Sugar Nation

How would you like to read a book that upends a lot of today’s standard advice about diabetes and prediabetes? Not another one! Well, here it is. Jeff O’Connell has written a book for American sugar eaters of today. He is a fitness writer and bodybuilder who tells about sugar and prediabetes and their impact on his life. The subtitle of the book Sugar Nation gets to the core of his memoir: The Hidden Truth Behind America’s Deadliest Habit and the Simple way to Beat it.

O’Connell tells his story about discovering that he has prediabetes. His father died of diabetes.  O’Connell didn’t just take medication or give up, but rather did research about this disease that showed him where many Americans eat the American diet, get minimal exercise and get sick. The culprit is the huge amount of sugars and carbohydrates that we are eating combined with sedentary lifestyles. He shows that diabetes brings with it complications including heart disease, kidney shutdown, nerve damage, and amputations.

He says that we have the tools at our disposal to prevent and reverse the disease, but many people aren’t using them. He says that many doctors know little about diet and nutrition and focus on treatment rather than prevention. He presents interviews with and data from many doctors who work with diabetics. He takes us into the lives of people with diabetes who follow the standard medical advice and see their disease advance. He sees his diabetic father suffering at the end of his life.

The tools are low carbohydrate diets and fats, and keeping physically fit. Diet and exercise. He weaves his own story through much of what he presents, which makes it readable and easy to understand. There was a lot that he says he didn’t know at the beginning of the story, particularly “I didn’t know that the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to do the exact opposite of what the majority of mainstream weight-loss experts recommend.” (p. 3.) He says also, “What I did know? That my limbs, heart, and kidneys were worth a hell of a lot more to me than hamburger buns, French fries, and glazed doughnuts. So I changed my ways with a vengeance.” (p. 3.)

O’Connell gives information about reactive hypoglycemia, a condition that happens to some people who are normal weight or thin but have prediabetes. He is one of them. He says there is not a lot of good data about it. But it occurs in a lot of diabetic patients.

A lot is packed into this book It’s worth reading.

O’Connell, Jeff, Sugar Nation: The Hidden Truth Behind America’s Deadliest Habit and the Simple Way to Beat it. 1^st ed., Hyperion Books, 2010.

Sugar -- Our Sweet Enemy

Forget about ISIS and terrorists. We are killing ourselves without their help. No guns. Just spoons and forks. Americans are eating ourselves into poor health and major diseases. Just ask the authors of the three books I have been reading: (1) JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Hidden Sugars, Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks; (2) Suicide by Sugar: a Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction; (3) Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. The authors, respectively, are JJ Virgin, Nancy Appleton and G.N. Jacobs, and Robert H. Lustig.

These three books have scary titles that describe their content. They all point out in different ways that sugar and related sweeteners plus processed foods have made Americans and people around the world heavier and sicker than they were in the 1980s and earlier. They tell us about the science of our metabolisms and how sugars, especially high fructose corn syrup, are in almost all processed foods in addition to obvious sweetening additions to our meals. They also suggest ways to reverse our copious use of sweet things. They know whereof they speak. The three books are sprinkled with stories about people who turned their lives around.

JJ Virgin is a bestselling author who has appeared in television, magazines and blogs. Her book is chatty and appears aimed at women who enjoy light reading. It also has content with its conversational style.

Nancy Appleton has a BS in clinical nutrition and a PhD in health services, and has a private practice in California. G.N. Jacobs is a reporter and filmmaker.  Appleton focuses on sugar as addictive for many people. Her story is about homeostasis, which she says is “the internal balance of the body’s electro-magnetic and chemical systems.” She says our bodies need balance for health: “Our bodies heal when we are in homeostasis.” It takes a book to make this sound relevant and interesting.

Robert H. Lustig is a medical doctor who has spent twenty years treating childhood obesity and studying the effects of sugar on the central nervous system and metabolism. Lustig is somewhat trendy now and appeared this week on Wisconsin Public Television in addition to being on YouTube and publishing a DVD with information about sugar consumption. In addition, I have spotted him on the Doctor Oz Show. Lustig’s book is the most scientific and is less easy to read than the others, but the person who reads it all learns a lot about how sugar is bad for our metabolisms from birth throughout life.

