Attempting to Get Around Added Sugars

[KSK]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

In that case: Its not that you're drinking water, its that you're sweating and losing water AND minerals.

Drinking plain water solves the water loss problem, but not the mineral loss. That is why gatorade was developed ("Its got electrolytes!" - I hope people get this reference  ).

*snip*

If you aren't sweating, you don't need to replace lost sodium, and most food has more than enough. If you aren't doing something that rapidly dehydrates you, then plain water is fine, and you don't need glucose enhanced uptake of water and sodium to replenish your water/sodium stores at a faster rate.

Not sure of the details but potassium loss can be a problem too I think. The Apollo astronauts (may as well throw a space travel reference in here.  ) suffered from electrolyte imbalance due to excessive sweating. The solution was to give them potassium spiked orange juice to drink, although apparently it tasted pretty bad and was blamed for certain gastric problems. As you can probably imagine, farts in confined spaces (like lunar landers) weren't popular.

[Razorforce7]

I'm a vegan and consequently get a low sugar intake since I use to never buy processed food of any kind.
I wasn't always Vegan and had a habit of eating quite a few bacon burgers during my life and other such non vegan fattening dishes.

Since I became vegan a healthier lifestyle direction was to be expanded by quitting sodas among other unhealthy foods.
Since then I have developed a distaste for refined sugars in any product. It gets a over sensitive sugary and fake food taste.  I sure can swallow it like a redbull for instance but it's all very grose now.

Not saying you should do what I did. But your taste buds resentisize if you quit intense flavours like sugars. If you can quit all those sugary products including what you put in your tea or coffee theres a good change you won't like sugar anymore like I do.

[steve_v]

3 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

While eating loads of sugar almost certainly isn't great for you, I'd always advise caution on blaming it for the increase in "western diseases".

Often, these diseases, heart disease, cancer, dementia, are paradoxically symptoms of a healthy population. As in, if you live long enough to get cancer, it means you haven't already been killed by an infectious disease, or malnutrition, or any of the million and one other preventable things that still kill people on a daily basis in the developing world.

Well, the elephant in the room (AFAIAC) is type 2 diabetes. You can't blame sugar for every "western disease", but this one appears to be primarily a malfunction in the mechanisms controlling sugar metabolism... I'd be pretty surprised if dietary sugar intake had nothing to do with it.
The real problem is a lack of long-term studies, there's just no control group available since sugar is everywhere, and conducting such a study would take an inordinately long time - symptoms typically take decades to appear.
At this point the vast majority of the information available is just speculation, or small studies of dubious quality (often with serious conflict of interest issues).
Without good quality data... Who knows?

 

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Not sure of the details but potassium loss can be a problem too I think.

It sure can. Potassium balance is critical to nerve function - and ergo heart function.

 

1 hour ago, Razorforce7 said:

your taste buds resentisize if you quit intense flavours like sugars

That they do. Same goes for curry

Edited April 13, 2017 by steve_v
This editor is horse****.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Razorforce7 said:

Not saying you should do what I did. But your taste buds resentisize if you quit intense flavours like sugars. If you can quit all those sugary products including what you put in your tea or coffee theres a good change you won't like sugar anymore like I do.

Yes I've heard that if you can stick it out for just 3 or 4 cups without sugar, you never take your coffee sweet again.

Its our damned efficient evolutionary history. We have been conditioned to find calories tasty, no matter where they come from, its no mystery why fatty and sugary foods are so tasty to so many, because back in the day, calories = survival, and being able to taste which foods had them was a great advantage. I mean, I presume...

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

In the case of gatorade, high sugar content makes some sense. A common low cost treatment for diarrhea in 3rd world countries is the so called "Oral Rehydration Therapy" - people also lose a lot of water and minerals when suffering from diarrhea. The treatment is to give them what is essentially gatorade until the bout of diarrhea is over.

I doubt they bother to tell all the locals (presumably starting with kids at school) that they are performing "oral rehydration therapy".  What gets hammered on is "a pinch of salt, a fist of sugar, a liter of water" to treat diarrhea.  It is one of the biggest successes (especially in terms of lives saved/cost) in infant mortality.

Good luck looking for things with less sugar (I should do it myself).  First, I'd recommend that anything that says "no extra sugar" probably has substitutes you really don't want (this goes true for any fad "witchless" food, for all "burn the witch" fads).  Second I'd look for replacing carbs and other processed foods with non-processed proteins.  Changing from heavily sugared (even the non-kiddie stuff is loaded with sugar) cereals to eggs was a no-brainer.

