in conjunction with another gene can trigger fat production by the liver.  Rats in the test were given a hight fructose diet with PGC-1 inhibited. These rats failed to develop insulin resistance, a condition that one would expect in rats consuming tons of fructose and also one of the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.

The ramfications of this study are too far over the horizon to say with certainty, but if the results continue to prove true, then a missing link into HFCS and the rash of Type 2 Diabetes we’re seeing these days may no longer be missing.

Of a side note, Pepsi is getting ready to release sodas with real sugar again. Appears business is starting to listen to the demand for non HFCS sweetend products.

So December kicked my butt and if you’ve been following this blog, I apologize for the unannounced hiatus. I’m back now and so is it and I figure what better way to return to the schedule than with a talk about the difference between too much and enough.

Catching up on my email last night, I read a story about the dangers of diet soda. The article has three main points:

1. Diet soda may help develop or continue a taste for sweet things, thus tempting you to ingest other sweet things and thus expand your waistline.
2. If you’re drinking diet soda, you’re not drinking water.
3. Aspartame may be dangerous, having been linked to headaches, diarrhea, dizziness, memory loss and mood instability.

On the points above, I don’t disagree. That said, there’s something to which the article gives a cursory nod but should, I think, be the main focus. Specifically, I’m talking about moderation.

Moderation in American culture is associated with the terms “boring” and “timid”.  We are the culture of XTREEMism, the culture of excess where enough is never enough and too much is usually prefered. If anything, this is what is killing us. With the rise in Type 2 diabetes, that danger to life and limb is literal.

Learning moderation is a hard trick. It’s usually much easier to avoid than to ration. But unless we discipline ourselves such that we can do so, I think we’ll find that we just bounce from one crisis caused by excess to another.

The article states in one place that if you’re drinking 1 can of diet soda a day, you’re probably okay but if you’re downing a 6 pack a day, probably not. I wish that had been the headline. It’s right. If I’d removed the word “diet” from in front of “soda” and followed that advice before my diagnosis, there might never have been a diagnosis to deal with at all.

So with that in mind, I give the following three tips to help learning to moderate not only your consumption of diet soda, but everything you need to keep a watch on in your life.

1. Limit Access: If you’re trying to watch your intake of anything, don’t keep it constantly in reach. Experiments have shown that we tend to consume things that are easily at hand and think about things we have to work for. If you drink diet soda at work, only take 1 or 2 with you for the day. It will make it hard to over consume if you don’t have any to consume.
2. Keep Yourself Posted: Wonder how many carbs/Diet Dr. Peppers/grapes/reality shows you take in on any given day? Write it down. At the end of the week look back and see how honest you’re being with yourself.
3. Experiment with Less: The next time you go to a fast food place, order the medium instead of the extra large. Try it out and see how it works for you. You might just find that it does as well for you as the X-Tra large swimming cup and you might also find that you waste less when you toss it.

Sugar Turned on Me will be back full time now. Got comments about this, the article or just want to say what you did on your Winter Break? Feel free to comment below. See you tomorrow.

We all have things we think we’ll never do. I just started doing one of them. I went to a restaurant and ordered Diet Coke. And I liked it.I used to drink Coke by the bucket, part of what has rendered me Type 2 diabetic. I couldn’t stand the taste of the diet version and only tried one recently because I happened to be at a party and wanted to drink something other than water, the black stuff being my only option. The experiment turned out successfully and now, I have another option on the list when I go to restaurants and other places with soda fountains.

But not without some reservations.

In general, I’m against artificial sweeteners. I don’t think the food additive industry is evil or doesn’t deserve to make money or anything like that. I just prefer that things I put in my body be minimally processed and tested by centuries of use.

Diet sodas have come under scrutiny lately, some studies showing that the sweet taste alone causes your body to spike insulin production and negatively affecting weight loss. The thought is that you may not be putting sugar into your body, but your taste buds fool your body into thinking you are and it reacts accordingly. There’s also the fact that diet soda still has caffeine and other ingredients that are considerably less good for you than say water, not to mention that aspertame (the sweetener in Diet Coke) has been linked to headaches in studies, to cancer in less conclusive studies.

I can’t say that any of the articles I’ve read have 100% convinced me one way or the other if Diet Coke is the devil or not, but still I think that as with anything, you should pay attention to what a substance does to your body and that all things consumed should be consumed in moderation. I’m not intending to start hooking myself up to IV’s of the stuff but knowing that Diet Coke, which I used to consider utterly foul, is now an option, makes me happier. I’ll keep my eye out for additional articles and keep an eye on myself to monitor the side effects, but when I go to the movies I now know that I have some other option besides bottled water to accompany my viewing pleasure.

