https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sugar-conspiracy?utm_source=pocket-newtab

An article inspired by a book by a journalist, not a nutritionist who talked about a nutritionist who was advocating the dangers of white sugar 50 years ago ("Pure, White, and Deadly", John Yudkin) and was driven out of the field by his fellow scientists who were all on board with low fat, low dietary carbohydrate.

1977 was my year of racing seriously, taking the advice of the book "Food for Fitness" and observing how I felt vs what I ate.  I avoided the white powders, sucrose, salt and white flour (bleached white flour like the plague).  Stopped eating meat except very occasional poultry and fish.  Eliminated uncultured milf products.  (The meats for better recovery when not having to digest "heavy" meals.  Milk because I got the wake-up call that I had always been lactose intolerant.  Salt for better hot weather performance.)  Food for Fitness was big on eliminating white sugar.  After a few weeks of consuming virtually none (not lowering my sugars intake overall but now consuming it in fruits and honey) I tried eating some sugar on a ride just to see how it felt.

Wow!  My near immediate awareness was "this is a drug!  It alters my state of being for finite span of time, improves performance for that span and when it wears off, leaves me lower than I started and wanting more".  Not just a drug.  For me, an addicting drug.

That year, my body was a fine tuned engine.  Yes, I know now things I could have done better diet-wise, but I was not far off.  I ate huge amounts of whole grains and products made from whole grains, lots of veggies, a good amount of fruit, yogurt and my favorite - good cheddar cheese.  PB, honey and cheese on whole wheat bread sandwiches as long ride food.  Bananas.

After racing my diet gradually slid in quality but not a lot until I married a woman for whom this was completely foreign.  That 6 years, my health slid a lot, but my new doc when I arrived in Portland told me to buy "The Omega Diet", read it and do it.  My next dietary life-changer.  Quality fats.  That book espouses a concept that the amount of fat we eat isn't the issue, health-wise, but the origin of the fat matters a lot.  No, not animal vs vegetable but what vegetable was at the foundation of that animal's diet.  "Goat food"!  The book stresses that we are to eat dark green vegetable or animals that have eaten from a food chain that can be traced back to those dark green vegetables.  The dark green vegetables that contain the omega 3 precursor or animals that have converted that precursor to omega 3 or have eaten animals that contain that omega 3 from the result of their diets.  In other word, the foods goats would eat in the wild, or the goats, or the animals that eat the goats.

That book also points out that the food industry has worked systematically to eliminate omega 3 from the food chain entirely.  The cattle that once ate grasses now eat grains; a high omega 6 source.  Until around 15-20 years ago, vegetables had been getting progressively less dark; "goat foods" being related to those who could not afford "quality" food.  (Those with money ate iceberg lettuce.  Those on the outskirts ate collard greens.)

This also applies to marine diets.  The very small marine life that eat algae that results from river run-off, then the small fish that eat them and so forth up the chain.  Menhaden was a core part of that chain.  We have fished it to near extinction to make fertilizer and so forth.  That food chain includes minnows, bluefish, salmon and up to swordfish and tuna.  Then there is seaweed, the goat food of the marine world.

Long digression here.  Read the article.  It's sobering and it makes you wonder who's telling the truth.  I see a world consuming sugars that weren't even invented when I got that little word that "all natural" sucrose didn't belong in my body.  (I see sucrose as an opium.  The new sugars are the heroins and other synthetic opiates.  Now opium and heroin are banned drugs.  But they used to be sold in stores, nearly as openly as white sugar.)

I confess, I do support the sugar industry by buying 10 lb bags of the stuff for my hummers and stocking up on small bags of M&Ms when they go on sale.  (Addicting drug.  I eat the whole bag once opened.  But I do have the discipline to limit myself to that one bag.  And I won't let myself pay full price or buy more than 4 bags when they are on sale.)   Not a saint.  I eat red meat now too.  Not a lot and I try to avoid beef and always go for pork when it is an option.  No, not for health reasons.  I see pigs as far more capable animals than cattle.  Smarter, they survive quite nicely in the wild and even have a constitution that means they thrive in environments that lesser animals (including humans) do not.  (Pigs regularly get relegated to the farm "waste lands" that would kill any other farm animal - trichinosis.)

Ben