Sweeteners (was Re: Guilt, satiety, calorie restrictio...

[Guest guest]

,

You seem to think that raw honey's *potential* to upset blood sugar in

*large* doses somehow indicates that in lower doses there is a directly

proportional

relationship between the dose and the deleterious effect.

I'm disagreeing with this. First of all, while there's virtually no

controlled research whatsoever on raw honey, and none that I've been able to

find on

its effect of insulin, there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence indicating that

raw honey DOES NOT have the effect on insulin that a) sugar or

pastuerized/heated/filtered honey has.

Secondly, like I've said many, many times now, it is a non-sequitor to say

that because something under certain specific conditions in certain specific

amounts consumed in a certain specific way contributes to insulin resistance,

that this substance must contribute to insulin resistance in other situations.

It is a total logical jump.

You are classifying foods according to their effect of insulin as if it were

an intensive property of the food per se. It isn't.

As to the positive benefits on health, yes, they are statisitically

significant in terms of antioxidants, and in terms of enzymes they are

*practically*

significant, in that a teaspoon of honey with a meal seems to help digestion,

while doing nothing whatsoever to effect blood sugar.

Furthermore, raw honey was used traditionall to TREAT diabetes before insulin

was made available, and there is anecdotal evidence that raw honey IMPROVES

blood sugar.

Chris

In a message dated 10/8/03 6:44:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

paultheo2000@... writes:

> Small amounts of honey have a ~significantly~ positive effect? Wow, I

> really think you're wishing this were true so you could keep

> justifying eating honey. Eating small amounts of honey is fine, and

> not harmful in all likilihood, but to claim that it may be

> SIGNIFICANTLY positive is really pushing it. There is no evidence of

> this at all. You've mentioned enzymes and other factors...but these

> things do nothing to compensate for the inherent unhealthy sugars

> honey is composed of. Or is it your claim that, when taken in small

> amounts the deleterious effects are unnoticed while the alledged

> positive effects are suddenly significant?

____

" What can one say of a soul, of a heart, filled with compassion? It is a

heart which burns with love for every creature: for human beings, birds, and

animals, for serpents and for demons. The thought of them and the sight of them

make the tears of the saint flow. And this immense and intense compassion,

which flows from the heart of the saints, makes them unable to bear the sight of

the smallest, most insignificant wound in any creature. Thus they pray

ceaselessly, with tears, even for animals, for enemies of the truth, and for

those

who do them wrong. "

--Saint Isaac the Syrian

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/8/03 6:47:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

paultheo2000@... writes:

> If you're ~defining~ something artificial as a non-sugar sweetener

> then of course stevia is artificial. The more commonly used meaning

> of the word 'artificial sweetener' refers to synthetically made

> sweeteners such as aspartame. I believe NT recommends stevia as a

> natural sweetener, but I'm unsure.

I understand that but it made sense in the context it was being used in. I

don't think I began the use in the thread, but don't remember. No one made any

statements against stevia due to its supposed " artificiality, " so it seems

insignificant.

Chris

[Guest guest]

,

>>Think also

of the vegetarian south Indians who have such bad health.

They eat virtually no wheat at all, and are eating their

native and traditional diet, but much less dairy products

than northerners, and more starch-based foods.<<

It's my understanding they do eat wheat-- chapattis and such, and they're

not eating their traditional fats (ghee) anymore because of public policy

promoting vegetable oils.

-

[Guest guest]

Heidi-

Now that's just not true, at least not in the sense we usually mean " high

carb " . The Bantu, for example, ate a diet that might be called " high carb "

only in relation to other tribes he found, but in both the nature of its

carbs and the quantity (and nature) of its fats it didn't resemble any

modern high-carb diets -- and they weren't the healthiest people he found

either.

>Just that there is no evidence

>that a high carb diet necessarily is the cause of ill

>health. Price found people eating high carb diets and

>doing just fine, and people are doing the same today

>all over the world.

-

[Guest guest]

Mike,

This is true, but I happen to like venison and beef, and happen to like stevia

much less than real sugars. I think, like said, if the quantity is very

limited, stevia can blend well with other flavors, but it can easily be

overloaded but more importantly its taste just doesn't go with a lot of things.

