Sugar is Toxic?

[dropzone]

Also known as Ketosis

Makes a bro smell like model airplane glue. Not a goal when you are trying to finesse the ladies, especially if you actually spent the afternoon building model airplanes.

 

[quarky]

Quarky, I'm not picking on you. I'm trying to get at the processes behind these various "X is toxic" trends.

What led you to accept the information in that post as "good"?

Linda

Not to worry, as per picking on me. My skin is thick.

I said 'good post'.
And then posed a reasonable question.
( regarding the economics of hfcs and possible side-products.)

I saw that some of the info was good, regarding sugars. It hadn't been layed out prior, to my eye. You jump to conclusions, perhaps.
I can appreciate a post defending big-foot as a good post. This is independent of my personal lack of big-foot agenda.

As far as me accepting certain information as good?
That's where you're jumping to conclusions.
A post could be brilliant, and I might mention it, even if I was in complete disagreement. Someone might make a good post (well written; friendly; entertaining in defense of the 6000 year old Earth. I could recognize the goodness of a post that may run contrary to my own bent.
(Terminal nice guy syndrome)

The obesity 'epidemic' in the U.S. is pretty serious. Pin-pointing the culprit is doomed to fail, even if we know that sweets and treats are very cheap; readily available everywhere; heavily advertised; subsidized; profitable; long shelf life, and so on...yet, we can't point the finger at anything in particular, objectively.

If the obesity epidemic was thought of as a disease; like aids, for instance, and we were analyzing data in an attempt to locate vectors; hfcs would certainly be on a short list of possibilities. Not because of anything unique in the molecules of said sugars...more because of subtle factors, like economics; advertising; availability, and so forth.

Is it fair to say that honey or maple syrup are healthier forms of sugar?
In a way, yes. Because they aren't so readily available.
There's a built-in aspect of moderation that has nothing to do with chemistry.

Who can even think of a single ad promoting a sexy brand of real maple sugar? Or honey? Sorghum? Molasses?
The hfcs also isn't brand-identified. It comes in under the radar. It's molecules may be the same, but its cheapness, and subsequent profits, have led to a flood of motivated salesmen and willing outlets.

So how do we address such a phenomena? The scrutiny knows that something is amuck, yet, the chemistry can't point at the evil-doers.

Imho, its not the molecules as much as the media. This is one of the tragedies of capitalism.
We are helpless to resist.
We have the right not to buy something, yet we do, just the same.
As if we are rendered child-like.

 

[Slimething]

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE OP I am correct. Sucrose is table sugar and needs to be processed from other goods before it becomes what we know as table sugar. White sugar. The stuff that goes in your tea if you are from England.

Nursedan, no you are not in the least correct. I know what you are trying to say but you have to bear in mind that you are communicating with a technical audience here. Your writing is not technically correct.

Sucrose is a molecule with a specific definition. It does occur in nature - full stop. Merely because a molecule is extracted and refined from a natural source makes little difference to its intrinsic properties. Actualy, none at all. The fact that sucrose is refined and sold as table sugar doesn't really matter with respect to its toxicity.

Keep a thick skin but consider your audience. A lot of Forumites treat sloppy writing with disdain and you've felt that. Take my advice and stop making bold statements that you see as true but, to technical people, are not. I believe what you are trying to say is that sucrose in purified form (table sugar or any concentrated form) can be be consumed in excess more easily than, say, overdosing from eating too much fruit. Am I right? If so, write your statements out fully and clearly. Avoid make sweeping statements. They are rarely true in all contexts.



FWIW, all substances are toxins. It's the dosage that dictates the level of harm they do. In the OP, the doctor may have well told that girl that sugar was a poison to her due to her metabolic disease. The doctor may have been trying to impress her through melodrama. To generalize it to everyone is absurd. Sugars are a primary energy source. Use it wisely.

 

[H'ethetheth]

Second, I've had this discussion before, and it has usually resulted in the same outcome. It was wrong for me to get into this without explicitly defining my terms- toxic, toxin, even sugar is an ambiguous term. I have science to back me up, I have research. But within the confines of an internet post things do get lost. This debate requires so many qualifying statements that my fingers get tired of typing. I get involved with debates like this because the topic interests me, and sharing knowledge is valuable to me.

I didn't understand some of the responses to my post, but to ask people to clarify just gets bothersome, for them and me.

Fair enough, but seeing how I am actually interested in discussing this, I'd like to just state what bothers me about your claims in their unqualified form.

The first is "You don't need sugar", by which you apparently mean "you don't need to ingest sucrose to live." The OP doesn't say anything about orally ingesting sucrose being necessary to live. Nobody on this thread has claimed this, so it's not necessary to argue against it.