I wonder what I’ll think will taste okay next.

Some links:
A piece on Diet Sodas with a scholarly yet alarmist bent.
Another article, this time from a more journalistic perspective.

Edit 09/18/08: I’m feeling a bit rough, so there’ won’t be an update Thursday or Friday. Sugar Turned On Me will return on Monday the 22nd. Sorry for the interruption.

I’ve written before about the trials and tribulations of finding something to drink when you’re diabetic. Prior to my diagnosis, my beverage of choice was almost always Coke Classic. I was okay going cold turkey for a while, but sometimes the desire for a soda rolls over the line of want and begins to become a fizzy, screaming need.

Here are three potential reliefs I use for such a craving:

1. Virgil’s Diet Black Cherry -  Black cherry is an outcast when it comes to soda flavors. It’s the last one picked when the beverages get together for a game of kickball and usually relegated to the house brand of grocery stores.  Here it’s a star, sweetened with xylitol and stevia. The only thing I find as a downside to this entry is that it may actually be too sweet. The aftertaste is a bit cloying too.
2. Virgil’s Diet Root Beer - Same company, same sweeteners, different flavor. I really, really like this stuff. The sweeteners work with the flavor well, making it feel less like I am drinking diet soda and just drinking soda. It still has a bit of an aftertaste, but nothing to write home about. I have no problem recommending this.

I get my supply of these from my local health food/socially conscious grocery store. I’ve noticed no effect on my blood sugar with these, though I do recommend experimenting a little at a time first, as xylitol dose up some peoples numbers.

Enjoy

Recently, my wife called to me from the other room and asked “Want to see a commercial that will piss you off?”

I said, “Sure!”

So, through the magic of the DVR, I got to watch this, sponsored by the Corn Refiners association:

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl. It’s too easy to point out that with the phallic object and the hot girl that this commercial is exploiting one of the two basic sales pitches most often used by advertisers, namely This product will make you sexy and attractive to the opposite gender.

The other theme, incidentally, is Use of this product will make you a better parent. Wanna guess what the subtext the other add this group puts out is? I’ll give you a hint: It’s starts with two moms discussing how best to sugar up their kids at a birthday party.

But my issue with the commercials isn’t the style, it’s their substance, and the substance they are selling: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I’ve touched a little on good ‘ol HFCS in my blog before, but the video above does make a good point. When the boyfriend is asked what the problem with HFCS is, he can’t say for certain. I found that when I accessed the squishy database of my brain trying to pull up statistics as to why HFCS is bad, I couldn’t either.

Part of the reason for that coming up with concrete facts is that research is still ongoing. I found mention of studies that showed no difference between HFCS and sugar, but those studies were funded by the same people who made the commercial above. Others differ, but the full effects of HFCS are yet to be determined.

One question that still remains is about HFCS and it’s effect on your liver. HFCS and regular table sugar both contain fructose and sucrose; sucrose is processed by every cell in the body, fructose only by the liver. In table sugar, the ratio of fructose to sucrose is 50/50. In some HFCS, it’s the same. In the version that most often ends up in sodas, however, it’s 55/45. While the difference is only 5%, it may not seem like much until you add up that the average American drinks about 55 gallons of soda per year (1) and HFCS is usually the second ingredient.

One researcher said, “The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic”.(2) This is not to say that someone on any other high sugar diet has a liver that looks like the organ equivalent of a supermodel, but it does give reason to be careful what you send through the body’s primary filter.

So if HFCS is dangerous, the devil’s advocate asks, why is it in so many things and why would anyone defend it?

Well I’ll tell you… Monday, in part 2.

(1): Concerning Soda consumption per capita.
(2): Concerning HFCS in general
And for the sake of fairness: The HFCS propoganda site, “Sweet Suprise!”

I know how I got where I am. It was because I was up to three bottles a day. Maybe with one poured from the tap with lunch, too. I’m talking about a beverage that is a problem for many otherwise normal Americans and one to which they are not quick to admit.

Soda.

Drink is as important to food to one’s diet. Maybe more so, as after all, not everyone has a steak at their desk but they do have something to sip on. Soda is an easy choice because it tastes good, is relatively cheap and easily obtainable. Sure, there are other options in the vending machine, but most people grab a Coke or Pepsi before they even look at as bottled green tea.

