Hansel and Gretel Had It Easy

We have all read, seen or listened to some variation of Hansel & Gretel from the Brothers Grimm. A witch lives in a deep forest luring children with an edible house and sweet treats hoping to fatten them up for her cannibalistic urges. The children turn the tables as befits fairy tale heroes and get out alive.

Well, according to the newest research from Princeton University published officially in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior1 and for the mass market in Science Daily2, Hansel and Gretel would be even fatter, slower and more lethargic eating today’s sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup because the weight gain from HFCS is far greater than ordinary sucrose. This would put the outcome of tricking the witch into her own oven in doubt.

HFCS is a corn derivative that typically has 55-percent fructose, 42-glucose and 3-percent other larger sugars. It is cheaper than sucrose in the United States where it is easier to grow corn than sugar cane or sugar beets. Sucrose is a naturally occurring blend of equally balanced fructose and glucose. HFCS replaced sucrose in the early 1970s and the rate of obesity as a population percentage has doubled from 15 to 33-percent since then according to CDC figures cited by Science Daily.

The researchers conducted two experiments. One compared male rats eating rat chow and HFCS water to similar rats eating rat chow and sucrose flavored water. The weight gain was described as “much for the rats eating the HFCS water. Thereally interesting fact about this study: the sucrose water was highly concentrated at levels similar to the few sodas sweetened with sucrose still in the US marketplace, but the HFCS water was half the concentration of the typical HFCS soda.

The second study lasting six months looked at high fructose corn syrup versus water. Here the rats ballooned up with 48-percent weight gains over rats just eating food and unsweetened water. The researchers described the high-fructose corn syrup rats as obese.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” researcher Miriam Bocarsly reported. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.”

The researchers speculated on the reasons why HFCS might be more fattening than sucrose. Apparently, fructose molecules in sucrose are bound to glucose molecules and take longer to hit the bloodstream than the fructose in HFCS, which aren’t bound to anything. The researchers also mentioned that fructose seems to be processed in the liver into fat, while sucrose is metabolized by insulin from the pancreas and is more readily used as an energy source.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” says psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese—every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”3

The researchers cite previous research articles that show fructose affects hormones like leptin that work with insulin to control satiety, the feeling of being full.

This excerpt from the abstract says it all – “The combined effects of lowered circulating leptin and insulin in individuals who consume diets that are high in dietary fructose could therefore increase the likelihood of weight gain and its associated metabolic sequelae. In addition, fructose, compared with glucose, is preferentially metabolized to lipid in the liver.”4

Not feeling full induces more eating. In the meantime, we can imagine Hansel and Gretel being fed soda and other fructose-laden foods and winding up in the witch’s meat pie. End of story.

Sources for this Article:

1. Bocarsly, ME, et al. “High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristic of obesity in rats:
2. sciencedaily.com viewed 3/30/2010
3. sciencedaily.com viewed 3/30/2010
4. Elliott, SS, et al. “Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.” Am J
5. Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels.” Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.pbb.2010.02.012
6. Clin Nutr. 2002 Nov;76(5):911-22.

Healthy Cooking Methods

How healthy are the various cooking methods? The answer depends on what you cook and how you cook it. If your idea of a healthy main course is blackened fish, crispy fried chicken, or caramelized ribs, you’ve probably never heard of advanced Glycated End Products (also known as advanced glycated end products).

Advanced glycated end products, which were discovered by Louis Maillard in 1912, are a class of chemical byproducts that result from the combination of protein and sugar (usually glucose) when food is cooked by excessive heat.1

Advanced glycated end products can also be formed by the body when too much refined sugar is eaten and elevated blood sugar levels are maintained for too long a time. And food manufacturers intentionally increase the number of advanced glycated end products in food, either by adding sugar or by browning food elements.

Advanced glycated end products aren’t to be confused with glycoproteins, even though they share the same building blocks. A glycoprotein forms when glucose and proteins bind using the normal digestive enzymes with which we all come equipped. This process presupposes gently cooked food and moderate sugar intake from whole fruits and vegetables and very little or no refined sugar. Glycoproteins are part of how the body feeds itself. Advanced glycated end products are something else entirely.

