Late breaking scientific data suggests that
all sugars are not created equal.
Professor of Biochemistry,
Jean-Marc Schwarz
and is team of nutritional busy-bodies wanted to know if fructose had the same
effect as sucrose on the health of obese African American and Latino
children. Why Schwarz didn’t include
white or Asian kids no one knows.
Oh, fructose is the sugar found in most
fruits, vegetables, and honey. It’s widely used in food and beverage (juice,
soda, sports drinks and alcohol) manufacturing due to its low cost and ease of
use. Sucrose is cane sugar in various forms like raw, brown, and table. (Table
sugar is most commonly a combination of sucrose and fructose.)
According to the
study one of these is more likely linked to obesity in children: sugar that is
processed from sugar cane or the sugar we get from fruits and vegetables? See if you can guess… If you guessed the
sucrose you’re wrong. Man, I love that,
any number of personal trainers just threw their iPads out the window.
Team
Schwarz’s research was recently presented at the Endocrine Society annual meeting
in San Diego. They took obese Latino and African American kids ages from 9 to
18 and provided them with all their food for ten days. Individual baseline food consumption was
measured beforehand in order to ensure that each kid got the same type and
amount of calories they normally eat. In
other words, they did not put the kids on any kind of diet or reduced their
calorie intake at in any way. The only
difference was that fructose was replaced with sucrose.
After only ten days the conversion of sugar to fat declined 40% on
average. 40 per cent, in terms of human
physiology that’s huge. Just as
importantly, their liver fat decreased 20% and liver fat is a precursor to any
number of serious health problems.
So, what might this
mean to you and me? Well, for starters
we should be happy that we probably don’t need to starve ourselves in improve
our health and lower our fat levels. We’d
be smart to avoid fructose as much as possible.
Minnesota Gastroenterology
suggests that in addition to cutting out honey, sugary fruits, berries, and any
foods whose ingredients chart lists fructose or high fructose corn syrup in their
first five. Alcohol sugars are among the
worst, but who am I kidding? You’re not gonna quit that.
Lucky for you, Pilates of La Jolla exclusively provides
sugar-free workouts.
Well, that’s my two cents and it’s worth every penny,
Jake Holmes
Pilates of
La Jolla
