When we first started working on this book, we knew that most people would need some persuading if they were going to change their beliefs about fat. After all, health professionals, government agencies, and health organizations like the American Dietetic Association and the American Heart Association (of which Steven is a member) have been telling people to avoid fat and fill up on
“complex carbs” for a very long time. Our telling people to eat fat as a way of getting and staying lean and healthy, particularly after years of hearing “anti-fat” propaganda, goes against the conventional diet “wisdom” of the past several decades. But we went into this knowing that fat—smart fat, that is
—was not the bad guy. And the very best medical science backs us up.
Here’s the truth: We’ve been blaming the wrong thing for our epidemic rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses that are, in many cases, completely avoidable. The butler didn’t do it, and neither did the fat. It was—and is—sugar, and all the other hidden forms of refined carbs.
In our quest to go low-fat, we stripped our diets of healthy, natural, smart fat. But we didn’t just take those fat-based calories out of our diet and end it there. We replaced them with refined carbohydrates. Yes, we successfully avoided many fatty foods, but, as it turns out, we filled the void with foods that were far worse—refined carbohydrate foods that essentially behave in our bodies like spoonfuls of white table sugar, and are only marginally more nutritious. And then we doubled down and replaced saturated fat with inflammatory “vegetable” oils, compounding the problem even further. We suspect by now that we’ve warned you off of the sugar-coated deep-fried doughball, but let’s look at two other sources of the sweet stuff, some of which are frequently presented to us as healthy choices.
1. Foods Made with Flour
Breads, pasta, pretzels, crackers, and cereals, made with flour, are technically low in fat and rarely have added sugars (except for many breakfast cereals); but all flours are refined, highly processed carbohydrates. Whether the flour is whole-grain or white, it spikes your blood sugar and insulin levels just the way eating table sugar would, and the metabolic mess that makes us sick and fat happens all over again.
Some people eliminate all foods containing wheat because they have a condition known as celiac disease. These folks have horrible reactions to a protein in grains known as gluten. But you don’t have to have a diagnosis of full-blown celiac to have a bad reaction to gluten, and many people who are gluten-sensitive avoid it for that reason. Other people are less concerned about gluten but simply want to cut back on refined carbohydrates, including flour products, for many of the reasons we’ve just discussed.
We have a very simple view of products made with flour: Avoid them as much as possible. They will wreck your metabolism, your waistline, your arteries, your brain, and your health.
But isn’t whole-grain flour better for you than white flour? Well, yes, but the effects on your blood sugar levels, your metabolism, and your hormones are the same. Whole-grain flour does have slightly more nutrient value than white flour, but the blood sugar response to eating any type of flour product, and the weight gain that goes with it, are why these foods are on our “no fly” list.
2. Foods with Added Sugar (by Any Name)
We won’t belabor the reasons for cutting out sugary soda and the like—we know you put soda into the same category as that sugar-coated deep-fried doughball. But we do want to point out that added sugar crops up in many foods that are often presented to us as good choices, and it has many aliases.
Let’s face it: “Organic cane juice,” “maple syrup,” and “honey” sound a lot better than “sugar,”
but they’re still sugar, and if it’s in your organic (flavored) yogurt, you might as well buy plain yogurt and dump in a few packets of the white stuff. Food manufacturers are required to list ingredients in order of predominance, but they know you’ll run the other way if “sugar” is listed first. To get around that, they toss in a couple of sugar sources with other names. Here are some that should trigger an alarm, because we guarantee that if you eat foods containing lots of these substances, your metabolism will quickly be thrown out of whack: glucose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup (of course), any other kind of syrup (including maple and rice), cornstarch, potato starch, cane products, fruit juice, honey, potato starch, sucrose, and dextrose.
Sugar in these forms can show up in the strangest places, like salty-savory, herb-filled pasta sauces and vinegary dressings—even high-quality ones with organic ingredients. Realistically, you can’t keep every molecule of added sugar out of your diet, but because it creeps into your diet more than it should, look at the ingredients—not just the nutrition label—when you’re looking for sugar. If you’re wondering whether or not artificial sweeteners, or natural sweeteners like agave nectar, are better than plain old white table sugar, we’ll give you the short answer: Not really. (In the case of agave, it’s actually much worse; see the box titled “Agave Nectar: Hype or Healthy?”) For more information on alternative sweeteners, see Chapter 7.
