The David Gillespie Blog

If you change nothing, nothing will change
April 26, 2024
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Processed for Profit: Why Diets Fail & Food Giants Win

By | Addiction, Sugar | No Comments

The obesity epidemic has reached “crisis” status, which usually means it’s time for desperate measures and terrible advice. And boy, have we gotten some doozies thanks to some nutrition ‘scientists’ misinterpreting physics and the irresistible power of sugar.

Somewhere along the way, we fell for the first law of thermodynamics, which isn’t about thrilling roller coaster rides, sadly. It states that energy can’t be created or destroyed. While that’s true in a closed system, our bodies are anything but!  This oversimplified idea led to the ‘calories in, calories out’ mantra. Sounds logical, right? Eat less, move more, and voila! Except, just like those “one simple trick” internet ads, human bodies don’t fall for that kind of simplicity.

Blaming our expanding waistlines on laziness and greed would be convenient, and that’s exactly what diet culture loves to do. But it ignores the biological battleground raging inside us. If you’ve ever felt driven to demolish that entire family-sized packet of Tim Tams while your brain screams, “Stop!”, you’ve experienced this firsthand. Blame fructose, that hidden sugar in everything delicious. It’s like your hormones are trying to send an important email, but fructose keeps hitting “spam.”

Those hormones, leptin and insulin, work together like a well-oiled machine to regulate your appetite. Leptin, produced by fat cells, signals to your brain that you’re satisfied and have enough energy stores. Insulin, released by the pancreas in response to rising blood sugar levels (like after a meal), promotes feelings of fullness and helps your body store excess glucose for later use.

Fructose, however, throws a wrench into this delicate system. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Fructose Bypasses the Leptin System: Unlike glucose, the primary sugar found in starchy foods, fructose doesn’t effectively stimulate leptin production. This means your body doesn’t receive the “all good” signal, leaving you feeling hungry even after consuming fructose-laden foods.
  • Fructose Fuels Fat Production: The liver is the primary place where fructose is metabolised. Excess fructose gets rapidly converted into fat, particularly a type called triglycerides. This can promote fat storage, particularly in the liver, contributing to conditions like fatty liver disease.
  • Fructose and the Reward System: Fructose also directly stimulates the reward centres in the brain, similar to addictive drugs. This creates a cycle of craving more sugary foods, leading to overconsumption and weight gain.

By disrupting these hormonal signals and promoting fat production, fructose tricks your body into thinking it needs more fuel, even when you don’t. This is why you might find yourself reaching for another Tim Tam or a handful of chips despite feeling like you just ate. Picture your appetite as a runaway train fueled by processed food, and willpower as a desperate koala trying to block the tracks. It’s not going to end well for the koala.

This hormonal chaos is why diets usually end in binge-eating frenzies (and a renewed appreciation for stretchy pants). Bariatric surgery? That’s like putting a speed bump on the runaway train – it works for a while, but your body is determined to regain its set point. It’s a marvel of adaptation, just the wrong kind when fighting a battle of the bulge.

So, what’s the solution? Well, it certainly isn’t counting every calorie like a neurotic accountant or joining that gym you’ll never actually attend. Let’s ditch the outdated physics misinterpretations and focus on what truly drives the runaway train:

  • Fructose is the Enemy: Processed foods are where fructose really hides, wreaking havoc on your hunger signals. It’s not just the obvious culprits like chocolates and soft drinks.  Think sneaky additions like flavoured yoghurts, breakfast cereals, sauces, and even seemingly ‘healthy’ muesli bars. Here’s how to fight back:
    • Read Labels Religiously: Fructose goes by many names – sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar, fruit juice concentrate – learn them all.  Don’t buy food which contains more than 3g of sugar per 100g.
    • Swap Sweet Treats: Craving something sweet? Reach for whole fruit, which delivers fructose alongside fibre, helping to balance the impact.
    • DIY is Best: Make your own dressings, sauces, and snacks to eliminate the added sugar. It’s easier than you think, and your taste buds will adjust!
  • Fat Isn’t the Villain: Remember all those low-fat snacks? Turns out healthy saturated fats like those found in meat, dairy, avocados, coconuts, macadamias, and olives can help you feel full and satisfied.

The obesity crisis is a beast, fueled by bad science and the food industry’s relentless quest for profit. But with solutions rooted in real biochemistry, not misapplied physics textbooks, we can fight back. And maybe, just maybe, relegate those stretchy pants to the back of the closet once and for all.

April 15, 2024
0

Fanta’s Sugar Shuffle: The Sweetness Trap

By | Addiction, Sugar | No Comments

Coca-Cola’s sneaky sugar shuffle with its iconic Fanta drink leaves a sour taste. They cut the sugar, got the good press, then hoped we wouldn’t notice when they added much of it back in. It exposes a fundamental contradiction: companies want to appear health-conscious without truly changing their core products.

Back in 2018, amidst growing concerns about sugar consumption and the threat of a sugar tax, Coca-Cola proudly announced a “healthier” Fanta with reduced sugar content. It was a strategic move, calculated to appease health experts and deflect criticism. But the illusion was temporary. Today, a 600ml bottle of Fanta contains a staggering four extra teaspoons of sugar compared to its “healthier” predecessor – a significant increase from 4.5g to 7.2g of sugar per 100ml.

