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119 comments on Grist Interview with Michael Pollan

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Rajiv on June 1, 2006 - 3:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yankee,

The post you replied to is not correct. The fats you put on come from carbohydrates, and not necessarily from the fats you eat. If your blood sugar stays above a certain level, the body converts it to fat, and stores it as visceral fat -- hence the pot bellies seen in different kinds of pathological obesities.

Normally, complex carbohydrates are better than sugar, which is better than corn syrup. The reason is the time span over which the conversion to glucose and fructose occurs. Glucose and fructose is the form in which the body absorbs calories. Sucrose and complex carbohydrates cannot be absorbed by the body without being broken down into glucose and fructose.

The problem with corn syrup is that it is a glucose/fructose syrup, and has a very rapid absorption profile, and leads to very high peak blood sugar levels. High peak blood sugar levels lead to insulin resistence, and a poor metabolism of sugar. This leads to the excess sugar being converted by the body to stored fat.

So Pollan is right in saying that corn syrup is a major factor in early obesity, and in the currently occurring diabetes epidemic.

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LJR on June 1, 2006 - 4:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for bringing this to light.  Apparently veganmaster isn't very well grounded in the biochemistry of digestion.  He seems to think big old greasy fat molecules just ram their way through the intestinal walls and seek out a hospitable skinny cell where they can take up residence.
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veganmaster on June 1, 2006 - 6:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I understand what you are saying, and I agree: excess sugars increase the chance that a fatty diet is deposited on your ass and elsewhere :) But the fat that is deposited is the FAT YOU ATE.  Scientists can and have taken fat samples from people, and just from that they know what foods they have been eating.  This is because fat goes right into storage, and is not chemically changed by the body.  You failed to respond to the China Study: sedentary Chinese workers eat hundreds of more calories a day, yet stay thin because they eat a low-fat, high-complex carb diet.  I suppose we aren't even disagreeing, assuming you admit the obvious, that fatty diets are the true culprit in weight gain. If you disagree with this, you are on the opposite side of the scientific studies, IMO!
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Rajiv on June 1, 2006 - 7:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The biochemistry of carbohydrate to fat conversion is well known and is well documented to occur in the human body.

Yes traditional diets in "poor" rural China are extremely high in carbohydrate, AND these Chinese are thin, with little abdominal obesity. The same has been shown to be true in rural India. The same is not true of either urban India, or urban China. The diets are still almost the same, still carbohydrate rich. But the rate of diabetes is tripled, and it is six times in the Chinese and Indian population in UK and US.

So what is the difference. The answer lies in the antinutritional factors that are there in the diet. Rural diets have many more "antinutritional" factors than occur in urban diets. In particular, amylase inhibitors and sucrase inhibitors are a part of the diet. These "antinutritional" factors have been greatly reduced in the urban diet through "food processing"

Thus vegan diets that are uncooked or poorly cooked, and rich in WHOLE grains and WHOLE legumes, have amylase and sucrase inhibitors, that greatly reduce the conversion of these carbohydrates to glucose and fructose. These carbohydrates mostly pass through the intestinal tract unabsorbed after being only partially broken down.

The term "antinutritional," should be considered a misnomer, as the human body has evolved to live on these traditional diets, and is probably most happy when these factors are present.

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JMG on June 1, 2006 - 7:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The other component of this is the metabolic energy being expended in hard physical work. When I grew up in a rural community about all tractors provided was traction power so much of the farm work involved a lot of manual pitching, chopping, shoveling and lifting all day long. The men ate huge meals of fairly basic foods three times a day. During the winter they often poured bacon grease on foods to increase their caloric intakes. Most of the time they were outside on foot, on horseback or on open tractors and the work clothes, particularly for winter, weren't nearly as good as now. Most of those men were not carrying any extra weight, most looked 10 years younger than their town cohort and most lived well into their 80's.
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alistairC on June 2, 2006 - 5:09am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Fascinating stuff Rajiv -- can I re-phrase it thusly :

* A diet based on refined foods (white flour etc) is more efficient in terms of calories absorbed. (but is likely to be lacking in all sorts of vital trace stuff)

This casts an interesting light on the sociology of whole vs refined grains. In Europe, and presumably in other bread-based cultures, and until recent decades, white bread was a status symbol, and ordinary folk ate mostly whole-grain bread (often rye or barley, where they were cheaper than wheat). In modern times, everyone migrated to white, wheat bread, because they COULD (this coincided with overconsumption of meat, for the same reason).

Now, the status has inverted somewhat, and eating whole-grain breads is pretty much confined to the "elite".

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Jack on June 2, 2006 - 7:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Now, the status has inverted somewhat, and eating whole-grain breads is pretty much confined to the "elite". "

We are finally starting to correct a centuries old mistake - removing the most nutritious part the grain.

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Jussi on June 2, 2006 - 9:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
In northern Europe stuff like rye bread have remained the basic food, and here in Finland lots of people don´t really consider white bread proper food at all. Similarly, when Finns go abroad (meaning further afield than just Sweden or Russia), the thing many miss most about Finland is decent bread (and, naturally, the sauna...)

It is strange how people in most places have bought into this "white bread as a status symbol" thing, not only is it not nutritious, it´s pretty tasteless as well. Fortunately it seems wholemeal is making a comeback, although, as you point out, it appears to be a kind of elite choice now.

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SocraticGadfly on June 3, 2006 - 3:45am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
NO, NO, NO.

Either you're reading pseudoscience or not understanding actual science that you read. That's the only way I can understand your non-unerstanding, veganmaster.

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119 comments on Grist Interview with Michael Pollan

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