Though
working at university, I currently do not have as much to read for work (will
change when I start my PhD. Big time…), plus I am spending roughly three
hours every day sitting in a train. Purchasing books is one of my favourite leisure
time activity, I own dozens of books, still waiting to be read. Having put
roughly ten of them right next to the couch in the living room, I am reminded
on a regular basis to take one of them with me whenever I leave the house, or
just read when I am at home. I am enjoying it a lot and can only recommend it.
As mentioned earlier “Fat chance” by Dr. Robert Lustig was one of the best reads
I have had for a long time. It is pretty unbelievable how little I knew about
our bodies and about nutrition, although it is such a large part of our life.
(At the moment I am reading “Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahnemann. Also new
insights into everyday life. I will tell you more about it when I am finished,
but I definitely recommend it.)
If you are
interested in the fight against sugar and how exactly sugar works in your body,
read “Fat Chance”. For those with limited time, I collected some of the most
important facts:
-
a
mantra used to be “A calorie is a calorie”, so if you use up as much as you
take in you should be fine. Dr. Lustig makes clear: not every calorie is like
the other
-
40%
of normal weight Americans (so not only obese people) suffer from metabolic
syndrome in some way [type 2 diabetes, lipid disorders, hypertension, heart
disease, cancer, dementia]
-
Obesity
is not the result of gluttony and sloth, but of a defect in energy deposition
-
Today,
the obese outnumber the undernourished on the planet by 30 %
-
The
body decides whether it uses your energy intake for storage or the business of
living
-
Different
calories are metabolized differently, the difference is: insulin
-
High
blood sugar leads to a release of big amounts of insulin, which will store energy that
is not used by the muscles and the brain in fat cells.
-
Subcutaneous
fat is not the devil here, in fact it seems to be healthy to have some fat
stored on your thighs, hips, arms, but the visceral fat makes you really ill.
It is the fat surrounding your organs, which you cannot see, apart from the
size of your belly. A lot of people have too much visceral fat and not only if
they have a big belly. Even slender persons can have vast amounts of visceral
fat, putting them as much at risk for diseases as someone who is obese.
-
I
guess we all know, that our bodies are still programmed for droughts and
ice age times, when food was scarce and who stored best got farthest
-
Sugar
is as addictive as alcohol, the same part of your brain derives pleasure from
it, which is why the food industry puts sugar into anything (ketchup, burgers,
all kinds of processed food)
-
Your
hunger is managed by a substance called leptin. Whenever the fat cells are
full, and you have eaten, blood sugar is high, then there will be a lot of
leptin in your blood, telling your brain that you had enough
-
Problem
is: when you eat a lot and a lot of sugar that is, your insulin levels will
rise high, as well as your leptin levels. After a while though, the cells will
ignore both substances as they always exist in such abundance that your body
suffers from a type of burn-out, it just gives up, resulting in insulin and
leptin resistance.
-
Those
resistances have a lot of horrible consequences, most interestingly, the body
of an obese person releases the same signals as a starving one: the brain cannot see the leptin anymore, therefore it signalizes GET FOOD and DON’T WASTE ENERGY,
SO DON’T MOVE. It is not only the sheer body mass of obese people that keep
them from working out, ironically it is their brain, being afraid of starving.
-
Processed
food is full of glucose, fructose, fats and proteins
-
Obesity
is no result of behaviour, it is mainly the result of nutritional alterations
of the last decades that drive insulin levels higher
-
Our
bodies produce twice as much insulin as the bodies of people 30 years ago, even
for the same amount of calories or
glucose, which is one difference, the other: there is much more sugar and
sweetener in our diet than 30 years ago
Factors and reasons
-
stress,
little sleep -> biochemical response is to store more fat; sugar makes you
happy and satisfied for a short amount of time
-
fructose
(50% of refined sugar is fructose) activates pleasure centre in brain, but
liver has a hard time to metabolize it -> liver fat -> metabolic syndrome
-
tans
fats: increase shelf-life of products, mitochondria cannot digest them, they
stay in your liver, your arteries, a.s.o. -> metabolic syndrome
-
omega
6 fatty acids: are essential, but too many lead to inflammatory compounds,
intake of omega 6 acids (e.g. canola and corn oil and protein from animals fed
by it (as most of them are today) has to equal omega 3 (e.g. in wild fish)
What to do to fix it?
You have to give your liver and your
mitochondria a break. Insulin levels need to get down to fix the resistances.
Cooking fresh food containing
a) fiber
slows the rate at which body turns food into
energy, therefore regulating blood sugar and insulin levels. Processed food
lacks fiber to make it freezable and prolong shelf life. Fiber also activates
leptin, tells your brain that you are full. [Dr. Lustig identifies not only
softdrinks, but especially fruit juice as bad, as it is still considered
healthy by a lot of people, containing as much sugar as coke and no fiber and
therefore really dangerous.]
b) Omega 3 fatty acids
Anti-flammatory, wild fish and eggs from
chicken fed with omega 3 fatty acids, flaxseed, linseed oil, walnut oil, a.s.o.
c) micronutrients
fruit and vegetables, especially wild ones,
containing healthy micronutrients and antioxidants -> combat inflammation,
keep cells intact and can protect you from cancer and Alzheimer
Eat real food, cook it yourself, when cooking
or baking, take less sugar than in the recipe and experiment with healthier
sugar alternatives, like stevia or xylose. Move -> movement refreshes the
mitochondria and helps you to shrink your fat cells.
Read the book, it has helped me to see sugar differently and understand our bodies and our problems much better.
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