Coca-Cola played on our desire to make good choices. With the threat of the sugar tax looming, they temporarily placated health advocates, buying themselves time. Now, with reduced scrutiny, they’ve quietly upped the sugar. It’s a calculated gamble, banking on the fact that we’re too busy, too overwhelmed, or too deliberately misled to realise they’ve sweetened the deal.

But why the sugar creep? The new Fanta is still a shadow of its 2016 sugar bomb self (with over 11g per 100ml) and remains loaded with barely disclosed artificial sweeteners. Perhaps there’s a nagging truth about sugar addiction: 4.5g just wasn’t cutting it. The point of sugar is, after all, to make products addictive to increase sales. Maybe those extra teaspoons are the scientifically calculated dose to keep us hooked.

This bait-and-switch tactic exposes the limitations of self-regulation within the food industry. Voluntary pledges, like the Australian Beverages Council’s commitment to reduce sugar, have proven largely ineffective with only four manufacturers signing up according to the AMA. While generating positive PR, they do little to change the fact that companies like Coca-Cola prioritise profits over public health, making their drinks as sweet and addictive as possible.

Most consumers are likely unaware of this sugar increase. Outdated nutritional information on supermarket websites and the expectation that we blindly trust familiar brands contribute to this deception. It’s not about willpower; it’s about the deliberate manipulation of our choices, making the addictive option the easiest and most appealing.

The beverage industry would probably argue that consumers have the right to choose. But, when corporations deliberately obscure the addictive contents of their products, choice is an illusion.

So, what can we do?

  • Don’t fall for marketing claims or misleading packaging. Be informed about the sugar content of the products you consume.
  • Hold food companies accountable. Demand transparency in ingredients and marketing practices and vote with your wallet.
  • Advocate for healthier food environments. Support educational campaigns, clearer food labelling, and restrictions on marketing sugary drinks.

The Takeaway

The Fanta sugar shuffle is a microcosm of the challenges we face. Real change won’t come from corporations suddenly prioritising our well-being over profits. It requires informed consumer choices and collective action to create a food environment that truly supports our health.

Don’t be fooled by deceptive marketing tactics. Take control of your health and demand better from the food industry. Real change happens when we challenge the status quo and demand a system that puts our well-being above the corporate bottom line.

April 10, 2024
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Your Grandma Wouldn’t Eat This: The quiet disappearance of real food and the hijacking of our health

By | Big Fat Lies, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Have you ever looked closely at the ingredients in your so-called “food?” Odds are, your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize half of them as edible, let alone healthy. In an incredibly short span of time, we’ve outsourced our meals to corporations whose main goal isn’t our well-being – it’s profit. The history of how we got here is a shocking tale of backroom deals, twisted logic, and the slow death of real food.

The Rise of “Imitation”

In these days of regulation, it’s easy to forget how recently food was routinely adulterated. To stretch profits, milk was watered down, bread bulked up with sawdust, and you were lucky if your jam contained actual fruit. These practices weren’t just dishonest, they were dangerous.

The US took action first. In 1938, the FDA was given the power to create “standards of identity” for common foods. Think of them as legally binding recipes. If you wanted to sell jam, your product had to meet specific requirements for fruit content. This wasn’t about gourmet standards; it was about ensuring a baseline level of quality and preventing outright fraud.

By 1950, almost half of US food had a standardised recipe. This meant that if you wanted to make something resembling real food, but cheaper, you had to clearly label it “Imitation.” And that wasn’t a great marketing strategy.

The War on Fat and the Death of Standards

The food industry didn’t love this system, and their grumbles grew louder in the 1970s. The low-fat trend was taking off, spurred by groups like the American Heart Foundation in their ill conceived fight against saturated fat. The problem? Traditional food descriptions rarely included vegetable oils, and fat content was regulated.

What followed was a classic case of unintended consequences. After relentless lobbying, legislation changed in 1973. No longer did “fake” foods require the “Imitation” label – they just had to provide the same level of nutrients as the original. Calories and fat were exempt, opening a loophole you could drive a truck through. The stage was set for a massive shift in what lined our grocery shelves.

The Disappearance of Everyday Foods

Want blatant examples? That little carton of “Up&Go” markets itself as a healthy breakfast which describes itself as having “The protein, energy and fibre of 2 Weet-Bix and milk”. But look closely – it doesn’t contain a single Weet-Bix! Its primary ingredients are water, skim milk powder, sugar, and a disturbing list of chemicals. Sure, it might have similar protein to real food, but so would a sawdust and offal smoothie. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, designed to appeal to our desire for convenience and the illusion of health.

And how about those mayonnaise jars? If yours doesn’t list eggs and olive oil as the first ingredients, it isn’t mayonnaise – it’s a carefully concocted emulsion of sugar, water, and who-knows-what. The same goes for countless other products. Things we once took for granted have been quietly replaced with cheaper, cleverly engineered imitations.

