The David Gillespie Blog

If you change nothing, nothing will change
November 16, 2009
0

Time to smash juice’s health halo

By | Sugar | 2 Comments

Drinking fruit juice is a nutritious way to get extremely fat. But juice marketers have us convinced that sugar that was once part of fruit is much healthier than sugar that was once part of sugar cane. We’re not entirely convinced. We still drink 3 litres of soft drink for every litre of juice. But that’s still 700ml of juice a week and growing at about 1.5 litres a year.

We love juice because it seems to defy mum’s first law of food: If it tastes good it can’t be good for you. And that’s because even though it’s yummy, it is stuffed with loads of vitamin C. Even the thickest nutritionist knows we all need that vitamin C, right?

Most plants and animals can produce all the Vitamin C they need. Unfortunately humans and other apes descended from tree-swingers never bothered to develop the necessary enzyme. This is probably because our prehistoric diet had plenty of fresh fruit and veg.

If you run low on Vitamin C, you will eventually die of scurvy. And if we are to believe the juice purveyors, we are all on the verge of expiring from lack of Vitamin C.

But do you know anyone that has died of scurvy? Me neither. That’s because it’s extraordinarily difficult to deplete your stores of vitamin C enough to achieve it. Pretty much the only way you’ll do it will be to lock yourself up on a sailing ship for 6 months. Even then you’d be pushing it. Captain Cook didn’t lose anyone to scurvy on his way over here and all he fed his men was pickled cabbage and salted meat. There were no stops at the mid-pacific juice bar for that lot.

According to the World Health Organisation, you would need to be totally deprived of Vitamin C for two months before you showed the first signs of scurvy. And even then all you would need to fix the problem would the amount of Vitamin C found in two tablespoons of baked potato (6.5-10 mg) a day.

The other major nutritional claims for fruit juices are that they are good sources of folate and potassium. And while both are important, anyone who eats bread, nuts, meat, fresh fruit or vegetables (well just about anything really) will be getting more than any fruit juice would ever deliver.

A glass of apple juice is no better for you than a glass of Coke. The average soft drink is 10% sugar and so is the average juice. And while the nutritional content claims are (vaguely) true, they are about as relevant as slapping “Asbestos Free” on the front of a bottle of Coke (no, this is not a suggestion).

Big Sugar is green with envy at people queuing round the block to buy sugar water from juice bars. Coca-cola tried to get in on the act and buy Berri, our biggest juice purveyor by a country mile. But the ACCC decided that wouldn’t be good for competition (it is, however, ok for a Japanese Brewer to own it).

And earlier this year, Coke got knocked back again when it tried to buy half the Chinese fruit juice market. I don’t know why they’re bothering. All they need to do is source their sugar molecules from fruit juice concentrate rather than cane, chuck in some multivitamins and, voila, healthy sugar water – oh wait – they’ve already thought of that: Glaceau Vitamin Water.

None of this is secret, so why does the government endorse juice as an alternative to fresh fruit? Why does the heart foundation hand out ticks to fruit juice makers? And why is juice promoted as a “green food” in school canteens?

In July, I asked the Queensland Deputy Premier and Minister for Health, Paul Lucas, why juice was endorsed as health food in schools. A flunkey immediately responded (at the end of September) letting me know that the Minister’s reply was awaiting signature and so, of course, I am still waiting. Maybe he forgot how to sign his name?

It’s time to knock the health halo off the head of the juice makers and place them firmly in the sugar-water category they have so successfully evaded. It’s time for governments to stop aiding and abetting the deception and its time kids were fed water at school instead of sugar-water dressed up as health food.

October 8, 2009
0

How necessary is lap-banding?

By | Conflicts of Interest, Sugar | 8 Comments

Imagine for a moment that there was a medical benefit to penis enlargement. I can’t imagine what it might be. But you can bet that if there was the slightest chance of one, Big Pharma would be working the PR angles overtime.

There would be submissions to parliamentary enquiries on the virtues of large members. There would be intense lobbying for bigification to be added to the medicare schedules. Universities would be endowed with grants for studies showing that despite the huge costs involved, the community as a whole would be better off.

Successful recipients of the procedure would make regular appearances on current affairs shows. And even the occasional celebrity might become a posterboy for his newly enlarged and much more healthy lifestyle.

Normally this kind of cosmetic surgery misses out on the PR windfall of there being a remote possibility of medical benefit. But there is one kind of beautification which has managed to land smack bang in the middle of the biggest medical concern we have (no not hair regrowth, the other one).

