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"Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat" by David Gillespie - my summary

RyanF

Member
I've been at home, sick all weekend, and as a feat of productive procrastination, this weekend I sat down and read David Gillespie's book "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat" (first published by Penguin Group (Australia) 2008, copyright David Gillespie 2008). As another feat of procrastination, I'm now going to write a little about the book, hopefully to the benefit of whoever reads this post.

Gillespie covers a few topics in Sweet Poison, such as the history of sugar production and commercialisation (which was once a rare, expensive delicacy), statistics on obesity and related health issues adjacent to the commercialisation of sugar, and of course practical information on what to do about sugar for the sake of your health and body composition.

One thing very note-worthy about this book is that Gillespie does not simply villify carbohydrates, or even all sugar. This is the first major issue to gleam from this book. Let's talk about our response to food.

So, according to Gillespie (and he does provide recommended reading at the back of the book to back up his claims, including references to medical journals for those who can read them), our body extracts energy from 4 main sources: fat, alcohol, protein and carbohydrates. Most nutrition and fitness professionals will agree with this. And, our bodies work on hormonal feedback loops to tell us when we're hungry and when we're full. If our feedback loops are working properly, once we've consumed enough fat, we won't want any more; once we've consumed enough protein, we won't want any more; and once we've consumed enough of 2 out of 3 basic forms of sugar, we won't want any more. Our hypothatlamus (the part of the brain that has primary control over our endocrine system, which takes care of hormones, including the hormones that promote or repress hunger) knows how much energy we need, and will tell us we're hungry when it identifies a need for food, and it will tell us that we're full when it identifies that we've had enough. This is consistent with my knowledge of the endocrine system.

The problem is in 1 of the 3 basic forms of sugar. All sugar is some combination of glucose, galactose and/or fructose. Our hypothalamus recognises fat. It recognises protein. It recognises glucose and galatcose. Therefore, if you get enough energy from these sources, your brain will tell your stomach that it's satisfied and doesn't need more food. Fructose, however, doesn't send the message to our hypothalamus that any more energy has been put into the body. Fructose is the sweetest of the natural sugar compounds, and table sugar (ie the stuff you think of as sugar) is 50% glucose, 50% fructose (which combine to make sucrose, but our bodies just break down the compounds and treat it is glucose + fructose). So, if we consume 100kcal worth of fat, our hypothalamus recognises that there's a new 100kcal in the body, and if we consume 100kcal worth of galactose or glucose, the same will occur. But if we consume 100kcal worth of fructose, our brains won't recognise it, and it won't contribute to us feeling full. This results in consuming more energy than we need, which leads to weight gain.

Other than gaining weight, there's another serious issue that Gillespie raises with fructose. According to his research and consquential writing, as soon as fructose goes into the liver, it's converted into fatty acids. Too much fatty acid in the arteries leads to cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Eating too much fat could possibly contribute to this (although my own research indicates that the fat you eat has pretty much nothing to do with the fat in your arteries), but when our feedback loops are working correctly, we won't be inclined to eat enough fat for it to be an issue anyway. Since our hypothalamus doesn't recognise the consumption of fructose, however, we can easily end up putting far more fatty acid into our bloodstreams than should be there, leading to our arteries being clogged up, causing most cardiovascular diseases as well as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. High levels of fructose consumption were also demonstrated to cause cancer in experiments on lab rats, although I didn't pick up on a strong explanation of how fructose might lead to cancer.

All this isn't saying that fructose is the devil, and despite the title of the book, Gillespie isn't trying to convince us not to let fructose pass through our lips under any circumstance. Fructose has been present in human diets for all of human history, and presumably for much longer. The issue is the volume of fructose. In a natural human diet without processed foods, most of the fructose we encounter would be in fruit form, which comes with other properties (in particular fibre, which appears to counteract at least some of the health issues raised by fructose in the first place) that prevent us from eating too much of it. In our modern world, we've stripped fructose of other ingrediants that would inhibit our consumption of it. Our brains know that sweet stuff provides carbohydrates for energy, fructose is the sweetest carbohydrate, and our brains don't know when we've had enough of it. Take away fibre and other components to food that would tell us to stop eating after 1 or 2 servings, and we end up eating ccokies and drinking juice and soft drink without feeling any closer to full than we did before hand. This easily adds up to excessive calories, and thus the obesity epidemic of the last century that's continually growing worse.