The Health Fallout

We’re paying the price for this deception. Skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease aren’t just about eating too much – they’re about eating the wrong things. Our bodies weren’t designed to run on the seed oil and sugar infused highly processed, nutrient-poor concoctions that now pass for food. Mass-produced “food” is addictive, unsatisfying, and disastrous for our long-term health.

The Loss of Control

Bring back the “Imitation” label! It would be a wake-up call, exposing the sheer amount of factory-made substitutes we’re consuming. This change wouldn’t lead to perfectly healthy aisles overnight, but at least we’d have a fighting chance to make informed choices.

Sadly, that’s never going to happen. Too much money, too much power, stands in the way. That in itself reveals how far we’ve fallen. In less than one lifetime, we’ve surrendered control of our most basic need to profit-driven corporations.

Taking Back Our Kitchens

We don’t have to accept this. While we can’t undo a century of changes overnight, we can start reclaiming our kitchens. Make changes now:

  • Learn to read a label ruthlessly. If the ingredient list includes ‘vegetable oil’ or sugar, put it back.
  • Shop the perimeter of the store – that’s where real food usually hides.
  • Cook at home, even simple meals. It’s an act of rebellion against the industrial food system and the pervasive use of seed oils in everything.
  • Last but certainly not least, ditch the sugar, the poison lurking in everything, labelled or not.

This fight isn’t just about better health. It’s about reclaiming the very act of feeding ourselves and our families – an act too precious to outsource.

 

March 27, 2024
0

The Calorie Count Con

By | Sugar, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Tired of “eat this, not that” advice? Brace yourself for the UK government’s latest “solution”: calorie counts that won’t solve anything and might even make things worse.

This feel-good trend swept through the US and much of Australia over the last decade. Since 2011, many Australian jurisdictions have mandated kilojoule (calorie) counts on menus at chain restaurants. They tout it as a weapon against our obesity crisis, but haven’t the numbers on the scale budged? Nope.

Proof it doesn’t work? A recent Australian study found fast food calorie content hasn’t changed a bit since menus started showing them in New South Wales in 2013. Turns out, those labels do nothing to make the food healthier, they just shift our focus to the wrong problem.

No less than four other Australian jurisdictions have fallen for the same empty promise. They insist this will magically fix our obesity crisis. But there’s one huge, inconvenient fact: calorie counts are useless when our broken appetites are the problem. So why are politicians so eager to embrace this idea?

Here’s the deal: most food provides a predictable amount of energy per gram. That’s why a calorie difference often just means more or less fat. Our bodies handle those calories just fine… until sugar enters the picture. Sugar hijacks our appetite hormones, making us crave more and more, regardless of calories. Slapping a number on a burger doesn’t fix that. Worse, it makes us feel like we’ve done something healthy when we haven’t.

Of course, science rarely stands in the way of flashy pronouncements. Which brings us to New York City, the pioneer of mandatory calorie counts. After years of this policy, guess what? A major study revealed absolutely no change in what people ordered. In fact, they stuffed themselves with even more calories once those numbers were staring them in the face! This complete failure should have sent governments scrambling for a different approach.

Instead, the copycat syndrome has kicked in. The US, most Australian states and now the UK have leapt on the bandwagon, desperate to look like they’re doing something, anything! And why not? It’s political theater at its best. Politicians get to feel virtuous, nutritionists feel ‘heard’ even if their advice is wrong, and food companies? They win twice. Calorie counts neatly focus our attention on fat, obscuring the true villain – the mountains of sugar they’re adding to everything – and they let them replace fat with even more sugar without blowing up the calorie count. A cynical strategy, but effective.

So here we are, the unwitting participants in a grand charade. A charade where we’ll keep getting fatter and sicker, armed with information that not only doesn’t help but gives us a false sense of control. But hey, at least we’ll know exactly how many calories are in that milkshake we shouldn’t be having… as if that’s ever stopped anyone. Bon appétit! After all, the worse this crisis gets, the better our leaders look for pretending to address it, while the food giants rake in the profits.

September 30, 2023
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Yes sugar really does make kids hyper, but not for the reasons you think

By | Addiction, Sugar, Teens | No Comments

I really thought we had moved on from the kind of codswallop I noticed being recycled in the paper last weekend.  But apparently not.

In a feeble attempt to encourage higher levels of sugar consumption someone had the hoary old ‘sugar doesn’t make kids hyper’ story dusted off and wheeled out.  It is, no doubt, stored next to the ‘chocolate is good for you’ piece that gets regurgitated every Easter.

The article looks at the science and concludes its not the sugar making your kids crazy it’s the food colouring or it’s parents telling the kids they will go nuts and the kids obliging or it’s that it’s an exciting event like a birthday party. In short it’s anything but the sugar.

Dietitian Miriam Raleigh is worried a mistaken belief that sugar makes kids hyper may lead to parents, gasp, limiting their children’s sugar intake.  The article even goes on to suggest that doing so may result in the child developing an eating disorder.  Miriam decides the solution is to eat sugar in moderation, a phrase that means exactly nothing.  Or more precisely and conveniently, means you eat as much as you think is moderate.