Lap-band surgery promises to blow away years of eating the wrong thing with a simple slice of the scalpel (and large quantities of liquid food). But it’s not cosmetic surgery, oh no, this is about reversing Type II Diabetes.

You need look no further than our own Monash University’s Centre for Obesity Research and Education (CORE) for proof that lap-band surgery is a cost effective way to manage diabetes. I’m sure that the fact that CORE’s ‘principal sponsor’ is Allergan has very little to do with their decision to focus their efforts on the study of lap-band surgery.

Allergan is the little pharmaceutical company that gave the world Botox. It followed up that gift to mankind with the invention of the very first (and still the most popular) device for bariatric surgery. Years of marketing Botox for medical uses (really? It’s also used for cosmetic purposes? Well spank my bottom and call me Anna) has ensured that Allergan knows how to tread the cosmetic-surgery-that’s-healthy path with great skill.

CORE has been having a bit of success on the lobbying front. It submitted to the House of Reps inquiry into obesity that “the barriers to publicly funded access to this surgery need to be addressed as a matter of urgency”, (but forgot to mention that their principal sponsor was a maker of such devices). And voila out pops a key recommendation that governments need to work together to boost access to bariatric surgery.

One of the chaps who has run multiple studies for CORE is a GP by the name of Dr John Dixon. His latest study correctly discloses that he is affiliated with CORE and the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, but doesn’t mention that he is also a consultant to Allergan and “the charter member of the board” of, and has an ‘ownership interest in’ Bariatric Advantage.

The recipients of lap-band surgery are put on an Optifast diet before and after surgery. It’s not the surgery that makes them thin, it’s being forced to stick to a very low calorie liquid diet. Optifast is one of those shake diets you can buy at the local pharmacy, but there is a special high end version for those undergoing lap-band surgery.

Bariatric Advantage makes its money flogging optifast liquid diets (and various other bibs and bobs) to lap-band patients, so it’s logical that Dr Dixon might want to have an ‘ownership interest’ in its operations. The primary ingredient in Optifast shakes (besides powdered milk) is fructose, a substance so dangerous to diabetics (remember diabetes is the disease we are ‘curing’ here), that the American Diabetes Association has pronounced “the use of added fructose as a sweetening agent in the diabetic diet is not recommended.”

CORE expects that 14,000 lap-band procedures will be done this year in Australia. But don’t worry, since Nestle make Optifast, they can probably get their hands on the industrial quantities of fructose required for the construction of that many ‘diet shakes’. And Nestle have no problems selling fructose to our kids as health food, so I guess this isn’t much of a leap to push it to diabetics either.

Bariatric surgery is not a simple piece of cosmetic beautification. One in five patients will suffer complications (but don’t worry less than 1 in 100 dies). And all for what? An average of just one decade’s remission from Type II Diabetes (for up to 40% of patients – the rest miss out).

Are we really going to seriously consider publicly funding surgery based on a submission from an outfit funded by the maker of the surgical device? Are we to seriously consider ‘research’ run by a GP who is a paid consultant to that manufacturer? And what are we to make of his side business flogging fructose (on behalf of Nestle) to the recipients of these devices? Is this really how public health policy is put together in this country?

Here’s an idea. How about instead of leaving a publicly funded first aid kit at the bottom of the slippery slide, we give some thought to telling people about the dangers before they climb the ladder? How about instead of blindly accepting that people are obese because they’re lazy or gluttonous (or both), we pay some attention to the more than 3,000 studies which suggest we’re fat because of a dangerous toxin (fructose) in our diet? How about we look a little deeper than the shiny surface that Big Pharma and Big Sugar want us to see?

Also published in Crikey

Image courtesy of artur84 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

August 26, 2009
0

Heart Association: Cut Back On Sugar—Way Back

By | Conflicts of Interest, Sugar | 2 Comments

Break out the marching bands. Yesterday the Heart Association recommended that adult men should eat no more than 9 teaspoons of sugar a day (6 teaspoons for women). If that still sounds like a lot to you, you’re not up with the times. The Food Investigators (SBS) recommend 32 teaspoons and even Food Standards Australia says it’s ok for a man to gulp down just over 21 teaspoons every day.

Unfortunately, it’s the American Heart Association that has issued the new guideline. Here in the land of Oz, nothing’s changed. The AHA says that it made the change because:

“High intake of added sugars is implicated in numerous poor health conditions, including obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease and stroke.”

The AHA has clearly sniffed the wind and decided that a (policy) stitch in time saves nine (lawsuits). There are just too many lawyers in the US who would be more than happy to have a crack at helping a court understand disparities between public health advice and research evidence.