[Razorforce7]

51 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Yes I've heard that if you can stick it out for just 3 or 4 cups without sugar, you never take your coffee sweet again.

Its our damned efficient evolutionary history. We have been conditioned to find calories tasty, no matter where they come from, its no mystery why fatty and sugary foods are so tasty to so many, because back in the day, calories = survival, and being able to taste which foods had them was a great advantage. I mean, I presume...

Ageed, although it took me more then 3 - 4 cups
Also, food is money, you can't deny that. So markets and industries have incentive to keep selling. And if sugars and fats make people buy more food, then that's what they add to them.
The only thing you can do is make personal decisions and when you do those markets will change with it.
 

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Not sure of the details but potassium loss can be a problem too I think. The Apollo astronauts (may as well throw a space travel reference in here.  ) suffered from electrolyte imbalance due to excessive sweating. The solution was to give them potassium spiked orange juice to drink, although apparently it tasted pretty bad and was blamed for certain gastric problems. As you can probably imagine, farts in confined spaces (like lunar landers) weren't popular.

It can be, but potassium is mainly intracellular, whereas sodium is mainly extracellular. Sweat, being an extracellular fluid, contains much more sodium than potassium.

Proportionately speaking, you'll lose a greater % of your sodium reserves than your potassium reserves when sweating.... Of course... in theory, you could lick your own sweat after it has dried...

I used to run a lot, and I'd have salty deposits on me after running, particularly on my brow/face... when first showering... I could taste that the water coming off of my head was salty... also... this may be a bit gross but... my cat liked to lick my skin when there was a lot of salt from dried sweat...

I didn't worry much about eating too much, or having too much sodium in my diet back then... running 10 miles a day in a semi-arid climate (California... not some humid place where the sweat just stick to you and doesn't really evaporate) resulted in secreting a lot of salt...

I loved to eat chips and salsa afterwards... particularly spicy salsa that encouraged drinking a lot of ice water. Chips(mostly carbs)-> replenish glycogen, salt on chips-> replenish lost salts, spicy salsa + water = drink a lot of water -> replenish lost water.

[p1t1o]

Ooh, I have a fact!

Your kidneys are quite efficient. It is said that half a kidney can keep a person almost as healthy as 2 whole ones (not literally cut in half, obvs) that is how much spare capacity they have. Presumably a result of the many different types of environment we evolved in.

If you drink a lot of water, say the mythical "8 glasses", then in order to maintain your water balance, your kidneys have to remove a fair amount of water and they get used to doing this over the long term. This means that a person who drinks 8 glasses a day *needs* 8 glasses a day.

If you drink less, you need less. There is no detriment.

Professional people who go to very hot places with little water (like a remote desert or whatever), will prepare by intentionally reducing their water intake in the weeks/months leading up to the trip, this reduces their kidneys tendency to eliminate water, otherwise, a significant amount of water is lost from your body just by urinating.

You do not need to "flush" your body with large amounts of water to "remove toxins", as mentioned previously, your kidneys are very efficient at doing this already. Your kidneys are capable of producing quite a concentrated urine (precisely to conserve water) and anything less than this means you are getting enough water. Barring any dysfunction of course. That they eliminate more water when you drink more, is because you are drinking more water than your body needs, or in other words *too much water*. It *is* possible to overwhelm your kidneys with water and poison yourself, and though this is quite difficult to do, people have died from this.

You can produce an LD50 or a lethal dosage for water, but the variability of circumstances is great. In general, drinking 2-3 litres of water in one go/in a short space of time can be harmful, but in practice this is pretty hard to do, and if you were already dehydrated/ing, the amount increases.

[Green Baron]

Less water in hot places only works for a few days. Sorry if that sounds like a correction, but the real professionals take a lot of water in dry places, because after a longer stay they would return with kidney stones. Very painful that. It is true that the urge to drink might sink in a desert climate, but this is indeed dangerous for the health of the affected person. Some people must be forced to drink water in the desert, when they start to fantasize. Amount of water can rise to 4 or more liters a day in hot and dry climate, or when working hard in the sun.

Btw., there is already of course a correlation between warmer climate and rising kidney stone risk.

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by Green Baron

[Razorforce7]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

*snip*

You can produce an LD50 or a lethal dosage for water, but the variability of circumstances is great. In general, drinking 2-3 litres of water in one go/in a short space of time can be harmful, but in practice this is pretty hard to do, and if you were already dehydrated/ing, the amount increases.

This statement makes me wonder why these tankards at those beer fests have 1 gallon jugs that they gobble up in one go and don't die. In fact, in there it is the sport to drink as much liquid as possible. So if this kidney failure is supposed to happen due to excess drinking then it is at such places.