So, are we wrong to demonise sugar for its effect on kids?  Of course we’re not. It is very bad for them. It causes tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes and kidney disease (at least and its benefits are, well, nothing.  So whether it causes hyperactivity is really neither here nor there.  Even so, it does.

Sugar is addictive.  Like all addictive substances, we crave the dopamine hit it delivers.  Each hit increases our tolerance for dopamine until we just can’t focus or function without those dopamine hits.  When we have less dopamine than our addicted brain thinks we need, we struggle to focus and we become hyperactive, symptoms that look a lot like ADHD.

Does sugar make our kids more hyperactive immediately after consumption?  No.  If anything, it is likely to calm them down as they get the dopamine hit they have been craving.  Does it create symptoms that look a lot like ADHD in the longer term?  Yes, because the dopamine acclimatisation makes us dopamine deficient in between sugar hits.  And when we are dopamine deficient, we struggle to hold a coherent thought in our head for even a few seconds.  We acquire the attention span of the proverbial gnat and the meditative practices of a Mexican jumping bean.

If we add other sources of dopamine into the mix like gaming or social media, then we can significantly accelerate the effect of sugar.  You can probably induce ADHD like symptoms in half the time if the kid is sucking down sugar while shooting his friends on Fortnite.

So no matter how many times you see this sugar is really not that bad chestnut recycled in the local paper, remember just one thing, its nonsense.  Sugar is very bad for children (and adults) and it also makes them hyper.  And no amount of moderation by dietitians or marketing by the sugar industry will change that.

January 10, 2022
2

How to use habits to quit sugar

By | Addiction, Sugar, Sweet Poison | One Comment

If your New Year resolution was to be healthier then you could do a lot worse than quitting sugar. Sugar makes us fat, gives us Type II diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, fatty liver disease and makes us more prone to infection, just to name a few of its greatest hits. The only problem is that it is just a wee bit addictive, so quitting is an awful lot easier said than done. Happily, the emerging science of ‘habits’ might be just the ticket we need to eliminate the Sweet Poison from our lives.

We do a lot of things habitually. A habit is a low energy automated thought process. We use them all the time to do repetitive tasks. We use them help us navigate to a place we travel to every day. We use them to catch a ball and we use them to cook our dinner.  I am using them now to type this article. I don’t need to know where the keys are. My brain just knows and lets me focus on what I am typing rather than how I am typing it.

Habits are procedures that we have assigned to the ‘auto-pilot’ domain in our brain (the basal ganglia) so we can do some higher order thinking (or watch Netflix) at the same time. It’s as close as the human brain comes to parallel processing.  We shove as much of our thinking into Habit subroutines as we can. Our brain is constantly on the lookout for repetitive actions that can be packaged up as a habit because every habit we can create decreases our brain’s energy requirement or increases the amount of thinking we can get done.

Uncertainty creates habits

To record a habit, we need dopamine.  Dopamine is generated if the procedure being coded either, requires we make lots of decisions or generates a reward or both. When we learn the route (without navigation) to a new destination we are on high alert because we have high levels of uncertainty about every decision we make – do I turn left before or after the McDonalds?  The uncertainty ensures dopamine levels are high and our learning is quickly encoded into a habit routine.  This is why manually learned routes are ‘memorable’ but routes ‘learned’ with the assistance of Google Maps are not. Using an app is outsourcing your habit formation routines to the software.

Sugar creates habits

Sometimes the behaviour itself generates the dopamine. Some substances artificially stimulate it, ensuring any behaviour associated with obtaining the substance is efficiently packaged as a habit. Sugar is one of these substances. This is why we develop habits around consuming it.

We go to the same coffee shop every morning and buy the same muffin. We see the same drink machine in the same place each day and automatically buy a Coke.  We walk past the sweets bowl on the receptionist’s desk and automatically take one. We relax in front of the telly and automatically reach for ice-cream.  We buy a pie and automatically add sauce. These are all habits.  They all happen without us really thinking about them at all.  And we will do them all over and over again without a moment’s thought – literally.

Just because we don’t think about habits, doesn’t mean we can’t.  We can manually override a habit subroutine, but it does require persistent effort.  As soon as you aren’t watching you will slip back into the habit subroutine unless you break the habit.

Breaking sugar habits

There are four steps to breaking a habit created by an addictive (dopamine generating) substance:

  1. Identify the habit
  2. Remove the sugar from the habit
  3. Neutralize the craving
  4. Find support

Identify the Habit

Identifying a habit is a simple as making a list (or preparing a fearless self-inventory as Step 4 of Alcoholic Anonymous puts it).  You can do it now. Think about your day today. Now fearlessly list each and every time you consumed something that obviously contained sugar. Your list might look like:

  1. Ate Sultana Bran for breakfast
  2. Drank orange juice for breakfast
  3. Purchased muffin with morning coffee
  4. Ate birthday cake at afternoon tea in office
  5. Took handful of jellybeans from co-worker’s lolly jar
  6. Bought energy drink from vending machine at train station
  7. Had ice-cream in front of TV after dinner.