One current example is a class action commenced in January this year against Coke in the US. The claim alleges fraudulent statements in the marketing of Coke’s new range of Glaceau Vitamin Waters. Coke’s advertising suggests that its drinks variously reduce the risk of chronic disease, reduce the risk of eye disease, promote healthy joints, and support optimal immune function. Whereas science suggests that the 8 teaspoons of sugar in each bottle do exactly the opposite.

Meanwhile back in the dark ages, we here in Australia base all our public health advice on something called the Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults published in 2003 by the National Health and Medical Research Council. Both Nestle and the Australian Heart Foundation referred me to those guidelines when I questioned the endorsement of Fruit Fix as a healthy snack. And Diabetes Australia-NSW pointed me that way when I queried their involvement in the The Food Investigators show which told us we should eat those 32 teaspoons of sugar a day.

The Dietary Guidelines recommend that we get 15% to 20% of our calories from sugar. They base that recommendation on a 1994 meta-study which concluded that the only ill effects of sugar consumption were likely to be dental cavities. That study based its conclusions primarily on four studies done from 1972 to 1992. Oh and by the way, it was paid for by the American Beverage Association, an outfit not exactly known for its tolerance of anti-sugar messages.

Let me say that again, but slower. Australian recommendations on sugar consumption are based on a 15 year old report paid for by Big Sugar. And that report is in turn based on research which is thinking about applying for its old age pension. None of that would matter if just about every nutritionist in the nation didn’t base their advice on those antiquated guidelines. Or if Big Sugar didn’t use them as a perfect defense to their behaviour. Or if our own Heart Foundation and Diabetes organisations didn’t blindly accept them at face value.

The American Diabetes Association moved in 2006 and now the American Heart Association has gone the same way. Both now say sugar is bad news for their respective constituents. You clearly don’t have to hit the AHA or the ADA over the head with a lawyer. They understand that it’s better to make sure your policy guidance matches what the research says now (rather than what it said in 1972). But the equivalent organisations in Australia are quite happy to keep trotting out Big Sugar’s company line.

It’s time for those responsible for the health of Australians to wake up and smell the (independent) research. In Australia, actions for chronic disease are (so far) limited to tobacco and asbestos poisoning.But it won’t be long before sugar is added to the list. The people we trust for health advice need to move before any more of us are suckered into a life of debilitating disease based on advice which is over three decades old (and paid for by the sugar industry).

Note: Yesterday, I contacted the Australian Heart Foundation and asked if they had any comment on the American Heart Association announcement. They responded with the sound of silence.

 

Also published in Crikey

July 22, 2009
0

Are you getting enough sugar?

By | Conflicts of Interest, Sugar | 7 Comments

Don’t tell the neighbours, but I don’t often venture northwards enough on the telly’s dial to make contact with SBS. However, last week some alert promo watchers warned me to tune in to Food Investigators on Wednesday night.

Food Investigators is in English and doesn’t contain any nudity (as far as I can tell from limited exposure) so I’m not quite sure why Aunty’s little sister funds it. Maybe it’s got something to do with SBS’s need to attract advertisers in these days of Master Runway Decorator Chefs?

Last week’s edition was a revelation. In hard hitting style, the show’s host(ess), ‘hospital doctor, actor and healthy eating enthusiast’ Dr Renee Lim was on the trail of some big news. She revealed that ‘recent studies’ show that we are all eating 20 percent less sugar than 30 years ago. This information seemed to come from Dr Alan Barclay who also pointed out that over the same period ‘rates of overweight and obesity have gone through the roof’.

That was enough for Renee, who pronounced that ‘too much sugar isn’t the major cause of obesity’. Having dropped her bombshell (or Dr Barclay’s bombshell, it wasn’t clear which), Dr Lim crossed to the show’s built in dietician, Hanan Saleh to find out how much sugar we all should be eating.

Hanan recommends ’15-20% of your daily energy intake should come from sugar’. She helpfully explains that translates to up to 32 teaspoons for men and up to 25 teaspoons for woman and children. Concerned that you, gentle viewer, will be freaking out about having to add another 30 teaspoons of sugar to your coffee (just to get your recommended dose), she helpfully explains that 80% of that has already been added to your food by your friendly neighbourhood food and beverage conglomerate (or words to that effect).

I stayed glued to the Box in the hope that Renee or Alan might pop back in and reference the world changing research they had unceremoniously dropped on the floor without so much as a ‘how’s your father?’. No such luck though. I had to know more, but hours spent hunched over a hot browser left me none the wiser, so I emailed Dr Barclay.

