Batman and Robin, Kobe and Shaq, Starsky and Hutch, Mary Kate and Ashley ? the world is full of tag team duos. Now of course these duos couldn’t have become what they are without some support. Batman has that like, smart butler guy, Kobe and Shaq had a bunch of other big dudes on the team, Starsky and Hutch had police scanners and guns, and we all know that Mary Kate and Ashley wouldn’t be didley squat without Uncle Joey, let alone Deej, Sags, and Dave Coulier. There is a digestible dynamic duo as well, and sure they’ve got support from elsewhere, but a meal without these two lacks metabolic healing power. A meal without the duo is like, well, Michael J. Fox when he’s not wolfed out, and when Michael J. Fox isn’t wolfed out, no matter how hard he tries, Styles just isn’t as cool (even when adorned by his ?What are you looking at dicknose?? tee-shirt).
Apologies for the unintelligible references there, but I was recently inspired by a comparison of a highly skilled professional baseball player and the city of Fresno uniting ?like Voltron. It was at that moment that I knew I had to step it up.
The dynamic duo is not broccoli and carrots. Nor is it flax oil and granola. And believe it or not it’s not butter and cheese. The dynamic duo is none other than protein and starch.
Like I said before, no duo can act alone. Protein and starch need support. They need a ?full house? of complementary foods such as vegetables and fats, but if your goal is metabolic healing, also known as getting the biochemical systems of your body in optimal balance, then protein and starch are two items that you simply can’t win the game without.
When protein is digested it is broken down into amino acids. Amino acids are the good stuff that your body is trying to get at with that whole digestion thing. The amino acids can then be stored in muscle tissue for building and recovery.
The hormone in your body that is responsible for the storage of amino acids is our buddy insulin. Mr. Insulin has taken many an Insult over that past couple of decades, and all of the research linking high insulin levels to just about every chronic disease and physiological imbalance in the human body is almost 100% correct. However, many have been overly eager to label insulin as the greatest enemy, something humans like doing because that is more easily tangible for our stupid, simplistic, little minds.
This is wrong. Insulin is your friend. And yes friends can be obnoxious from time to time, and there is always the potential that your friend will bum your couch and eat up all your food ? especially if your friend is me, but you’ve gotta have friends, regardless of how annoying they can sometimes be.
All in all, insulin is a building hormone. Nutrients, sugars, and amino acids cannot be stored into your cells without it. Insulin is just as important as any other chemical in the body. Without insulin your cells would literally starve and you’d wither away ? the reason why type I diabetics must take insulin in order to survive.
The starch is important because it raises insulin levels steadily, not causing a spike and crash, and allows the protein to be effectively utilized by your body. The starch is also important because it is broken down into glucose, aka blood sugar. Glucose is the body’s premiere source of fuel. If you don’t get it in the form of starch or sugar, the body can actually convert protein into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis. It can also tear down the protein in your muscle tissue to supply glucose, a common occurrence among starvation dieting, no-carb dieting, and even when meals are spaced too far apart. This really prevents metabolic healing.
This is why protein and starch go together like Turner and Hooch. They are the MVP’s of the metabolic miracle.
To take full advantage of the potential of this Seigfried and Roy-caliber combination, there are certain guidelines to follow, but I assure you that if followed religiously for an extended period of time the results will undoubtedly come.
The first guideline is to eat starch, not sugar, and never look at sugar as a starch substitute. In other words, when you do have a little sugar, make sure it is combined with starch for better blood sugar and insulin regularity. The ultimate starch would be beans and legumes, but few can digest these without problems. Second on the list are whole, intact grains, like brown rice. Again, whole grains are more of a digestive battle that not everyone can win. Third would be starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, beets, potatoes, corn, and turnips. Almost everyone can tolerate these. And finally, for those with the poorest digestion of all, white rice and pasta can function as acceptable starches. Breads would be last on the list, but they are still starches, not sugars, and are fundamentally different in how they affect insulin levels. Sugars are unique in that they cause insulin spiking, where insulin rises higher in proportion to the rise in blood sugar, which disrupts the goodness of the starch-protein combo and leads to elevated cortisol levels, tissue breakdown, hunger, emotionality, decreased mental aptitude, and other hormone-related disturbances.