Every one of those things is likely to be something you do most of the time.  And in each case, you probably barely remember doing it. Indeed, you probably struggled to list them at all and even now you’re not sure you got them all – amiright?

Remove Sugar

You could progressively eliminate each habit in its entirety but that will be hard going. The science tells us it is easier to change an element of a habit than it is to delete it altogether.  Your brain went to a lot of trouble to create these habits and it will not let go of them easily.  So, I suggest that the best approach is to remove the sugar containing element but otherwise leave the habit intact.

So, for the first two listed above this means having breakfast as usual but substituting a low or no sugar alternative – say Week-bix instead of Sultana Bran and water, milk or a hot beverage instead of the juice.  You are still executing the habit routine; you are just doing it without the dopamine generating sugar.

Nix the Craving

Needless to say, it will not be that easy. Cravings for dopamine generating substances do not just vanish because you changed your breakfast one morning. Repeated dopamine hits cause our brain to temporarily rewire so that we crave more hits. You will need more than a simple substitution plan.

The craving will fade but it can take up to three months and you will need help while it does. Two things will help you get through the withdrawal phase, dopamine hit substitution, and peer reinforcement. Substitution is the strategy used in many drug assisted addiction programs. They substitute methadone for heroin or nicotine patches for cigarettes. The idea is to replace the addictive substance with one that is still potentially addictive but delivers a lower dopamine hit, then lower the dose over time.  If you wanted to implement it with sugar, then caffeine could be the way to go.  Replace a sugar hit with a coffee (without sugar) in habits that permit it. Substitution can work but, on its own, it is not particularly effective.

Find Support

A recent review of all popular smoking cessation programs available in the UK found that of the available pharmacological interventions, the most likely to succeed is varenicline, a drug which produces a less powerful dopamine release than nicotine. The next most effective method is a combination of nicotine patch with nicotine gum or spray. With each method, the counselling that goes with it makes a massive difference.

The counselling sessions are based on a variety of theoretical models that have very little in common. It seems the model used does not materially affect the outcome. The important things seem to be the existence and scheduled nature of counselling and whether or not it is in a group setting. Group therapy, being able to talk to other people who have quit or are quitting, triples the effectiveness of all pharmacological treatments. Similarly, the group meetings are likely to be the secret to the success of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The most effective method we know of for breaking addiction is anything involving group therapy. It doesn’t seem to matter what that group therapy entails if there is regular contact with people in the same boat. That contact can be in person or online, but it must be regular. There is something about the group dynamic which makes us want to do what the group values; that is, remaining abstinent. The research shows we can quit on our own but three times as many of us succeed if we can regularly interact with people who are quitting or have quit.

Addiction is not a choice we make. People don’t choose to keep doing something that will kill them. In fact, most don’t want to keep doing it. Most smokers would quit tomorrow if they could. Simply telling yourself that ugly things will happen to you if you keep going with the addictive behaviour or substance has no effect whatsoever. That is just stressful information, and the thing most people are likely to do to relieve stress is turn to their favourite addiction.

The key is to find the sugar hidden in your daily habits, admit it is there, plan for it not to be there and do it all with others who are in the same boat.  It might sound like tinkering, but these small changes to cravings driven routines will cumulatively drag you kicking and screaming away from sugar addiction. Suddenly you will be in a place where you, and not an addictive substance, determine what you will eat and the circumstances in which you eat it.

 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels

April 11, 2021
26

The ACL epidemic is caused by sugar-water

By | Sugar | No Comments

Last week Gold Coast Suns co-captain Jarrod Witts collapsed with a season ending ACL injury. This week Carlton defender Caleb Marchbank suffered the same fate.  They are just the latest high-profile examples of the rapidly growing list of ligament injuries in the AFL and AFLW. Ironically, the science tells us the damage is being done by one of their sponsors’ products.

ACL injuries are not a problem exclusive to the AFL but they do keep very good stats on them. The average male professional AFL player will suffer an ACL injury after playing 1,428 hours of footy.  The average AFLW player will do her knee after just 133 hours. In general, women are up to 10 times more likely to injure an ACL than men because the wider female pelvis makes a knee collapse, or movement towards the other knee, more likely. ACLs in sports are not generally caused by contact with another player but by landing.

The dreaded ACL injury is a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament, one of the four ligaments that hold our knee together.  The ACL is inside the knee joint connecting the bottom of the thigh bone (the femur) to the top of the lower leg bone (the tibia).  It is attached to the tibia by a little spit of bone called the tibial spine.

ACL rates have been accelerating massively over the last few decades.  Between 2000 and 2015, the annual incidence of ACL’s requiring surgery increased by 43 per cent. In people under 25 they increased by 74 per cent.  The fastest growing group are children aged 5-14 where the rate of injury is growing at around 8 per cent a year.

Twenty five years ago kids didn’t tear their ACL, they broke the tibial spine.  Orthopaedics textbooks from the nineties warned doctors to look for tibial spine fractures because children don’t tear their ACLs.  In essence, they thought they were immune to ACL tears by virtue of being children. This was because in growing children the bones are not at full strength, but the ligaments are.  In a stressed situation, where the ACL is yanking on the tibial spine, the bone gave way before the ligament, hence the fracture.