Gillespie's solution to the problem is fairly simple at surface value, although not as simple or easy to get started on as we'd all like. Such is life. His first recommendation is to simply go by what your tongue tells you: if it's sweet (or sweetened to make it palatable), stop buying it, stop drinking it and stop eating it, because it probably contains a relatively high amount of fructose. If you must use some form of sweetener in your food and drinks, hunt down some pure glucose (which, if you can find it, will be sold as "dextrose," and according to Gillespie is more likely to be found in the homewares department than food/cooking department) and use that. It's not as sweet as sugar (ie sucrose, ie glucose + fructose), but your hypothalamus will recognise every calorie consumed by it, and will tell you when you're full. His second recommendation is, once you've cut the sweet stuff out of your diet, use your sense of hunger and satiation to tell you when to eat and when to stop eating. If you get halfway through a meal and your hypothalamus says you're full, don't make yourself finish the meal. Either save it for later, or cut your losses and throw out the rest (personally, it grates my nerves to see food go to waste, so I say save it for later if it's safe and practical to do so). So, avoid sweet stuff (especially if there isn't a boat load of fibre with it) and eat when you're hungry, until you're not hungry anymore.

One funny thing I picked up on was that I've always been taught that if people don't want pure water, it's okay to drink cordial and other flavoured stuff to encourage them to hydrate themselves. Gillespie, onthe other hand, says that if milk or water isn't appealing enough for you to drink it, you're not really thirsty. His rationale for milk is that it has protein in it (recognised by the hypothalamus), fat (recognised by the hypothalamus), and lactose as it's sugar, which is made up of glucose and galactose, not fructose (therefore the sugar in it is also recognised by the hypothalamus), so you'll have to drink more than you're comfortable with to gain weight on it. Obviously, we're talking pure milk, not sweetened or flavoured milk. Full cream is okay because the brain recognises the calories, so you don't have to cut back to trim or skim.

Obviously there will be some mental barriers over the first couple weeks as your pallate adjusts to fructose withdrawal, but, according to Gillespie, once you adjust you won't really want sweet foods anymore, as they will begin to taste sickly sweet and off-putting.

I think that just about sums up the nuts and bolts of the book. Obviously, if you want to know more, you can have a read for yourself. I found it an interesting read, and everything in it made sense to me based on my pre-existing knowledge of the human body and experience with food. Gillespie reports to have lost 40kg over 2 years of avoiding sweet stuff and using hunger as a guide for when to eat or stop eating, then to have stopped losing weight without thinking about once his body composition evened out to a healthy level. I definitely recommend it, and hope that the abridged information here has been helpful.

Good luck, everybody :)
 
Good summary, Ryan and thanks for posting it!

Hope you are feeling better too...hate being sick on a weekend :(

There has been a lot of vilification of fructose in the media and by some medical experts, although one can find massive holes in the arguments and selective approach to evidence to support the asserted facts.

Glad to hear Gillespie isn't taking that route.

A diet that includes whole fruits and veggies (which contain fructose naturally) is good because the fructose comes along with fibre and other stuff that slows down its processing by the liver and, importantly also, the digestion of fructose molecules in the small intestine - where fructose and fructans (longer chains of fructose molecules) can ferment and cause GI tract issues and food intolerances on top of any fat deposits after being processed by the liver.

Most of the problems we have today relate to the over consumption of things like fructose - in concentrated form, it gets included in everything and so our bodies become overexposed leading to chronic health issues.

All these things tend to come back to "if your mother/grandmother/greatgrandmother would not have recognised it as food, don't eat it" along with "eat a variety of foods, not too much of anything".

:)
 
Good summary, Ryan and thanks for posting it!

Hope you are feeling better too...hate being sick on a weekend :(

There has been a lot of vilification of fructose in the media and by some medical experts, although one can find massive holes in the arguments and selective approach to evidence to support the asserted facts.

Glad to hear Gillespie isn't taking that route.

A diet that includes whole fruits and veggies (which contain fructose naturally) is good because the fructose comes along with fibre and other stuff that slows down its processing by the liver and, importantly also, the digestion of fructose molecules in the small intestine - where fructose and fructans (longer chains of fructose molecules) can ferment and cause GI tract issues and food intolerances on top of any fat deposits after being processed by the liver.

Most of the problems we have today relate to the over consumption of things like fructose - in concentrated form, it gets included in everything and so our bodies become overexposed leading to chronic health issues.

All these things tend to come back to "if your mother/grandmother/greatgrandmother would not have recognised it as food, don't eat it" along with "eat a variety of foods, not too much of anything".

:)
Thanks. Being sick sucks. I feel like I'm on the recovery end of things today, but then I felt like that on Thursday, and turned out to be wrecked Fri and Sat, so who knows?