It looks as if we need to slow down on sugar consumption and that it isn’t easy for most people. The three authors agree that Americans get hooked on sweet foods, especially soda and processed foods, and it is giving us metabolic syndrome, which according to Lustig is a cluster of five chronic conditions familiar to most people: “obesity, diabetes, lipid problems such as high triglyceride and low HDL, hypertension, cardiovascular disease), any or all of which increase your chance of early death.” (Lustig, p. 94.) Lustig’s ongoing statement is, “a calorie is not a calorie,” meaning that calories are not all alike. Broccoli and soda are very different. Appleton’s list of factors for metabolic syndrome includes elevated blood pressure, elevated C-reactive protein, high fasting blood glucose levels, high triglycerides, a large waistline, low levels of HDL, raised LDL, and raised total cholesterol levels.

Appleton has a chapter that gives 140 reasons why sugar is ruining your health. She gives a list of thirty-one forms of sugar. She says Americans eat sugar and other similar sweeteners at about forty-eight teaspoons per person per day, while about two teaspoons of added sugar two or three times a day is usually the body’s threshold for added sugar. Virgin says that the average American eats about twenty-two teaspoons of sugar every day. I don’t know where they get their statistics, but either figure is a lot of sweet stuff. Virgin says, “It will blow your mind when you see how much sugar is sneaking into your diet—mountains of it, even in things you would swear have no added sugar.” (Virgin, p. xv.)

Virgin talks about hidden sugars that are in the processed foods that many people eat. She says, “…refined sugar by itself is a bad thing (especially liquid sugars like juice and soda), but you should avoid processed foods with added sugar and fat together at all costs—it’s a fat-storing, metabolically toxic combo.” (Virgin, p. 43.) She rates sugars into low, medium and high impact in accordance with the damage they can do. She has suggestions on how to eat in restaurants and fast food places. She says that exercise is good but we need to get our eating right first. She tells us to go easy on grains, roots and fruit, low-fat and no-fat dairy and diet foods, sweet drinks and dressings, and sweeteners and added sugars.

Lustig compares food addiction to established criteria for substance dependence. He’s the doctor, so he gives us an essay on what constitutes addiction: seven criteria, of which an addict usually has three: tolerance, withdrawal, binging, desire or attempts to quit, craving or seeking, interference with life, and use despite negative consequences. (Lustig, p. 55-56.) He expresses concern that many obese children come to his office and that type 2 diabetes is becoming common in children as well as adults. He says the goal of obesity management is to keep insulin down. He tells us about insulin and other hormones that affect our eating.

The three say in various ways that it’s not our fault. The food industry is in there with thousands of appealing processed foods. People are eating fast food in their busy lives. School lunch programs give kids processed sugary foods. Deceptive advertising is ubiquitous.  Our way of living and eating is a big problem, but not insurmountable. Virgin has chapters that tell how to taper, transition and transform. Appleton offers three food plans to follow.  Appleton and Virgin give recipes to help people who need help. All three give suggestions that can make a difference.  Lustig calls for global sugar reduction because the problem is not just American.

It’s about our health. If everyone stopped eating sugars, our medical establishment would shrink, food processors would need to change or cease to exist, and we all would feel a lot better and have longer lives. Yes, sweet foods are delicious and hard to resist. But life and health are precious. Virgin in her chatty way says, “So let me shout this from the mountaintop—it’s the impact of sugar that matters. You don’t have to eliminate sugar completely, but you need to choose your sugars wisely.” (Virgin, p. xiv.)

Year of No Sugar - Book review

What’s it like to live without sugar for a year? Eve Schaub found out and wrote about it in Year of No Sugar, an amusing book that she calls a memoir. Schaub, her husband and two daughters all took part in this dietary adventure for a year. Schaub did this after watching a You Tube video, “Sugar: the Bitter Truth,” presented by Dr. Robert Lustig. Lustig is the author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, which explains that sugar is the reason for the worldwide obesity epidemic

Eve Schaub watched the video and said her brain caught fire. She said it changed her life. The video called sugar a poison that makes people sick, overweight, obese and unhappy. That was eye opening for Schaub, so she decided to stop eating added sugar, and her family joined in. She kept a blog about the experience. She wrote the book. The family established rules, such as don’t eat added sugar but do eat foods like fruit containing naturally occurring sugar. They agreed to eat one sugar containing dessert per month and another on a birthday. Sweets at school were optional, but the girls mostly did not eat them.

