Blog: Free Diet

I recently watched the movie "King Corn." It was a really good movie and I'd recommend it to everyone. You can even stream it free on Hulu http://www.hulu.com/watch/255609/king-corn. What's so great about it, is that it doesn't come across as having some monumental, life changing agenda. The creators simply want to understand more about the corn industry and they decide to film along the way. So there aren't any awkward accusations, or  morality lessons or anything that makes you feel deeply and utterly hopeless about America. At least for me it didn't. I knew or at least had an idea of a majority of what they discovered so none of the information was earth shattering, but their presentation was entertaining and the information, interesting.

But it really did get me to thinking about added sugar. From what I've read, there are three basics, glucose, fructose and sucrose. Glucose and fructose, when combined form, sucrose. So any food can have, free floating glucose, free floating fructose or sucrose (fructose and glucose bound together).

Fructose, is the sweetest of them all and if it is not cooked or heated is 73% sweeter (or so says wikipedia) than sucrose. It also doesn't affect blood sugar levels as much. So it used to be highly recommended for people with Diabetes because they could get the same sweetness with less quantity and have lesser effects on blood glucose levels.  HOWEVER, glucose can be absorbed by any cell in the body, fructose can can only be absorbed in the liver, which goes into overdrive when presented with fructose. The liver turns fructose into fatty acids, and although it doesn't spike insulin or leptin levels, it spikes ghrelin levels. Ghrelin increases appetite whereas insulin and leptin diminish it. So eating fructose can lead to not only weight gain, but livers that "looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

I got all of this from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose. And it's definitely interesting.... It's all a start to a diet I want to try just for curiosity's sake: No Added Sugar.... that includes: Corn Syrup, Sugar, Aspartame. 

Still just thinking about it, looking at labels, trying to become more aware of everything that has added sugar in it. One quote i saw said on avg, an american 20yrs ago consumed 35lbs of sugar, not it's over 160lbs.

oi....