Humans evolved eating raw food and food cooked slowly over a small open flame. Today we cook food quickly and at high heat by flash heating, microwaving, deep-frying, and barbecuing. All of these methods form advanced glycated end products, which are difficult to metabolize and nearly indestructible.

Our immune system reacts to advanced glycated end products as foreign bodies. When our diet is inundated with advanced glycated end products, the immune system is overworked and becomes exhausted, which may lead to allergies or disease. advanced glycated end products spur the release of cytokines, which are part of the inflammatory process. Cytokines collect in the joints of people with arthritis. Another interesting fact about advanced glycated end products and inflammation is that free radical production is nearly five times greater with glycated protein compared to regular protein.4

Not all cooking methods are created equal. Studies have shown that boiling, steaming, or any method involving water tends to greatly limit the number of advanced glycated end products that form. Turning down the heat and extending the cooking time can also create fewer advanced glycated end products than other methods.

There are two different temperature ranges to be aware of: the heat labile point around 245° F and the much lower advanced glycated end products threshold between 120° F and 180° F. The heat labile point applies to fats and proteins that change chemically without the presence of sugar and has similar health risk as the advanced glycated end products discussed here.

How to Avoid Advanced Glycated End Products

• Turn down the heat and extend the cooking time
• Stop eating sugar (The average American eats 140 pounds of sugar per year.3)
• Cook with water (boil, steam and poach)
• Avoid processed foods which are likely to have sugar or browned food elements
• Drink green tea (Recent studies have shown that green tea help remove advanced glycated end products from your body.4)

The following is a small sample of diseases and conditions that can be helped by limiting advanced glycated end products either by changing how we cook or cutting out the sugar:

• Inflammation
• Aging
• Diabetes
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Macular Degeneration
• Hypertension
• Arthritis
• Kidney Disease

This list is not inclusive, but is just enough for all of us to be mindful that how we cook our food is at least as important as what foods we eat.

Eating raw can help a person be healthier, but it can be a hard choice. In some cases, cooking is necessary for economic reasons like extending the shelf life of food. For example, cooking turns stale bread into toast, which tastes the same regardless of how fresh the bread was. Striking the balance between killing off pathogens in poorly stored raw food and overcooking has always been delicate. And for many people the practice of cooking is so ingrained in their culture that eating raw food is unthinkable.  So if you must cook, cook gently.

1.  “Effects of High Temperatures on Meats.” Food and Chemical Toxicology Apr 1985:23(12).
2. Mullarkey, CJ., et al. “Free Radical Generation by Early Gycation Products: A Mechanism for Acceleration of Arthogenesis in Diabetes.”

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• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases
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Is stevia a good sugar replacement? Yes, up to a point. Sugar addicted people must stop and heal before switching to stevia.
Stevia, a plant-extract originally from Central and South America, has been used as a sweetener for several centuries. It has been described alternately as either 30 or 300 times as sweet as sugar. Stevia has slowly gained popularity as an alternative to sugar; it was initially marketed in the US as a dietary supplement, and only recently as a sweetener. Stevia has slowly gained popularity as an alternative to sugar, even though it wasn’t marketed until recently.

One would think a food or drug is either safe or not, right? As of September 2009, the Food and Drug Administration has given support to two stevia products, Truvia and Purevia, for use as a sweetener in sodas and other drinks. What changed the stance of a government organization that used a 1985 study that described stevia as a mutagenic agent in the liver (possibly carcinogenic)?

Apparently, Coca-Cola and other large manufacturers of drinks and sodas have twisted the arms of some regulators, because as more people grasp Sugar Bad, Stevia Good, Big Soda needs to give the people soda that appears healthy in order to keep up sales. Trust a corporation to turn something potentially helpful in moderation into something you still shouldn’t consume.

