Oh no, not again!

Today's title is a quote from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".



There seems to be a lot of hysteria & worry around the Internet.

Oh, noes! They took away her lunch-box (they didn't)! Her lunch-box! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They made her eat chicken nuggets (they didn't)! Chicken nuggets! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They made her eat a portion of grain! A portion of grain! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They wanted to give her a carton of skimmed milk! Skimmed milk! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They wanted to give her a carton of chocolate milk! Chocolate milk! That's crap!

Is there too much fat in this Guacamole?

Is there too much omega-6 in this pork?

Is there too much BPA in this bottled water?

And so on...

Firstly, chicken nuggets, grains, skimmed milk and chocolate milk are not crap. They're not perfect, but they're far better than chocolate/candy bars and fizzy drinks.

Schools act in loco parentis, so they are not going to feed the children crap. USDA guidelines are nowhere near perfect, but children who aren't humongously fat are metabolically-flexible. Therefore, whether they eat carbohydrates or fats, their bodies will burn them. If a child has been diagnosed with Coeliac disease, they won't be given gluten grains (unless the school wants to get sued).

Eat some carbs, dammit. See Why I Ditched Low Carb.

To quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, DON'T PANIC! The dose makes the poison. Dietary fructose is used by the liver to make blood glucose to run red blood cells & the brain. A non-keto-adapted brain uses ~140g/day of glucose. Therefore, in the absence of any other dietary carbohydrates, a child could eat 100g/day of fructose, or 200g/day of sucrose without harm. Obviously, other carbohydrates are being eaten, so the amount of fructose that can be eaten without harm is probably ~50g/day, or ~100g/day of sucrose, or ~90g/day of HFCS55.

Warning, irony alert. So, light up a large spliff and chill a bit! Here's a song to help.



EDIT: Worrying about "X" may be worse for you than "X" itself, due to the adverse effect of chronically-elevated cortisol.

Natural & synthetic disaccharides.

As mentioned in Carbohydrates: Dogs' Doodads or Spawn of Satan?, there are three common disaccharides, sucrose (table sugar), lactose (milk sugar) and maltose (beer sugar). These all contain a molecule of glucose linked by a glycosidic bond to molecules of fructose, galactose and glucose respectively. In our bodies, our guts contain the enzymes sucrase, lactase & maltase which hydrolyse the glycosidic bond breaking the disaccharides into their constituent monosaccharides. People who lack any of these enzymes are unable to break the disaccharide into monosaccharides. As disaccharides are not absorbed, they pass along the gut until they reach the colon, where colonic bacteria ferment the disaccharides into short-chain fatty acids and gas. This increases ammonia levels in the colon which attracts water. End result: Lots of gas, soft poo and the excretion of ammonia (nitrogenous waste).

There's a synthetic disaccharide called lactulose, which is a disaccharide of fructose and galactose. As our bodies don't contain the enzyme lactulase, lactulose is fermented, producing lots of gas & soft poo. I thought I'd post about this as I'm taking lactulose to prevent the constipation caused by high dose Co-Codamol, the pain-killer I'm on while my 4-inch scar heals. It works!

An interesting but otherwise useless fact: The artificial sweetener sucralose that's made from & is about 600 times sweeter than sugar has the chemical name 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside (I'm nerdy enough to know that by heart!). Sucralose has a structure like lactulose rather than sucrose, which has the chemical name β-D-fructofuranosyl-(2→1)-α-D-glucopyranoside. As the amount of sucralose used is about one 600th that of sucrose, it doesn't cause the above effects.

*Biff!* *Thwack!* *Ker-Pow!*

The Internet is a great place for a virtual punch-up. Nobody gets physically hurt (feelings can get very hurt!) and the end result is often educational as well as entertaining. Such a punch-up has just occurred between Alan Aragon (who's in my blog list) and Robert H. Lustig, M.D. (whose video is linked to in An apple a day...) plus quite a few others, including me.

Alan's blog post The bitter truth about fructose alarmism has caused a bit of a stir in the nutritional blogosphere.

Dr Lustig pointed out that lots of people have watched his video. If only Alan had some videos. Oh, wait! He has. They're in Conversations with a bro: animated edition. Also, see Alan Aragon on Paleo Cream Puffs and Is_Fructose_causing_problems_and_is_pointing_this_out_Alarmism_.mp4

Enjoy!

An apple a day...

Once upon a time, there were Crab Apples. They were extremely sour (except perhaps for the Chestnut Crabapple) and contained a lot of Pectin, a soluble fibre/fiber. Then, we clever humans selectively bred apple trees over a large number of years and voila! We have the modern-day apple. Note that this contains on average 10.4g of sugar/100g of apple and only 2.4g of fibre/100g of apple. The British Dental Association claims that the Pink Lady, Braeburn and Fuji contain so much sugar that they cause tooth decay.

Different types of fruit vary hugely in their sugar content. Some fruits (blueberries & cranberries) also contain mannose. Bananas also contain starch, which turns into sugars as the banana changes colour from green to yellow to black.

Don't eat/drink too much fructose, as that goes straight to your liver where it tops-up liver glycogen and, once your liver glycogen stores are full, overspills as triglycerides a.k.a. fats into your liver & blood.

For more on fructose, see Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert H. Lustig, M.D.

As glucose and fructose have very different effects on the body, this is a situation where "a calorie isn't a calorie".