But what trumps them all for me is that the taste of stevia I find closer to

aspartame than sugar, and I do believe that the sweetness of stevia is

fundamentally different from the taste of a sugar, and that this is very much

related to the fact that it is not a sugar. So choosing between stevia and

honey, stevia and maple syrup, or maple syrup and honey, are NOT the same, in

that maple syrup and honey are subdivisions of a class of tastes produced by

sugar-containing foods, and stevia partially fits into a wider umbrella division

of sweet foods, but not into the subdivision of sugar foods.

Chris

In a message dated 10/9/2003 8:42:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, bwp@...

writes:

> i really like christie's point here. i think it's very profound,

> and my thoughts on green (unrefined) stevia have run the same

> course. choosing stevia vs honey vs maple syrup vs cane vs

> persimmon vs mango, etc is no different than choosing coriander vs

> cumin vs cardamom, etc, or choosing mint vs lemon balm vs sage,

> etc. every food has a unique flavor, and not liking unrefined

> stevia because it doesn't taste like cane sugar is

> equivalent to not

> liking venison because it doens't taste like beef.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/9/2003 11:50:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

slethnobotanist@... writes:

> I brought this up on the board awhile back and you would

> have thought I

> was advocating that animal foods were poisonous, LOL!

eh?

Chris

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/11/03 2:22:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

liberty@... writes:

> I'm not sure that a modern farmer has to work anywhere

> as hard as a primitive one did, for one thing, and I'm not

> sure that being fat alone is all that unhealthy, unless the

> fat is due to insulin resistance, for another.

One of the lifespan studies altered insulin receptors on fat cells, so that

high insulin and insulin resistance would be unchanged, but the insulin would

not lead to fat storage. The GM mice had longer life span attributable to

lower body fat.

Chris

[Guest guest]

>

>

>I don't know, but isn't every animal in its native state

>working hard to find food, compete for mates, and

>avoid getting eaten? Certainly animals stop, at any

>given feeding, when they reach the capacity of what

>their digestive system can properly digest at one time,

>but do they truly not favor, when given a choice, the

>more nutrient-rich, and more calorie-rich, including

>carbohydrate-rich, food over other when it's available?

Rats in captivity, which are on a poor diet and not getting

a lot of exercise, typically do not get terribly overweight.

They've been studied a lot, and even when the researchers

make the food more or less nutrient dense (feed them

only sugar/protein water, for instance, and cut it with

more water sometimes) they eat the same amount of calories

every day, no matter how much food is around. They

are very exact about the amount of calories. So are people,

it turns out. That's what the whole appestat theory is based

on.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that the appestat was

>some wacko idea that you invented yourself. I just meant

>that I think it's possible that over-eating on carbohydrates

>when they were available in abundance, and getting fat

>from them, was probably a natural process for primitive

>humans. Anyway, see also pages 41 and 42 of the the

>document at www.le.ac.uk/ieh/pdf/FORA2.pdf about

>how the proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrates

>in the diet play a role in appetite regulation.

Very interesting PDF! I don't have time to read the whole

thing. However, it seems to have the same issue as all

the rodent studies ... they feed them wheat diets. Also

they feed them all day ... the mice fed every OTHER day

seem to have the same benefits, with or without

wheat/carbs, and eating the same number of calories

they would if they had been eating all day long. Clearly

all-day snacking at will isn't the ideal lifestyle, esp.

if it is wheat based snacks (which blunt the villi).

>Could it just be that your metabolism is different from

>what it was when you were a teenager? Doesn't that happen

>to all of us with age?

It seems to happen when we age, sure. So does blunting of the villi --

a certain amount of blunting is considered " normal " with age,

which just floors me. If they do an endoscopy on an older

person and they have blunted villi, they don't even report

it to the patient, it's " normal old age " .

However, the blunting can be reversed ... given half a chance

the villi regenerate. The villi have a big role in appetite regulation.

My appestat is healing (I eat about half as much as I used to, and

am rarely hungry) and so did my husband's, who was getting

that " middle aged spread. THAT part is anectdotal, but the bit

about the blunting is not, it's been studied in rats, dogs,

and people. The villi take up to 2 years to regenerate.