The good doctor got straight back to me with a clarification that wasn’t in the show. His research has not yet been published. He will reveal all at the Australian Diabetes Society’s annual conference in Adelaide next month. He was stumm as to any further detail, so I guess I’ll just have to sit and wait.

In all my searching, I couldn’t find Dr Barclay’s research (or even anything that it might be based on), but I did find out quite a bit about him. SBS described him with the brief under-title, ‘Diabetes Australia’, but there is so much more they could (and should) have told us.

Alan Barclay has a PhD to top up his undergraduate studies in nutrition and dietetics. He is the human nutrition manager at Diabetes Australia-NSW. He’s also a media spokesperson for the Dieticians Association of Australia (having recently completed a media training course at NIDA). So I’m guessing he knows a thing or two about human nutrition (and how to talk to journalists).

So far so good, but then things get a little murky. Alan is also the CSO (I think that means Chief Science Officer) and occasionally Acting-CEO at Glycemic Index Ltd (GIL). GIL is a ‘not-for-profit company formed by the University of Sydney, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and Diabetes Australia’. It exists to dispense GI Symbols to worthy recipients.

The GI Symbol is the poor relation of the heart foundation’s tick. Prospective supplicants submit their fare for testing, pay the ‘testing fee’ and, if adjudged worthy, receive a little blue G that they can display on their labels.

Just like the tick, the GI program is designed to ‘help consumers choose healthy foods’. And just like the tick, consumer research shows it actually works. But there is one place you’ll find a GI Symbol that not even the heart foundation has (so far) dared to go. CSR have managed to get one slapped proudly on the front of a packet of sugar. Yep, sugar. The very same stuff that Alan helped SBS point out is no longer a threat to our waistlines.

This is, of course, not news to Alan. He was right there at the launch of the new GI Approved Sugar in March and his boss, board member, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller was widely quoted in support of CSR’s announcement.

At this stage, it seems that only SBS have been privy to Dr Barclay’s paradigm smashing research on sugar, so I can’t comment on that. I do however think it would have been a nice touch to mention his association with a sugar producer. This is particularly important given the program did much more than break the news on the ‘research’ front. It suggested that people should be getting up to a fifth of their calories from sugar (which is more than even Nestle recommends).

How long would a doctor keep his practising certificate if he prescribed a medication in which he had an undisclosed financial interest? Exactly how many minutes would a lawyer spend in the wild, if he counselled clients to invest in a scheme from which he took an undisclosed fee?

Human nutrition is no longer a soft science or an almost-profession. People base life decisions on the information dispensed by shows like The Food Investigators. The standard ‘this advice does not take account of your circumstances’ disclaimer doesn’t cut it when the advice affects everyone. The science says there isn’t a category of person who won’t be harmed by sugar consumption. Telling people to eat it in quantity, is like recommending daily arsenic supplements.

Also published in Crikey

July 9, 2009
0

Taxing Sin

By | Sugar | 2 Comments

Good news! Kevin and Nicola (you know, brown hair, answers to ‘health minister’) are thinking about raising tobacco taxes again. Baccy tax is a politician’s dream tax. It drags in wads of money and everyone (well according to a recent Newspoll, 88 percent of everyone) thinks you’re a legend for doing it. If only they could convince us to feel that way about income tax. Then they could hand out stimulus packages every second Tuesday and even afford to buy their own utes.

The latest proposal from the think tank over at the National Preventative Health Taskforce should rake in $1.97 billion (with a B!) in extra taxes every year. That’s a lot of mullah just by whacking an extra 67c on a pack of ciggies. They’d better hope not too many people give up.

The extra two billion will be added to the six billion or so they already take from the tobacco industry every year. Eight billion will be quite a nice little earner when you consider that the direct health costs of treating smokers is just $318 million (with an M) a year (mostly because smokers have the good grace to die before they cost real money).

But don’t start picking out next year’s plasma TV just yet, if another paper from the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission (all these government Taskforces and Commissions are starting to blur together into one steaming, committee coloured pile) is to be believed, we’re going to need every last cent of that (and a whole lot more).

The research underlying the report says that by 2033, the Australian health system will be costing up to $295 billion every year (up from the $94 billion it currently costs). To put that in perspective, last year the total income tax take for the entire country was a mere $209 billion which was topped up with $76 billion in GST. The biggest cost increases are directly related to chronic diseases caused by sugar consumption such as Type II Diabetes. There will be almost four times as many of us with the disease by then.

