Even more bad news about soft drinks...

Today's post: Friday, 2-15-2008

1. New study shows that drinking a lot of soft drinks & not exercising reliably made people fat.

In addition, it showed that doing this caused such liver dysfuntion that it alarmed the doctors; caused undesirable liver changes; & tended to create type II diabetes.

Since the soft drinks involved were either diet or sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, this suggests that both these sweeteners are dangerous to your health to consume.

(Given that fast food hamburgers are high in protein -- & often have raw onions, which reliably raise HDL, it’s not clear to me that eating hamburgers is a good way to raise HDL.

Also, the news article didn’t say by how much HDL was raised. A 3 % increase is no big deal & was likely only from the onions, for example. If the study showed 30 %, then that might be significant. However, I doubt it.

In studying the French Paradox they spoke of in the news story, I discovered one of the reasons the French had a lower heart attack rate than in the United States is that compared to here, they hardly ever drank full fat milk or ate hamburgers – though that may have changed since those studies were done.)

“Fast-food binge harms liver, but boosts good cholesterol: study by Marlowe Hood
Wed Feb 13, 8:48 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the
docu-movie "Supersize Me." ….”

“….Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks.

The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake.

Blood samples were taken before, during and after the experiment to monitor levels of an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase, or ALT, a potential marker for liver damage often seen among heavy drinkers and patients with hepatitis C.

Levels of ALT increased sharply after only one week, and quadrupled on average over the entire period, said lead researcher Frederik Nystrom, a doctor at the University Hospital of Linkoping.

"The results scared me," he told AFP. "One of the subjects had to be withdrawn from the study because he had 10 times the normal ALT levels."

For 11 of the 18 subjects, ALT rose to levels that would normally reflect liver damage, even among individuals who did not drink any alcohol, although no such damage occurred, he said.

Two of the individuals had liver steatosis, or fatty liver, in which fat cells build up dangerously in the liver, he said. Steatosis is associated with the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, which has taken on epidemic proportions, especially in industrialised countries.

Published in the British Medical Association's journal Gut, the study "proves that high ALT levels can be caused by food alone," said Nystrom.

That signs of liver damage were linked to carbohydrates was another key finding, he said.

"It was not the fat in the hamburgers, it was rather the sugar in the coke," he said.”….


….”The young Swedish guinea pigs ate at least two fast-food meals a day, and terminated the study once they had gained a maximum of 15 percent in weight.

On average, they tipped the scales 6.5 kilos (14.3 pounds) more, but one ballooned by 12 kilos (26.4 pounds).

Nystrom got the idea for his study from the 2004 Oscar-nominated documentary "Supersize Me," in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock asked doctors to monitor him over a 30-day period in which he ate at McDonalds morning, noon and night.

Doctors were so alarmed by changes in his blood chemistry -- including skyrocketing levels of ALT -- that they begged him to halt his experiment.”

In case you aren’t familiar with his documentary movie, "Supersize Me," he also developed symptoms of heart disease & experienced partial erectile dysfunction from his month of eating this way.

2. The other piece of news I read recently was startling. Diet soft drink sweeteners may make you even more fat than regular soft drinks.

I had read that they tended to produce disease about as well & knew that they did NOT, despite it seeming illogical, do ANY good to help people lose weight.

The study I read about recently, said that they tended to make people even more fat because the sweet taste with no blood sugar boost threw off the appetite controls of the people consuming sweeteners that had no calories.

This also suggests that it may even be more desirable to use some real sugar than to use such natural no calorie sweeteners as stevia & erythritol, which is sold as Z-Sweet.

In addition, there are many people who believe as I do that the artificial chemicals used as no calorie sweeteners in soft drinks & other foods are NOT health OK to consume for any reason. So if you must have something sweet that has no sugar do it as seldom as you can & use stevia or erythritol, which is sold as Z-Sweet. These at least are likely to be safe to consume. And, consider not using them until after you have lost any fat weight you are trying to use if you can.

If you’ve read our previous posts, you already know that high fructose corn syrup sweetened soft drinks tend to make you fat as they add calories but do NOT make you less hungry.

And, you know that to the extent carbohydrates of any kind turn down hunger, they create an even hungrier state later. So eating a low carb, higher protein & low glycemic diet is a good way to stay trim. And, you’ve also read here this is likely because people evolved to eat protein foods, nuts, fruits, & vegetables but NOT grains or refined grains or refined sugars.

So to me the two messages are quite clear.

a) Eliminate 99 to 100 percent of any soft drinks you have been drinking if you want to avoid being fat & sick.

b) And, use real sugar but sparingly & not often or eat whole fruit when you want a sweet treat.

One fitness & fat loss expert I read recently suggests eating real sugar ONCE a week or less only to lose fat.

I think you might be able to eat it a bit more often than that if you also exercise often. But I also have some fat on my tummy I’d like to lose. So he may be right.