Schaub’s book covers a bit about sugar’s destructive characteristics, but most of it is about the family’s day to day experiences during a year without sugar. It’s not a long essay about the evils of sugar, but rather a chronicle of avoiding the ubiquitous sugar that they learned is in a great many foods. Schaub learned to cook without sugar but with substitutions like dates to give some sweetness. Her sugar free cookies pleased the family and others. The holidays were there, including Halloween and Christmas, with attendant pitfalls. She pointed out that the trick or treat candy was saved for consumption after the year was finished.  The family took a trip to Italy and stayed on the diet. . The family stayed with the project with no mutinies. There were times when one or another family member wanted sugar very much.

What did they learn from the experiment? They learned that sugar is everywhere, especially at school. Schaub became a label reader. Her awareness of the prevalence of sugar was heightened. Schaub became acquainted with David Gillespie, an Australian who publicly advocated about sugar’s destructiveness in his book Sweet Poison. Lustig and Gillespie are support people behind her book.

I haven’t read many books like this. It reminded me a bit of A.J. Jacobs’ book, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. Jacobs tried various diets and weight loss techniques for a period of time that might have been a year, and then wrote about his experiences. Like Schaub, he didn’t preach, he just told the story.

The Big Fat Surprise – Book Review

Fat. Healthy or unhealthy? Saturated vs unsaturated, trans fat. Fat science, fat politics. Diets: low fat, Mediterranean, paleo, low carb.  Dean Ornish vs Robert Atkins. Gary Taubes. These are covered in The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, by Nina Teicholz. I was fascinated as I read about how the book turns conventional dogma about fat upside down. Teicholz, a writer and apparently not a doctor or nutritionist, spent ten years on this book and gives us about a hundred pages of documentation, including notes and bibliography, for her assertions that the last sixty years’ advice on fats have been wrong.

To quote the author, “The more I probed, the greater was my realization that all our dietary recommendations about fat—the ingredient about which our health authorities have obsessed most during the pat sixty years—appeared to be not just slightly offtrack but completely wrong. Almost nothing that we commonly believe today about fats generally and saturated fat in particular appears, upon close examination, to be accurate. “(p. 2).

Teicholz points out that once the low fat, low cholesterol hypothesis was in place, it was very difficult to write or talk against it. She goes through the history of America’s advice and experiments about dietary fats. According to Teicholz, studies that contradicted accepted belief were often not given credibility or not published; researchers were unable to get funding for further studies. Even prominent experts in the field were not believed. Meanwhile, Americans found themselves with growing epidemics of chronic disease related to diet.

Much of the book examines the story of nutrition science regarding dietary fats as its advice went from bad to worse. In the 1950s medical experts looked for ways to reduce heart disease and came up with the idea that saturated fat, or primarily animal fat, caused heart disease. Ancel Keys developed what various writers have called the cholesterol hypothesis, which said that high cholesterol caused heart disease. From that came the low fat diet, and advice to replace fats with carbohydrates. Teicholz takes us from that to saturated fat to polyunsaturated fat conclusions, bolstered by President Eisenhower’s heart attack. Lots of science, both good and bad, appears here. Bad or flawed science comes from studies which were designed with a particular conclusion in mind, or studies with data points that support the hypotheses but not the ones that do not, and other flaws of design, participation or follow-up. Teicholz read and reported on a great many studies.

Sugar never got much study, according to this book. Teicholz suggests that studies have shown that sugar causes heart disease, not saturated fat. And so Americans went from the saturated fat veto to the low fat diet, to trans fats and manufactured fats to the Mediterranean diet to high fat low carb. At the end the Atkins diet wins after being scorned by doctors and nutrition people for many years. The Atkins diet is characterized by high fat meat and low carb vegetables. Teicholz reports the studies, large and small. She credits nationally known food journalist Gary Taubes with breaking through the accepted story because he is outside the system, not a doctor or nutritionist. She also says she was able to write the book for the same reason.