Guideline number two is based on maintaining positive nitrogen balance. Nitrogen levels are high when the body is in its anabolic building state. Positive nitrogen balance can be maintained much better on any no sugar diet that contains plenty of protein, but is enhanced to an ever greater degree by the following two things:
First of all, protein is digested in approximately three hours. Three hours after digestion your body begins to tear itself down to get what it needs in a state of negative nitrogen balance. To prevent this, and thus maximize the time in which your body is in positive nitrogen balance, it is ideal to eat a meal that contains the dynamic duo in proper proportions every 3 hours during the day. Eating a meal at say, 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and 7pm would be optimal. Four meals would be better than three. And three meals with two between-meal snacks works too. Still, to get the body in balance most effectively, the more exact you can be with the ?dosage? of your food and the timing of your ?injections? the more successful you will be. The greater the equality between feedings, the more easily the body can make the necessary adjustments.
This brings up the second tool for maintaining positive nitrogen balance ? eating the perfect amount of starch at each sitting. Diana Schwarzbein, Barry Sears, and other endocrinology-based contributors to nutritional science are into the whole counting carbs thing for a reason. Because nearly everyone suffers from having insulin levels that are way too high, and carbohydrates are the primary stimulator of insulin release, it makes perfect sense to be more exacting on the quantity of carbohydrates consumed. The ideal amount varies depending on the severity of your hyperinsulinemia, your amount of physical activity, etc., but the absolute minimum appears to be 25 grams of starch every 3 hours. The maximum is probably 50 grams per 3 hours for the highly active. You don’t have to really obsess over this, just think ?not too little, not too much. A typical burger bun or baked potato is perfect. Just don’t have burger bun, and chips, and corn on the cob, and baked beans, and a Coke, and fruit all in one sitting like you might at a summer barbecue. Just pick one ‘serving? of any kind of starch and call it good, to which I wouldn’t advise adding a 32-ouncer of sweet liquid beverage.
Protein amounts can be looked at a little more loosely, but you still need to eat plenty to maximize metabolic healing. In fact, animal protein is probably the best asset someone with a pronounced metabolic disorder has. The preoccupation with hormones and toxins in meat, mercury in fish, and the general idea that meat may be unhealthy is keeping many people from healing from obesity, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, diabetes, and other symptoms associated with metabolic syndrome. I’d love it if meat was produced properly, and it is important to eat properly-cultivated food if possible, but it is not a requirement for healing yourself from the most imminent 21st century disease: biochemical disarray. Barry Sears has shown quite convincingly that the human body can heal even when a considerable portion of your food intake comes from Taco Bell. You may have your doubts about this, but I, who have really, really, really, really thought about this, and who for years designated fast food restaurants as establishments solely for the purpose of no-flush defecation, do not.
Protein requirement varies depending on your amount of lean body mass and your activity level. I won’t get into the calculations here, but 20 grams of protein per 3 hours is about the minimum, and 40 grams is about the maximum. A quarter pound, as in Quarter-Pounder, has about 30 grams. 4 eggs have about 25 grams of protein. A few ounces of fish meet the requirement. Legumes unfortunately are too high in starch in relation to protein to achieve the desired effect. Tofu is the only exception. Long-term, a vegan is much, much, much, much better off eating mountains of tofu and drinking Spirutein than not getting enough protein.
And that’s that. Throw in some veggies and moderate amounts (a tablespoon or so per meal) of added fat from an unadulterated source, be consistent about eating precisely every three hours, and avoid simple sugars and magic happens in direct proportion to your level of patience. I don’t want to say this is for everybody, but you’d have to try it for months without results to convince me that this wasn’t the most sustainable, therapeutic type of eating for you.
??by eating small meals and snacks throughout the day, you are essentially creating an intravenous drip of nutrients (especially protein which stimulates glucagon) into the body, thus keeping insulin levels in a zone. This maintains a steady level of blood sugar, so that hunger is not present and mental acuity remains at peak levels throughout the day.
Barry Sears; The Age-Free Zone (1999)
??you should reduce simple carbohydrates overall if you want maximum fat loss. This is one of the many tricks bodybuilders use to get so lean ? they cut out refined sugar completely, but they even cut back on natural sugars too, opting for starchy and fibrous carbohydrates instead.
Tom Venuto; Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (2006)
?One of the most dangerous myths in nutrition today is that you should only eat when you are hungry. This is simply not true. One of the tenets of the Schwarzbein Principle Program is something most people will initially find surprising: you should eat at least four, and preferably five, times a day even if you are not hungry.
