What Bob wants may just kill us.

Day 6
August 13, 2011
Wt. 259.2
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 162
Blood Pressure 138/92 72 bpm.

What Bob wants may just kill us.
　
Man oh man. Bob was noisy last night. Wanted everything-but just got an apple and some V-8 juice. I think it is becoming easier after almost a week to tell Bob to be quiet. Yesterday was an easier day. No energy crashes and not particularly hungry beyond really looking forward to lunch and dinner.
Now-to Rules 1 and 2.

Rule 1. You have to give up High Fructose Corn Syrup. It is the most energy dense food known to man. Think of it as poison or make up whatever story about it you want but get it out of your diet.

Rule 2. White flour, white sugar, white rice should be eliminated or at least reduced to the minimum.

I have a number of objections to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). First is that it is a manufactured food. It does not exist anywhere in nature and requires numerous chemicals and acids to produce.

Essentially corn is ground up, chemically broken down with sulphur dioxide, filtered and then treated with an enzyme that digests it and converts it to fructose. The resulting syrup is then mixed with glucose or sucrose to create a reliably consistent sweetener that is shipped in 55 gallon drums, tank trucks and rail tankers to manufacturers of just about every processed food we find on the shelves of grocery stores.

A recent estimate suggests that Americans consume as many as 200 calories a day from HFCS. In the course of a year that would amount to 73,000 calories from HFCS alone. I would suspect that for many Americans this is a very low number considering that there are 140 calories in a single 12 ounce can of sweetened soda. In an earlier blog I mentioned drinking one or more 48 ounce Mongo-Gulp 7-11 sodas a day. A drink like that comes with 560 calories. Good grief-two of them would be 1120 calories. AAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

The problem is not just with a can of soda however. HFCSs are in an amazing number of products. Catsup, canned beans, processed meats, crackers, bread, snack cakes, the list is endless. As you’re reading this, take a moment to get up and read a few of the labels on the food you have in your kitchen and the next time you go to the grocery store look at the labels there. It is scary. If they don’t list HFCSs they very often have some form of cane juice.

Why would a can of pinto beans need a sweetener? The answer is simple: Marketing. Manufacturers use focus groups to determine how their products should taste in order to outsell their competition. Sweet, salty, fatty are the tastes that drive consumers to pick this one over that one and manufacturers could not care less about our health as they develop products. Their biggest concern is market share and profitability. Sell as many as possible and make them as cheaply as possible. I once heard that sometimes the packaging costs more than the product. Health only becomes a concern if someone can sue them because it made them sick or killed a loved one. HFCSs are the cheapest sweeteners available. If a cheaper one comes along they will switch in a heartbeat–once the fucus groups give their stamp of approval.

The next objection to HFCS is a really serious one. After four million years of evolving into the creatures we are today and eating a diet of whatever we could find in nature and generally working pretty hard for it, our bodies have no idea what the heck to do with HFCSs. Its sweetness appeals to our desire for foods that are quickly turned into energy but once in our guts it bypasses most of the normal controls and goes directly to the liver to be processed.

A St. Luis University study tested the typical American diet on mice. The mice weren’t force fed but allowed to eat whatever they wanted and however much they wanted. The foods fed to them weren’t specifically selected for HFCS but represented what people would buy in grocery stores and take home for their families to eat. The results were frightening: One doctor involved noted, "we had a feeling we’d see evidence of fatty liver disease by the end of the study, but we were surprised to find how severe the damage was and how quickly it occurred. It took only four weeks for liver enzymes to increase and for glucose intolerance-the beginning of type II diabetes-to begin" (Dixon)

As I write this I am cringing at the thought of what I’ve done to my body and wondering if I will be able to undo the damage in the years I have left to me. We shall see.

The other big problem with HFCSs is that they seem to interfere with the feeling of satiation. In other words, you have a nice big meal, 1,000 to 1,500 calories, a few hundred calories come from HFCS and you don’t feel full. Old Bob starts jumping up and down and demanding something more. Another 500 calories of snack cake or a couple of nice apple turnovers and you go on about your day. You gotta know that the fast food industry loves it when you come back to the counter for their special apple turnovers-just like the one’s Grandma made–if she had a factory with 200,000 gallons of HFCS in storage tanks.

There is something that HFCSs share with the foods listed in Rule 2. For the body to digest highly processed flour, sugar, rice and, of course, HFCS it needs magnesium. As most people don’t eat a magnesium rich diet it has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is your bones.

OK, not a bad deal. The body has a ready supply of magnesium to help take care of digesting that Mongo-Gulp. The problem is that it has to be stripped away from the calcium in the bones and in the process it releases more calcium into the blood stream. Good thing, you say, we need more calcium. Nope. Your bones need the calcium and there is usually just the amount you need already circulating in your blood as it is. So now you have more calcium in your blood than you need. So what?

There is good evidence that excess calcium interfere with how the heart beats, it can cause confusion and concentration problems, gastrointestinal pain, kidney problems, osteoporosis and muscle weakness. Great, just great. All of that from the diet our mother’s encouraged us to eat. And diabetes too.

The solution is simple, but not always easy. Eliminate manufactured foods-that includes trips to the fast food chains. Eat as low on the food chain as possible and prepare most of your own food when you can. As I was reminded the other day-be sure and take your food with you so you don’t have to eat the stuff you are trying to avoid just to keep from falling over with low blood sugar.
As always-more to come.
Jim　
　
Dixon, Rachel. ""Supersize Me" Mice Research Offers Grim Warning for America’s Fast Food
Consumers." 27 May 2007. Saint Louis University. 24 July 2009 <http://www.slu.
edu/x15990.xml>