Depending on how things track between now and then, the health system may cost up to 15% of our GDP. Our friends in the US already have a health system which costs 15% of GDP and they’re finding it a bit tricky to keep delivering the essentials. Kevin’s mate, Barack says “When it comes to health-care spending, we are on an unsustainable course that threatens the financial stability of families, businesses and government itself.” Oh ok, so no big deal then?

But, as they say, necessity is the mother of taking science seriously. So our friends over the pond are seriously considering slapping a sin tax on soft drinks (or soda, as they insist on calling it), fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas.

They reckon if they add 10c per litre to the price, everyone will win. The government will pocket an extra $6 billion a year (to go towards the health system) and the tax would ‘lower consumption, reduce health problems and save medical costs.’ Gosh that sounds familiar. Except this time they’re not talking about ciggies, they’re talking about a substance that Nestle advertises to Australian kids as a healthy and nutritious snack (ah c’mon, you knew I couldn’t leave that alone).

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says “Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it’s something government should discourage the consumption of.” I don’t think Mike’s worried about the water, so that leaves the other ingredient in soft drink, sugar. That’s right, sugar. And it would appear that he has good reason to be worried.

The evidence on sugar is enough to have the US Senate seriously considering the imposition of tobacco-like sin taxes. Clearly Americans have a very different metabolism, because in Australia, we’re not in the least concerned. Just last week (in response to one of my earlier rants) Susan Anderson, National Director, Healthy Weight at the Australian Heart Foundation told Cardiology Update “Although associated with tooth decay… eating sugar itself is not clearly associated with other health problems.”

Susan isn’t on her John Malone. The House of Representatives Inquiry into Obesity (which handed down its report in June) was more worried about ensuring the taxpayer (that means you and me) footed the bill for gastric banding surgery than doing anything about sugar consumption. And the Preventative Health Taskforce wants to increase cigarette taxes and educate us to eat less fat and exercise more (because that’s worked so well to date).

A sin tax on sugar may not be the ideal approach. But at least it acknowledges the real cause of the obesity crisis and (much like a tobacco tax) ensures some of the real costs associated with its consumption are built into the price paid by the consumer. It’s time for Australian ‘experts’ to extract their heads from the sand and start acting on sugar. At the very least, let’s stop pushing it to our kids as ‘health food’.

Residents of Melbourne might like to know I’ll be giving a free public lecture next Tuesday. People who can’t (or wont) go to Melbourne (even to hear me) can tune into Ockham’s Razor this Sunday instead.

Also published in Crikey

June 12, 2009
0

Why Iodine is being added to your Daily Bread

By | Big Fat Lies, Sugar | 7 Comments

You may not know it but you need iodine in your life. No, I’m not talking about the brown tincture that your mum smeared all over your bloodied knee, although it’s closely related. The iodine you need even more than that is the kind you eat as part of your diet. You don’t need a lot (about one teaspoon over your lifetime) but it is vital, particularly in the few months before the world is blessed with your presence.

Iodine is used by your thyroid gland to manufacture a couple of hormones (with inconsiderately long names which have thankfully been abbreviated by the research community to T3 & T4). If a pregnant woman’s thyroid gland can’t get enough iodine to make these hormones then there will be disastrous consequences for her baby.

Thyroid hormones are critical for the creation of the protective coating of nerves (called myelanation) which is most active in the period from 22 weeks gestation to just after birth. A range of recent studies show conclusively that even if the mother is only moderately iodine deficient, the child will suffer a reduction in IQ of between 10 and 15 points. Severe iodine deficiency will result in significant mental retardation.

The research on iodine deficiency is well established and is the driver behind the creation of ‘iodised salt’. But in the last decade or so we’ve become a bit too good for plain old salt (rock salt only please) and the alarm bells are starting to ring. Iodised Salt is now less than 10% of all salt sales.

But even if you have a perfectly adequate amount of iodine in your diet you may still be unable to produce enough of the thyroid hormones. Guess how (c’mon it’s not that hard, you’re reading a blog about fructose)? That’s right, just make sure your diet is high in fructose (sugar for the newcomers).

A series of studies published in the eighties by the US Department of Agriculture show that fructose creates a copper deficiency. And a bit more research (from Russia) in the nineties shows that a fructose induced copper deficiency sharply decreases iodine hormone (T3 & T4) production by the thyroid gland.

So even if she has plenty of iodine in her diet, if a pregnant woman’s diet also has plenty of fructose, she’s playing Russian roulette with her child’s IQ (‘scuse pun).

