Anti-Sugar Elitism

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chicago81
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by chicago81 »

Well, I think it might depend person to person... but for myself, I know my numbers from my doctor have been MUCH better, since severely restricting carbohydrates, and eating a lot more fats.

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GandK
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by GandK »

I suddenly feel as though my diet is under-designed.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

GandK said: I suddenly feel as though my diet is under-designed.
Lol- Well, I am in the empty-nest pre-Grandma phase of life, so I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Seriously, like many of you thoughtful frugal folk, over the years, I have given consideration to such puzzles as "ideal diet for my own health and fitness", "planning menus to feed my family of four on $40/week", and "planning a vegetable garden according to the square foot method, and in alignment with what the people I will be feeding will actually eat ,and what I can actually grow without too much hassle in my micro-climate." On paper, or software, trying to optimize the overall system by maximizing nutrition and meeting personal preferences while minimizing cost and hassle is difficult enough. When you switch into real world mode and have to deal with "hottest June ever", "child who gags on beans", "husband who gets rash from tomatoes", "absent-minded cook who forgets to turn on crock-pot before leaving for work", "major infestation of fruit flies" , "preparing something resembling traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 13 people, including two vegan nieces, one paleo sister who doesn't eat any sugar/white foods, and two terrible foodie snobs for less than $5/person" etc. etc. etc. you learn that you also have to leave a huge margin for error.

One thing I recently re-learned about complexity is that it arises from the repetition of simple rules. Snowflakes, DNA, traffic lights, etc. I am not trying to be holier than thou when I make the observation that if any simple rule or set of rules (whether initial intention is good or evil) regarding what people eat is applied over and over again within a large population, there will be consequences. More like I am thinking "Isn't it interesting how this might work out?"
EMJ said: Here's a "agri-food innovation" European project - 2,000 square meters - grow your own food
Interesting. I especially like this:
Kitchens, canteens, restaurants and supermarkets – these are the places where we manage our 2000m² field: Every meal we eat, every food purchase we make, can be seen as an indirect order to our agricultural producers.
OTOH, IMO,like most models like this (although far better than current reality!), I have seen it errs a bit on the side of conventional organic farming of annual staple crops towards vegan diet. IOW, the part of the model where you either till a field and plant it with corn and feed it to humans, or you till a field and plant it with corn, and then feed it to hogs, is not validated in the real world where many animals can digest foods that humans can't digest. For simple instance, on my tiny urban homestead, I could feed mulberry leaves to meat rabbits, but not to myself. I could also ride my bicycle to the river and forage my fair share of fish from the wilderness. Also, the boxes where I am growing arugula near the kitchen door, the mini-orchard or food forest where I am growing fruit , the rough patch where I am growing potatoes this year, and the patch I might fine till in order to experiment with growing some oats next year, are not most efficiently or healthily managed through application of the same methods.
brute isn't very often interested in these type of Kantian "could the whole world do it" solutions. the whole world couldn't be a psychoanalyst or philosopher, either, but that doesn't mean those aren't good choices.
Well, I was suggesting a model based on parameters of my choosing in alignment with my "Adventure-Cottage-Library" lifestyle ideal. BRUTE and chicago81 might prefer something like these premises suggested as the basis for a Non-Hierarcchical Paleo Permaculture Hunter-Gatherer Intentional Community
Premises
1. A hunter-gatherer lifeway represents a peak in the psychological flourishing (happiness, well-being, etc.) of individuals. [3, 5]
2. Hunter-gatherers represent a peak in human physical health [7, 8, 9]
-- basis for antifragility: genus Homo lived as hunter-gatherers for at least 2,000,000 years, starting in the paleolithic, and some persisting until today. [4, 6]
3. Egalitarian social relationships (anarchy) represents a peak in human social interaction [4, 6]
-- basis for antifragility: genus Homo actively fostered egalitarian and anarchist social relationships for at least 2,000,000 years, starting in the paleolithic, and some persisting until today. [3, 4, 6]
4. Agriculture and its unintended consequences (slavery, the state, patriarchy, hierarchy, feudalism, control culture, false theistic religions, disease, malnutrition) destroy all of the above [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
-- a. Flourishing
-- b. Health
-- c. Social Relationships
5. Agriculture is inherently destructive, as every farm--by definition--displaces a wild ecosystem.
6. Permaculture can restore human flourishing, health, and social relationships by acting as a bridge over the chasm of agriculture to the restoration of land and lifeways for human and non-human animals.
Okay. Let's assume in the world of the future, I have bequeathed my permaculture project to my two theoretical grandchildren, sturdy Iskra and lithe Woody, who choose to follow the basic dietary/lifestyle models below.