Then:

Sucrose, or table sugar, does not occur in nature and is, for all intents and purposes, "toxic" to our bodies, as is HFCS.

This quote, which has been pointed out by many already.
The first part of this makes me ask: Would you agree that Oxygen does not occur in nature?
The second part is something I just can't imagine being qualified in a way that makes it true. In what way is sucrose toxic? That is, what definition of toxic are you using that would make this statement true?

 

[John Albert]

Yeah, one gets the sense he's on a crusade.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the science is wrong.

I can forgive the guy for using buzzwords and sound-bites to get his message across, as long as his medicine is good. He's trying to prevent a generation of kids from growing up to be fat, unhealthy adults and passing their bad dietary habits on to the next generation. That's commendable.

 

[fls]

As far as me accepting certain information as good?
That's where you're jumping to conclusions.
A post could be brilliant, and I might mention it, even if I was in complete disagreement. Someone might make a good post (well written; friendly; entertaining in defense of the 6000 year old Earth. I could recognize the goodness of a post that may run contrary to my own bent.
(Terminal nice guy syndrome)

Thanks.

Linda

 

[fls]

Sure, but that doesn't mean the science is wrong.

I can forgive the guy for using buzzwords and sound-bites to get his message across, as long as his medicine is good. He's trying to prevent a generation of kids from growing up to be fat, unhealthy adults and passing their bad dietary habits on to the next generation. That's commendable.

It hasn't been established that the use of HFCS is harmful, is all. He may be barking up the wrong tree.

Linda

 

[IDB87]

Makes a bro smell like model airplane glue. Not a goal when you are trying to finesse the ladies, especially if you actually spent the afternoon building model airplanes.

Just gotta find a broette who likes building model airplanes, bro.

 

[IDB87]

OK, so! Sugar isn't toxic. Eat more fruits and veggies and eat less cookies and bread (?). Everything in moderation.

As I am quite the simpleton, is that basically the gist of this thread?

 

[fls]

OK, so! Sugar isn't toxic. Eat more fruits and veggies and eat less cookies and bread (?). Everything in moderation.

As I am quite the simpleton, is that basically the gist of this thread?

More like...

You've got two messages.

"Sugar is toxic."

"Eat more fruits and veggies and eat less cookies and bread." (Or alternatively, Michael Pollan's "Eat food.* Not too much. Mostly vegetables."

Why choose the former rather than the latter?

Linda

*By "food" he means potatoes, beef, water and salt rather than a can of stew.

 

[caniswalensis]

*By "food" he means potatoes, beef, water and salt rather than a can of stew.

UH-OH!

Is canned stew toxic?

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I like cake.

 

[John Albert]

It hasn't been established that the use of HFCS is harmful, is all. He may be barking up the wrong tree.

To be fair, he's not arguing that the general use of it is dangerous, but that overconsumption is, and that today's American food industry uses it so excessively that it's difficult for consumers to formulate a diet out of common, name-brand off-the-shelf foods and soft drinks without overconsuming it. He's also not placing the blame solely on HFCS, but excessive sucrose consumption also (I'm sure he'd argue that a diet comprised entirely of recipes from the Paula Deen cookbook would be just as bad).

He presents a comparative study of the biochemistry of glucose, ethanol, and fructose metabolism as proof of the negative health effects of fructose. He asserts that these effects are significant, considering the quantities of HFCS and sucrose intake inherent to the average American's diet. If that science is correct, then he has a valid point. If the science is faulty, then he's definitely "barking up the wrong tree" as you put it. I've seen some critiques on nutritionist blogs that assert his claims constitute nothing more than nutritional alarmism, similar to the negative hype during the 1970s and '80s surrounding the issue of dietary fat.

As I said before, I'm not a biochemist so it's difficult for me to formulate a reliable, informed opinion on my own. But I do know enough about basic physiology to understand that the negative effects he ascribes to fructose overconsumption (insulin resistance leading to decreased leptin production, hepatic lipid accumulation, liver inflammation, elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels, etc.) are serious enough to warrant concern.

As I see it, it all comes down to validation or refutation of the underlying science, and an assessment of whether the negative effects are really as bad as he makes them out to be. As far as I know, his results haven't been widely criticized, but it doesn't appear there's anything approaching a consensus, either.

"Sugar is toxic."

"Eat more fruits and veggies and eat less cookies and bread." (Or alternatively, Michael Pollan's "Eat food.* Not too much. Mostly vegetables."

Why choose the former rather than the latter?

