The FastDay Forum

Sugar is the 'most dangerous drug of our time', according to a senior Dutch health official, and should be treated accordingly.

Paul van der Velpen, head of Amsterdam's health service, suggests that food and drink with high-sugar content should come with health warnings.

He suggests introducing hard-hitting campaigns similar to the anti-smoking messages found on cigarette packets....

http://huff.to/1erJJN6

Well done on yr dietary success!
Will look into the Lustig book - sounds interesting
Another book that creates a great impact for the reader is Slim for Life by Jason Vale..
Really puts you off fatty / sugary food and exposes the junk food/ diet industries for the cynical manipulators they are xx

Well done on your weight loss.

I totally agree that sugar is a serious health hazard, and wish I knew about this earlier. Lustig can be found on u-tube giving talks at various medical conferences.

I'm not sure that substituting artificial sweeteners helps much with sugar addiction, because the body still has the same chemical reactions to the sweetness - releasing insulin etc - though the artificial sweetners do have hardly any calories. I would recommend that people addicted to sweet things gradually wean themselves off it. When you eat very few carbs and sweet things it's amazing how good vegetables taste. Of course the occasional sugary treat isn't going to kill you, so if someone offers you a slice of birthday cake you can have it - just don't go back for seconds, and don't make it a habit.

I echo what Pipsqueak has posted above - I have found that eating the 5 2 way has meant my cravings for refined carbs has really diminished and I have managed to give up Diet coke too (which I read isn't great in all sorts of ways) and so now I am finding it much easier to choose foods that are lower carb and lower GL so I eat loads more healthily AND with very few cravings BUT as Pipsqueak says the occasional of birthday cake (as long as that's all it is) isn't going to undo all your good work.

Thanks superfluity. Hardens my resolve to stay sugar free and lower GI. @candicemarie. Yes the food industry is highly manipulative and we all fall for the marketing hype and sexy packaging from time to time don't we?

Well done on your weight loss.

I totally agree that sugar is a serious health hazard, and wish I knew about this earlier. Lustig can be found on u-tube giving talks at various medical conferences.

I'm not sure that substituting artificial sweeteners helps much with sugar addiction, because the body still has the same chemical reactions to the sweetness - releasing insulin etc - though the artificial sweetners do have hardly any calories. I would recommend that people addicted to sweet things gradually wean themselves off it. When you eat very few carbs and sweet things it's amazing how good vegetables taste. Of course the occasional sugary treat isn't going to kill you, so if someone offers you a slice of birthday cake you can have it - just don't go back for seconds, and don't make it a habit.

Pipsqueak: The body does not react the same way to sweeteners as it does to sugar. The sweeteners I have reviewed do not raise blood sugar, hence it does not cause release of insulin.

How do you know? What do you mean by 'reviewed'?

How do you know? What do you mean by 'reviewed'?

Reviewed as in reading articles, research and forums on my own time. As far as knowing, there is little evidence that sweeteners like aspartame cause the body to release insulin. Can you find any?

Haven't really looked other than to have read some of the links provided by others in the numerous 'to diet coke or not to diet coke' threads in this forum. In those threads it seems there are lots of opinions based on various pieces of research about whether sweeteners such as aspartame are harmful or not (and not just about whether it causes the body to produce insulin), both for and against and I suppose one has to make up one's own mind. I personally prefer not to drink things containing artificial sweeteners now because the things I have read ARE contentious and why drink things with added chemicals if I don't have to? But that's just me.....

[carorees]

This article by Peter Attia is well-researched and discusses sugar toxicity: http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/is-sugar-toxic

While this article, also by Peter Attia, reviews the scientific research which shows that while an excess of artificial sweetener can cause gastrointestinal distress (e.g., if you overdo it on these you can get diarrhoea), they do not cause secretion of insulin from the pancreas due to their distinct chemical structure: http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/what ... ubstitutes

He explains how the study about the outcomes of people who consumed artificial sweeteners that was picked up by the media has, as is almost always the case, been wrongly interpreted by the journalists who have little understanding of science and so fail to appreciate that an association between two events does not mean the one causes the other.

As many things people consume can be on the list of " Most dangerous drug of our time" sugar is one of them.

ah sugar...my last vice...

5 years ago I quit smoking after 25 years, and all of a sudden I developed a sweet tooth (previously I had preferred savory snacks). I tell you, giving up sugar has been almost as hard as quitting smoking! In fact, I still haven't given it up, but I have reduced my consumption quite a bit.

Giving up or even cutting down on sugar is EVEN harder than stopping smoking . to stop smoking you stop buying cigarettes and climb the wall for a few weeks. Sugar is in everything now, hidden in all sorts of things and if (like me ) you are a sugar addict once you have even inadvertently taken some, the cravings start. Sometimes the only thing that stops a sugar feast is a fast day, that thank goodness seems to settle things down and you can get back to an even keel. I can stop a one piece of Birthday cake but I guarantee two hours later I will be desperately looking for another sweet treat, and another, and another But I battle on, I am on maintenance now but still have to fast 2days a week sometimes 2 1/2 days just to undo the dreaded sugar overdose. At the moment I am writing down in my diary all the sugar things I eat in any given day and it can be as 900 Cals on a bad day. I only hope by writing it down and considering all the damage I am doing to myself I will eventually beat this.

Another truth is that if coffee had been introduced today it would have been banned due to "poisons".

When it comes to artificial sweeteners, one of me friends have a son diabetic since childhood and he have drunk copious amounts of diet coke over the years without it affecting his blood sugar levels at all.

But I must say that I can't understand if you want to ween yourself of sugar, but go for artificial sweeteners instead...... I thought the idea was to move away from sweets as much as you can, no matter what origin. And I can't find it in me to believe that synthetic things like aspartam is better than real sugar. If you want to stay away from refined sugar, go for unrefined/raw instead and cut it down to a minimum. I absolutely can't drink tea or coffee without sweeten the a bit, but I use so little that I doubt my body can react, just my tastebuds . If you don't want to use sugar, why not try stevia - I read somewhere that it's 300 times sweeter than sugar = little goes a long way.

OK of my soapbox

[Betsysgr8]

Does anyone actually have a definitive answer to the question about artificial sweeteners and insulin response? Seems to depend on which report you read, or choose to put your faith in. Also what your weight/BMI is, which sweetener, etc etc. As suggested in an article on Marks Daily Apple website, if you have any doubts at all, it might be safest to test how you react to a particular sweetener, which makes perfect sense to me, seeing as how we don't all fit into one particular pigeon hole

When my Dad was alive, I used to have to test his BG twice a day, and found that ANYTIME he had anything with an artificial sweetner his BG was raised significantly and occasionaly enough to have to add the 'fast' acting insulin to his 'slow' insulin shot. (forgot the correct terms for the insulin, ) But as Izzy said, everybody is different and can have different responses to anything we consume.