The FastDay Forum

I read once that Jaffa Cakes were being counted by some!!

My hubby was once asked by a SW member if they could count a chocolate orange in their 5 a day! If only!! Sad thing was that they were totally serious!

Isn't it the Paleo gang who say that fruit is nature's candy? That the most widely bought varieties are actually grown with the emphasis on sweetness to cater to our ever increasing need for sweet tastes? Lots of the cheaper varieties of apples to me just taste like sugar water whereas the ones I remember as a kid had a tartness to them and a proper apple flavour.Did pick them striaght from Grandad's orchard though.

When I went strict low carb I did miss fruit as I could happily eat a whole, massive bag of grapes in one sitting. Now I compromise and have a bit as a pud or for breakfast but never as a snack. I used to snack on nuts or veg rather than fruit before I changed to this WOE. Now I tend not to snack at all and tell myself that being hungry is being in for a service!

I can think of quite a few veg that are a whole lot sweeter than most fruit!
Contrast root veg such as carrots and parsnips with blackcurrants and gooseberries for example. A thick veg soup can be a lot sweeter than, say, a lot of oranges.
The sweetest fruits, e.g. dates and grapes have the highest calorie count on the whole.
Not sure where that gets us .....

General feeling seems to be that the biggest culprit is the hig fructose syrup doesn't it? Its when they mess about with stuff that its properties change. Fructose in fruit is a totally different ball game as its much harder to eat it to excess when you have all the other stuff that comes along with eating an actual piece of fruit. They are pumping far more fructose into processed foods in the form of HFCS than you would ever ingest as fruit.

I avoid processed stuff where possible. I can't eat gluten and wheat but I wont even eat the gluten free products if I can possibly find an alternative. The ingredients panels read more like a recipe for semtex than a food stuff! I like to look at a label and recognise stuff from my pantry shelf not from the garden shed!

I can think of quite a few veg that are a whole lot sweeter than most fruit!
Contrast root veg such as carrots and parsnips with blackcurrants and gooseberries for example. A thick veg soup can be a lot sweeter than, say, a lot of oranges.
The sweetest fruits, e.g. dates and grapes have the highest calorie count on the whole.
Not sure where that gets us .....

I think that means there's acid along with the sugar - I suspect an orange has more sugar than a carrot

100g of orange = 11.75 carbs

100g of carrot = 8.24 carbs

So if you believe fructose is bad, and if you have any intellectual consistency, then fruit is also bad.

+ fibre - isn't so bad. Avoid juice/smoothies/anything that removes/destroys the fibre. (qual: Have read his book - not seen the above video.)

Not a problem. As far as I'm aware, per capita total sugar consumption has increased over a similar time frame as diabetes and obesity. There's 'visible' sugar, e.g. traditional sugar you buy in packets etc, and that has been in decline/static for years and there's 'invisible' sugar which has been increasingly added in the last 30 years to breakfast cereals, muesli bars, soft drinks, low fat food, peanut butter, canned vegetables, etc etc. I think you'll find, for example, that total visible+invisible sugar consumption went up by about 30% in the UK in the decade around 2000.

I think you're wrong. I've provided references previously for UK sugar consumption before, it's approximately static. That's total sugar of all forms, retail packet decline was offset by industrial sales into processed foods, with a net similar consumption.

We have EU production quotas on sugar from beet, and a finite import of cane sugar, and little HFCS worthy of the mention.

Carbohydrates and calories may have increased with declining fat over the time period, but it simply isn't an increase in sugar. The epidemiology fails here in the UK to associate obesity and sugar.

The epidemiology fails here in the UK to associate obesity and sugar.

How about adding fibre into that mix?

Forgot to add to above post - Lustig's main beef is with processed food - fibre removed, sugar added. Whole fruits/grains/veg. ok.

Lustig is a one trick pony - fructose. He does talk about the worst sin being combining fat and carbs etc saying this doesn't occur in nature.

I've never seen anyone suggest low fibre is the cause of obesity - educate me

I'd also add that it appears to be not easy to find believable data concerning per capita total consumption and the percentage of daily calorie intake consisting of sugars. But I think there's enough information out there to form a view that total consumption has increased substantially over the last 30 years.

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2424#p22636

some UK stats.

I've never seen anyone suggest low fibre is the cause of obesity - educate me

I'd suggest you read his book - there's heaps of refs. to sources. His 2 'antidotes' are fibre & exercise.

Thanks, but my reading list is currently studies that measure the effect of fructose intake on humans.

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf ... -2012-0322 for example - "Consumption of sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup does not
increase liver fat or ectopic fat deposition in muscles"

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/1/150.full
"Moderate Amounts of Fructose Consumption Impair Insulin Sensitivity in Healthy Young Men"

etc

The $64,000 question. Dr Robert Lustig - the man in the video - is very clear on this - "fructose is fructose, the vehicle is irrelevant".

Except, and I know this because I've just finished reading Fat Chance, what he says is when you eat the whole fruit, the fibre mitigates the fructose. "The reason that fructose in fruit doesn't cause significant health problems is that it's balanced by the endogenous fibre that makes up the solid part of the fruit."

And as he says many times, EAT the fruit don't drink the juice.

five a day should always have been vegetables, the fruit was a compromise - like a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

On the positive side only one portion of fruit juice can be included in the five.

Well, at least here in Germany we discuss from time to time that eating 5 a day resulted in lot more people struggeling with digestion problem, mainly driven by people focusing on fruits. The diagnosis of IBS increased enormously. So some GPs start to recommend eating less fruits (and for some even vegetables) than recommended