LizGM2 suggested I put these thoughts in my blog – so blame her for subjecting the net to more ramblings 😉
Over the years I have tried to understand what it was that changed my body shape from slim-ish to fat guy. Nearly all the advice we have been given over the last several decades centres around calories being the root cause. This bit I agree with, more in than out means you get fatter. The advice carried on to recommend we eat more carbohydrate foods, less fat and a little protein – and lots of the green leafy veg stuff. I also agree that appetite and what types and composition of food you eat must be significant, but suggesting if you eat fatty foods you will get fat? Just like if you eat lots of green food you go green, or lots of chili and you melt… hmmm
Fat is very energy dense and arrives in several forms like saturated, poly-unsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats. Some fats are shown to be essential and very useful to human wellbeing, however, evidence that any one of these types are ‘bad’ is not as clear cut as the established canon suggest. I don’t mean that in the same daft ways that some argue global warming is not happening. I mean that the science has not been done or has been interpreted naively based on 40 year old concepts and simply accepted as a given.
I also agree that too much of just about anything is not good, but fat is not ‘the’ proven enemy, there is another chemical group I think has hidden behind fat.
I reckon sugar is the big evil in western life and not fat. It just isn’t natural for us humans to eat so much sugar or easy carb food. We are a protein and fats kind of species with occasional fruit and sugary stuff when we can get it. Unfortunately in this modern world that is just about all the time…
From a subjective stance, a couple of weeks after I have reduced the carbohydrate or GI level in my food intake (eg after Christmas blowouts!) I always feel better, more balanced and more comfortable. Potatoes, pasta and rice have always tended to make me feel a little tired an hour or so after eating, even, to a lesser extent, the brown wholegrain still-got-the-mud-on-it stuff. The body’s response to excess sugar is fairly fast but seems to overshoot and give you a slight hunger pang, before getting back to a more stable sort of level -a sort of moderated pendulum!
The sugar industry is powerful, as are the convenience junk food pushers like the processors and supermarkets. Carbs are cheap to produce using the least energy to create it from sunlight so it is very plentiful. To get protein and fat eg pulses, eggs, dairy and meat, you need more energy and time invested in it’s production. If you push carbs into the expensive stuff in processed foods you can get far higher margins or the chance to lower prices. What sort of sugars I am including here? Carbohydrates like white flour, potatoes, rice and sugars which once in the body quickly break down to easily accessible sugar energy. They also have a habit of needing to employ other cheap ingredients – salt and water.
Is it strange that most of the foods blamed for making you fat because they have fat in them, also have easy carbs too. I think that is the key element. Chocolate is fat with masses of sugar. Burgers are fried protein (people eating them alone don’t tend to get fat) they are eaten in a white wheat based bun and with chips. Chips are fatty but they are effectively a simple carbohydrate too, essentially fried sugar. Cakes are fatty but equally sugar based. Crisps, more fried sugar. In fact, dentists reckon crisps, that stick to teeth, are worse for teeth than chocolate or boiled sweets!
We have been encouraged to eat bread, pasta, rice and boiled potatoes but to avoid fat. The carbohydrate digestive cycle will quickly produce high blood sugar levels. When these kick in the body’s insulin production increases. It’s one of the reasons you feel full eating carb-high chinese meals and then 30 mins later feel peckish. The blood sugar levels soar when simple carbs are eaten, the body rapidly removes it – by converting it to fat stores. The system usually over reacts so that the blood levels drop too far and it in turn makes you feel hungry again.
Fats may be very energy dense but don’t cause the sugar cycle to kick in it. The sugar stimulates a whole range of responses including the all powerful make-me-fat one it affects blood biochemistry with appetite signals and pleasure centres in the brain too. It would seem the body is well designed to get fat on sugars. It helped us to turn a short shelf life energy source like abundant ripe fruits in to a long term fat store for harder times ahead.
As the digestive system is dynamic the body seems to produce the balance of enzymes it requires in response to general diet changes. A sudden change to a high fibre diet will help demonstrate that! If you eat fat then fat enzymes form a greater part of the enzyme mix and the body can break down fat to produce energy. Sort of useful if you are looking to lose bodyfat I would guess. If you eat carb heavy and fat/protein light foods then the enzyme mix will tend to work better with carb digestion. Which in turn leads to faster sugar level rise and then greater fat deposition. In a natural environment, sugar in a diet is a sign of plenty, a time to stock up on reserves before a winter. If your body believes it is in a time of plenty the last thing it would make sense to do is actually consume fat stores.
Finally, other than cancer and heart disease, which are both increased by obesity, what is one of the fastest growing problems in modern human health in the carb rich west? Type 2 diabetes – the diet related difficulty in controlling blood sugar levels. Common in fatter people – the very ones that ate the sugars which set the energy to fat in the first place. Perhaps the constant fighting to control high and fluctuating sugar levels has made it impossible for the body to be sensitive enough to know its required baseline level?
Still, that’s all just my amateur take on the thing. It’s certainly non-medical but nonetheless logical attempt to apply information and knowledge. Note, I don’t work for the sugar industry, fat industry or a PR company! 😉