Two words I would never put in the same sentence, unless the sentence started with avoid. The news story is all over the place and I feel like I should address it before I start getting, “I told you so” emails from you guys.

The article in question, found here: www.cnn.com

The article describes a college professor doing an experiment on himself to prove a point about calorie counting, one of the things I don’t promote as a useful means of maintaing your health. That being said, at the latter part of the article a nutritionist chimes in to say, “There are things we can’t measure,” which I would have to agree with whole-heartily.

To give you a little perspective here I will explain quickly my story. I eat whole fruits and vegetables, occasionally sprouted grains or spelt flour, raw grass fed milk and about 5 grass fed eggs a day. My numbers are normal as they say but about 3 years ago I put myself to an experiment to see if I could gain “mass” while lifting weights and not changing my diet but increasing the amount of food I took in. So in short, I took the above listed foods and ate them till I went from 145 all the way up to 205. Does that mean I was unhealthily pursuing my goal of muscle mass? No. Because I was keeping my food in the context of whole, nutritious, balanced and organic.

What difference does this make?
The difference is clear, my body never got addicted to the food it consumed because of refined sugars and other chemicals, but more so than that my body didn’t burn out it’s filters in the process of my weight gain. Eating non-nutritive sugary sweets such as twinkies will wreak havoc on your filters as well as your insulin production which affects so many other organs and systems in your body. That being said, when I stopped eating one extra meal I dropped twenty pounds in five weeks. I was finding my “perfect weight” or healthy weight that I believed I needed to be at to do my job correctly.

In comparison you may be thinking, “well, you just reduced calories”, on the surface you’d be right, but there’s so much more to it, especially given the parameters I personally place on holistic well being. If you are going to just simply count and cut calories you are going to leave yourself open to all sorts of sickness and diseases like cancer, diabetes and early death. Skinny and obese people alike get diabetes and cancer and crohns and all sorts of sickness and disease. Yeah, that is how seriously I take refinement, chemicals, and GM foods. These foods are NOT time tested – just like the “twinkie diet”! There is no way of completely testing this long term, but if there was mind you, there couldn’t be any protein shakes and vegetables on the side like the professor said he had.

You can lose weight counting calories, it’s not practical but it can be done. You can’t gain or maintain whole health just counting calories and not the quality of the content you are eating. It will NOT be a conclusive answer to overall health, which is what we strive to do here at Life Fitness Academy.

Nutrition Experts Battle Industry Groups Over Sugar
Posted by Dr. Mercola | March 23 2010
There’s a heated debate going on over the health risks of consuming too much sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other caloric sweeteners.
On one side are leading nutrition experts, who believe that these sweeteners add empty calories to people’s diets and promote weight gain.
Emerging scientific research indicates that consuming too much of these sweeteners may increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and other health problems.
On the other side are industry groups representing sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They claim that their products are natural and don’t cause weight gain or health problems. And they have launched advertising and marketing campaigns to spread this idea.
The American Heart Association is on the nutrition experts’ side. The group recently issued a scientific statement saying that high intake of added sugars is implicated in many poor health conditions, including obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
Sources:
USA Today March 3, 2010

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

The sugar industry groups can tout all the misleading propaganda they want, but it won’t change the fact that sugar, and especially fructose, is essentially public enemy #1 for human health.
When you eat sugar, it actually causes negative changes in your genes that last for two full weeks! So indulge in a couple of sodas or splurge on a hot fudge sundae and not only do your genes turn off controls designed to protect you from heart disease and diabetes, but the impact lasts for 14 days!
Even more concerning, if you eat too much sugar for a long time, your DNA may become permanently altered, and the effects could be passed on to your children and grandchildren.
For most Americans, sugar is not only a regular part of their diet, but often the source of the most calories! On average, adults are eating over 22 teaspoons of sugar a day … which is way over the American Heart Association’s recommended limit of 6.5 teaspoons a day for women and 9.5 for men.

