What the Iranians can teach us about fructose

Aaah the old 'sorry I've not blogged for ages' blog post. I've been on limited internet for a while due to the whole packing-moving-unpacking thing. And to be honest, I've also felt like I don't have anything new to share. Maybe writing about going sugar-free isn't blog worthy. I mean, it seemed like such a big step, a topic which would keep me writing for ages. But turns out that, once past the initial withdrawal and so on, and after trying a few recipes and finding that glucose is nearly as easy to work with as sucrose, it's not such a big deal. It's actually really easy. I've lost nearly 8kg so far, and it keeps going slowly down.

But then again, I do love to write, and so I find myself back here. I was inspired tonight by a study which David Gillespie posted to the Sweet Poison Facebook group. The original study is here. In a nutshell this study showed that high levels of fructose in the diet of men and women in Tehran, Iran was associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, including higher body mass index and abdominal obesity.

Yeah, so? you might be saying. Isn't that the point of this blog, that fructose is bad, bad, bad, and that there is research to prove it? Well, yes, of course. But remember that most of the previous published research in this field has been in rats. And it's easy to dismiss this- a rat is (by definition) not a human. And while there have been other studies on people which showed that the rats were on the right track, they were limited, and open to criticism, for example that they fed people an unrealistic amount of fructose. A 2010 review of research published in the same journal as the new one concluded that "No fully relevant data account for a direct link between moderate dietary fructose intake and health risk markers".

So what we have now is one of the first human (ie, non rat) studies to show strong links between dietary fructose (the fructose that actual humans actually ate as part of their actual normal everyday diet) and metabolic syndrome, independent of age, physical activity, energy intake, dietary intake of other nutrients (eg fat) and BMI (all of which the researchers controlled for in their analysis).

The levels of fructose that this study suggest leads to problems seem quite high: >50g per day. At first glance it may seem like most of us are ok- surely I don't eat more than 50g fructose (100g sucrose), you might say. That's a heck of a lot of sugar. Visualise 22 teaspoons if you can, because that's how much it is. But consider that the average intake of fructose in this study was around 50g. So around half those studied (normal, everyday people) were eating over 50g per day. In their usual diet. And in case you think this only applies to Tehranian Iranians, US figures suggest that on average, Americans eat 55g of fructose per day- again, meaning that around half eat more than this. The data for Aussies is sketchy. In 1995 an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey showed that 20% of Australian energy intake came from sugar (in processed foods, fruit and veg, honey and other sweeteners). 20% of energy intake for a male aged 31-50 is between 104g and 185g per day (in fructose terms, 52-92.5g per day). More current figures are sparse to nonexistent because the ABS no longer conducts this particular survey, but a study being conducted with staff at the Epworth hospital (the SWEET study) may provide more answers (if and when it is published- will be looking out for that one). Preliminary data collected from participants showed that they ate 17 teaspoons per day in added sugars alone. Add in your fruit and veg (these are counted in the fructose total, even if they are healthy!) and I'll bet we are close to averaging the magic (in a bad way) 22 teaspoons.

I can't help but feel that this new study means that David Gillespie and others sounding the warning on fructose like Dr Robert Lustig should take some time out this week to give themselves a little pat on the back and maybe just send a little 'told you so' email to the nay-sayers who have insisted that fructose is fine and dandy like sugar candy. Like the university professors interviewed for this article reassuring the public that sugar is no threat, and that the National Health and Medical Research Council draft nutrition guidelines are being ridiculous for daring to suggest that Australians limit added sugars.

The bottom line is that we (most of us) eat a LOT of sugar. And we can now be more confident that this sugar may be doing us, the humans, and not just the rats, a lot of harm. 

Forty days later

Counting back, I’ve now been sugar free for...40 days. Wow, that’s a long time. Well done me! Also, I just made the connection that I started at the beginning of Lent. Huh. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in giving up sugar at this time of the year. But anyway, here I am 40 days later, and I thought it was time for an update. You know, am I losing weight? Do I feel better? Do I miss sugar? Will I be desperately hoping the Easter bunny is real and has left me some chocolate eggs on Sunday?

Let’s start with weight. Sugar is an excess calorie, so I could lose weight just by cutting it out and therefore reducing my overall daily calories. On the other hand, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and am eating full fat dairy- you can read why, here. I’ve also been kind to myself while withdrawing from sugar and haven’t stinted on other (non sugar) treats like potato chips and nuts, both of which are fatty. Fat has more calories than sugar, so I may actually end up eating more calories this way. Hmm.