The combination of a high fructose, low iodine diet is starting to have a real impact on Australian women. A recent update to 2001 research out of Westmead hospital in Sydney suggests a 50% increase in thyroid hormone deficiencies in Australian pregnant mothers.

But don’t worry, the Government is on the case. Are they banning fructose? Are they suggesting pregnant mothers take iodine supplements? No, of course not. Their solution is exactly the same as the solution for tooth decay. They’ll mass medicate. From October 2009 all bread sold in Australia will come with a free dose of iodine.

Now don’t get me wrong.I don’t know any mother that wouldn’t give both her arms to ensure her baby had the best possible start in life.And as far as I can discern there is no downside to having too much iodine (at the levels we are likely to be getting).But the research suggests that if we keep increasing fructose in our diet, then no matter how much iodine we put in the bread, we won’t be able to convert it to the hormones pregnant mothers need.

The problem is that, just as with fluoride and now with iodine, the knee jerk response to problems created (at least in part) by overconsumption of sugar is to pull the ‘mass-medicate’ lever. How long will it be before the Government decides the best option for high cholesterol or blood pressure or diabetes is to mass medicate. How about depression? Before you know it there’ll be more medication than bread in our daily bread.

Why is the Government so reluctant to take a proper look at what the research says is the common cause to all of these ailments? I hope it’s going too far to suggest that Big Sugar is pulling the strings. I believe firmly that you should not ascribe to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. But I think all the good marketing work Big Sugar is doing (just to move product) may be operating to muddy the waters for those charged with looking after our health.

It’s time to cut through the spin and look to the underlying cause before we once again reach for the band-aids.

May 28, 2009
0

Telling lies to children (and their parents)

By | Sugar | 4 Comments

Nestle’s lawyers have demanded that I correct this post – see the correction before you read on.

They must have some very strange strawberries growing in the patch over at Uncle Toby’s place. The aged gent apparently grows fruit which is around 72% sugar. Now those would be sweet little strawberries indeed.

The average strawberry growing in the ground round these parts comes in at only 4.6%. Perhaps Nestle (the owner of Uncle Toby’s) has had a scientific breakthrough. Because they are now heavily promoting a product which contains ‘1 Serve of Fruit’ in every snack, but manages to pack almost 16 times as much sugar in.

‘Nutritionist’ Lisa Guy is very happy with the new Fruit Fix.As a ‘busy mum’ she’s found a nutritious snack (which is ‘99% fruit ingredients’) that she can feel good about feeding to her children.

Really? Let’s take a quick look at how a Strawberry Fruit Fix (SFF) stacks up against the strawberries it theoretically contains:

Protein: Strawberry 1% SFF 1.3%

Fat: Strawberry 0% SFF .5%

Sugar: Strawberry 4.6% SFF 72.7%

Fibre: Strawberry 2% SFF 7.3%

Well I guess they have about the same amount of protein …

I’ve become pretty good at seeing how, with just the right shade of rose coloured glasses on, a marketer can spin the description of junk food into healthy kids food, but this one defies even my best efforts.

Apparently the folks over at the National Heart Foundation were able to exercise their imaginations to just the right degree, because they’ve bestowed one of their highly prized ticks on this product.

On what planet is a ‘food’ which almost entirely consists of sugar, able to be described as a healthy and nutritious snack for children?

Given what we know about the addictive qualities of fructose, perhaps the name Fruit Fix is no accident. Nestle, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Naturally, I’ve lodged complaints with the Advertising Standards Bureau and the ACCC.

May 17, 2009
0

How fructose causes erectile dysfunction

By | Sugar | 7 Comments

Good news!  They’ve discovered a treatment for – ahem – ‘erectile dysfunction’.  I bring this to your attention because if you don’t regularly, drive (especially with small children in the car on roads which have billboards), watch television, listen to the radio or read the newspaper, this will have surely escaped your notice.

And it’s not a moment too soon.  The number of men suffering this malady is skyrocketing at a rate only equalled by the growth in obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease.  There aren’t many studies on it (men seem strangely shy about participating in such research). But we don’t need boffins in white coats when we have public sales data on the ‘cure’.

There are drugs that really do help and so their sales are a reasonable approximation of the need.  The most famous is Viagra, which first hit the market in 1998.  In the first year Pfizer, the drug’s maker, sold US$1 Billion of the stuff.  By 2006, it was moving around US$1.6 Billion worth of Viagra a year. 