Linda

*By "food" he means potatoes, beef, water and salt rather than a can of stew.

This seems very reasonable to me.

Also: Hey, Americans, get off your asses and go for a walk, or ride a bike once and awhile for chrissakes!

 

[quarky]

It hasn't been established that the use of HFCS is harmful, is all. He may be barking up the wrong tree.

Linda

The more subtle subjective factors which I broached in my last post can't really be used in the bio-chem argument.

Is advertising toxic?

Well; sort-of?

 

[stevea]

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE OP I am correct. Sucrose is table sugar and needs to be processed from other goods before it becomes what we know as table sugar.

In the contexts of reality you are just plain wrong. Conflating sucrose with the table sugar term, then insisting it ONLY refers to the white granulated pure stuff is word play, not chemistry. A blatant distortion of definitions. By that standard no simple chemical exists in nature in any food. You may as well claim that table sugar only exists on tables therefore not in nature.

Sucrose in high concentration in sugar cane and sugar beets. It exists as a modest component.on many fruits and vegetables, bananas, grapes (4-5% by weight in some grape varieties), carrots, squash. Yes sucrose is naturally occurring in many foods.

White sugar. The stuff that goes in your tea if you are from England. One of the things that people stop eating when they stop eating sugar. IN THE CONTEXT OF THE OP. ....

I can't agree - When someone makes the vague statement they've stopped eating sugar it MAY mean they've stopped using refined table sugar only. It almost certainly means they are avoiding foods with any form of added carbohydrate sweetener - beverages, candies, baked sweets. It may mean they also avoid foods high in natural sugars - mostly fruits. It could mean they are avoiding all sources of simple carbs. It's certainly metabolically meaningless to claim you've stopped using sugar while drinking soda or fruit juice, or munching on cookies or grapes or apples. It is technically accurate to claim you've stopped eating sugar while still consuming starch or reducible polysaccharides, but again - metabolically meaningless.

To simplify the paper you referenced...he isn't saying that fructose is broken down in the liver along a similar pathway as ethanol. They are broken down along quite different pathways.

Linda - I think you missed the parallels in the admittedly confusing diagrams. The main ethanol & fructose pathways are:
ethanol -> acetaldehyde -> acetate (->pyruvate) and into the citric cycle.
vs
fructose => glyceraldehyde -> pyruvate and into the citric cycle.

And yes these are similar. The enzymes for each are distinct, which is not surprising. According to my trusty Mathews & van Holde "Biochemistry"

In humans for fructose we have
Fructose (by fructokinase) => fructose-1-phosphate ((F1P)).
F1P (by aldolase B) => 1.dihydroxyacetone-phosphate((DHAP) + 1.D-glyceraldehyde .
The D-glyceraldehyde is further phosphorylated to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate.
This last step skips the rate limiting phosphofructokinase enzyme, so eating fructose results in a lot of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate even if we can't readily use it.
glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate *MAY* be oxidized to another DHAP or it may be used as the basis of a triacylglyceride (fat). The DHAPs fate is most likely to pyruvate then either lactate or acetyl-CoA and into the citric acid cycle. The acetyl-CoA can drive fatty acid formation, or can provide energy. Lactate can be used by smooth muscle tissue directly for energy.

In humans for ethanol,
EtOH (by alcohol dehydrogenase) => acetaldehyde
acetaldehyde (by pyruvate decarboxylase) => pyruvate
Then as before pyruvate to lactate or acetyl-CoA and into the citric acid cycle.
No glycerol, but plenty of acetylCoA .

The aldehydes are reactive and not easy on the liver. The excess glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate and acetylCoA are the precursors to fat. The liver uses fatty acids for energy, but can only handle so much.

----------

I won't make a detailed argument here , but there are journal papers that suggest that overloading the liver causes free fatty acid spills into the blood, and the fatty acids harm cell endoplasmic reticulum structures,. In the hypothalamus this causes leptin resistance that damages an important part of energy balance ((no fat scoring, less sense of satiation)). The same mechanism may be part of the insulin insensitivity of metabolic syndrome.

Another issue is that eating natural fruit, with fiber allows control of sugar uptake rate (as others have noted) while consuming HFCS or sucrose in a beverage or fiberless cookie does not.

Fructose is not toxic. per se, but in excess or with high 'spikes' of fructose level, it's likely to cause liver problems and that impacts fat catabolism and MAY be implicated in metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.. It's unlikely that it makes any difference whether you consume fructose as sucrose, HFCS or fruit juice.

 

[Mercurial Artism]

Sugar is not toxic. It is an essential nutrient.

