Food for thought and maybe not for eating?

[Steve R.]

Seems that Tulsi Gabbard follows @Cotswold.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1864390531154887125

 

[Mark_]

Fortunately this decade humans have stopped using tetraethyl lead. At this rate healthy food will be the norm in 2125!

 

[Isaac]

Seems that Tulsi Gabbard follows @Cotswold.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1864390531154887125

Yes

 

[Cotswold]

Fortunately this decade humans have stopped using tetraethyl lead. At this rate healthy food will be the norm in 2125!

In England it is difficult to locate tomato puree that isn't in a lead squeeze tube. The largest supermarkets only do it in lead.
When we come across it in tins we stock up.

 

[ColinEssex]

In England it is difficult to locate tomato puree that isn't in a lead squeeze tube. The largest supermarkets only do it in lead.
When we come across it in tins we stock up.

Sainsbury's sell it in tins.
Col

 

[Cotswold]

Sainsbury's sell it in tins.
Col

Thanks for that Colin.
Sainsburys isn't handy for us but next time I'm passing I'll call. Only really use them for the occasional Argos order.

 

[ColinEssex]

Thanks for that Colin.
Sainsburys isn't handy for us but next time I'm passing I'll call. Only really use them for the occasional Argos order.

They also sell it in glass jars. They don't always have it though. There's a bit of a fuss about tomato puree being made in China and being sold as Italian. Not sure how that's panning out as its dropped off the news bulletins. They have plenty of the tube puree.
Col

 

[Pat Hartman]

Interesting question about banning high-fructose corn syrup. We should ask our resident chemical expert? Clearly this is cheaper than what we think of as standard sugar made from cane or beets but is it otherwise different in how it is metabolized by the human body?

I'd like to see rules about how ingredients are listed because the manufacturers currently use them to fool people. I don't know where I saw this recently but it has to do with pet food and how certain components are split into separate parts so that "meat" becomes the primary ingredient rather than "bread" or whatever would otherwise come first.

 

[Steve R.]

Clearly this is cheaper than what we think of as standard sugar made from cane or beets but is it otherwise different in how it is metabolized by the human body?

6 Reasons Why High-Fructose Corn Syrup Is Bad for You

High-fructose corn syrup has been linked to today's obesity epidemic and many other serious health issues. Learn why it's bad for your healt

www.healthline.com

 

[GaP42]

"Sugars" come in various forms - Fructose is one (a naturally occurring sugar in fruit, honey), Glucose, Galactose, Maltose, Sucrose (commonly table sugar) are others (eg Ribose). The issue is excessive addition of sugars to the diet, the high calorific value of sugars and how easily it is processed by the body - in respiration of the cells (H2O / CO2) or by conversion to other forms (glycogen/fat). The article points to HFCS - but really it should be about overconsumption of sugar and starches (digestible starches, being polymers of sugars, are readily broken down to sugars).

Right off, HFCS is described as artificial - what does that mean with respect to corn syrup and the naturally occurring fructose? Has the original material from corn been concentrated or produced through an alteration of the chemical makeup of the corn "juice" by some chemical process to make the fructose?

Well: "corn is milled to extract corn starch and an "acid-enzyme" process is used, in which the corn-starch solution is acidified to begin breaking up the existing carbohydrates. High-temperature enzymes are added to further metabolize the starch and convert the resulting sugars to fructose." Enzymes - the types of enzymes - eg amalyases, glucoamalyse are naturally occurring in your body too.

Anyway - pointing the finger specifically at HFCS seems to be trying to point the finger at just one factor when in effect it is not just HFCS. Often the solutions are less palatable (pun) - lifestyle change: diet, moderation, exercise. We like simple solutions (in coding too, but know the reality often is much more involved).

 

[Cotswold]

I'd like to see rules about how ingredients are listed.......................

Big food uses all sorts of scams when displaying ingredients. The once ubiquitous E numbers have mainly disappeared. They are replaced by super, super processed natural products. Basically they are identical to E numbers but are listed as their original name. Normally if you see that an ingredient is 10% of a UPF, you'd take it at face value. But they will show an ingredient by weight or volume depending upon which makes things look better and swap them about which is why the per 100 grams list never adds up to 100%. This is done inconsistently so basically you haven't a clue what is going on.
We never buy margarine but hydronated fat used to be the main constituent of margarine but now it has been replaced by an equivalent to avoid the downside of the word hydronated. Food labelling is worse now than it was in the 1980s. I would also add that from what we have in England we appear to have better ingredient lists than you do in the USA. (as well as better supermarkets)
Basically food labelling is provided by people trained by Walt Disney, or Aesop.

[amend (sp) hydronated when it should be hydrogenated!]

 

[GaP42]

Labelling requirements for processed foods are very involved. Don't know about "E" numbers. In Australia and N there is this enforceable standard:
Food Labelling Standards: FSANZ
Explicitly indicates ingredients are listed by weight (including added water), and any known allergen is listed.
Nutrition information is provided in a standardised table - grams in a serve of the food and as % of 100g of the food.

Re Margerine - essentially created from hydrogenated vegetable oils to make fats (solidifying the oil) : there is/was the issue of creating trans fats in the process - not good for cardiovascular health. However at least in some places the use of improved processing has mitigated that risk.
Margerine healthier than butter
For Margerine the food label must list trans (low/non-existent), saturated (low is better) and unsaturated (high) fat contents. Calorific content is also required. Thats OK for when you purchase it, but when you purchase meals - restaurant or otherwise - then you generally do not have transparency about the quality/suitability of the ingredients - except by taste/ reputation or some public statement.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

We should ask our resident chemical expert?