Diana Schwarzbein; The Program (2004).
?’the practice of eating small, frequent meals ? one approximately every three waking hours is by far the most effective way to speed up your metabolism. It’s so effective in fact, that when you see the results, you may wonder why you’ve ever had any difficulty losing body fat in the past.
Tom Venuto; Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (2006)
?Eating proteins without carbohydrates breaks you down. Eating carbohydrates without proteins builds too much fat. Eating balanced amounts of them together with healthy fats and plenty of nonstarchy vegetables is the key to good health.
Diana Schwarzbein; The Program (2004)
Matt,
Interesting post that you have here. Obviously, I am in no position to question your conclusions given that successfully eating anything is still a novelty to me, but I do have some thoughts:
1) Does this concept–eating a balanced meal every three hours or so–not seem terribly impractical? This is the exact thing espoused by bodybuilders: that one must maintain a positive nitrogen balance by eating every three hours and if you wait too long, your body will start catabolizing muscle. But it is far from convenient to be able to do this without having to resort to meal replacement shakes, protein bars, and other similar garbage.
Having this many meals on hand takes planning. Before you know it, you have to prepare a bunch of small meals and pack a cooler before you can go anywhere. (And I mean anywhere.) I did this very thing for a time when I was younger and quickly found it to be quite oppressive.
2) How does the emphasis on starch square with findings regarding native peoples? No doubt there are examples of cultures that had robust health and ate a lot of starch, but are there not also examples of cultures that ate very little, yet were still muscular, lean, and healthy? Indeed, many might form the impression that starch-eating was the exception and not the rule.
I hope my tone does not come off as too confrontational. You know I have the utmost respect for you.
-Ben (aka Morgan Spurlock wannabe)
Ben,
Greatest comment of all time, thanks. Seriously.
The recommendations above are basically a strategy for healing from a disorder — a disorder that our practically flawless ancestors did not have. Native diets proved one thing, and that is that there is a broad spectrum of healthy foods and healthy diets. From ancestral diets we can conclude that carbohydrates are not the problem, dairy products are not the problem, meat is not the problem, fat is not the problem, dietary cholesterol is not the problem — no natural food or natural food-comprised diet is inherently disease causing! Human beings across the globe ate heartily from all of these food categories with a long litany of combinations and the result of perfect health occurred every time. That’s because eating a diet of exclusively natural foods from birth makes it virtually impossible to depart from homeostasis. Natural foods simply don’t have a strong enough drug-like effect to do what say, refined sugar does to the human organism, which is throw human physiology into a state of chaos unachievable through primitive, unprocessed foods. The result is altered vitamin and mineral metabolism, cavities, obesity, diabetes, birth defects, allergies, and all that good stuff.
Basically, modern foods create a hormonally disturbed state, not to mention disrupt digestion. Now the rules of the game have changed. Natasha Campbell McBride made one of the most influential statements in my philosophy that I’ve heard. She said something along the lines of, “Weston A. Price showed what is a healthy way of eating for healthy people, but this (her autism diet) is a specific diet for a specific disorder.”
The same is true to what I’m recommending above. You can eat a diet comprised of only natural foods until you are blue in the face (or until your digestion is ruined depending upon which native diet you choose to follow — in my case it was whole grains, legumes, and small amounts of fish, cheese, and eggs), but there is a specific, cutting-edge scientific formula for maximizing your chances at healing your body, and versions of that are laid out by myself, Schwarzbein, Sears, and others entrenched in the science of how food affects the human biochemistry.
Inconvenient perhaps, but so is being overweight, administering insulin shots to yourself every day, etc. But there is not a single human being on earth that is in a prediabetic condition that can’t utilize the above information without dramatic results — lowering inslin, lowering triglcerides, lowering of blood pressure, cholesterol level alterations, fat loss without muscle loss, and more. It’s also excellent for overcoming allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders, depression, and addiction.
