The Carb-Sane Asylum

This post may be added to from time to time, to collect in one place evidence against the concept of sugar/fructose addiction.   When added to it will be bumped, and the "skip to using browser search" table of contents below will be updated.   Accidental Experimental Evidences Mice Fed 18% Fructose Mice Fed 60% Sugar or Starch Unmotivated Fat Rats

I interrupt my usual stream of non-blogging for this general "off topic" post.   The Offending Tweet

A Facebook friend recently posted a screenshot of some papers he'd been reading this past month.  Being the geek that I am, I of course scanned the titles to see if there was anything I might be interested in, and I was shocked to discover this study for the first time!  Shocked in that I'd never seen it before or seen anyone reference it.  Read on and discover that this isn't quite true ...   (As of this post, full text available   HERE . ) Metabolic and behavioral effects of a high-sucrose diet during weight loss  ... 1997  ← Almost two decades ago!!

Blogstress Note: I wrote most of the analysis in this post around a year ago when I was looking for some additional examples of what I call "accidental evidences" against the concept of sugar addiction (and food addiction in general), just never got to tidying it up.  Therefore this post will be formatted a little oddly as it's what I have time for.  I'll do some general conclusions as regards sugar addiction, and then include the detail afterwards.  Whatever conclusions one might make vis a vis the minerals involved in this study are welcomed in comments, with the understanding that I'll likely not engage on those points due to time constraints.  In the end it seems difficult to arrive at any consistent conclusion  from the study I'll discuss, as results often contradicted themselves from one of the three experiments to the next. While perhaps not as striking as the image I've chosen here, I believe the size (and thus age) differentials of the animal...

Just some notes on the non-Taubes/Attia portions of John Stossel's Food Bunk program.  I managed to catch and tape a rerun of it and watched in the background the other day. It still may be rerun (or watch online?) for anyone interested on FNC or FBC. It was on food freedom, government regulations, laws/bans and all that.  It began with Joel Salatin v. Felix Ortiz a NYC Councilman responsible for transfat ban, posting calorie counts, etc. Salatin came off rather well here in my opinion. Stossel shows video of a raid on a food coop. Scary. Ortiz was challenged on juices -- if you limit soda sizes, how about juice? His answer was more like "I ate my orange today" which disturbs me in spite of my recent defense of OJ.  So many of the politicians and folks like Lustig and Diet Doc Eenfeldt are all in for banning and regulating and taxing their pet dietary peeves.  They believe butter cannot be fattening, so Denmark's misguided butter tax was foolhardy, but t...

You can file this one in the random thoughts file ;-) Think about foods you tend to overeat once you have some.  Nuts come to mind.  They are usually salted, and something about the yummy nut flavor mixed with the salt seems to stay on the tongue longer.  It lingers.  I know that if I'm having cashews (yes, I know, not technically a nut) I want more and more and more if there is a ready supply of more.  So I tend to grab nuts, when I do, in single serve packets or on the way out the door.  If I have them in the house, I take a handful or whatever from the kitchen and go eat in another room.  But when that handful is done, while that flavor persists in my mouth, I always want more, and it's not hunger or craving or any desire to binge.  It seems to be the lingering flavor.  (Brushing one's teeth helps with this big time!)

Is fructose making us fat?  Apparently the answer is no if you get your fructose in the form of candy! Thanks to MM for sending me this paper. Candy consumption was not associated with body weight measures, risk factors for cardiovascular disease, or metabolic syndrome in US adults: NHANES 1999-2004 For the purposes of this study, candies were defined as follows: Sugar candy consists of sugar in crystalline form or semisolid (amorphous) forms with other ingredients including flavors and colors; examples include peppermint, lollipops, licorice, and gum drops. Chocolate candy is a mixture of processed cacao, cocoa butter, and sugar and often contains other ingredients, including milk, fruit, nuts, and caramels.  This group analyzed 3 sets of NHANES data to look at candy consumption defined as: Candy consumers were defined as those participants consuming any amounts of candy/confection except gum and were placed in 1of 3 overlappin...

We've all heard the stories of the alcoholic downing cough medicine, vanilla extract, mouthwashes or even other alcohols in desperation when a palatable/usual source of the ethanol they are addicted to is not around. So I've often wondered why the "carbaholic", sugar addict, wheat addict, etc. doesn't do the same.  Addiction is often blamed for binge behavior and overeating certain foods.  They're addictive and worse yet, we have to eat. The addict must abstain completely, you would't offer alcohol to an alcoholic after all.  Etc. etc. But I've been in desperate situations in my binge disordered life where there's been nothing binge-worthy in the house but lots of raw materials.  If it's just the carbs I so desired or were addicted to, or wheat proteins, why did I get in the car and drive however far to find a "fix" rather than eating flour from the bag?  Or mixing it with diet soda or something.  Sounds gross?  Sure, but so would s...