nutritional articles

[merchimerch]

Here are two sweetener related articles I found via the mercola blog. Both are a combo of no-brainer and harsh realization.

The first says that our cells remember even one dose of sugar for 2 weeks:
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=187166

The second says that Splenda/sucralose reduces the good bacteria in our intestines by 50%:
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=150785

It's nice to have some more ammunition for when I get in the "diet foods" are bad for you discussion. Now I'm contemplating a 2-week sweetener fast/detox, but I'm not sure about when to do that.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

I dunno, to me the knock-down argument goes like this: "Where did my ancestors gettheir supply of Splenda? ... Oh, they didn't? It's an engineered solution? So where are the system diagrams that explain the engineering?"

Of course, the counter arguments are "::drool::" and "give me all your money," which I guess can be pretty hard to defeat....

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

I realize that I am occasionally a luddite about things, but bearing in mind the corn lobby, the packaged food lobby, and the fact that Splenda was pushed through FDA trials quickly because people were so excited about the latest magic no-sugar pill, it makes me concerned. I don't think that we truly understand the intricacies of nutrition as a science yet. We're still figuring out that some amino acids are important but only in combo with others, etc. In that case, an engineered solution is not only usually based on profit motive, but also on incomplete data. That's not good engineering in my book.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Quite. It's only been the last decade or so that reports of new drugs have started to have coherent explanations of how they work attached, and they are still quite strikingly absent from all of these dietary things, as far as I can tell. So I'll stick to the theory that only things that my ancestors ate are known-safe, for now.

[sps.livejournal.com]

(Not, of course, that there aren't situations in which the best course is to take a gamble. But in situations where there's no evidence, not even a coherent line of reasoning, that the cure is better than the disease? I don't think so.)

[aelfscine.livejournal.com]

I'm torn because it goes both ways - everything we eat is chemicals, be it bananas or banana-flavored corn syrup. Whether it's water or dihydrogen monoxide, our world is not split between 'food' and 'chemicals' but 'chemicals we eat' and 'chemicals we don't.'

[sps.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. But my genes have probably had millions of years of practise with bananas (not so much recently, but that's just me); banana-flavoured corn syrup is a novelty within my lifetime and in consequence there is zero evolutionary investment in interpreting that.

Lookit, we have a planet whose environment is characterised by salt water and oxygen. Sure, they're "just" chemicals, but they're some of the nastiest that you're likely to find lying around free (and in truth, the oxygen isn't; it has to be constantly replenished). The development of the current atmosphere was an ecocatastrophe that must have caused a 99.9% die-off. We have evolved to cope.

That banana-flavoured corn syrup? Wouldn't be the least surprised if it kills you. That's the process. That's how evolution works.

<sarcasm>Only America bets against Evolution.</sarcasm>