Iskra Dietary Requirements
Basal Metabolism: 180 X10
Agricultural Labor: 900
Squats: 200
Protein: .8 X 180 = 144 grams/day
TOTAL: 2900 dietary calories and 144 grams protein/day

Woody Dietary Requirements
Basal Metabolism: 160 x 10
Cello Practice: 300
Bicycle to Rehearsal Space: 300
Protein: .4 X 180 = 72 grams/day
TOTAL: 2200 dietary calories and 72 grams protein/day

Will they be able to survive on the solar energy that shines down upon the acreage I have bequeathed to them in combination with some sustainable foraging in the surrounding commons? We shall assume that Woody's community symphony cellist stipend is just enough to cover property taxes which are just enough to cover maintenance of community bicycle paths and performance space etc.etc.etc. We must remember that energy must also be allocated for the processing, preparation and storage of foodstuffs, soil must be preserved or amended, some crops should be rotated, even apple trees have a limited productive life-cycle, hoe and cello and variety of other tools must be produced on-site or received in trade, etc. etc. etc.

BRUTE
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:Non-Hierarcchical Paleo Permaculture Hunter-Gatherer Intentional Community
brute found out the hard way that intentional communities basically don't work, at least if the common denominator is a single topic of interest.

Dragline
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Dragline »

Sounds like you have an interesting tale to tell, but I would suggest a new thread for it.

BRUTE
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by BRUTE »

not that interesting, they just usually fall apart pretty quickly.

banker22
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by banker22 »

@steveo73

Did you read the book?

steveo73
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by steveo73 »

banker22 wrote:@steveo73

Did you read the book?
No - I did get it but I haven't read it yet. I will try to read it though.

Farm_or
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Farm_or »

@7wb5 Thanks for the thought provoking thread. Amazing how one subject can branch in so many directions.

My sheepherding intuition:

Soil health. I like the analogy of the plants plants​themselves as carnivorous. There is a movement in agriculture that considers the soil to be a living organism. It is analogous to the skin on your body. The benefits of this new paradigm is zero fertilizer application. It's not really new, or a fad, but one of those who things rediscovered and enlightened with modern technology.

Gardening and permaculture. The physical and spiritual reconnection with the earth is the best teacher for nutrition. Most of our health problems stem from the industrialization of agriculture. Should we consume it in large quantities because it is cheap and readily available? Back to nature harvesting reveals a lot about foods and how we are supposed to get our nutrition. We wouldn't consume so much honey if we always got stung.

Round sprinkler irrigation. In reality, that is the most expensive form of irrigation. It is only cheap if you compare it to the cost of manually irrigatng and consider all the costly side effects and inefficiency of flood irrigation. That said, there's an average ten years pay back for every big round circle that you see flying over the countryside.

Meat eating? The ultimate shortcut for nutrition. I don't think nature intended for the industrial meat diet. It should be moderated greatly. But there is no better recycler than a free range chicken for two excellent and renewable sources of aminos.

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jennypenny
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by jennypenny »

I just finished Gary Taubes's new book The Case Against Sugar. It's good, and I like that he includes some history of sugar use as well as some history of the medical research. One of the terms I hadn't heard before was dopamine downregulation. I'm going to research that more, especially wrt mental health. If anyone knows of any good literature, please post it.

halfmoon
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by halfmoon »

Farm_or wrote: That said, there's an average ten years pay back for every big round circle that you see flying over the countryside.
There's a 10-year payback for alien spacecraft? :lol:
Farm_or wrote:But there is no better recycler than a free range chicken for two excellent and renewable sources of aminos.
Agreed. I always roll my eyes at the supermarket chicken proudly labeled: All Vegetarian Diet. I've never seen a vegetarian chicken, because chickens love juicy bugs above all things. I can't (yet) bring myself to eat bugs, but I'm happy to let chickens convert them for me into tasty meat. If a person is concerned about being vegetarian, why would they eat chicken?

Dragline
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Dragline »

jennypenny wrote:I just finished Gary Taubes's new book The Case Against Sugar. It's good, and I like that he includes some history of sugar use as well as some history of the medical research. One of the terms I hadn't heard before was dopamine downregulation. I'm going to research that more, especially wrt mental health. If anyone knows of any good literature, please post it.
Taubes was just interviewed about this book on EconTalk -- its quite interesting, actually: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/0 ... es_on.html

Smashter
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Smashter »

This article presents an interesting takedown of "The Case Against Sugar".

http://www.stephanguyenet.com/bad-sugar ... nst-sugar/

Personally, I think Taubes is a great writer who has done a lot of good in pointing out that we shouldn't simply follow FDA dogma. Still, he seems like he's taking this whole crusade against sugar a little too far.