Fortunately, there is good science that tells us why our ACLs are suddenly failing.  Sugar.

The massive increase in our consumption of sugar is responsible for us producing substandard ligaments and cartilage.  If we make knees out of rubbish material its little wonder that they are suddenly not up to the job.

A byproduct of human metabolism is that sugars can become randomly attached to proteins in a process called glycation. Glycation results in the formation of all sorts of unpredictable (and haphazard) molecules called AGE’s (Advanced Glycation End-products).

All sugars can form AGE’s but the fructose half of table sugar (sucrose) is ten times as likely to do so as glucose (the other half). AGE’s are dangerous because they bond easily (and randomly) to each other and to other proteins in a process called cross-linking. Cross-linking significantly degrades the quality of the protein.

Our bodies are used to garden variety (glucose-produced) AGE’s. And we are pretty good at breaking them down and disposing of them. But even so, over time they accumulate in our organs and tissues and we, well, age (the acronym AGE is very much on purpose).

Unfortunately the AGE’s made with fructose molecules are resistant to our disposal system. So not only they made at 10 times the rate, they hang around.

Long-lived proteins such as collagen, elastin (both used in ligaments), lens crystallins (used in the eyes) and cartilage are much more susceptible to the effects of AGEs because once we make a bad batch, they’re part of us for an awfully long time.

Collagen degraded by AGEs makes less elastic ligaments.  And substandard ligaments, rather like rubber bands left in the sun, tear much more easily. So it would seem that it is less than intelligent to be telling people who play sport to drink sugar that will significantly increase their chances of never playing sport again. That is, of course, unless you are the one selling the sugar-water.

Coca-cola sponsors the AFL and many other sports under the Powerade brand and Pepsi does the same for an array of sports under its Gatorade brand.  They are not doing this because they want to give money to professional sports. They are doing it so young players will see their heroes knocking back blue, green, yellow and pink sludge during and after games and come to the conclusion they need to do the same.  And it’s working, sport drinks are the one part of the sugar water industry doing well.  The global sports drink market is worth $30 billion and it is growing rapidly.

ACLs and other ligament and cartilage damage are now a standard part of sporting life because fructose is being consumed at unprecedented rates (ironically, particularly by those playing sport) and the group suffering the most explosive growth in injuries are those kids emulating their sporting icons.

ACL’s can be repaired (by transplanting other ligaments) but even a well repaired ACL is likely to have debilitating long term consequences.  A Swedish study for example found that half of all adult soccer players who tore their ACL had developed severe arthritis of the injured knee within 14 years. Apply that timeline to an 8 year old and it means they will spend most of their lives battling severe debilitation.  And that’s from an injury that 8 year olds are supposed to be ‘immune’ to.

Let’s stop paying professional sportspeople to suck down sugar. Let’s stop advertising sugar nonstop during broadcast sport. Most of all, let’s stop teaching our kids that sugar and sport go together. And then hopefully we can stop putting severely injured teenagers and their sporting idols in the back of ambulances every weekend.

 

Picture: Adelaide’s Taylor Walker was one of 15 AFL players to tear their ACL in 2013. (Joe Castro: AAP Image)

April 6, 2021
6

Don’t give kids sugar flavoured seed oil masquerading as Health Food

By | Big Fat Lies, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Do you have a fussy eater? Are your kids refusing to eat their greens?  Worry no more, you should just give them a chocolate milkshake instead. Well, that’s what the makers of PediaSure would have you believe.  But is filling a kid with flour, sugar and seed oil really a better alternative to telling a kid to eat their greens for dinner or risk getting them for breakfast?

The latest Television Commercial for PediaSure shows a ‘busy kid’ playing basketball, riding his bike and sucking down a ‘delicious PediaSure health shake’ to ‘help support immunity, growth and a healthy appetite.’  The ad was in high rotation on Sunday night prime-time telly. The packaging looks a little like an infant formula tin but was clearly being sold as something active kids should be inhaling by the bucket-load. So what is it?

Here’s the ingredient list for vanilla PediaSure:

Hydrolysed corn starch, sucrose, PROTEIN (milk protein concentrate, soy protein isolate), VEGETABLE OIL (canola oil, high oleic sunflower oil, sunflower oil, medium chain triglycerides (MCT) oil), maltodextrin, MINERALS (potassium citrate, sodium citrate, calcium phosphate tribasic, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, potassium phosphate monobasic, calcium carbonate, potassium phosphate dibasic, sodium chloride, magnesium phosphate dibasic, ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, cupric sulfate, potassium iodide, chromium chloride, sodium selenite, sodium molybdate), oligofructose (FOS), EMULSIFIER (soy lecithin), flavoring, DHA from C. cohnii oil , choline chloride, VITAMINS (ascorbic acid, Vitamin E, niacinamide, calcium pantothenate, thiamin hydrochloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, Vitamin A palmitate, folic acid, phylloquinone, biotin, Vitamin D3, cyanocobalamin), ascorbyl palmitate, taurine, myo-inositol, carnitine tartrate, Lactobacillus acidophilus, mixed tocopherols

