You bet. Luckily, it takes more than 70 years to kill you.
I never said that fruit and honey were bad. The crux of that argument is that everywhere you get Fructose in nature it is accompanied by Fiber, which is the only known antidote to Fructose. When we consume Fructose in artificial circumstances, eg as HFCS added to prepared foods, it is devoid of the necessary fiber to neutralize the damaging effects. That is what makes it a toxin. It is a toxin when consumed without fiber.
The reason fiber is stripped from most prepared/packaged and fast foods is because fiber lessens the shelf life and lengthens the time necessary to cook it which is bad economics for the people who sell prepared foods and who sell fast food. But, when you strip the fiber and the fat out the food tastes more bland. So, HFCS is added to improve flavor.
The body does indeed break HFCS into Fructose and Glucose via an enzyme in the stomach, but the problem is that 1) HFCS is apx 90% Fructose and only 10% Glucose and 2) only 20% of Glucose is metabolized by the liver leaving 80% for other processes, but 100% of Fructose is metabolized by the liver. Only the liver can metabolize Fructose. Since the purpose of the human liver is convert glucose to glycogen, to produce bile to break down fats, and to filter foreign substances that can’t be metabolized by other processes, this is the basis for the assertion is Fructose is a toxin.
He goes on to show that the average person is consuming 15% of his/her daily caloric intake from Fructose (particularly HFCS) as it is in all kinds of pre-prepared food, fast food and packaged ready-to-eat foods. We have been told to lower fat intake so much, so many foods are “low fat”. When you take the fat out of foods it tastes worse, and HFCS is added to make it taste better. HFCS (and all sugars) also masks the taste of salt. The average person in America consumes over 140 lbs of sugar (glucose, fructose, sucrose et al) each year.
Anecdotally, we as a society have gotten fatter, we have higher rates of heart disease, and higher rates of diabetes. We have been told to reduce fat intake, and we have reduced fat intake, yet we are sicker than ever in these diseases. There is a clear correlation between the increase in sugar intake and the increase in Cardiovascular and Metabolic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, and dislipidemia etc, where we know Diabetes leads to increased risk of heart attack and stroke). To me this is a clear link between sugar and the heart. When “they” told us to reduce fat intake, the substitution of Fat for Sugar may have been seriously detrimental. Hence this thread. It is possible the “fat = heart disease” studies are flawed because many of those studies did not control for sugar intake.
He mocks the idea that we can realistically burn away fat. Yes we can, but its obscenely inefficient. 30 minutes of cardio work burns the calories of 1 cookie. Its impossible really to burn calories. Exercise is good for increasing the metabolism which speeds up the process of burning Glucose, so it is a net plus but doesn’t really help us lose weight very much. Conversely he argues that it isn’t strictly the calories that cause fat, but the substrate that the calories come from. For example you can get 120 calories by eating 2 slices of bread, from 1 shot of Makers Mark, or 1 glass of OJ. If you have the OJ you get lots of Sucrose. Sucrose is half Fructose and half Glucose. He claims this is worse than the other two options in terms of creating and storing fat.
Unlike Glucose, Fructose metabolizes into (among other things) Uric Acid. (This is discussed at around the 1 hour mark in the video if you are so inclined). Uric Acid causes Gout and Hypertension. But as it relates to fat, he claims, and backs it up with studies, that Fructose metabolizes in a way, unlike Glucose, that it causes de novo lipogenesis (new fat cell creation). Tests comparing high dose Glucose consumption results in less than 2% additional fat, whereas the same calories taken in as Fructose ends up as over 30% fat. And in a study where high amounts of Fructose were added to a diet vs a control group, by day 6 Triglyceride levels doubled, there was a 5 fold increase in denovo lipo genesis (new fat cell creation), and insulin resistance doubled.
The science behind this, he asserts, is that Glucose consumption metabolizes and partially ends up as tyrosine-irs 1. Fructose, via the same process, ends up as serine-irs1, which is inactive. It sits in the liver and raises liver insulin resistance, forcing the pancreas works harder where insulin creation increases, forces energy to be stored in the fat cells and reinforces a negative feedback loop where the brain can’t tell you that you are full.
He claims Sugar and Ethanol both metabolize the same way, except that Ethanol has an effect on the brain (you get drunk) and sugar doesn’t. I don’t recall hearing him state that that Ethanol is a “Hydrated Carbon” (carbohydrate). The basis for saying that Ethanol is a Carbohydrate is based on a rudimentary definition of Carbohydrate that states a carbohydrate is a molecule composed of only Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen where Hydrogen exists in a ratio of 2:1 or more relative to Oxygen Ethanol is Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen where Hydrogen is 2:1 or more than Oxygen. The Hydrogen is bound to the Carbon instead of the Hydrogen (as far as I know - just a keyboard chemist here). I don’t really know why he mentions that - it is almost in passing. He is really trying to compare Ethanol metabolisis to Fructose matabolisis.
Now I agree, he is sometimes sloppy in that video, he will occasionally interchange the word Fructose with the word Sugar, especially when he claims Fructose is essentially not a carb but actually is essentially a fat. So as an interested third party, curious why I can’t shed these excess 30 lbs despite well over a year on a low cal diet, (I quit smoking 6 years ago, went from 190lbs to 240lbs on a 6 foot frame) if you have any special knowledge or expertise that disputes these issues I am interested to hear it.
Apologies for the long post, but I edited my original post and now want to clarify where I am coming from - since you asked “where do you people come up with” these ideas. :-)