And I prepared all my food for the day from 8:22 to 8:35 this morning. I’ll be eating the same thing for every meal, but it will taste fine. Healthy people do not have to follow the above directions to maintain good health, just eat primarily natural foods in any combination they like. But everyone stands to improve their health, and following the above advice is the most efficient way to do that that I have unearth in my searches for optimal health and healing. Additive-laden or organic, the results exceed what is achievable by casually eating whenever it is convenient to do so without paying mind to the macronutrient balances and keeping insulin levels in the appropriate “zone.” I wish Barry Sears was wrong, because this whole concept goes against every idealogy I’ve ever proscribed to. But he is not. Well, at least about the basics he isn’t.
So, to recap, distinctions between such a diet and that of native peoples is due to the fact that we are damaged from eating non-natural foods and they are not because they never did. That makes sense. I missed the caveat that this plan was for “unhealthy” individuals.
Some further questions:
1) I would love your take on those who point out that combining protein and starch is not an ideal digestive combination. The idea of food combining does seem to make some sense on paper. I’d appreciate an explanation as to where the theory is flawed.
2) Many of your recommendations obviously depend on Schwarzbein’s work. She has three books. Which one of them would give us the most “bang for our buck,” so to speak?
Don’t worry Ben. This episode is a segway to my next post, which is going to be a thorough roasting of Donna Gates, a food-combining fanatic. Of course there is some merit to it from a digestive perspective, and I do find the food combining thing to have potential as a dietary therapy for those with very poor digestion. The entire premise is whack though. It’s a good way to intensify sugar cravings, lose body mass, bring the metabolism to a screeching halt, and so much more!
As far as Schwarzbein’s books, I don’t think any would blow you away, it’s just that her recommendations are nearly flawless, from exercise to sleep to macronutrient balance to additive avoidance. A more mind-blowing read would be good ole’ Barry Sears Age Free Zone. His understanding of the biochemsitry of the human organism is very advanced, his ability to translate that into a diet is, well, not perfect. A lot of his errors come from a dependence on the glycemic index for choosing carbohydrates. But still, he offers a path to better health without overhyping organics and stuff like that, which are great for us, great for the ecosystem, but preventing many from healing when that is the primary focus. In other words, he focuses on what is most important and what hormonally unbalanced people need to read instead of weighing too heavily on the ethos of the ‘natural’ movement.
Hey Matt,
Just an elementary question regarding this post:
So basically, you promote the idea of eating every 3 hours, and striking a balance between 20-40 grams of animal protein and 25-50 grams of carbohydrates (Starch being the key) every meal, right?
You stated that beans and legumes are the idea carbohydrate choice. But as far as I know, beans and rice even contain some protein. Should the protein in the beans and rice be counted as well towards the 20-40 grams of protein?
Legumes (and grains) are still predominantly starch, so they can’t function as the sole source of protein but can be counted towards the protein total. Use another type of starch if you have any digestive problems with legumes though.
>>>Matt
Yeah, I’ve been trying out the “One meal every 3 hours plan”, but I find that beans just don’t digest that quickly as opposed to brown rice. After one meal with beans as carbs, I just don’t feel like forcing anything down until at least 4 hours later.
Thanks for the tip.
So no one should cut out carbs completely? Not even those with blood sugar problems?
You quote this
?Eating proteins without carbohydrates breaks you down. Eating carbohydrates without proteins builds too much fat. Eating balanced amounts of them together with healthy fats and plenty of nonstarchy vegetables is the key to good health.
Diana Schwarzbein; The Program (2004)
Won’t enough fat in the diet prevent that eating proteins without carbohydrates causes break down of tissue???? Are low carb diets completely flawed? Do you experience a leaner, more muscular body without exercise when you have starch in your diet or when you don’t have any at all????
The mistake I made was that when I cut out starch and all grains I replaced it with tons of fruit!!! I thought it was healthier but experienced problems such as huge hunger!! Now I’ve cut out fruit from my diet and I’m not really sure if I should reintroduce any starch or carbs at all, I mean I think all that fruit caused me some blood sugar problems..!!
Carbs can probably be reduced down to nil. I do think there are advantages to eating some starch with your meals, keeping it even and consistent. However, going too low in carbs can be risky. I’m investigating that in depth right now. Be sure to follow along on that! Check out the “FUMP Day” posts, which began with the post entitled “The First Supper”
I must have read this post more then a few times. I’m still wondering about the whole eating starches alone and eating proteins and fat without starches thing. It’s hard for me to tell what the hell effects me or doesn’t effect me, so right now I’ve decided to just stick without the starch in my meals, and use mostly scallions, onions, garlic and mushrooms. Maybe those are even contributing to digestive distress because I’m still experiencing flatulence damn it. I’m taking peanut butter out to see if it’s that little bugger – after all it is a legume. But it’s the only thing that seems to fill me up very nicely. I ran out of raw cream too, and that seemed to help digestion. Aw shucks I have to wait another three weeks or so before I can get more.