I admit that only the very hardcore acloholist do this but these characters exist make no mistake.
And we should also take into account the dehydration due to the alcohol itself.
Drinking events like that are quite common. I just wonder if they don't leave excess hydration out at the autopsy when somebody died of supposed alcohol poisoning, although that's pretty difficult to do with beer. Since alcohol converts into sugar your intake should be limited to a minumum, preferably stop booze altogether ofcourse. Although I must admit that I still like the taste of beer from time to time.

[Tex]

I've been reading comments here, and I'm very pleased as to the discussion that has come about as a result. As with most of my topics, perhaps I don't express myself perfectly as I mean to, and I'm certainly not trying to sound like some nut who looks at one documentary, decides there's an enormous problem, and does a complete drastic change as a result of it. Of course I'm attempting to research the sugar issue from all sides, and I'm certainly not looking for some sort of "super beverage" to replace soft drinks in my diet, I'm merely looking for alternatives that just so happen to taste good, or at least not bad. Water and tea, yes, but are there any other alternatives?

[Green Baron]

Oranges are 75 eurocent a kilo here on La Palma island ... so in the end i pay just the double compared to bottled filtered juice.

Really fresh juices ?

Depending on where you live, how about a small press and squeeze out the poor apples later in the year ? Make your own apple juice and maybe even wine ... ?

Edit: cancel the wine. Counterproductive for your goal ...

Edited April 13, 2017 by Green Baron

[YNM]

Regarding "drinking water wash ions/minerals" : I'd never consider just drinking water and not eating. True there's a form of fasting here called "mutih" in which you only eat enough (ie. a small portion of) white rice and drink (mineral / plain) water, often followed by those who feel have enough glucose or those with diabetes (but not that often, again), however for general consumption you should eat enough as well. Unless when fasting.

Lots of food provide ions / minerals : meats, or banana or some other fruit (I'm only truly aware of banana so far).

Juices... make one yourself when able, or buy in stalls where they only juiced it.

EDIT :

Kidney capacity : be careful with your organs - that's your body. You don't want to work long hours right ? So don't let it do that. Also, going to a hot, humid place means lots of sweat, so you should drink. Same applies when going to colder place - you'll end up urinating more often, so keeping hydrated is important.

Vegan : oh please, meat is an efficient way to cover things. Just don't eat the fatty parts and you're OK.

Edited April 13, 2017 by YNM

[Scotius]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Yes I've heard that if you can stick it out for just 3 or 4 cups without sugar, you never take your coffee sweet again.

Its our damned efficient evolutionary history. We have been conditioned to find calories tasty, no matter where they come from, its no mystery why fatty and sugary foods are so tasty to so many, because back in the day, calories = survival, and being able to taste which foods had them was a great advantage. I mean, I presume...

You presume correctly. Sweet and fatty are attractive to us, because usually they mean "Hey! Calories! Get them." to our body. Sour taste is also a pretty good indicator that food is unripe... or very much 'ripe' and spoiling. Bitter taste, which most people find repugnant, is a defence measure hammered into us by millions of years of evolution - many toxins have bitter taste. Now for umami...i got nothing

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Razorforce7 said:

This statement makes me wonder why these tankards at those beer fests have 1 gallon jugs that they gobble up in one go and don't die. In fact, in there it is the sport to drink as much liquid as possible. So if this kidney failure is supposed to happen due to excess drinking then it is at such places.

I admit that only the very hardcore acloholist do this but these characters exist make no mistake.
And we should also take into account the dehydration due to the alcohol itself.
Drinking events like that are quite common. I just wonder if they don't leave excess hydration out at the autopsy when somebody died of supposed alcohol poisoning, although that's pretty difficult to do with beer. Since alcohol converts into sugar your intake should be limited to a minumum, preferably stop booze altogether ofcourse. Although I must admit that I still like the taste of beer from time to time.

First off, this sort of thing can be dangerous, so much so that "excessive beer drinking" is listed as a cause of hyponatremia.

But you do have to do it to extreme excess. Like I said there is a lot of variability. Its not pure water for starters, so its osmotic potential is less than that of just water, then there is the urination which counters it a lot, then you may just possibly be a bit overweight if you enjoy chugging gallons of beer at a time, giving you a larger volume to dilute. And probably a million other details as well.

Its not a hard line though as in "drink a certain amount then you die", probably at some point you start feeling like poop which will hopefully discourage you from chugging too many more gallons of beer. It may even be responsible for a part of some hangovers at a low level, manifesting as low blood sugar and low electrolytes.

