"The average American currently eats 126 grams of sugar a day—though most don't realize it. Much of that amount comes from the refined sugars added to our foods during manufacturing."
"foods during manufacturing" -- that's the problem -- foods manufactured, not grown.
The fogginess that the author describes sounds like the 'keto-flu'. But if he was eating carbs from vegetables and fruits, he shouldn't have noticed this.
I also found this odd:
"I missed the sugar and milk in my coffee "
Wait, why were you eliminating milk? Sure it contains some sugars naturally, but they aren't "refined sugar" that the article is demonizing.
The mental clarity and focus he describes are very likely due to the increased quality of sleep. I have no explanation for why his sleep improved.
My own anecdote is that I ate a high fat, super-low carb diet for about a year, and one of the primary motivations was that one of my friends couldn't stop talking about the mental improvements (calmness, focus, short-term memory). Sadly, I experienced none of that. It makes me think that either it is placebo, or sugar/carbs really does affect some people badly, but others not so much. I will say that I found loosing weight to be effortless when eating that way (in fact I had to go off it when I wanted to gain some weight).
Finally, I hate it when people point out things like "(a large Big Mac meal deal has 85 grams of sugar—236% of your daily allowance). That means if I were to escape refined sugar, I was going to have to spend more time at home cooking fresh foods than I was used to. " but then ignore the breakdown:
Big Mac: 9g of sugar
Medium Fries: 0g of sugar
Large Coke-classic: 76g of sugar.
In other words, you don't need to cook more fresh foods, you could just get diet coke and double down on fries to get the calories you need without the sugar.
None of this is meant to say "No, we should all eat lots of sugar". I get that in the quantities that most people eat sugar, it's way too much. But I'm frustrated that we can't have an honest conversation about sugar and how it ought to be consumed. My personal opinion is that people should in general just stop drinking regular soda. If people did that, I suspect a fair amount of our sugar-consumption problems would just stop.
> I also found this odd: "I missed the sugar and milk in my coffee " Wait, why were you eliminating milk?
Possibly, because people who drink sugar and milk in coffee tend to do so for taste, and find that either element on its own (or even both but in something other than the preferred balance) is not desirable, often worse than just drinking coffee black.
I too tried Keto for a long while. I experienced the "mental benefits" in the form of a huge rush of energy after I'd eat a pound of bacon... but other than that I never got any.
Nowadays I just eat "normally." (i.e. I pretty much make my decisions about food unconsciously).
People love demonizing things and thinking in black and white. But the world is just shades of gray.
This guy is experiencing huge benefits from the placebo effect, because the placebo effect works. But his theory doesn't.
It really is different for everyone. I found that milk protein was actually the lynchpin of my diet troubles. But both our medical practice and food culture don't speak in terms of food sensitivity outside of "you swell up and die immediately". There are lots and lots of bad things that can happen that don't involve swelling up and dying.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 24.1 ms ] thread"foods during manufacturing" -- that's the problem -- foods manufactured, not grown.
[0]: http://freetheanimal.com/2015/08/fall-bloodletting-iron.html
I also found this odd: "I missed the sugar and milk in my coffee " Wait, why were you eliminating milk? Sure it contains some sugars naturally, but they aren't "refined sugar" that the article is demonizing.
The mental clarity and focus he describes are very likely due to the increased quality of sleep. I have no explanation for why his sleep improved.
My own anecdote is that I ate a high fat, super-low carb diet for about a year, and one of the primary motivations was that one of my friends couldn't stop talking about the mental improvements (calmness, focus, short-term memory). Sadly, I experienced none of that. It makes me think that either it is placebo, or sugar/carbs really does affect some people badly, but others not so much. I will say that I found loosing weight to be effortless when eating that way (in fact I had to go off it when I wanted to gain some weight).
Finally, I hate it when people point out things like "(a large Big Mac meal deal has 85 grams of sugar—236% of your daily allowance). That means if I were to escape refined sugar, I was going to have to spend more time at home cooking fresh foods than I was used to. " but then ignore the breakdown:
In other words, you don't need to cook more fresh foods, you could just get diet coke and double down on fries to get the calories you need without the sugar.None of this is meant to say "No, we should all eat lots of sugar". I get that in the quantities that most people eat sugar, it's way too much. But I'm frustrated that we can't have an honest conversation about sugar and how it ought to be consumed. My personal opinion is that people should in general just stop drinking regular soda. If people did that, I suspect a fair amount of our sugar-consumption problems would just stop.
Possibly, because people who drink sugar and milk in coffee tend to do so for taste, and find that either element on its own (or even both but in something other than the preferred balance) is not desirable, often worse than just drinking coffee black.
Nowadays I just eat "normally." (i.e. I pretty much make my decisions about food unconsciously).
People love demonizing things and thinking in black and white. But the world is just shades of gray.
This guy is experiencing huge benefits from the placebo effect, because the placebo effect works. But his theory doesn't.
My guess is the volume of sodas, juices, and energy drinks wasn't replaced with an equivalent volume of water.