Sugar is a class of carbohydrates containing many different molecules of varying complexity.

The simplest sugars are called monosaccharides. They consist of a single carbohydrate, or saccharide (a carbon ring with hydroxyl (H-O) groups and a carbonyl (C=O) attached), hence the name "monosaccharides." Glucose and fructose are monosaccharides. Glucose is the basic chemical energy source for most life forms. Fructose is the sugar that naturally occurs in fruit, vegetables, and some grains.

Disaccharides are sugars made of two saccharides bound together into a larger molecule. Sucrose, maltose, and lactose are disaccharides. Sucrose (table sugar), for example, is a single glucose joined to a single fructose.

There are also trisaccharides and polysaccharides, which are longer chains of saccharides. Polysaccharides is a rather large group that contains not only sugars, but also starches and proteins. Many of the higher sugars are not broken down by the body, instead traveling through the digestive system unchanged, until they get broken down via fermentation by bacteria in the colon.

...

Despite excessive fructose being generally bad for you, processed foods sold in America (and exported to most of the world) contain outrageous amounts of artificially-added fructose, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

...

HFCS is also hydrophilic—very soluble in water—which makes it a cheaper and easier ingredient to work with than refined sugar. Using HFCS incurs fewer energy costs for heating and stirring to dissolve it. On an industrial scale, factors like this can make a huge economic difference. HFCS is common in canned and jarred foods because its molecules remain locked up in water, so it provides better shelf stability to foods that otherwise probably wouldn't need any added sugar.

Another obvious reason for the popularity of HFCS is because it's sweet, and people like stuff that tastes sweet. American foods tend to be very, very sweet.

Is sugar poisonous? Of course not. But like anything else, overconsumption of sugar can be very bad for your health.

One way to restrict your sugar intake is to avoid sweet soft drinks. Those things contain ridiculous amounts of sugar. Another thing you can do is stay away from preprocessed, ready-to-eat foods, and instead just get off your lazy ass and cook for yourself. That way you can be reasonably sure of what you're eating, instead of getting your meals from a can like a damn dog.

Exactly what we learned in 9th grade health/biology (at my school). Where were the teachers'/students' brains when they should've been learning this stuff? Maybe people just forget after a few years, like people tend to forget trigonometry when they don't use it in their jobs?

 

[fls]

Linda - I think you missed the parallels in the admittedly confusing diagrams. The main ethanol & fructose pathways are:
ethanol -> acetaldehyde -> acetate (->pyruvate) and into the citric cycle.
vs
fructose => glyceraldehyde -> pyruvate and into the citric cycle.

And yes these are similar. The enzymes for each are distinct, which is not surprising. According to my trusty Mathews & van Holde "Biochemistry"

In humans for fructose we have
Fructose (by fructokinase) => fructose-1-phosphate ((F1P)).
F1P (by aldolase B) => 1.dihydroxyacetone-phosphate((DHAP) + 1.D-glyceraldehyde .
The D-glyceraldehyde is further phosphorylated to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate.
This last step skips the rate limiting phosphofructokinase enzyme, so eating fructose results in a lot of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate even if we can't readily use it.
glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate *MAY* be oxidized to another DHAP or it may be used as the basis of a triacylglyceride (fat). The DHAPs fate is most likely to pyruvate then either lactate or acetyl-CoA and into the citric acid cycle. The acetyl-CoA can drive fatty acid formation, or can provide energy. Lactate can be used by smooth muscle tissue directly for energy.

In humans for ethanol,
EtOH (by alcohol dehydrogenase) => acetaldehyde
acetaldehyde (by pyruvate decarboxylase) => pyruvate
Then as before pyruvate to lactate or acetyl-CoA and into the citric acid cycle.
No glycerol, but plenty of acetylCoA .

I don't know why you think you are saying something different from what I said.

Linda

 

[John Albert]

Maybe because he said something different?

Because he acknowledged that I wasn't entirely wrong in my original statement about the similarities of hepatic metabolism of fructose and ethanol?

Maybe because he acknowledged the possible damaging effects of excessive fructose on the liver, including excess lipid production?

Don't sweat it. I don't expect anything like an apology.

 

[fls]

Maybe because he said something different?

Because he acknowledged that I wasn't entirely wrong in my original statement about the similarities of hepatic metabolism of fructose and ethanol?

Maybe because he acknowledged the possible damaging effects of excessive fructose on the liver, including excess lipid production?

No, that doesn't seem to be it.

Don't sweat it. I don't expect anything like an apology.

Ummm...sorry for not being clueless?

Linda

 

[John Albert]

Of course not.