>

>> So was he fat?

>

>He was basically thin all over except for a big belly.

So either he was malnourished, had a food allergy (which results

in a big belly a lot) or his appestat was working, in spite of the

big meals.

>But you're basing the notion that they didn't eat more

>than their bodies needed, on the fact alone that they

>weren't fat. As I pointed out before, that's not

>necessarily the case. As I understand it, the inos

>are not one of those unusually healthy and longevous peoples

>of the world to whom we look as an example of how best to eat.

I'm not saying " healthy " , just not diabetic or fat. To be " healthy " you

also have to get enough nutrients, and avoid toxins, and a lot of folks don't.

>> The issue with gluten is that for a lot of folks in interferes with

>> absorption and so causes an artificial lack of nutrients. Besides

>> the obvious one that white flour is nutrient-less.

>

>Yes, but glycolysis uses up vitamins and minerals too.

???? I haven't heard that one before. Most " natural " carbs are full

of vitamins and minerals, so it likely wouldn't be a problem

unless they were processed?

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

IF they are using lower BF as an indicator, it's not very accurate. A lot of

skinny folks that eat a lot have major health problems, not " thrifty

metabolisms " .

(and others, of course, are in fact in good health! But you can't tell

just by BF).

-- Heidi

>I forget where I heard this, but don't people with thrifty metabolisms

>(and therefore lower bf) actually live less long? Have you heard

>anything about this?

>

>-

[Guest guest]

From: filikara October 12, 2003 6:08 AM

<<maybe salad (yep, salad for brekky!).>>

--- Yep, in the middle east people might have salad, eggs, olives and some fresh

goat or ewe's cheese for breakfast...

<< I don't think 100% buckwheat noodles are possible (correct me if I'm

wrong).>>

100% buckwheat noodles [made in Japan] are possible, and I can even get them in

my local healthfood shop here in London UK !

check out http://www.clearspring.co.uk/pages/site/products/noodles/info1.htm

seems that traditionally, the dough for Japanese wheat noodles would be

fermented for several hours!

http://www.clearspring.co.uk/pages/site/products/noodles/info2.htm#HEADING

Dedy

[Guest guest]

>about soba (buckwheat noodles), I didn't realise they were

>originally made with buckwheat and rice flour. now they are made

>with buckwheat and wheat flour. I don't think 100% buckwheat

>noodles are possible (correct me if I'm wrong).

>

>Filippa

I don't know -- they seem to be able to make noodles out of anything.

Like yams. Yam noodles are great, but how do you get noodles

out of a yam, I ask you? I've heard the noodles used to be pure

buckwheat, and I've seen them once or twice.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

> 100% buckwheat noodles [made in Japan] are possible, and I can

even get them in my local healthfood shop here in London UK !

> check out

http://www.clearspring.co.uk/pages/site/products/noodles/info1.htm

Yes, I'll have to do more searching here!

>

> seems that traditionally, the dough for Japanese wheat noodles

would be fermented for several hours!

http://www.clearspring.co.uk/pages/site/products/noodles/info2.htm#HE

ADING

>

> Dedy

now THAT's interesting! so maybe some of the skin problems occurring

if they are a wheat reaction, are because they are no longer

fermented.

Filippa

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/13/03 11:47:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

paultheo2000@... writes:

> CR still works. I don't think the people doing CRON, assuming they

> live longer and don't feel like crap, don't really care WHAT the

> underlying mechanism at work is.

If they like doing a calorie-restricted diet, I imagine they wouldn't care

because they do it for pleasure's sake. However, I suspect that, if continued

research can validate that body fat is the primary operative factor in the CR

studies, most CR folks who aren't doing it purely for pleasure's sake, would

appreciate being aware of the numerous ways they could lower their body fat

percentage. Moreover, people who have low body fat whatever they eat might be

interested in knowing CR is useless to them.

The reason I was pointing it out what that you said that humans with thrifty

metabolisms-- i.e. who can maintain low body fat with a high-calorie diet--

die younger, which supports CR (and I agree that *would* support CR), so I

pointed out that the opposite is true in mice, according to this one study,

which

is evidence against CR in the same way the human evidence (were there any)

would be evidence in support of CR.

Chris