Food manufacturers are not vilified in this book, but the part they played in creating foods for these diets is told, as is the politics of food that gave us the food pyramid. The USDA continues to say stay the course and avoid saturated fats. Teicholz says that death from heart disease has declined but the actual occurrence of it has not appeared to decline, possibly because medical treatment has improved. She points out that Americans “have experienced skyrocketing epidemics obesity and diabetes.” (p. 327). She says that recent studies have showed the absence of negative effect of saturated fat on heart disease, obesity or diabetes. She concludes that “bias and habit present powerful, if not impenetrable, barriers to change.” (p. 326).

Teicholz does not address the effect of her conclusions on the environmental consequences of trying to feed animals to millions of people beyond saying that she recognizes it but environmental impact is not within the scope of her book. She also does not advocate for or against vegetarian diets but shows that they come up in studies of fats.

This book is one more addition to my library of ideas on how to eat well as a way to stay healthy. I read other well qualified writers and understand that not all agree with her dietary conclusions.

After Christmas Weight Loss

Once again it’s time to take off a few pounds. Every year I give it a try with limited or no success. A couple of weeks of holiday eating can’t be wished off or prayed off even though a good attitude should help. I can’t blame Aunt Molly, as my mother did when she put on extra pounds. Aunt Molly was remembered for her spherical shape. Mother would groan and say, “I take after Aunt Molly.” Did she lose weight with this strategy? No. She spent less time looking into the mirror.

I turn to the books. After all, I spent a lot of my life as a librarian. When I worked in libraries, every January I made displays of diet books to enable everyone to eliminate excess holiday pounds. Maybe my co-workers noticed; I don’t know. I was doing something to help the world and maybe myself. Well, we all know that making displays is nice but it doesn’t bring about weight loss. It’s better to read them. It’s even better to do something.

I have noticed some recent weight loss trends such as intermittent fasting and the paleo diet. Goodbye Weight Watchers and the Atkins program. What became of calories? What happened to too much junk food? Low carb has morphed into low glycemic. The diets and weight loss programs all have books. Pick one and live better. Are we confused yet?

The latest weight loss wonder with book, The Daniel Plan, comes from megachurch pastor Rick Warren in collaboration with Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Daniel Amen. It has a different approach. Here is what Amazon.com says about it:  “Revolutionize Your Health ... Once and for All During an afternoon of baptizing over 800 people, Pastor Rick Warren realized it was time for change. He told his congregation he needed to lose weight and asked if anyone wanted to join him. He thought maybe 200 people would sign up, instead he witnessed a movement unfold as 15,000 people lost over 260,000 pounds in the first year. With assistance from medical and fitness experts, Pastor Rick and thousands of people began a journey to transform their lives. Welcome to The Daniel Plan. Here's the secret sauce: The Daniel Plan is designed to be done in a supportive community relying on God's instruction for living.”

I’m not sure how well this works. It deals with weight loss science from Dr. Hyman, the brain connection from Dr. Amen, and grouping from Rick Warren. These three guys have appeared on several television venues to promote their program and their book. They want groups of people to lose weight as Rick Warren has. The two doctors look slim enough already. I haven’t read the book.

Intermittent fasting is interesting. It works for some people. I have read about two types and blogged about one. They are said to be very good for health, as obesity reduction should be. One type, with book, The Mini-fast Diet, is the mini-fast, from weight loss doctor Julian Whitaker, and Peggy Dace. This program works by eliminating breakfast and thus bringing about a sixteen hour fast, with no food ingested from after supper through the morning. I tried it for two and a half weeks and gave up after seeing no results. In the book people said they lost pounds immediately. The other intermittent fast challenge is the fast diet from medical journalist Michael Mosley. The book is The Fast Diet, published in the United Kingdom. This program is supposed to work when the dieter eats 500 or 600 calories per day for two non-consecutive days of the week. The dieter does not go into starvation mode when he/she separates the days or does not eat 500-600 calories every day. The difference in calories is gender related: women 500, men 600. Both the Whitaker and Mosley programs promise weight loss and better health as long as the dieter doesn’t binge on the other days and stays to a diet that is low on the glycemic load.

Here we have three dieting possibilities for the next weight loss attempt. Would it work for Mother and Aunt Molly? Since they have gone to their rewards in the next life, we’ll never know. Will it work for me? Or you? We can check in on that next year at this time, maybe.

Mini-Fast Diet Book

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, according to the old saying. Well, maybe so, maybe no. That’s my conclusion after reading The Mini-Fast Diet: Burn Fat Faster than Ever With the Simple Science of Intermittent Fasting, by Julian Whitaker and Peggy Dace. Testimonials abound in the book, but it hasn’t done a thing for me.

