3/30/2010

Reading all the opinions of various nutritionists, dietitians, and doctors is like listening to two politicians debate.  I just read on one website that agave nectar, while high is fructose it has a low glycemic index and is fine in moderation.  Not five minutes later a received a newsletter with the heading: "Shocking! This 'Tequila' sweetener is far worse than high fructose corn syrup.  Luckily, for me I'm not a sugar junky.  So cutting sugars (except for naturally occurring sugars in whole foods) out of my diet is pretty easy.

I think that my head is going to explode!

The 'Oses'.
You are probably familiar with; sucrose, fructose and glucose .  I have been reading up one the properties of each.  In my head I think of them as the three stooges, read on, it will make sense.

Sucrose (common table sugar): is broken down in the stomach, by a process called "acidic hydrolysis" into glucose and fructose.  Turns out that their are two forms of fructose.  Monosaccharide (free fructose) or as a disaccharide (sucrose).  Fuck me! these bastards are going in a fucking circle!   Your body will readily absorb "Free" fructose and use it as fuel.  When the disaccharide version of fructose, which is really sucrose hits your small intestine some fucking enzyme cleaves it into one part glucose and.... wait for it... it's coming... one part fructose!  This 2,347,817th version of fructose gets spat out of your intestine through the portal vein and sent to the liver, where it gets turned into fat.  But wait!  it gets better!  I got this next bit from the British Medical Journal:  In order for the liver to process fructose, it must be phosphorylated by removal of phosphates from adenosine triphosphate.  The adenosine triphosphate gets converted into adenosine monophosphate, and then into inisotol monophosphate, and were not dot quite yet...finally into uric acid.  Too much uric acid and you get Gout.


So, what did I get out of all that?  A headache.   Actually I think that I may have a tiny grasp of what's going on.


There are two types of fructose, monosaccharide (free fructose) and disaccharide (sucrose).  Free fructose walks on through the small intestine unscathed and is then easily absorbed by the large intestine.  Sucrose walks in to the small intestine and promptly gets mugged by a bully an enzyme called sucrase (NOT sucrose) in the small intestine, where it is split in two.  One unit of glucose which you body can use and one unit of fructose, which some fucking reason I still don't get, it gets kicked out of the small intestine via the portal vein before it could get to the large intestine.  It then gets sent to the principals office liver where it gets detention stored as fat... and uric acid.


Fruc, gluc and suc (sounds kinda dirty when I put it that way!)can all be present in a food, in varying levels.


So, the sugar found in your sugar bowl and soda can will make you fat.  The sugars found in fruits and vegetables are better for you...unless (you knew this had to be coming) your a guy and your triglycerides are high, then you may not want to go on an all fruit diet.  As apparently; "fructose can produce much higher fasting plasma triglycerides when compared to glucose".


Aw...come on!  This is more fucked up than a football bat!


I just found this:


Says Meira Field, Ph.D., a research chemist at United States Department of Agriculture, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic." While a few other tissues (eg, sperm cells and some intestinal cells) do use fructose directly, fructose is almost entirely metabolized in the liver.


BOOM! That was the sound of my head exploding!  


Heres what I'm going to do: (once I clean up the blood and brains, which are splattered all  over my office)


I'm going to stay away from fruit flavored vodka.  That shit must be a double whammy!


Until next time...


Bald Bill
P.S. I did lose two pounds last week.