As delicious as that explosion in a chemical factory sounds, it boils down to garbage. Here’s my translation of the ingredient list (in descending order by calories supplied)

  1. Seed oil (35% of the calories)
  2. Pre-digested corn flour (for volume and ‘creaminess’ – also used in cosmetics) (30%)
  3. Table sugar (20%)
  4. Protein extracted from milk and soy (12%)
  5. Multi-vitamin
  6. Man-made soluble fibre
  7. Emulsifier (so the oil doesn’t layer out)

Yes, that’s right, this swill can summarised as Seed oil, Corn Flour and protein extracts with a serious dose of sugar to make sure the ‘busy kid’ will actually swallow it. It has a very similar make-up to so-called Toddler formula, the completely unnecessary marketing extension to actual infant formula. It also looks pretty similar to the shakes being sold to the elderly.

The omega-6 fats which dominate the seed oils are implicated in (at least) osteoporosis, male infertility, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, allergies, asthma, macular degeneration, impaired intelligence and cancer. And the sugar will put the kid on track to an even more spectacular array of chronic diseases including Type II Diabetes, Kidney Disease, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Erectile Dysfunction and Alzheimer’s.

This is all part of powder-creep. Baby formula is a, sometimes, vital food for infants who cannot be breast fed. But manufacturers are legally prohibited from filling infant formula with sugar and the margins are thin. If the manufacturers want to grow their revenue, they need new tummies to fill. So, we can expect more and more ‘nutritional supplements’ that look and taste like a milkshake but spouting dubious medical sounding benefits.

The reality is that a child in Australia today has about as much risk of being clinically undernourished as I do of being elected Pope. Yes, there are an exceedingly small number of Australian kids who could be considered at risk and they probably already have the support of a medical diagnosis and supervision.  So, let’s stop pretending that flogging this sugar flavoured seed oil on prime time TV is anything other than a cynical attempt to sell cornflour at a massive markup.  If you really want a kid to be well nourished give them a glass of milk or an egg.  Both are almost perfect foods from a human nutritional perspective.

Corn flour, sugar and seed oil will not boost the average kid’s immune system or help them grow (well at least not vertically).  PediaSure is no more a health food than the similarly composed seed oil and sugar effluent sold as Up&Go.  It should be avoided with just as much diligence. And under no circumstances should it be given to children.

January 25, 2018
2

Don’t hand Sugar Tax money to the people who got us in this mess

By | Conflicts of Interest, Sugar | 3 Comments

It’s already been quite a year for the Australian Sugar Industry.  Just 6 sleeps into the New Year they were taking sustained incoming fire from the AMA (Australian Medical Association). Suddenly the doctors were demanding a soft drink tax.  It was something the AMA had sort-of mentioned before but now they were going postal on the issue.

Wiping the holiday sleep from their eyes, the pro-sugar lobby struggled to respond.  But eventually they managed to inspire a National Party Minister to regurgitate the soft drink industry response. Then they then lined up a climate change denial think tank to try and jazz it up with ‘science.’

And last but certainly least, yesterday they wheeled out an ever-reliable University of Sugar (sorry, Sydney) dietitian who sagely warned us that if soft drinks were taxed we’d all hit the booze instead.  Yes, lock up the vodka at Macca’s, Coke now cost 2c more.

It’s a familiar merry-go-round but in every other civilized place in the world it eventually ends with the introduction of a soft drink tax.  Since 2014, 28 countries and 7 US cities have implemented sugar taxes.  And there are very good reasons for that.  The science on the health destroying effects of sugar is unequivocal.  The costs of managing that harm are crippling. And unlike most tax increases, sugar taxes are popular.  A January 2018 poll tells us that 53 per cent of Australians want it.

The real question then is not whether we will have a soft drink tax but when.  Most importantly, when the inevitable happens, what will we do with the money it raises.

The AMA has clearly put its stake in the ground to be the first in the queue for handouts.  But their record on sugar has hardly been stellar.  No, they haven’t actively promoted sugar consumption like dietitians or the Heart Foundation, but they have sat on their hands for at least a decade and happily refused to use their considerable influence to advocate against sugar.

Even now, playing catchup, their support of the Health Star System (which labels sugar loaded Milo a health food and unflavoured Greek Yoghurt a health hazard), suggests they remain a little confused on potential solutions. The AMAs new found conscience should therefore be regarded with suspicion and their plans for the dough scrutinized carefully.

A soft drink tax is unlikely to have any measurable health effect on its own. Taxing one source of sugar will certainly reduce consumption from that source but people simply find a cheaper, or just different, supply (iced coffee anyone?).

But the siren call of cold hard cash will apparently do what I and many like me have failed to do for a decade.  It will remove the single greatest obstacle to real progress, the nutrition rent-seekers.

These organisations have been perfectly happy to ignore the science for decades.  They have been happy to dictate health policy that lets ever increasing numbers of us suffer.  And they have been happy to do it because of ego or profit or consensus or stubbornness or all of the above.