Anyway, when I did eat starch, which was potatoes, it seemed like it didn’t help with satiation. Maybe I ate too little of them, buuut I don’t knoww.. Now I’m thinking, well, maybe it will. But I guess if I was eating it and it wasn’t working then, I don’t know why it would be working now. Plus I still just want to see a straight up result from one specific thing, so right now it will be mostly the fat and protein.
The main thing I’m asking is concerning the carb only meal. I was going to do that twice a week, but I’m not sure if I should do it based on brown rice, roots, or white rice; I don’t know my digestive tract very well. It seems like any wrong move could mess it up, frankly. I also am unsure about it whenever I read this because of the whole imbalance thing goin on. Haha oohh..
For building, it’s best to have protein and starch combined. That’s just the way it is. Any sumo wrestler could tell ya that.
However, from a digestion standpoint, the simpler the meals the better. So there is definitely a contradiction. One must assume eating carbohydrate and protein and fat altogether is ideal unless digestion prohibits it. If your body can’t digest it, then it can’t digest it. Digestion rules supreme.
With that said, I do believe that eating consistent meals over time can improve many cases of poor digestion, so if it doesn’t go well the first time, that’s not a sign to throw your hands up and quit completely. Nah mean?
yeeeaahh man
I think I’m gonna give it a go again with starch included.
I also woke up this morning and I usually wait like 3 hours to eat (I wake up at like 430 or 5 usually – so it felt kind of weird eating in the dark..don’t ask haha), but I ate an hour after I woke up instead and WOW it’s making a big difference in how hungry I am. I want to knock myself upside the head and say “duh” — I’ve always read so much about how eating soon after you wake up is the best thing to do for your metabolism (and probably other things).
Digestions slowed down like a bitch when I tried to add more protein again – so I’m definitely going for the rice tonight, and then I’m going to slowly add starches in each meal again the next day to continue to help. Jeez
On a random note, today I’m frying up rabbit liver-first ever liver I’ll try, but I hear it’s da best. I’ll just make sure there’s plenty of butter…
Matt: “Sugars are unique in that they cause insulin spiking, where insulin rises higher in proportion to the rise in blood sugar, which disrupts the goodness of the starch-protein combo and leads to elevated cortisol levels, tissue breakdown, hunger, emotionality, decreased mental aptitude, and other hormone-related disturbances.”
Where is the proof that sugars can spike insulin more than starches? according to what I’ve read, white rice and potatoes spike blood sugar and insulin more than apples and oranges and other fruit. What you eat with sugars also has effect. It seems like the problems you describe are from insulin resistance, not an inherent problem with sugars. Art DeVany and Mark Sisson eat virtually no starch and lots of sugars (fruit, squash, root veggies). They are both muscular and lean with no signs of elevated cortisol, catabolism, hunger, emotionality, or lowered mental aptitude. Isn’t it possible to be fully healthy with sugars and no starches, if your hormones are balanced?
http://www.mendosa.com/insulin_index.htm
??you should reduce simple carbohydrates overall if you want maximum fat loss. This is one of the many tricks bodybuilders use to get so lean ? they cut out refined sugar completely, but they even cut back on natural sugars too, opting for starchy and fibrous carbohydrates instead.
Tom Venuto; Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (2006)
But bodybuilders are excessively thin. I don’t think most of the groups Weston A. Price studied were that thin. Why assume that having 6% body fat is healthy or at least desirable? It’s just vanity IMO. I think it’s better not to worry about the body fat. 15% is fine for a man. 22% is fine for a woman. You say that we should not extrapolate from healthy people to unhealthy people, but why assume that it is healthy to be lean, esp when you have not eaten a natural diet all your life? It makes more sense to say don’t worry about weight, eat natural food, and let the chips fall where they may.