No soda is safe to drink. The primary culprit after sugar is phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is an industrial solvent used to clean toilets and kill insects. Putting the amount of phosphorus from one soda into your body damages the calcium-phosphorus ratio.

Truvia will eventually be stuffed into the rainbow of packets on the table at our favorite eateries. Presently that rainbow includes white (sugar or sucrose), blue (aspartame), pink (saccharin) and yellow (sucralose). For purely aesthetic reasons how about green for Truvia?

However, don’t eat stevia from these Truvia packs because it will be mixed with dextrose or maltodextrin as the first ingredient (largest amount) in each pack, as is the case with the other colors in the bin. These are sugar derivatives that willadulterate whatever is good and useful about stevia. Mixing good things with bad things only ruins the food value of the beneficial.

So, what is so good about stevia that we actually are cautiously optimistic about the eventual release of small bags of pure stevia powder in the supermarket for use in baking, coffee, grapefruit and lemonade? Well, despite the ignominious beginning to stevia as a sweetener, a study that had been described as being “able to classify distilled water as a mutagen”, enough people have used the product now that there are health studies that show benefits for many diseases.

A study published in 2000 gave stevioside (stevia’s active ingredient) to 60 hypertension patients with a placebo group of 49. Results described as significant for reducing blood pressure supplemented similar animal studies.¹

Stevia’s reputed limited effect on blood glucose naturally led to diabetes studies. A Denmark study took blood glucose readings from 12 type-2 diabetes patients before eating stevia or cornstarch with their meals and a couple of hours later. The stevia group showed blood glucose levels at least 18-percent less than the starch group, leading to the possibility that diabetes patients have finally found the sweetener that will allow them to have their sweet cake and eat it, too.²

But after the FDA has spent many years trying to keep stevia out of the U.S. marketplace, we should ask if there are any side effects. A study conducted by the Burdock Group generally supports the safety of stevia, finding no adverse effects in rats at the massive doses such studies use to determine carcinogenic or mutagen properties of foods.³

And so we give stevia qualified support because while almost no information has surfaced to say that this sweetener hurts people, we realize that the weak link in any health plan is the patient. Many of us are unlikely to moderate our consumption of stevia because we just have to have ice cream, chocolate cake, or soda. Too much of a good thing isn’t good. But, on the range of things that are sweet but not named sugar, stevia is a great start.

1 Chan, P, et al “A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study of the Effectiveness and Tolerability of Oral Stevioside in Human Hypertension” Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2000 September; 50(3): 215–220. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2125.2000.00260.x

2 Gregersen S, et al. “Antihyperglycemic Effects of  Stevioside in Type-2 Diabetic Subjects.” Metabolism 2004 Jan;53(1):73-76

3 Williams LD, Burdock GA “Genotoxicity Studies on a High-Purity Rebauside A Preparation.” Food Chem Toxicol. 2009 Aug;47(8):1831-1836

Alzheimer’s. The word conjures up an image of a forgetful or confused elder. While this image is accurate for the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease, later stages are devastating. Alzheimer’s is a progressive, fatal brain disease that destroys every faculty, robbing its victims of dignity, personality, and cognitive abilities. In the late stages of the disease, victims lose control of bladder and bowel, the ability to feed themselves, and all ability to communicate.

There is no accepted singular cause of this disease and there is no known cure. There isn’t even a definitive diagnosis until post mortem dissection reveals an abundance of tell-tale plaques (deposits between nerve cells) and tangles (twisted fibers of proteins that develop within dying cells). Scientists have not determined whether these plaques and tangles cause Alzheimer’s or visa-versa. All they do know is that there is a definite correlation between Alzheimer’s and their occurrence as well as the amount of inflammation and brain shrinkage present. All of these changes occur as a part of normal aging, but in the case of Alzheimer’s, the changes are extreme.

More than 35 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease; 5.3 million are Americans.  The latest National Vital Statistics Report prepared by the CDC reports Alzheimer’s disease to be the 7th leading cause of death, while other reports place it as number 5.