You don’t get to keep a honey pot like that to yourself for long.  Bayer and Eli Lilley launched competitive offerings (Levitra and Cialis) in 2003.  By 2006 they were moving a combined US$1.5 Billion worth of the drugs (for a total market size of $3.1 billion per year).  They estimate that that the combined customer list for all three drugs is over 300 million men worldwide. Current estimates put the number of US men affected at about 20 percent of the male population.

One of the more recent studies on the causes of erectile dysfunction confirms you are more likely to suffer from it if you also suffer from heart disease, hypertension or diabetes.

Viagra, Levitra and Cialis work by encouraging the production of nitric oxide, a critical element in making all the relevant muscles relax enough to encourage inbound arterial blood flow and the squeezing shut of the veins to keep the blood in place long enough to be useful (so to speak).  In other words they temporarily fix the lack of nitric oxide which causes the problem in the first place.

Tell me you’ll be surprised to find that one of the many side-effects of fructose consumption is a massive decrease in nitric oxide production.  Go on, tell me, I dare you.  It should also then come as no particular surprise that erectile dysfunction is so closely aligned with the other symptoms of overindulging in fructose, namely heart disease, obesity and type II diabetes and that the number of men needing assistance is also increasing.

The trouble with drugs like Viagra is that while they do definitely work, they require a prescription.  Which would be fine if it was a ‘woman’s issue’.  But for men, that’s akin to suggesting we take out a front page ad about our – ah- issues.  Playing on men’s reluctance in this regard, a new industry in alternative solutions (of the nasal delivery kind) has sprung up to service the need for discretion.  The nasal delivery drugs are apomorphines which have been very soundly proven to be barely effective (when compared to Viagra), but that doesn’t stop people paying upwards of $4,000 for them.

Well gentlemen, the news really is good.  I have a solution which doesn’t require a prescription for Viagra or for you to drop 4 Large – stop eating fructose.  There that wasn’t so painful was it.

December 15, 2008
2

Is Fluoride in the water the best cure for decaying teeth?

By | Sugar | 4 Comments

Nobody gets tooth decay by drinking water, but Coca-Cola recently announced they were “investigating the possibility of including fluoride in some of [their] bottled waters”.  A strange announcement given water drinkers are not the ones who need the tender ministrations of industrial medication. 

Juice and soft drink gulpers are the ones who need help with their teeth, but government and now Big Sugar are carpet bombing the water drinkers rather than laser targeting the sugar drinkers.

Researchers have known since the 60s that tooth decay is caused by a little chap called Streptococcus Mutans (SM).  It is one of the two to three hundred species of bacteria that inhabit our mouths.

SM is a little unusual though.  It’s rather like a koala in that it only really likes one thing to eat.  No, not gum leaves.  SM wants sugar.  To be more precise, SM likes the two components of sugar, glucose and fructose in exactly the proportions they are found in sugar, 50/50.

In hundreds of well controlled studies, scientists have been able to determine that feeding SM sugar causes it to produce plaque and lactic acid.  Plaque is the gummy coating on teeth.  If you feed SM pure glucose or fructose it can only produce the acid.  It can’t make plaque without sugar and without plaque there is no decay.  If you want to rot teeth, the most effective way is to give SM a constant wash of sugar solution (like soft drink or fruit juice).   Eating sugar in food still works but it is nowhere near as effective at helping SM do its job.

SM has really enjoyed our change in diet in the last few decades.  The amount of sugar laden, soft drink, juice and flavoured milk we drink has risen from virtually nothing prior to the Second World War to almost 1 litre per person per day.  Consumption of soft drink alone has more than doubled in the last 30 years.  And with this our need for dental services has also risen exponentially.

Unfortunately fixing decayed teeth is monumentally expensive, so our governments have been reluctant to include those costs in our ‘free’ public health system.  The number of decayed teeth in the mouth of the average six year old increased by 11.4 percent between 1990 and 1999.  And Australia now spends 1 in every 10 health dollars on those white (well, yellowish) things in our mouths. The health cost is accelerating almost as fast as the sales of soft drink.

Our Governments, desperate to avoid the popular demand for them to pay the bill for a disease that affects everyone (that consumes sugar), have increasingly turned to the quick-fix solution of mass medication using fluoride.   And there is no denying that mass fluoride medication has an economic appeal.  Victoria estimates that it has saved more than $1 billion in public dental services in the three decades since it started pumping fluoride into its water supplies.  Big Sugar doesn’t mind some free marketing, so has clearly jumped on board with the message.

The chemical used most commonly for water fluoridation is fluorosilicic acid.  It is produced as a co-product from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers.  Because some people have concerns that putting such a thing in our water supply might not be a good thing, the World Health Organisation (WHO) conducted a thorough review of the health effects of fluoride in 2002.