?’the practice of eating small, frequent meals ? one approximately every three waking hours is by far the most effective way to speed up your metabolism. It’s so effective in fact, that when you see the results, you may wonder why you’ve ever had any difficulty losing body fat in the past.Tom Venuto; Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (2006)
Serge Nubret built a world champion body with one meal per day. I don’t put a lot of stock in bodybuilders or their ideas. Many people have great results on Martin Berkhan’s “LeanGains” program – skipping meals and fasting much of the day. Barry Sears is overweight and out of shape. He either doesn’t follow his rules, or they don’t work. Art De Vany and Mark Sisson also believe in intermittent fasting and random meal skipping. They are extremely muscular and lean and their diets are a lot more satisfying than Venuto’s brutal low-fat regime. It just seems like you are mixing together a lot of quotes from people with disparate views. Schwarzbein and Sears are somewhat similar, but Tom Venuto is very low-fat, very high-carb, and high-protein. Nothing like The Zone or Schwarzbein’s ratios.
?Eating proteins without carbohydrates breaks you down. Eating carbohydrates without proteins builds too much fat. Eating balanced amounts of them together with healthy fats and plenty of nonstarchy vegetables is the key to good health.Diana Schwarzbein; The Program (2004)
This is too simplistic. Many people are thin on high-carb low-protein diets like the Kitavans and Japanese. I’ve probably seen a thousand thin people drinking on soft drinks. In the absence of fat and protein, I don’t see how carbs would be able to make you fat. You brought up the “Mac Daddy” Don Gorske who ate Big Macs and Cokes as his main source of calories – isn’t that a refutation of your theory that sugars are evil? I think diet is a lot more complex than most people choose to believe. For example, I am skeptical that refined sugar would cause cavities if eaten dry from the bag and by itself.
Many studies have proven that dry sugar does not have the same effects as moist sugar or sugar mixed with other food. I think you would have far fewer problems eating dry white sugar from the bag by itself than you would drinking Coke and Pepsi, eating doughnuts and cookies and Pop Tarts and candy. Cavities are a lot more complex than saying “refined sugar causes tooth decay.” I’m sure you could find people with no tooth decay who eat lots of refined sugar, and don’t bother brushing or flossing. Natural sugars do not have the same effect as the refined sugar, either. Orange juice will reduce tooth decay probably.
http://www.drbass.com/freedownload/files/drbassrecov.pdf
It’s been a while since I posted this obviously. At the time that I wrote it I was all fired up about the ability of Schwarzbein’s program and it’s ability to heal. It may be built on a few false premises, but it does work.
A study on fructose I came across long ago (don’t have the link on this computer, but I may send it to you another time), showed conclusively that fructose caused the highest insulin response of any carbohydrate once insulin was already elevated by glucose.
But yes, the body only hyper-responded to fructose in the presence of other sugars (glucose from starches or bound to fructose as in sucrose). Glucose alone, in any quantity, could not trigger insulin resistance. Fructose HAD to be present. Again, this could be the body’s response under conditions of a low metabolism from cumulative poor heredity and other garbage foods and low nutrient loads.
"A study on fructose I came across long ago … showed conclusively that fructose caused the highest insulin response of any carbohydrate once insulin was already elevated by glucose."
So, this is the effect of a combination, not necessarily what would happen if you ate it by itself. I've tried agave syrup in the past. The first time, I ate it by itself, and it caused a mild tingling in my hands. The next time I ate it, I had no reaction. But if you pour agave syrup on pancakes it would probably be highly damaging. Ditto for drinking a soda made with HFCS along with french fries and a white flour bun (normal fast food meal). It might be fine to eat fructose, agave, and so forth in the absence of starch or other sugars. That will lower insulin & the body can convert fructose to glucose for steady energy (if your digestion is healthy). The demonization of fructose ignores the fact that it's worst of all when combined with starches, which is of course the way most people eat it.
isn’t agave more highly refined the fructose corn syrup? it’s original name is like “high inulin agave syrup” – or something; someone had posted on another blog, either Peter’s or Stephan’s, this link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/024892.html
How is it refined? Raw agave syrup isn’t nearly as bad as HFCS. That garbage will give me gout like symptoms and numbness. It is processed with enzymes, but why is that necessarily bad? If used right, raw agave my have some benefits. (Pouring it on pancakes and using it to sweeten junk food like doughnuts would not be a right way to use it or any other sweetener, at least not often.) Peter and Stephan will blame all the world’s evils on fructose, as if nobody was eating starch with that fructose, and as if starch had no effect on the body’s utilization of fructose. I have trouble telling whether fructose or gluten is worse in their world view, but the truth is that you can be healthy and eat lots of fructose and gluten – if you eat them in the right context.
no it was someone on one of their blogs that posted it; not them specifically
is it even possible to get high fructose corn syrup alone? how else can you compare them?