Alzheimer’s is usually associated with advancing age, beginning at 65. By age 85, 45% of the population exhibits memory deficits indicative of the disease. Life expectancy post diagnosis averages 6-10 years, though some have lived for 20 years.

As the population ages and life expectancy increases, we face a daunting challenge: how to care for the 115.4 million people we expect to suffer from Alzheimer’s by 2050.¹

The Alzheimer’s Association website lists “Alzheimer’s Myths,” among them the suggestion that aluminum, Aspartame, flu shots, or mercury fillings are causal factors.  However, ongoing research is still investigating some of these possible causes.

The Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation reports that “aluminum does turn up in higher amounts than normal in some autopsy studies of Alzheimer’s patients, but not in all, and the aluminum found in some studies may have come from substances used in the laboratory to study brain tissue.” They conclude that scientists are still uncertain about the role aluminum plays in Alzheimer’s disease. ²

The Alzheimer’s Disease Research of the American Health Assistance Foundation is not ready to dismiss the metal connection, either. “Metals have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, although it is unlikely that any are the sole cause. For example, interest in a possible connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease arose over 40 years ago, and the toxicity of aluminum has been the subject of much controversy since that time. However, aluminum has never been proven to be a direct cause of Alzheimer’s, and increasingly, evidence shows that Alzheimer’s disease is likely caused not by one, but by a combination of factors.”

Some studies show zinc levels are too low—some show they are too high. Some show a correlation to electro-magnetic exposure. Infant monkeys exposed to low levels of lead had higher levels of Alzheimer’s disease-related genes, elevated amyloid-beta levels and greater Alzheimer’s disease-like pathology in their frontal cortex. There is a correlation between Alzheimer’s and traumatic head injuries, type 2 diabetes, diet, education levels, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, elevated homocysteine levels, inflammation,and oxidative damage (which is caused by free radicals).

Recent studies suggest a lifestyle that includes a low-fat, antioxidant-rich diet high in vitamins E and C (especially when the vitamin E comes from foods, not supplements) promotes a healthier brain. B vitamins are also essential to control homocysteine levels. Studies also show the importance of exercising the brain.

Genetics also play a role. Early onset Alzheimer’s, though rare, does run in families and up to 50% of the cases are linked to genetic defects (in 3 separate genes). The typical late onset Alzheimer’s also appears to have genetic links that affect the age of onset, though carrying the gene is not a sure indicator that the disease will develop.

Once again, do we need a study to tell us that toxic heavy metals known to cause brain damage and neurological damage are bad for the brain? No, we don’t.

If you haven’t as yet thrown out your aluminum cookware, boil water in an aluminum pan. Now pour the cooled water into a clear glass. Do you really want to drink that gray water? Cover a dish of spaghetti sauce with aluminum foil and make sure the foil touches the sauce. Leave it for a day and notice how the acidity of the tomatoes ate holes in the foil, dissolving aluminum into your food. Do you still want to eat it? Do you really want to cook with aluminum foil? Do you want to be injected with a vaccine containing mercury or aluminum? Do you want to eat fish contaminated with mercury?

Our brain is first and foremost an organ of the body. It requires good, healthy nutrition and as few toxins as possible in order to function well. Studies are showing definite correlation between diet and brain health as well as toxicity and brain health. So once again, don’t eat processed food.  You don’t need it. You body doesn’t want it. It isn’t good for you. Detox. Eat well. Exercise your body. And don’t forget to exercise your brain.

1 PR Newswire, More Than 35 Million People Have Alzheimer’s and Dementia Worldwide, According To New Report

2 Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation

Restricted Calorie Diet

How many times did your mother tell you to eat up because kids living in a place you weren’t going to visit anyway were starving? How many times did you respond by saying, “Why don’t you send this plate to Ethiopia?” Believe it or not, the child’s wish to not eat is sometimes more nutritionally appropriate than the mother’s position.