The WHO report concluded that there was at least a 12.5 percent reduction in the number of dental cavities in communities where water fluoridation had been introduced.   These numbers are supported out by a recent Australian study which show that the average six year old will have one less decayed tooth (which still leaves two) if there is fluoride in the water.

The problem is that 90 percent of swallowed fluoride is retained by the body.  Fluoride accumulates in the bone (and tooth) internal structure and ultimately causes a disease called fluorosis. The WHO report noted that the risk of dental and skeletal fluorosis was significantly increased in areas where the water was heavily fluoridated.  Over time, the accumulation of fluoride may result in increased brittleness leading to crumbling teeth and more easily broken bones.

And WHO aren’t the only ones raising red flags.  The risks associated with swallowing too much fluoride are so real that earlier this year the American Dental Association put out a warning to mothers not to mix infant feeding formula with fluoridated water.

Not even the most wildly supportive research suggests that fluoridating water cures tooth decay.  It merely defers the problem and the expense of treatment.  The price for treating less decayed teeth now, is that someone in the future can deal with elderly people suffering continuous fractures.

You don’t have to look too hard to see why.  Fluoridation lets Government and Big Sugar alike look like they are doing something tangible about dental health without actually doing anything which challenges the status quo.  At the same time politicians can justify the closure of public dentistry facilities (such as school clinics) because they have ‘solved’ the problem.  And they can defer discussion about who should pay for dental health until somebody else’s watch.  Best of all, the ‘treatment’ is administered without asking any voter to change their lifestyle.

Strangely, neither government nor Big Sugar appears to be contemplating the possibility of removing or changing the sugary drinks that cause the problem in the first place.

If mass medication is the way we solve society’s lifestyle influenced health problems, then why stop at fluoride?  Bowel cancer is growing at unprecedented rates, so let’s back the Metamucil trucks up to the reservoirs and the bottling plants.  Too many of us still smoke, so how about dumping a load of whatever they put in nicotine patches into the water as well.  Maybe if we tip in a few hundred gallons of anti-depressant, we could even do something about our falling consumer confidence (there’s an idea, Kevin).  The possibilities are endless.

Image courtesy of olovedog / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

November 18, 2008
4

Sorbitol, Maltitol, Mannitol and Isomalt

By | Sugar | 14 Comments

I had to perform an intervention this last week-end.  A Sweet Poison fan was overdosing on ‘sugar-free’ treats.  She had in her possession, no less than Kopiko, Licorette and two different varieties of Jols. 

The well intentioned fructose avoider had obtained all of these sweets from her local pharmacist (a topic for another day) and all of them proudly proclaim that they are “Sugar Free”.  Instead of Sugar they all contain the following goodies:

Jols (raspberry apple) – 39% Sorbitol and 7.5% Maltitol

Jols (cranberry green tea) – 33% Sorbitol and 8.8% Maltitol

Licorette – 39% Sorbitol and 7.5% Maltitol

Kopiko – 64% Isomalt and 20% Maltitol

Isomalt consists of two molecules of glucose joined to a molecule of sorbitol and a molecule of mannitol.  Mannitol is the sugar alcohol of fructose and is metabolised as if it were fructose.

Maltitol is metabolised to glucose and sorbitol.

About 65% of the sorbitol you eat makes it into your bloodstream where it is converted immediately to fructose by your liver.  The other 35% feeds the bacteria in the large intestine resulting in diarrhoea and gas.  This is why it is sometimes an important ingredient in ‘natural’ laxatives and why each of these products bears a warning about a potential ‘laxative effect’.

So when you see Sorbitol on the label, your body sees Fructose, well 65% Fructose anyway.

Which means when you see Maltitol on the label your body sees Glucose (50%) and Fructose (50%).  This is just like sugar only slightly less of it gets absorbed.  You also have the lovely benefit of wind-pain as well (if you eat more than 10-20g of the stuff).

Likewise when you see Isomalt on the label your body once again sees Glucose (50%), Fructose from Sorbitol (25%) and Fructose (25%).  Again just like sugar.

Sure, these products (and many more like them) all have less calories than ones containing equivalent quantities of sugar.  They achieve this because less of the sugar substitute makes it into your bloodstream.  Instead it is feeding the little chaps in your large intestine. 

But at the end of the day if fructose is what you are trying to avoid, you might as well be eating sugar for all you are achieving by eating these products.

People wanting to avoid fructose (and who doesn’t) should avoid products containing sorbitol, isomalt maltitol and mannitol.