It's pretty easy to interpret Gillespie's book as saying "herpa derpa, fructose is le bad," and there are people who will take that away from his book, but to me it's clear that he's not saying fructose is all evil, rather the context in which we consume it is the problem, which you've accurately summed up. His basic attitude towards the consumption of fructose in the book seems to be: "Eat as much of it as you would if food didn't come in packaging, preferably from the same sources you would find it in if there were no packaging." Or as you said, "If your mother/grandmother/greatgrandmother would not have recognised it as food, don't eat it."
 
I seem to remember reading a lot of not favorable reviews and debunking of the ideas put up in this book.
 
Kosmo Kramer (Seinfeld) cut out Fructose from his diet back in the early 90s, thats good enough for me.

60 Minutes did a feature on sugar called "Sweet Poison" in June this year.
Sweet Poison
 
Thanks Ryan

Interesting summary.... otherwise this is a book I would never read...

Our bodies extract energy from 4 main sources

I note that alcohol is included next to carbs fats and protein...Didn't know this?

I stopped reading when it started to build a bridge between sugar and cardiovascular disease....

Same silly song trotted out like diabetes....

Being overweight and inactive are the key determinants not sugar...

Then I read Bazza's link... Nice rebuttal that....
 
Most of the statements here are beyond my scope to give an intelligent comment on one way or the other, but there a couple of things I can actively disagree with them on.

Firstly, in section iv, they write: "This position statement is diametrically opposed to your claim that consumption of added fructose is the sole cause of type 2 diabetes." Later on they write: "In addition to containing these errors (among others), Sweet Poison selectively refers to the scientific literature and, as explained above, occasionally grossly misinterprets the literature to develop an exaggerated case that fructose is the sole cause of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease."

Gillespie doesn't say that added fructose is the sole cause of type 2 diabetes, heart disease or obesity. That's an overstatement of the book. He does link the two, by making the claim that fructose consumption leads to over-eating without feeling like you've eaten too much, which in turn leads to excessive calorie consumption and consequential weight gain. In other words, he still says what we all agree on, which is that at a base level it's calories in vs calories out, but he also presents an argument for why so many of us are consuming more calories than we use. This (the relationship between fructose and over-eating) is actually the crux of the entire book, and while they dispute a lot of things, they actually don't dispute this main point.

The main concept in the book is that fructose is super sweet, and our brain doesn't know when to say it's had enough of it, while our brain does know when to say it's had enough of every other energy source, so if you want to get rid of excess bodyfat and related health issues, cull the sweets from your diet and let your sense of hunger/fullness figure out the rest. They've attacked quite a few points in the book, and they may very well be right to do so, but they haven't attacked this main point at all, which is the only point anyone likely to read the book cares about in the first place.

The other issue I'd disagree with them on is: "Another major problem is that Sweet Poison ignores (in fact denigrates) the Dietary Guidelines for Australians published by the National Health and Medical Research Council. These are science-based, and constitute the most appropriate diet-related advice currently available to Australians. Although your book includes reference to the value of dietary fibre, and mentions the problems associated with consumption of trans fats, it does not address the major health problems associated with excessive consumption of salt and alcohol. It also (inappropriately) includes the claim that physical activity is of no value for people whose aim is to lose weight, and it condones (even promotes) high fat consumption (other than trans fats)."

I can't find any contradiction between Sweet Poison and the healthy eating pyramid, which is the nuts and bolts of the Dietary Guidelines for Australians. I can't take the Dietary Guidelines for Australians seriously, mind you, for reasons beyond anything brought up in Sweet Poison, but there's no inherent contradiction there. If there is a contradiction at all, it's that they allow for more "extras" (without actually recommending that you eat them), while he says cull them altogether.

The complaint that Gillespie doesn't deal with the issues related to excess salt and alcohol is a mute point. His book is on the issues related to fructose, not the issues related to everything you can put in your mouth. This is almost like complaining that someone's advice about squats is wrong because they don't talk about deadlifts at the same time. It's irrelevant nit-picking.

Gillespie addresses the reality that the more you exercise, the more you'll want (and need) to eat, so on that basis exercise isn't the sharpest tool in the shed for weight loss. He also addresses the reality that a 500kcal deficit may be produced by 1-2 hours of exercise, or by not drinking a 1.25L bottle of Coke during the day, the latter of which is a more efficient means of creating that deficit. He does promote exercise as being a good habit for overall health that all able-bodied people should do, but if it's your be-all-end-all strategy for losing weight, he basically says to keep dreaming.

He doesn't say to eat high volumes of fat. He says that when people are told to get rid of sugar from their diet and eat as much meat and fat as they want, they tend to eat about the right amount of fat anyway, because after the first few weeks, the urge for excess isn't there. And he provides examples to back this up.
 
Thanks Ryan

Interesting summary.... otherwise this is a book I would never read...



I note that alcohol is included next to carbs fats and protein...Didn't know this?