AGAVE NECTAR: HYPE OR HEALTHY?
Agave nectar/syrup is basically high-fructose corn syrup masquerading as a health food. This amber-colored liquid pours more easily than honey and is considerably sweeter than sugar. Its reputation as a health food is based on the fact that it’s gluten-free, suitable for vegan diets, and, most especially, it’s low glycemic, meaning that supposedly it has a low effect on blood sugar levels after you ingest it. Largely because of that reason, agave nectar is marketed as “diabetic friendly.” What’s not to like?
As it turns out, quite a lot.
Agave nectar is considered low glycemic for one reason only: It’s largely made of fructose, the sugar found naturally in fruit. Fructose is perfectly fine when you get it from whole foods like apples (which are about 7 percent fructose); in that form, it is packaged with a host of vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber. But when it’s commercially extracted from fruit, concentrated, and made into a sweetener, fructose exacts a considerable metabolic price. It may be termed
“low glycemic,” but we now know that fructose is a very damaging form of sugar when used as a sweetener. Agave nectar has the highest fructose content of any commercial sweetener (with the exception of pure liquid fructose).
All sugar—from table sugar to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to honey—contains some mixture of fructose and glucose. Table sugar is 50/50, HFCS is 55/45. But agave nectar is a whopping 90 percent fructose, almost—but not quite—twice as high as HFCS.
Research shows that it’s the fructose part of sweeteners that’s the most dangerous. Fructose causes insulin resistance and significantly raises triglycerides (a risk factor for heart disease). It also increases fat around your middle, which in turn puts you at greater risk for developing diabetes, heart disease, and Metabolic Syndrome. Fructose has been linked to nonalcoholic fatty-liver disease. Rats given high-fructose diets develop a number of undesirable metabolic abnormalities, including elevated triglycerides, weight gain, and extra abdominal fat.
In the agave plant, most of the sweetness comes from a particular kind of fructose called inulin that does have some health benefits; it’s considered a fiber, for one thing. But not much inulin is left in the syrup. During the manufacturing process, enzymes are added to the inulin to break it down into digestible sugar (fructose), resulting in a syrup that has a fructose content that is at best 57 percent and more commonly as high as 90 percent.
Agave nectar syrup is a triumph of marketing over science. (True, it is “low glycemic,” but so is gasoline; that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.) If you’re looking for an alternative sweetener, see the information on alternatives to sugar in Chapter 7. Agave is not the answer.
Perhaps you already knew all those words besides “sugar” that indicate, well, sugar. If so, you’re among those savvy consumers who are wise to how unhealthy “healthy” foods can actually be. But even as we’re armed with more and more information about our food supply, food producers still try to sell us a constantly updated grocery list packed with sweetened, lightly sweetened, or artificially sweetened products.
In recent years, we’ve seen a flood of new foods that didn’t previously exist but that have been created to meet the demand for more low-fat, low-calorie options. We’re talking about beverages like sweetened sports drinks, “juice beverages,” sugary flavored waters, even low-fat chocolate milk enriched with omega-3s. Every aisle of the supermarket has sweet “fruit snacks” that hide behind the
promise of vitamin C, low-fat yogurts packaged with granola toppings that are nothing more than candy, organic breakfast cereal with just as much sugar as the neon-colored kiddie stuff, 100-calorie packs of cookies (100-calorie packs of everything), and many more deluges from the Sugar Storm.
Don’t think that some of these gimmicky foods like squeezable bubble-gum-flavored-yogurt-in-a-tube were cynically created just for kids; adults buy and consume these items, too. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that men between the ages of twenty and fifty-nine, not kids, are among the biggest consumers of sugar!) And whether or not you can find the word “sugar” on the label, these foods and beverages all have one thing in common: They can ruin your metabolism—and your life.