I had the last Dr. Pepper I expect to ever have the Friday while I was waiting to get my first A1C results back after the weekend. I thought I was going to miss it. It was the only thing still regularly in my diet for which I was willing to overlook high fructose corn syrup . It was like a comfort food I got to have every day.

Knowing that it was one of the most likely culprits in my acquisition of diabetes, however, did take some of the sting out of having to give it up. The only problem then became… what do I drink?

After trial and error I got used to the following options:

• Water -  If we’re 90% made up of it, it can’t be a bad thing. I have never really been accustomed to drinking water as my primary source of hydration, but after a few days I got used to the lack of taste and started craving it. I prefer to use the water cooler or the filtered pitcher at home to lots of bottles (for environmental reasons) but it’s now my safe default.
• Tea - If you can get the taste for unsweetened tea, more power to you. I usually carry around packets of stevia with me. The advantages to tea are that it’s usually available in restaurants, has a bit of caffine (if you’re fond of it like I am) and is really cheap to make at home.
• Vitamin Water- Recently maligned for it’s sugar content, I still think it’s a good thing in moderation. Both Sobe and Glaceau brands use real sugar instead of HFCS and it does have vitamins. The thing I try to remember is that while one 20 oz. bottle has about 2/3 the sugar of a 20 oz. cola, it still is a sugary beverage and might be fine to sip on all day but not guzzled down two at a time.
• Juice - Most of what I said about vitamin water applies to 100% juices. Watch the sugar content, consume in moderation but still keep in the fridge. I need to start experimenting with thinning grape juice with water. The thing I look for is that it’s real juice and not a juice flavored beverage and that it has some real vitamin content.
• SODA!- There are a number of good diet sodas that meet the needs of even the most discriminating diabetic. I personally avoid the big name labels and get my supply from the local hippie grocery which stocks Virgil’s Diet (flavored with xylitol and stevia) or Steaz diet fruit/green tea sodas (which use real sugar, just not very much). If used in moderation, as they still are no replacement for water, they satisfy the craving for something bubbly quite nicely.

It’s nice to have options. After all, even though I’ve avoiding sugar… it’s still nice to have a cold one now and again.

I’ve never been a fan of artificial sweeteners. Saccharin, Aspartame, Sucralose… they all just taste bad to me. Not even my love of cola and the promise of being able to consume it again has tempted me to get used to the flavor, much less the aftertastes, of the any of the above.

But still, water alone gets kind of boring. Fortunately, I got turned on to a solution… a weed. It’s called stevia.

A friend of mine worked in the dietary supplements section of a Whole Foods. He’d suggested stevia to me at one point to which I nodded and smiled and went back to my high fructose corn syrup flavored battery acid. After all, I knew most sugar alternatives were repugnant to me and that herbal concoctions were usually also distateful. What was to be gained by combining the two?

A lot, actually.

To clarify what stevia is and why you may have never heard of it, let me first say that it is not sold as a sweetener. This is not because it doesn’t sweeten things. The FDA for some reason, possibly pressure from the private sector, declared stevia an unsafe food additive in 1991, despite the fact that it has been used safely for decades in many countries around the world and for who knows how long in it’s native continent, South America.

What the FDA was willing to do a few years later was declare stevia an herbal supplement. Which just happens to sweeten things. And grows wild, so you can’t patent it.

No, it doesn’t make any sense. Just accept it.

I started using it a month ago and have had good experiences so far. I’ve only experimented with it in a white powdered form, though it’s available as a liquid and a powdered leaf though some people prefer to only use the green or brown extract, as it has a higher purity.

Stevia is 300 times as sweet as sugar and as a result, a little dab ‘ll do ya for most applications. I use something like 1/8 of an ounce in a glass of unsweetened tea and it comes out tasting like it was brewed by a southern grandmother. My sister in law used to keep a plant and sweeten a gallon of sun tea with just one leaf. The packaging for stevia will usually give conversions for replacing sugar.

I’ve not tried cooking with it, but when I do, I’ll write about it here.

Whether there are any real concerns or whether it’s all just political smoke and big business mirrors, stevia will have to wait to be recognized for what it does best. Until then, it will sit on the shelves in hippie stores, next to xylitol and fructose powder, just having no calories and being incognito. And I’ll continue to add it to my tea.

Call it sticking it to the man… with sweetness.

Here’s an article about stevia and diabetes.
And don’t forget to check Wikipedia.