According to the results of a long-term rhesus monkey study from Wisconsin, modest reductions in daily calories can help primates live longer and healthier. The monkeys were divided into normal and reduced calorie diet groups. Apparently, 37 percent of the monkeys in the regular group died of age-related conditions as opposed to 13 percent of the dieting group. The research is not over, but there is an indication that a very healthy diet of fewer calories might add years to your life.

The researchers reduced the dieting monkeys’ calorie intake by 30 percent, but took steps to make sure that all necessary nutrients were still consumed. The calorie-cut monkeys didn’t just live longer; they had approximately half the heart disease and cancerous tumors of the non-dieting group. Additionally, the rates of diabetes and brain atrophy, conditions associated with aging, were greatly reduced in the dieting group.1

We, at Nancy Appleton Books, applaud this research with both cheers and a “We told you so.” We have commented on food intake and other aspects of our diet making us fat, especially in our recent book Suicide by Sugar.

A sedentary lifestyle, going from bed to work in front of a screen to entertainment in front of another screen and back to bed, leads to lack of exercise and overeating. Too often, people living this lifestyle eat processed foods that are high in sugars, especially fructose. Fructose triggers hunger2 which feeds a vicious cycle of eating more and more, making people fat and unhealthy. Our position has always been to cut back on sugar and preservatives in favor of whole foods, which represents the kind of caloric reductions mentioned in the Wisconsin monkey study.

What the average person reading this article needs to know before applying a 30 percent daily calorie reduction to his or her diet is what is in the monkey chow normally fed to the primates in captivity. Rhesus monkeys in the wild eat insects, fruit, worms, leaves and roots, usually after exerting some energy to get the food. We have it directly from the Wisconsin researchers that the “animals ate a semi-purified, well-defined pelleted diet consisting of 15 percent protein (lactalbumin), 10 percent fat (corn oil) that also contains sucrose, corn starch, dextrin, cellulose and a vitamin and mineral mix. In addition, each animal receives a piece of fresh fruit (~100 kcal) daily.”

At this point, we need to refer the reader to experiments conducted on cats by Francis Pottenger Jr., MD, between the 1930s and 1980s that show how the modern processed diet is in and of itself a cause for alarm.

Pottenger’s cats were given a diet of raw milk, cod liver, and either raw or cooked meat. The cooked meat cats showed generations of abnormalities that, left alone, killed off the cat breeding after three generations and took four generations of a proper diet to heal in the cat offspring.3 While it is true that subsequent replication studies suggest a taurine deficiency more than cooking as the cause of the symptoms shown by Pottenger’s cats, which included heart disease, bad vision, lack of balance, and wild variations in birth weight, there is some link between our diet and the symptoms we feel.4

Pottenger’s cats apply to the monkey study in this way: the standard captive monkey diet already has a lot of fat, heart disease and other ailments built in. Making a 30 percent cut in this non-whole foods diet will help because a lot of sugar is being cut out and every little bit helps. More research is obviously needed to see if monkeys and humans would benefit as much from calorie reduction when they go on a diet of more whole foods than not, or if these primate studies just tell us to cut the sugar, excess carbohydrates, preservatives, and other time bombs in our diet to achieve the same effect.

Another minor issue in applying the monkey study to our diet is the distressing fact that portion sizes in human meals keepincreasing. Some food items, like chocolate chip cookies, increased 700 percent between 1982 and 2002.5 We need to find out which year to use in setting an appropriate base meal size, because while any reduction from a high-calorie diet is an improvement, it represents a false hope if the underlying average meal size continues to grow.

However, while there are holes left to fill concerning sugar and carbohydrates, the first bit of research on overeating and longevity is in. Eating a little less without depriving yourself of nutrients will go a long way to extending your life and making you healthier. But there are no magic pills for your health, says Dr. David Finkelstein of the National Institute of Aging, a funding source for the Wisconsin study.

“Watch what you eat, keep your mind active, exercise and don’t get hit by a car,” Finkelstein says.