This is probably why I’ve been drawn in the past to low-fat, high carbohydrate approaches in preference to low-carb, high fat approaches. It’s rational to think that you should remove the food group with the highest calories (fat), but it’s also simplistic. The body doesn’t process everything we eat as energy in the same way. One of the really important things I learned about sugar in David Gillespie’s books and from my own forays into the research is that fructose in sugar interacts with our appetite controls in a very dangerous way. 

Now that I’m avoiding fructose like the plague, I’ve found that I’m eating way less in a day than I used to. I could do a side by side comparison of my food then and now but I’d be too embarrassed about the ‘before’ shots. I’ve already revealed what used to be in my snack cupboard as well as some of the stupid ‘diet’ foods I used to know and love. 

But as an example of how things have changed, I’m now almost snack free. I used to be a mid-morning, mid-afternoon and evening snacker. I think this was made worse by being an at-home mummy because I would be feeding my baby boy things at all hours (babies snack a LOT) and would just naturally have a little something myself as well. Now I don’t snack during the day at all- I’m just not hungry between meals, and even my meals are smaller. I’ll admit that the after-dinner snack habit has been harder to break. This is definitely a habit, not hunger, but I’m aiming to change this as well. I know I snack more after dinner if I’m just watching TV without anything else to do (I’m a chronic multi-tasker, I can’t just watch TV), so I’m trying to make sure I have things to do, like...writing this blog.

[This reminds me of a study I read when I was looking into the exercise question. These researchers looked at the energy consumed by teenagers when they did typical daily activities. They found that when teenagers watch tv, they eat. When they exercise, they eat (well, presumably after). And for both of those activities they consume more energy than they burn. In fact, the only activity where the teenagers didn’t eat more calories than they burned was doing homework.  Perhaps this is partly because homework is not traditionally a snacking activity (unlike watching tv). But I think it might also be because the brain is actively engaged in something, rather than free to ponder the snacking possibilities. So there you go, homework is good for you (and I’m sure that’s the line they used in the media release for that particular study). And you, dear blog, are like homework to me. In a good way.]

So, to answer your question (or the question which I posed on your behalf- you're welcome) is that yes, I have lost weight. I wish I could give a figure here because I’m all about the data, but I was determined when starting this whole sugar-free thing not to get caught up in weighing myself endlessly. With the result that I (perhaps stupidly) failed to get a baseline weight to go from. I know from weighings in the not too distant past that I was at least a certain weight, so I can say for almost certain that I’ve lost at least...

(drum roll please)

3.2 kg

Yesssssss. I need to lose more, but the best part is knowing that, however gradually things move, they are moving down, not up. I don’t need to watch my weight anymore. My body is doing that for me, because I stopped blindfolding it.  Er, with a blindfold made of sugar...Ok, I need to work on that metaphor, but hopefully you get the picture.

So, weight loss, check.

I’m feeling good too. My skin is great (I’ll have to look into that one sometime), I’m not as moody, I don’t get highs and lows throughout the day caused by what I eat. It wasn’t easy for about three weeks- I definitely wanted sugar. I wouldn’t have thought I could come out the other side and just feel completely uninterested in sugar, but...here I am.  I have a box of home-made fructose free chocolates in the fridge which I made last week, and I’ve eaten about three of them. They are delicious, I just don’t crave them. I forgot about them actually. I’ve also got some of the coconut bread I made a few weeks back sitting in the freezer, waiting for a time when I want it. I’ve asked myself today whether I really honestly would say no to an Easter egg if, say, I were to find one in the garden Sunday morning after the Easter bunny has been by. And totally honestly (but grammatically confusingly), yes, I would say no. I know I feel dreadful if I eat sugar now- I’ve done it a few times accidentally (canned corn, I’m looking at you!). It’s not worth it.

So, I don’t think I’ll go back. I can’t promise- it’s not easy to avoid sugar totally, and it’s an addictive substance. It’s definitely trickier when eating at other people’s houses even if they are trying to be sensitive to your sugar-free needs. Not because of obviously sugary treats which I don’t care about saying no to, but because of hidden sugars which they may inadvertently serve up. Like the time I was eating dad’s home-made spaghetti sauce and after a process of cross-examination to rival any court room managed to work out that the reason it tasted sweet despite being ‘sugar free’ was that dad had innocently added just a dash (or two) of barbecue sauce which on inspection had about 40% sugar. I may just have to take the sugar hit every now and then and put up with the consequences, because this stuff is everywhere. But I don’t want it, so I won’t seek it.

So, forty days in, here I am. If you want to ask questions or comment about any of this, the comment box below will be happy to oblige. And any suggestions about homework/blog topics I should tackle in the future are also welcome. That’s unless you have given up commenting on blogs for Lent- in which case, you must wait until Sunday.