How Can Industry Groups Continue to Claim Sugar and Fructose are Healthy?
We now know without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on the health of the United States and other developed nations.
Yet, industry groups are trying to take away all the negative press by highlighting that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are “natural.” The Corn Growers Association, for instance, wants you to believe that HFCS has the “same natural sweeteners as table sugar and honey.”
But don‚Äôt fall for it. HFCS is highly processed and does not exist anywhere in nature. The biggest difference is that due to its costs HFCS has massively increased the sugar load in the typical diet, but additionally, HFCS also has fructose as a “free” sugar not joined to other sugars like glucose so it is more easily absorbed and able to devastate you metabolically.
Still, even in its “natural” form, it is a well-proven fact that sugar and more specifically, fructose, increases your insulin and leptin levels and decreases receptor sensitivity for both of these vital hormones. This can lead to:
• High blood pressure and high cholesterol
• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Weight gain
• Premature aging
Elevated insulin levels are one of your key physical influences that contribute to rapid aging, and there is no question that optimizing your insulin levels is an absolute necessity if you want to slow down your aging process.
Consuming sugar (and grains) will increase your insulin level, which is the equivalent of slamming your foot on your aging accelerator. There’s simply no more potent way to accelerate aging than eating sugar.
Agave syrup, too, is being falsely advertised as “natural.” In reality, it is actually HIGHLY processed and is 80 percent fructose. The end product does not even remotely resemble the original agave plant and has virtually no nutritive value.
Likewise, honey is very high in fructose. Although its fructose content varies, it typically contains about the same amount as HFCS, or more. So even though honey contains many other beneficial nutrients, you’ll want to use honey very sparingly.

Why You Need to Avoid Fructose-Based Sweeteners, Even if They‚Äôre “Natural”
One of the main claims that industry groups are making for the safety of their sweeteners is that they‚Äôre “natural.” But this argument falls flat when you look a little deeper at the way sugar, and especially fructose, behaves in your body.
I am convinced that FRUCTOSE is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic in both children and adults. Sweetened beverages and processed foods are the main sources of fructose.
For an in-depth understanding of just how fructose is destroying your health, and that of your children, please watch this excellent video lecture from Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at University of California in San Francisco, in its entirety.
It was Dr. Lustig’s presentation on this subject that really opened my eyes to this issue, and then Dr. Johnson, who is the chairman of medicine at the University of Colorado, reinforced that with his book The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat and Sick.
You probably already know that fructose is a sugar, but what you may not realize is that it’s distinctly different from other sugars as it’s metabolized through very specific pathways that differ from those of glucose, for example, and through its distinct metabolic action, uric acid is generated.
Uric acid is a normal waste product found in your blood. High levels of uric acid are normally associated with gout, but it has been known for a long time that people with high blood pressure, overweight, and people with kidney disease, often have high uric acid levels as well.
It used to be thought that the uric acid was secondary in these conditions, and not the cause — but Dr. Johnson‚Äôs research indicates that it could be a lead player in the development of these conditions.
And it turns out that one of the most potent ways to raise uric acid is via fructose!
Folks, this is exactly why I am so passionate about educating you on the dangers of fructose! I am thoroughly convinced that it’s one of the leading causes behind the massive rise in needless suffering from poor health and premature death.

Cutting Back on ALL Forms of Sugar is Essential for Optimal Health
Sugar, in any form, will contribute to the decline of your health. Fructose will do so as well, and likely even more rapidly.
This is why significantly limiting sugar in your diet has long been at the crux of my nutrition plan for optimal health.
Reducing sugar in your diet can be tough for some people. After all, sugar is just as addictive as cocaine! But it’s possible, and Dr. Johnson provides helpful guidelines for doing so in his book.
If you’re currently a soda drinker, this will be one of the first areas in which to start cutting back. The major sweetener used in soda is HFCS, and since 55 percent of HFCS is fructose, one can of soda alone would nearly exceed your daily allotment. It is easy to see that anyone who is drinking three, and certainly four, will easily exceed 100 grams of fructose per day.
As a standard recommendation, I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day.
However, for most people it would actually be wise to limit your fruit fructose to 15 grams or less, as it is virtually guaranteed that you will consume “hidden” sources of fructose from most beverages and just about any processed food you might eat.
This includes limiting your consumption of fruit and especially fruit juices so you don‚Äôt go over this limit. I‚Äôve included the reference table below to help you keep the total fructose from fruit below 15 grams per day (which should allow you to stay below 25 grams a day total after factoring in the excess fructose from “hidden” sources).

Are Any Sweeteners Safe?

A far safer alternative to table sugar and fructose is to use pure glucose.
I personally prefer to use the herb stevia but lo han can also be used.
You can buy pure glucose (dextrose) as a sweetener for about $1 a pound. It is only 70 percent as sweet as sucrose, so you‚Äôll end up using a bit more of it for the same amount of sweetness, making it slightly more expensive than sucrose — but still well worth it for your health as it has ZERO grams of fructose.