“…Falsely labeled agave fructose and high fructose corn syrup are both products of advanced chemistry and extensive food processing technology.”
“Refined fructose is processed in the body through the liver, rather than digested in the intestine.(5) Levulose is digested in the intestine. Refined fructose robs the body of many micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use. While naturally occurring fruit sugars contain levulose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains “free” (unbound), chemically refined fructose. Research indicates that free refined fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium.”
” They are also using caustic acids, clarifiers, filtration chemicals and so forth in the conversion of agave starches into highly refined fructose inulin that is even higher in fructose content than high fructose corn syrup”, says Mr. Bianchi. Inulin is a chain of chemically refined fibers and sugars linked together, and, this bears repeating, high fructose inulin has more concentrated sugar than high fructose corn syrup”
kind of like making margarine, with chemicals and stuff; if you read it they say there’s no such thing as ‘raw’ agave nectar
“is it even possible to get high fructose corn syrup alone? how else can you compare them?”
They are more unhealthy in the presence of starches than by themselves. I don’t think you could easily obtain pure high fructose corn syrup, but it is the main ingredient in soft drinks, so you could compare things made with HFCS to things made with raw agave syrup at home. Like compare lemonade sweetened with HFCS to one with raw agave at home. Why does it make something bad to be broken down by enzymes? Organic would not have all the chemicals. I use raw organic blue agave nectar. It tastes like maple syrup, not extremely sweet. (Maple syrup is mostly sucrose.) Maybe raw organic agave syrup is processed a different way?
well, here’s a different point of view:
http://www.fromsadtoraw.com/Misc/AgaveNectar.htm
“When the syrup is depleted from the fruit, the fruit will begin to gather more syrup. The fruit is typically siphoned twice a day until the fruit will yield no more syrup. The syrup can have a milky like substance from the Agave plant that is later filtered and processed out during the final processing of the syrup. When the Agave fruit will produce no more syrup, the fruit is removed and wrapped in a mesh cloth, smashed and pressed for any syrup that the fruit may still contain. “
How many corn syrups are you going to find that are organic though? It’s probably made with the cheapest corn starch imaginable. Maybe if you compared the factory processed Agave with the chemicals to the corn syrup they’d both be bad as use for sweeteners.
Nobody should eat high (or low) fructose corn syrup. There has to be a difference between raw organic blue agave syrup and the highly processed syrups. It probably even tastes different. The one I’ve used tastes similar to maple syrup, it is not extremely sweet like something very high in fructose should be. It may have quite different mixes of sugars, more like the maple syrup. It might be far better than maple syrup, which is boiled to condense it. (They might boil it in a vaccum now, so it’s not heated much.)
I don’t think there’s any such thing as organic high fructose corn syrup. It is processed in a way that it doesn’t live up to any organic standards. I’ve never seen organic food with HFCS. so that is one advantage to organic food. Plus, an organic food never has hydrogenated oil in it, because that’s not allowed under organic guidelines, either. They may be using something even worse, of course – like high PUFA oils. That’s what all of the restaurants have done. Rather than switch to beef tallow (which is like 80 cents a pound in 50 pound blocks), they started using non-hydrogenated PUFA oil which is arguably more damaging to your body than the hydrogenated oils, esp if cooked at high temperatures and re-used for cooking other foods.
Agave nectar may be much better than HFCS and most other sweeteners, but it’s important to note that it is no way because of its low-glycemic index. In general, the glycemic index should be read backwards, as it gives preferential treatment to foods that contain the most fiber and fructose by weight.
And I do think there is much to be said of the sugar-starch combo. We know what makes people fat. That’s not a big mystery: drinks sweetened with refined sugar (HFCS), processed food, and veggie oil mixed with an otherwise high-everything diet.
Healthy people could eat unlimited sugar and starch without gaining weight, along with unlimited fat and protein. Starches could be refined or unrefined. The sugar would have to be unrefined or eaten only once or twice a week in binges. (A quart of ice cream, a whole cheesecake, or 3-4 bars of chocolate.