I stopped reading when it started to build a bridge between sugar and cardiovascular disease....

Same silly song trotted out like diabetes....

Being overweight and inactive are the key determinants not sugar...

Then I read Bazza's link... Nice rebuttal that....
Conventional wisdom in the field of nutritional information is:
1g fat = 9kcal
1g alcohol = 7kcal
1g protein = 4kcal
1g CHO = 4kcal

If I'm not mistaken, there's some dispute over whether or not the 7kcal from alcohol is actually used by the body, and I'm skeptical of the accuracy of those numbers (especially when people say that 3,500kcal = 1lb of fat, because that = 455g of fat, which, multiplied by 9, gives us 4,095kcal) because I can't find any source that gives more specific numbers than these rounded off digits. But yes, alcohol is grouped in with carbs, fat and protein as energy.
 
This (the relationship between fructose and over-eating) is actually the crux of the entire book, and while they dispute a lot of things, they actually don't dispute this main point.

The main concept in the book is that fructose is super sweet, and our brain doesn't know when to say it's had enough of it, while our brain does know when to say it's had enough of every other energy source, so if you want to get rid of excess bodyfat and related health issues, cull the sweets from your diet and let your sense of hunger/fullness figure out the rest. They've attacked quite a few points in the book, and they may very well be right to do so, but they haven't attacked this main point at all, which is the only point anyone likely to read the book cares about in the first place.

I'm not going through all your points because there way too many but since you said this is the main point.

We are assuming the fructose consumption leads to overeating. Does it? What research shows this?

You say fructose is super sweet. That could be argued in helping lose weight. Super sweet means less calories are needed to satisfy a persons sweet cravings.

Anecdotal evidence but fructose containing foods are not my problem with overeating. Salty, fatty, starchy carb foods are my problem. Salted nuts, hot chips, pizza. Ect.
 
Conventional wisdom in the field of nutritional information is:
1g fat = 9kcal
1g alcohol = 7kcal
1g protein = 4kcal
1g CHO = 4kcal

If I'm not mistaken, there's some dispute over whether or not the 7kcal from alcohol is actually used by the body, and I'm skeptical of the accuracy of those numbers (especially when people say that 3,500kcal = 1lb of fat, because that = 455g of fat, which, multiplied by 9, gives us 4,095kcal) because I can't find any source that gives more specific numbers than these rounded off digits. But yes, alcohol is grouped in with carbs, fat and protein as energy.

Alcohol is processed by the liver, obviously but not used by the body. A few enzymes are involved in the metabolism of alcohol (ethanol) to form acetaldehyde.
 
I'm not going through all your points because there way too many but since you said this is the main point.

We are assuming the fructose consumption leads to overeating. Does it? What research shows this?

You say fructose is super sweet. That could be argued in helping lose weight. Super sweet means less calories are needed to satisfy a persons sweet cravings.

Anecdotal evidence but fructose containing foods are not my problem with overeating. Salty, fatty, starchy carb foods are my problem. Salted nuts, hot chips, pizza. Ect.
The argument isn't so much that if you eat fructose you will overeat. It's more that fructose doesn't provide the brain with a message that it's had enough, so it's far too easy to over-indulge in it. Unfortunately, Gillespie didn't provide clear citations on where he came to this conclusion from, he just references general resources (such as pubmed) where you can do your own research. He does provide a fair dose of clear anecdotal evidence to support his argument for trying to limit fructose to the foods it's naturally found in (such as fresh fruit), but it would take a lot of further reading to assess the legitimacy of his claims from an endocrine system POV.

I suspect there might be some biological evidence for his claims about fructose in research pertaining to the sugar-crash effect of high GI foods, which results in the need to eat more later on. Surprisingly he didn't have much to say about high GI food, although he did make note of the problems with worrying about low GI (for example, chocolate is apparently low GI, but that doesn't mean it's great diet food).

The argument for fructose appeasing people's sweet cravings for fewer calories is certainly worth considering. From what I can tell, it seems that Gillespie would argue that making something just as sweet through pure glucose may be more calories per unit of food, but would also be more filling, so they might have one and be done instead of eating four and going back for more. In reality, it could go both ways, depending on the individual.

Your anecdotal point with salty, fatty, starchy foods is also worth considering. Even at the best of times (this is not one of them), I'm not one to say: "but teh labz don't agree, so yer stomak be lying." My own observation is that salty food with not a lot of nutritional content does tend to result in over-eating, too. I can get full on thick potato chips but not on crisps (at least they haven't ever filled me up yet...one day I'll be bulking and test my ability to get full while eating crsips), and the ability to eat endless supplies of party-food seems to be fairly universal. So, good point well raised.
 
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