The rise of obesity is usually blamed on too much eating and not enough exercising, but we should look beyond the obvious.
Yes, more North Americans are overweight today than 30 years ago. Kids are still getting heavier, compared with prior generations of kids. A warning that heart disease and other health problems will grow in future decades.
But behaviours that some might refer to as gluttony and sloth are merely consequences of the true cause of the epidemic. Food was just as abundant before obesity’s ascendance. The problem is the increase in sugar consumption. Sugar both drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry, setting up a “vicious cycle.”
More specifically, it is fructose that is harmful. Fructose is a component of the two most popular sugars. One is table sugar — sucrose. The other is high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup has become ubiquitous in soft drinks and many other processed foods.
The obesity epidemic as a societal issue that pits the food-selling agenda of government agencies and profit-seeking behaviour of major corporations against public health needs.
Insulin and Leptin
Studies done more than a decade ago stimulated the development of his controversial ideas about metabolism and biological feedback in weight control. One not-yet-popular idea is that, calorie for calorie, sugar causes more insulin resistance in the liver than other edibles. The pancreas then has to release more insulin to satisfy the liver’s needs. High insulin levels, in turn, interfere with the brain’s receipt of signals from a hormone called leptin, secreted by fat cells.
Eating stimulates secretion of insulin and leptin. The conventional view holds that insulin, like leptin, feeds back in the brain to limit food intake.Chronically elevated insulin blocks leptin’s negative feedback signal. Most people think insulin does the same thing as leptin, does just the opposite.
It is believed that fructose generates greater insulin resistance than other foodstuffs, and that fructose calories, therefore, fail to blunt appetite in the same way as other foods.
A Calorie Is Not Just a Calorie
Unlike conventional calorie counters, SureSlim does not believe all food calories have the same impact on fat storage and energy expenditure, regardless of whether they come from fat, protein or carbohydrate. Fructose, a type of carbohydrate, is not metabolized like other foodstuffs, and not even like glucose, the other major carbohydrate.
Sugar No Better Than Fat
Each sucrose molecule consists of one molecule of fructose joined to one molecule of glucose. In the gut, these two components are quickly split apart. High-fructose corn syrup is a less expensive mixture of glucose and fructose. High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are exactly the same, they’re equally bad. They’re both poison in high doses.
Over the past century, Westerners have increased their fructose consumption from 15 grams per day to 75 grams per day. The trend accelerated beginning about three decades ago, when cheap, easy-to-transport high-fructose corn syrup became widely available.
Much of processed food labeled “reduced fat” instead has sugar added to make it more palatable. But when it comes to harmful health effects, sugar is worse than fat. Consumption of either results in elevated levels of artery-clogging fats being made by the liver and deposited in the bloodstream. But fructose causes even further damage to the liver and to structural proteins of the body while fomenting excessive caloric consumption.
Four Simple Guidelines
- Get rid of every sugared liquid in the house. Kids should drink only water and milk.
- Provide carbohydrates associated with fiber.
- Wait 20 minutes before serving second portions.
- Increase physical activity.
- Eat whole foods, avoid processed foods
- Read food labels, you will be surprised at how much sugar is added to processed foods.
- Loose excess weight by following an eating plan that will help regulate your metabolism.
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