According to well-regarded obesity researcher Stephan Guyenet, Taubes excludes from his books any research he doesn't like. This becomes pretty funny when Taubes conveniently leaves out results from research his own organization is currently funding if the results contradict the narrative he's trying to push.

From the piece:

"Taubes upbraids the research community for its belief that body fatness is determined by calorie intake, rather than the impact of foods on insulin. He supports the latter proposition with semi-anecdotal observations from Africa suggesting that a group of people eating a high-sugar diet supplying “as little as sixteen hundred calories per day” were sometimes obese and diabetic.

A person who actually wants to get to the bottom of this question should conduct their investigation in a very different manner. The first order of business is to look up the relevant metabolic ward studies, which are the most tightly controlled diet studies available. These studies consistently show that calorie content is the only known food property that has a meaningful impact on body fatness. This is true across a wide range of carbohydrate-to-fat ratios and sugar intakes, and a correspondingly wide range of insulin levels (17).

What makes Taubes’s oversight so extraordinary is that he was involved in funding one of these metabolic ward studies, which compared two diets that differed more than tenfold in sugar content. The results showed that a 25 percent sugar, high-carbohydrate diet caused slightly more body fat loss than a 2 percent sugar, very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diet of equal calories (18). Despite these clear and consistent findings, Taubes continues to insist that calorie intake is not an important determinant of body fatness, and he offers the reader questionable evidence in support of this while omitting high-quality evidence to the contrary. All while exuding righteous indignation about the scientific community’s misguided beliefs."

7Wannabe5
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Sugar isn't good for you, but anybody who was a female suburban teenager in the 1980s knows that if you want to fit into your designer jeans, you just have to take your sugar straight (lemon drops NOT muffins) with coffee and some aspirin and/or burn off caloric equivalent aerobically. Variation being you just hang out on the beach or by the pool eating nothing until dinner time then you only have one piece of pizza and 3 vodka and diet tonics. IOW, what constitutes best nutrition, the variety of factors that contribute to fitness, the variety of factors that contribute to longevity, and the straight-forward factors that contribute to weight loss are often confused by those who don't comprehend that all religions are based on rules for diet and sanitation. Exercise towards proof would be creation of Venn diagram intersecting dietary practice of individuals with frequency of visitation to establishment specializing in colon cleansing services.

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jennypenny
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by jennypenny »

@smashter -- I thought Taubes was upfront in the book about only presenting his side of the argument wrt sugar.

At the end of the book, Taubes touched on something that concerns me the most. It has been determined that epigenetics can influence our susceptibility to diseases like diabetes. Our personal tolerance level for something like sugar might be at least partially determined by the conditions under which our grandparents lived. That could mean that (1) what is safe will vary for each individual and someone following 'healthy' guidelines might still be doing damage based on genetic influences, and (2) past studies might not prove useful if epigenetics influences the health of future generations (levels that made people sick in the past may be higher than what would make you and I sick). After reading The Sports Gene, I also question whether studies on different populations can be conclusive.

I think it's good to read all available information to make an informed decision about what works best for each individual. Some people may function best following a different diet -- I expect that's most likely the case. What I wonder about is the genetic coding they are passing on if they overindulge in sugar, even if it doesn't negatively affect their own health.

If you don't plan on procreating, enjoy all the Chunky Monkey you want. :D

7Wannabe5
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Epigenetics is interesting, but glucose intolerance in offspring is linked to famine more than feast conditions in utero. Also, it is trivial compared to the effects of industrial food production and robots performing most of our manual labor. A middle-aged overweight, over-worked female with whom I am acquainted was telling me that she pays somebody $160/week to prepare and deliver homemade, healthy meals for her husband and her. The undeniable clear correlation is employment of females outside of the home and obesity. The obvious solution is to reduce the average workweek of men AND women to 20 hours, so that everybody can engage in more home production.