Sources:

1. Coleman, RJ, Et. Al. “Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys” Science 325;(5937): 201-204
2. Tannous, dit El Khoury D. et. al. “Variations in Postprandial Ghrelin Status Following Ingestion of High-Carbohydrate, High-Fat and High-Protein Meals in Males.” Annals of

Just say the words gonads, testosterone or any of the unprintable slang associated with testicles, sex, and male virility and you’ll get a laugh or at least amused looks. Now, say those words again, but in a context that says, “You’re going to lose that capability, son,” and watch what happens. The collective scream you hear is shrill enough to replace the air raid sirens America abandoned in the 1980s.

New research so fresh that it hasn’t yet appeared in a journal article says flat out that eating sugar reduces testosterone levels in the blood by up to 25 percent across the board. The researchers found 74 men at Massachusetts General Hospital with a range of tolerances to glucose (42 normal blood sugar, 23 impaired glucose tolerance “prediabetic” and 9 actually with Type-2 Diabetes) and gave them 75g of a glucose solution. In many cases, the effect lasted at least 2 hours after ingestion and affected all types of men in the study. Of 66 men listed as having normal testosterone levels in a fasting state before the test, 10 developed a hypogonadal (low testosterone) state at some point during the two hours of the test.ⁱ

The actual intent of the research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Diabetes Association was to refine testing methods for low testosterone levels. Current methodology says to test the man in the morning on two different days and get an average reading to see if the man is truly hypogondal or if the low testosterone will pick up later. So far, no one has said that a man should fast before taking the blood test—until now.

The link between sugar, insulin, obesity, diabetes, the metabolic syndrome and testosterone levels had been touched on in other research that has come out recently. Only these researchers worked backwards relative to this new study; they took people with known elements of the metabolic syndrome (diabetes, obesity, and heart disease) and tested their testosterone levels. Many subjects had low testosterone.

In recent research conducted in Berlin, the conclusion read in part “Lower total testosterone and sex-hormone-binding-globulin (SHBG) predict a higher incidence of the metabolic syndrome…Administration of testosterone to hypogondal men reverses the unfavorable risk profile for the development of diabetes and atherosclerosis.”ⁱⁱ

In Finland where similar research is regularly conducted the researchers came up with this gem: “Low total testosterone and SHBG levels independently predict development of the metabolic syndrome and diabetes in middle-aged men. Thus, hypoandrogenism (hypogondal) is an early marker for disturbances in insulin and glucose metabolism that may progress to the metabolic syndrome or frank diabetes.” ⁱⁱⁱ

It seems that these previous studies were waiting for someone else to have a “The Emperor Seems Naked” moment and try out the inverse of their results in which you give sugar to mostly healthy people and see what happens. No longer should low testosterone be considered just a symptom of the metabolic syndrome, but as what both are…a result of too much sugar in our diet.

We at Nancy Appleton Books have already touched on sugar causing the metabolic syndrome in previous articles like 140 Reasons Why Sugar Ruins Your Health. In it we make simple declarative statements about many of sugar’s ill effects:

• Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.iv
• Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.viii
• Sugar can lead to obesity.v
• Sugar can cause heart disease.vii
• Sugar can cause metabolic
• syndrome.viii

One way sugar lowers testosterone is through its effect on the adrenal glands.ix
Sugar taxes the adrenal glands and these glands interrelate with the sex hormone glands (testes and ovaries) that produce testosterone and estrogen.^x

These ailments listed above are elements of and highly associated with the metabolic syndrome, which we have linked to the excessive intake of sugar. The research in Massachusetts says that sugar causes low testosterone. Similar research around the world says that low testosterone is highly associated with the various elements of the metabolic syndrome. So how many times do we have to enjoy the circular logic before we simply say that sugar causes both the low testosterone and the ailments in the metabolic syndrome? Put more simply, sugar kills in a multitude of ways and this one affects men where they really live, in the bedroom.

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No Sweeteners for You, and that Includes Agave!

