On Wednesday 20 Apr 2011 11:08:38 pm Heather Madrone wrote: . > > This diet sounds very starchy to me, and all that fried food is not > particularly healthy, either. Also quite low in protein, which might > lead to overconsumption of calories. The glycemic index of many of the > foods in this diet is quite high, particularly if the rice is polished
Absolutely - and Indians exposed to hype about sugar fruitlessly (pun unintended) decrease the sugar in their diets imagining they are doing good which they are not. Lustig's article is a threat to many indian diabetics for perpetuating misleading impressions > and the flour white. Yes, it's low in sugar, but starch metabolizes very > quickly to glucose, and dumping large amounts of glucose into the > bloodstream quickly is only marginally better than dumping large amounts > of glucose plus fructose into the bloodstream. This is the "given knowledge". I believe it stems from western research on western diets that tell people in the west that they are better off eating complex starch that dumps sugar more slowly into the blood. Correct as that information may be - it is absolutely no use for Indian who has always eaten a high starch low protein diet with plenty of fruit and fiber. It's not the knowledge or research that is wrong. It is the inapplicability of some knowledge into inappropriate situations. Indian doctors are also "guilty" of this to no small extent > So yes, he was talking to Americans, but sugar consumption has been > increasing worldwide: > > http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/globalsugar.html#SEARO > > You will note that sugar consumption is rising rapidly in India. This is true. And here I need to come down on you for making a needless assumption that I was questioning Lustig's carbohydrate biochemistry. Have you checked the figures for beef consumption in the US in say 1930, 1950 and 2000? And the meat and eggs consumption figures for India in 1960 and say 2005? Or even per capita rice consumption in india? But there is a lot more to obesity in the world than the problem of refined sugar (sucrose and corn syrup) being promoted in junk food and drink. Meat every day was a rarity in the US in 1930 I believe. In India meat eaters (including Muslims) who could afford meat only once in a while are now eating it once or twice a week - and the more wealthy "Westernized" people - almost every day. If you look at photographs and videos of American GIs in world war 1 and even world war 2 - you find them thin and scrawny compared to the current bunch. Those American GIs in those days used to look like the Indians of the 1970s. Indians are now getting "beefier" and more muscular and taller, while Americans are growing laterally. The issue in my view goes far beyond sugar consumption. There is an overall incerase in food availability and consumption. The constituents and "nutritive value" in food may well be changing because of methods used to incerase food production. Look at milk production in India. I am not sure - but I think India has been the largest milk producer in the world for many years now. Every one of these things probably counts for something. No one knows (yet) how much each of these counts towards the overall problem. Combined with that are lifestyle changes - with television and the internet and fewer working days. I watched the west with envy as a student when the working week in the west was brought down from 6 to 5 including one half day. My father was a short man. He always explained away his stature as the result of a severe attack of Typhoid in childhood that he deveastated him and left him thin and weak. In India it is common to describe "overweight" as "healthy" and "slim as "weak. Just yesretday a man who did not know that my dog had had pups remarked that she had become "weak" . I believe this cultural terminology was a result of frequent infections like Malaria, Typhoid and Tuberculosis. In the absence of anti-bacterial therapy - only the fattest and fittest (those who had access to nutritive food) survived albeit with weight loss. The ones who started off anemic or hypoproteinemic probably died. So does obesity have something to do with survival of everyone and the virtual "defeat" of infections like Malaria and Typhoid? Nobody knows. Yet. It's not just sugar. Spending my lifetime studying sugar does not make it the most important factor in everyone's health. Maybe Lustig didn't mean that - but that article certainly gives that impression. shiv