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Ego
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote:Epigenetics is interesting, but glucose intolerance in offspring is linked to famine more than feast conditions in utero. Also, it is trivial compared to the effects of industrial food production and robots performing most of our manual labor.
Hum. I believe more time has been spent studying the DNA of famine-offsprings. Feast conditions have been linked epidemiological to insulin resistance. Today they are working out the epigenetic causes.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... heritance/

I don't think it is possible to say that the epigenetic influence is trivial, regardless of how much I want that to be true. I want to believe that we control our level of insulin resistance, but evidence seems to be showing that some people start their lives with the genes expressing in ways that are not ideal. They still influence this. They are not entirely victims. But I think it is not correct to say it is trivial when compared to industrial food and our sedentary society. I could be wrong.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Hum. I believe more time has been spent studying the DNA of famine-offsprings. Feast conditions have been linked epidemiological to insulin resistance. Today they are working out the epigenetic causes.
So, according to the article you linked, it is high fat, not high sugar, diet that is linked with diabesity risk through epigenetic causation? That makes more sense since if/when you are in famine situation during pregnancy, you are basically eating a high fat diet. Also, this correlates with high fertility being linked to low waist-to-hip-ratio which is also strongly correlated with ability to convert carbohydrates/sugars into inert fat storage on lower body. Very obese women and very thin women with high waist-to-hip ratio are both more likely to give birth to underweight, at-risk infants. I wonder to what extent this is exacerbated through bottle-feeding with large protein/high sucrose cow milk formulas rather than small protein/high glucose human breast milk? Obviously, the industrial feeding of infants with formula was promoted prior to the industrial feeding of the elderly and adult workers with liquid soylent protein formulations and/or giant frozen TVP burritos.
. But I think it is not correct to say it is trivial when compared to industrial food and our sedentary society. I could be wrong.
On one of the permaculture forums I visit, a man who a number of years ago changed his diet from industrial wheat based to vegetables he raises himself by engaging in manual labor, recently posted some before and after photos. Stunning difference. He also noted that he now has to consume around 4000 kcalories/day to maintain his weight at his current level of labor. My 76 year old friend who can still run and do headstands, mostly lives on giant bowls of fresh fruit, fish and oatmeal. I do not always make the best choices for myself, but I can see what works. I guess it is just the part of me that tends a bit towards Sesame Street Socialism that doesn't like how "healthy" has been rendered into "elitist" signaling mechanism. Like your typical low-income, overweight, working-as-wage-slave, single mother does not have enough problems to overcome. Now she has to worry that the reason why her 6 year old is throwing a tantrum in the back seat because he is jonesing for McDonalds is she ate a candy bar the week his absentee father knocked her up.

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Ego
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote: I guess it is just the part of me that tends a bit towards Sesame Street Socialism that doesn't like how "healthy" has been rendered into "elitist" signaling mechanism. Like your typical low-income, overweight, working-as-wage-slave, single mother does not have enough problems to overcome. Now she has to worry that the reason why her 6 year old is throwing a tantrum in the back seat because he is jonesing for McDonalds is she ate a candy bar the week his absentee father knocked her up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences

Not liking the consequences of a fact does not make it less true.

We are just now starting to learn the generational consequences of behaviors and already we are seeing people put on blinders of denial because they don't want to believe that when they did X they caused their child's Y disease or grandchild's Z susceptibility. Preventative medicine is gearing up to include primordial or inter-generational prevention. La Leche League was way ahead of its time. Where once we shrugged and said, "He/she is only hurting her/himself so it is up to him/her," we are now learning that they are also hurting those who are yet to be born. Sticky issue.

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jennypenny
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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Post by jennypenny »

I have no problem baking someone a cake for their birthday or having cookies on Christmas every year. It's the other 363 days that are the problem. And I would never disparage someone who doesn't understand the issue or can't cook or doesn't have access to decent quality food. Honestly, I'd be ok with doubling SNAP payments if they included mandatory home ec classes that included cooking and nutrition.

I think the biggest issue for me is that sugar (in all its forms) has been added to too many products unnecessarily and should be removed from most of them. It's the 30-40g of sugar in every yogurt or the high sugar content in condiments, canned goods, and cereals that are the hidden culprits and where a significant amount of sugar could be removed from our diets quite easily. It's like the trans fat issue. Everyone complained about laws banning trans fats, but does anyone really notice a difference in the quality of the food? I'm a celiac and most of the time I don't notice when companies reformulate their product to remove the gluten. Same with products like Kraft Mac & Cheese which just removed the yellow dye.

If half of the sugar was removed from packaged foods, that would reduce the intake of people who rely almost solely on those foods by half. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. For example, fast food outlets vary the sugar content of their food -- a Whopper in the US has twice the sugar as a Whopper in Australia, but I'm sure our burger isn't twice as tasty. My point is only that I don't think it would be that hard to do with packaged goods and fast food (including crap like Gatorade and soda).

That said, I wonder if the damage from too much sugar is already baked in the genetic cake, so to speak, and subsequent generations will be forced to lower their intake or suffer severe consequences. Can you imagine what society will be like in a generation if 1 out of every 2 people has some form of metabolic syndrome?

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