We get asked about every new sweetener put out by the purveyors of unhealthy sweetness. Agave nectar or syrup is the most recent. Put a gun to our heads and we’ll tell you not to eat it. Actually, we’ll do that without the pistol and dramatics. We’re quite consistent that way.

Whole foods have fiber, vitamins, and nutrients that enrich the body and in some cases slow down the sugar hit that comes from glucose and fructose. When a naturally sugary food like an apple or a generous hunk of agave cactus is processed into a syrup or nectar, everything good about the whole food is lost in the production vat.

In the specific case of agave, the debate comes down to whether glucose or fructose is more harmful to the body. Natural agave, the plant from which tequila is derived, is approximately half and half glucose to fructose. The nectar or syrup appears primarily to be all fructose, according to published statistics from agave distributors.

Now, is fructose better for you than glucose or sucrose? If you listen to the fructose manufacturers and some diabetes experts, then yes, fructose is better for you. Fructose doesn’t raise glucose levels in the bloodstream, which means there is less of an insulin response and a consequent benefit to diabetics because insulin Agave Plant management is the name of the game.

But is spiking up on fructose any better for anyone whether diabetic or not? We say No! And we’re not alone. Fructose has been linked to raised triglycerides, fatty liver disease, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and more belly fat, which can all be collected together as Metabolic Syndrome.

Agave seems to have other drawbacks as well. The first one that sets our teeth on edge is the fact that agave nectar you buy might not actually be agave nectar.

According to the Chicago Tribune, products labeled as being from the blue agave plant …may in fact be mostly corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup. may, in fact, be mostly corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup. Tequila manufacturers get first call on the expensive blue agave cactus that grows in Mexico. There are strict requirements for tequila to come from the blue agave in the same way the German Beer Purity Law says beer must be made from wheat or barley, hops, water, and fermenting yeast. So, when supply did not meet demand, some nectar producers cut what agave they had with similar corn-based fructose.

“Agave is really chemically refined hydrolyzed high-fructose syrup and not from the blue agave plant, organic or raw, asclaimed,” says Russ Bianchi, a food and beverage formulator.

So far the Food and Drug Administration sees no reason to regulate agave for any safety concerns, but admits that agave products may have been “economically adulterated and misbranded by adding corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup.”

The Chicago Tribune also reports some less well-documented effects of agave nectar consumption that may be a concern. Apparently, some agave products and other sweeteners may have botulism spores and thus shouldn’t be given to small children. There are assertions that agave may cause miscarriages and/or other harm to pregnant or lactating mothers, and agave, like many other sugary products, has also been linked to increased acne.

Agave does have some possible health benefits touted by its proponents. As stated, glucose levels aren’t raised. Agave is loaded with inulin, a complex sub-variant of fructose, which is broken down by friendly bacteria to make fatty acids that may fight colon cancer. Additionally, agave may have some anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. But, these effects are hotly debated.

“It’s almost all fructose, highly processed sugar with great marketing,” says Dr. Ingrid Kohlstadt of the American College of Nutrition and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. “Fructose interferes with healthy metabolism when taken at higher doses. Many people have fructose intolerance like lactose intolerance. They get acne or worse diabetes symptoms even though blood glucose is OK.”

Even some agave proponents like Dave Grotto, a Registered Dietician and author of101 Foods that Could Save Your Life, will admit that “excess consumption of any sweetener is not wise. But, honey and agave are value-added sweeteners, if used moderately.”

If the best the pro-agave people can come up with for their product is “use in moderation,” we should translate that statement into “avoid as much as possible.” If sugar, fructose, honey, agave, and other sweeteners can lead to addiction, then how is the average person to know what in moderation actually means? How much is too much before a small dose of agave that may help with cancer and inflammation becomes a mainline hit of fructose to the bloodstream and liver?

Limit yourself to less than two teaspoons a day for any refined sweetener to avoid the many related health effects. We live in the same world you do, and we understand about occasionally falling off the wagon. But remember that any sweetener removed from its natural state is a refined sweetener that should be avoided as much as possible. Agave is no different. Now you know.