I missed this thread earlier and it looks from the time-stamps that several posts occurred overnight.

Fructose, which is a naturally occurring sugar, can be very quickly absorbed in the gut. (Along with glucose and galactose.) We evolved from animals that ate a lot of fruit, which means that we adapted in a way to quickly get our nutrients from fruit sugars and carbohydrates. The danger of fructose in large quantities is that it has an unusually efficient path into the body. Therefore, it is very easy to have "too much of a good thing." The danger of high fructose corn syrup is that our evolutionary adaptation makes us vulnerable to it, loosely analogous to having open borders that allow too many people to come into the USA at once, too many to efficiently handle.

That is EXACTLY the problem with HFCS - too much HFCS means too much fructose to efficiently handle in a short time. We convert sugars into energy to power our muscles and other parts of the body, but that conversion is rate-limited based on our body's ability to create the enzymes needed to perform that conversion. The excess eventually, thanks to another enzyme, insulin, converts to a type of fat and gets stored in our livers. Once that happens, you head towards non-alcoholic steato-hepatitis (NASH), which can lead to liver scarring and other bodily ills related to the digestive system. When you drive the body to produce more insulin because you have too much sugar, that is also rate-limited and can lead to a condition known as "insulin resistance." The large-scale inability to process blood sugars has a well-known name - diabetes. It all derives back to a simple concept - "too much of a good thing."

One normally does not discuss one's ills, but in this case I admit to having NASH as a problem, primarly caused by eating too much. Some time ago I started on a slow diet (because crash diets upset body equilibrium, too) and have lost over 18% of my highest body weight, shooting for 20% as my next goal weight. I am intimately familiar with this condition and therefore feel qualified to discuss it in this context.

Other issues include that excessive fat deposits can clog the nutrient distribution systems of our bodies - circulatory and heart disease. Fat build-up in the blood vessels (fats in the form of cholesterol) is also known as atherosclerosis. Dangerous side effects can include increased inflammation of a subtle, long-term, wide-spread nature. Inflammation has been linked to formation of beta-amyloids in the brain (and elsewhere), which in turn can lead to Alzheimer's Disease. Other body parts can be affected as well, such as the gall bladder, kidneys, and eyes (the latter primarily due to circulatory issues such as ocular atherosclerosis, leading to macular degeneration.) Severe atherosclerosis can lead to circulatory failure in the extremities, leading to amputation of gangrenous tissue. My brother-in-law recently lost his big toe to this condition, and about 20 years ago, one of the Navy's computer center operators lost a leg due to complications from diabetes.

A common question is the differences between sugars. The "fast path" for absorbtion for fructose, glucose, and galactose is because they are in the family of mono-saccharides. Sugars are created from ringed compounds. Mono-saccharides are single-ringed; disaccharides are two-ringed. You can have oligosaccharides (oily sugars) and polysaccharides (mono-saccharides that chemically bond with each other to form longer chains of mono-saccharide rings). The body can handle the bigger saccharides slowly over time but it really handles mono-saccharides the best among all sugars.

The danger of alcohol is that it is a component of sugars. More specifically, ethanol (C2H6O or, in subgroups, CH3.CH2.OH or hydroxy-ethane) is a structural component of sugars. At least three ethanol sub-groups appear in fructose. I counted four such groups in glucose. In the little diagram you can see that sucrose is just a bond between one glucose and one fructose so that is seven ethanol subgroups. Alcohol gets converted to sugar in the liver but part of the problem is that alcohol requires extra water molecules to be enzymatically merged and converted to sugar. Thus, when you have a hangover, your REAL problem is that your brain is dehydrated from all the water needed to process the alcohol.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Just stick to the foods your grandparents grandparents ate.

 

[Isaac]

Big Corn is a real thing - the massive, powerful, greedy corn industry is almost like big pharma

 

[Cotswold]

A knowledgeable synopsis from the Dos, which after reading it you have to conclude - "why am I eating anything with it in"
It is in sliced meat over here. I first saw dextrose, or fructose in the sliced meat in France maybe ten years ago. Then not long after it was in ours. So not eaten any the stuff for years now.
Why add sugar to meat? Was my very first thought when I first saw it. Is it because it is a cheap ingredient, or to help us eat more?
There is a reason for everything.

 

[AngelSpeaks]

A knowledgeable synopsis from the Dos, which after reading it you have to conclude - "why am I eating anything with it in"
It is in sliced meat over here. I first saw dextrose, or fructose in the sliced meat in France maybe ten years ago. Then not long after it was in ours. So not eaten any the stuff for years now.
Why add sugar to meat? Was my very first thought when I first saw it. Is it because it is a cheap ingredient, or to help us eat more?
There is a reason for everything.

Fillers are added to meat to increase the volume.

 

[AccessBlaster]

 

[Pat Hartman]

Fillers are added to meat to increase the volume.

But sugar is addictive and that is why it is added.

 

[GaP42]

On the subject of going Paleo? (my interpretation) - an amusing sidetrack to show the talents (or lack of) of some people I have an association with in Fathomverse (citizen science project).