Happy Easter everyone J

Cleaning house

I spent this morning cleaning out our ‘snack shelf’. I needed to do this anyway- the shelf is too high for me to reach to the back and there are things in there of which I know not- the ghost of snack attacks past. I found some candy canes from Christmas two years ago. They were probably still good (do candy canes go off?) but I chucked them out anyway, along with

•         Two packs of ‘Double-D’ candies. Completely disgusting anyway, but also made with Isomalt, a low calorie sweetener which acts body just like sugar with approximately 50% glucose and 50% fructose.

•         Two packs of 'Sultry Sally' 97% fat free potato chips (salt and vinegar). Most flavoured chips have sugar in the flavouring so I was surprised and a little excited to see that these used dextrose (glucose). Then I realised that they a) contain MSG for no good reason and b) taste like cardboard. So, I chucked them.

•         Three individual snack packs of apricots in juice by Weight Watchers. No sugar added and only half a WW Point each (I think under the new ‘Pro Points’ system they are worth 0 points). But, sweetened with cyclamate and saccharin, artificial sweeteners which don’t act like fructose in the body (as far as we know) but which I can probably do without anyway. 

Goodbye ‘diet’ snacks. You won’t be missed. My snacks now (in case you are wondering) are things like popcorn, plain potato chips, nuts, rice crackers etc- as well as fruit, cheese, etc. Yummier and healthier snacks than the manufactured crap I used to eat in the name of my diet. I haven’t felt the need to snack as much as usual, anyway, which is great news.

I’ve also had a good look the snacks I give my son, who is 12 months old. I must admit that my attention previously was on the salt, rather than the sugar. Babies' kidneys can’t cope with salt in the same way that adults do, and it is dangerous for them to have large amounts. The Food Standard Agency, UK says that toddlers 1-3 years can cope with 2 grams of salt per day (0.8 grams of sodium) max.

So that's salt, but I'm off the sugar grid, remember? So, of course I'm now interested in sugar for toddlers. It's hard to find recommendations about the daily intake of sugar for this age group. The 'Toddler Healthy Food Pyramid' on Kidspot doesn't even mention sugars. And the information on the Raising Children Network site is also sparse in this respect. Perhaps we are all pretending that the only sugars littlies will come across are the natural ones in fruit and vegetables, and the lactose in milk and dairy? Please. If you expect toddlers to have no foods with added sugar, then say NO FOODS WITH ADDED SUGAR. 

Well anyway, what’s in our cupboard? My son is still at the age where he eats plain rice cakes enthusiastically, and I haven't ventured far into commercial snack packs or bars so far. The ones I had bought, though, included a few hidden nasties from a sugar perspective. Rafferty’s Garden Fruit Snack Bars (recommended for 12 months plus), a former favourite, turned out to be 40% sugar. Some of this is the (dried and concentrated) apple paste, but if you look at the ridiculously long list of ingredients that these bars contain, sugar is listed twice (added to the ‘fruit paste’ and to the biscuity outer layer of the bar). At 6.5 grams of sugar per serve, baby gets about 1.5 teaspoons of sugar in a tiny bar. Yum! 

Sultanas are another suspect food in terms of sugar, unfortunately. When someone opened a container of sultanas at mothers group this week, the babies all channeled their inner locust, swarming over and devouring as many as they could. I don't think I've met a baby of this age who doesn't love their 'tanas. Sultanas are 100% fruit, of course, but with all the water removed they are 80% sugar instead of the 20% sugar of the grape that made them. The usual story with fruit is that the fibre content, as well as the overall bulk (mostly water) of fruit limits the damage from the fructose that they contain. It fills you up, naturally limiting the amount of fructose you can eat in one sitting. You might eat a medium orange (about 7 grams of fructose), you might even find room for two (14 g fructose), but you probably wouldn't want your dinner afterwards. Compare how easily you (or your one year old) can eat a 40g packet of sultanas (about 13g fructose) and still find room for more. 

I'm not binning the 'tanas, in case you were wondering. We're just having them as an occasional treat instead of an everyday snack. The Rafferty's bars are gone though. Now we need some new ideas before the rice cakes get old- I'm always happy to hear new ideas for toddler snacks, so please feel free to post your suggestions below. [Thanks to those who pointed out that the comments weren't working for everyone- I had it on the wrong settings. I've fixed this now, so it should be easy to comment if you want to]. 

All in all, a good day's work. I know I'm not going to be able to keep my baby off the sugar grid at all times, but at least now I’ve made sure the snackables for both of us are as healthy as possible :)