Intermittent fasting has gotten significant press lately. The book was published in 2012, and the dust jacket proclaims: “Lose up to 30 pounds in 12 Weeks!...Burn Fat faster than ever …”  Dr. Joseph Mercola, who has a widely read website with health articles, has said that he tried intermittent fasting successfully. Headlines of some of his articles state: “Burn Away Fat Cells With This Simple Eating Trick” (May 4, 2012); “Intermittent Fasting Finally Becoming Mainstream Health Recommendation” (January 18, 2013); “Intermittent Fasting Shown to Improve Diabetes and Reduce Cardiovascular Risk” (May 17, 2013); “How Intermittent Fasting Stacks Up Among Obesity-Related Myths, Assumptions, and Evidence-Backed Facts” (March 1, 2013).

Julian Whitaker, who has written fourteen books, is a physician who operates a weight loss clinic using diet, exercise and some nutritional supplements, in California.  He refers to his program as a mini-fast with exercise. The mini-fast is about sixteen hours, preferably during the night when one is sleeping and continuing the next day until about noon. No breakfast. His program includes some sweat producing exercise during the fast, to be spaced a couple of hours before eating.  Whitaker says in the book that he tried this procedure himself and saw results right away. He says he was not hungry and liked not having to worry about counting calories. That’s right. His diet is a non-diet diet.  He says in the book’s introduction that this diet is “the most successful, health-enhancing, and fastest-acting weight loss program I’ve ever come across. It eliminates the restrictive diets, calorie counting, and food cravings that are the bane of most regimens. It promotes habits that will lead to a lifetime of health. And it…selectively burns fat.”

According to the book, Whitaker’s program allows the dieter to eat a normally healthy diet and stresses the importance of exercise while fasting. He allows people who don’t want to fast during the night to fast for sixteen hours during other times of the day as long as they are eating only two meals during the twenty-four hour period and spaced within about eight hours. He says that the fasting time puts the dieter in a state of ketosis, which is a fat burning state that occurs with the fast. Some of us know about ketosis  as the basis of the Atkins diet, which comes about by severely reducing carbohydrate intake. In Whitaker’s program, the dieter is encouraged to break the fast with some protein rather than high glycemic carbohydrates. Whitaker encourages people to eat a healthy diet. However, he is no Robert Atkins.

Ok, it sounded too good to be true to me, even with Whitaker’s many patients who tout their successful weight loss. So, I tried it. I have been going without breakfast for two and a half weeks. Unlike Dr. Whitaker and Dr. Mercola, who said they lost weight in days, I haven’t lost a pound. It is possible that I may be enjoying some of the other benefits that are enumerated in the book, but I don’t have the equipment to do medical tests. I feel the same as always. I don’t miss breakfast, but I haven’t been hungry in the morning for many years.

The book has many good parts. It is assembled with headlines throughout the text, before and after pictures with dieter testimonials, and boxed sections here and there about related topics that don’t interrupt the basic text. These features give us a book that is easy to read and good to look at. The book is organized into three useful parts: The Problem and the Solution; The Mini-Fast With Exercise Program; and Exercise and Diet Strategies.

Whitaker tells us why diets normally fail and that it isn’t the person’s fault if they do. He explains diet failures in laypeople’s language while using science that is documented in footnotes. He has a chapter about why weight loss matters, with science that is pointed enough to make a normal person want to lose weight as a health issue. He writes about some roadblocks to success, such as being hypothyroid or having other medical problems. He provides menus and some recipes for people who would like to use them. His thyroid solution strikes me as too simple; get the situation treated and you will be fine. I can say from experience that it isn’t a simple situation. It occurs to me that the dieter needs to do a lot of exercise, or maybe the diet works better for men than for post-menopausal women.

Whitaker presents one type of intermittent fasting. Another that is being discussed around the water coolers  is a diet requiring the person to choose some days in which to eat a maximum of five hundred calories, while eating normally the rest of the week. This type of fast is explained in another book that I haven’t read, called The Fast Diet, by Michael Mosley.

I think Dr. Whitaker’s book has many merits. Is it too good to be true? Maybe and maybe not.