If, however the tax funds consistent government public health campaigns aimed at making sugar consumption slightly less desirable than persistent public flatulence, then it will have a measurable and significant effect.  The outcome can’t be to hand money to the organisations that got us in this mess in the first place and hope for the best.  Because if there is one thing we should know about sugar, our health comes a very long way second to the self-interest of the people with their hand in the cookie jar.

November 14, 2017
12

How the Healthy Eating Guidelines have destroyed our health

By | Big Fat Lies, Conflicts of Interest, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 5 Comments

The first Australian healthy eating guidelines were published in 1982.  Its now been 35 years since our government became worried enough about our health to start telling us what to eat.  There is now little doubt that it has been an unmitigated disaster.

The guidelines told us to eat more fruit and vegetables and less animal fat and salt, moderate our intake of sugar and alcohol and exercise more.

And we pretty much did as we were told.

We eat less fat and the fat we do eat is vegetable oil. Between 1982 and 2012 we dropped our total fat consumption by 25% but our animal fat consumption plummeted by an incredible 85%.

We now add salt to our food a third less frequently than we did in 1982. And Between 1992 and 2011, we increased our consumption of vegetables by 15.4%, and our fruit consumption by 7.5%.

We also exercise more.  In 1995, 30.2% of us performed moderate or high levels of exercise every week and in 2012 that had increased to 32.4% with the proportion doing high levels of exercise almost doubling.

Between 1980 and 2012 we also cut back on the booze, dropping our consumption by 21%.

The only guideline we appeared to ignore was the one about ‘moderating’ our sugar consumption.  Data on that is spongy due to the Australian Bureau of Statistics discontinuing its monitoring in 1995 but based on comparable data in the US, we are likely to have increased the amount of sugar we consume by about 20%

So how have the Guidelines gone?  Have they reduced chronic disease?  Have they improved health outcomes?  Are we all pictures of glowing good health after a third of a century of politician inspired, food industry sponsored, dietitian enforced eating advice?

Not so much.

Chronic disease is now killing us at rates which were unimaginable in the 1980s.  Here are some of the most egregious examples, but they are just the tip of the ice-berg.

Weight

In the early 1980s, Forty percent of us were overweight including 10% who were obese.

Thirty-five years later, we would kill to only have that kind of weight problem.  Now almost 70% of us are overweight and obesity has tripled.

The science tells us weight gain is caused by sugar’s unique ability to dysregulate our appetite control.

Type II Diabetes

In 1989, less than 1% of the Australian population had Type II Diabetes.  By 2015, that number had more than quadrupled (to 4.4%).  As a result, every day in Australia around 12 people will undergo a diabetes-related amputation.

Type II Diabetes is caused by consumption of sugar.

Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease is now responsible for more than 1 in every 6 hospitalisations. And that rate has gotten very bad, very quickly. Between 2001 and 2015, hospital admissions for kidney dialysis alone more than doubled.

Chronic kidney disease is caused by consumption of sugar

Cancer

The incidence of all cancers has increased by 23% but some cancers have exploded.  Australians are now three times as likely to have Thyroid or liver cancer and between 2 and 3 times as likely to have Kidney, Anal or prostate cancer or melanoma.

Cancer is caused by consumption of vegetable oils and its growth is accelerated by sugar.

Allergies

Reported rates of Hay Fever, Asthma and Eczema have doubled in the last 15 years according to survey data. Hosptilisation rates for the most extreme form of allergic reaction, Anaphylaxis (life threatening acute inflammation usually in response to food) also doubled between 1994 and 2005. And the biggest overall change has been a five-fold increase in anaphylaxis admissions for children aged 0 to 4 years (as compared to just double for the rest of the population). Five times as many admissions in just ten years.

Impaired inflammation responses like these are caused by consumption of vegetable oil.

Fertility

Around one in six Australian couples now meet the World Health Organisation definition of infertility and this is due in no small part to the alarming drop in male fertility.  Since the 1980s, male sperm counts have dropped by at least 30% and if the trend continues, fertile men will be as rare as hen’s teeth within two decades.

Male fertility is destroyed by consumption of vegetable oils.

Those we trusted with health advice told us to eat vegetable oils, focus on the fat and calorie content of foods and exercise more.  They also had scant concern for sugar.  The food industry paid attention and pushed the ‘healthy eating’ barrow as hard and fast as it could.

Our food was filled with vegetable oil and sugar and that was ok as long as it was ‘low in saturated fat’.  The dietetics industry merrily accepted the sponsorship of the food producers and sung uncritically from the same hymn sheet.

But now we see the grisly consequences of that gormless obsession with saturated fat unfolding before our eyes (provided they haven’t been destroyed by vegetable oil induced macular degeneration).

The evidence that sugar and vegetable oil is crippling us is now abundant, but those in charge of health advice refuse to act.  These same experts who have presided over three decades of culpably negligent public health advice, now refuse to either acknowledge their error or change their foolhardy ways.

That advice must change immediately.  We cannot afford to throw millions more of us under the bus driven by the egos of academics and fueled by the blood money of the processed food industry.