I would imagine that a severe drop in blood sugar/salts does contribute to some alcohol poisoning cases.

 

14 minutes ago, Scotius said:

You presume correctly. Sweet and fatty are attractive to us, because usually they mean "Hey! Calories! Get them." to our body. Sour taste is also a pretty good indicator that food is unripe... or very much 'ripe' and spoiling. Bitter taste, which most people find repugnant, is a defence measure hammered into us by millions of years of evolution - many toxins have bitter taste. Now for umami...i got nothing

Umami is "meaty" and is related to certain amino acids I believe, so its a telltale for delicious, delicious protein, another staple for survival!

Now combine umami with fatty and you have the reason why bacon is so...so good. So good. Honey glaze?! Forget about it!!

Ok now I am hungry for real.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Less water in hot places only works for a few days. Sorry if that sounds like a correction, but the real professionals take a lot of water in dry places, because after a longer stay they would return with kidney stones. Very painful that. It is true that the urge to drink might sink in a desert climate, but this is indeed dangerous for the health of the affected person. Some people must be forced to drink water in the desert, when they start to fantasize. Amount of water can rise to 4 or more liters a day in hot and dry climate, or when working hard in the sun.

Btw., there is already of course a correlation between warmer climate and rising kidney stone risk.

 

Oh I didnt mean intentionally reducing your water intake whilst in hot place. I mean training your body to eliminate water less rapidly before you go. Of course they take a lot of water because they will lose a lot in said hotness. If they didnt acclimatize beforehand though, they would need significantly more, and thus be at even more risk of stones/dehydration.

Mind you, Id wager that folk of this ilk are probably not the sort to give much credence to the "8 glasses" myth and probably dont have much aclimatising to do, esp. if they travel to hot places regularly.

 

PS: who drinks less water in hot places? Is that a thing?

Edited April 13, 2017 by p1t1o

[TheSaint]

51 minutes ago, Tex said:

I've been reading comments here, and I'm very pleased as to the discussion that has come about as a result. As with most of my topics, perhaps I don't express myself perfectly as I mean to, and I'm certainly not trying to sound like some nut who looks at one documentary, decides there's an enormous problem, and does a complete drastic change as a result of it. Of course I'm attempting to research the sugar issue from all sides, and I'm certainly not looking for some sort of "super beverage" to replace soft drinks in my diet, I'm merely looking for alternatives that just so happen to taste good, or at least not bad. Water and tea, yes, but are there any other alternatives?

As far as beverages go, try adding flavors to your water. Those Crystal Light beverage flavor packets aren't bad. Just plain old Kool-Aid is good too, and while it still has sugar it has way less sugar than soda does. I used to make my own iced tea and iced coffee by the gallon, back when I was single. Got out of the habit after I got married. Again, they weren't zero-sugar options, but they were way less than soda. And you don't necessarily have to do away with soda either, maybe just cut back on it. All-you-can-drink soda fountains are an option, not a mandate. Sometimes, depending on your personality, moderation and reduction can be a better strategy than cold-turkey abstinence.

And, if you want to reduce your sugar intake, you might want to expand your view beyond just your beverages. If you look at most processed/pre-made foods, one of the first ingredients in them will usually be some form of sugar (many times they will disguise it by using a scientific name: glucose, fructose, etc). So another great way to reduce your sugar intake is to cook your own food from scratch. If you're smart about it, it's cheaper too. And once you have some basic skills down, it tastes better.

Just now, p1t1o said:

Umami is "meaty" and is related to certain amino acids I believe, so its a telltale for delicious, delicious protein, another staple for survival!

Now combine umami with fatty and you have the reason why bacon is so...so good. So good. Honey glaze?! Forget about it!!

Ok now I am hungry for real.

Did someone say BACON!

[p1t1o]

10 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Did someone say BACON!

The flavour/nutrient brain connection must be very powerful because, no joke, I have heard it so often from vegetarian or vegan friends and acquaintances...

"I do miss bacon though."

"If I went back, it would be for bacon."

"Say? Do you have any bacon I can smell?"

 

*edit*

If you think too long and too hard about what exactly we do to pigs, it is like, the gruesomest horror movie...

Edited April 13, 2017 by p1t1o

[TheSaint]

Just now, p1t1o said:

The flavour/nutrient brain connection must be very powerful because, no joke, I have heard it so often from vegetarian or vegan friends and acquaintances...

"I do miss bacon though."

"If I went back, it would be for bacon."

"Say? Do you have any bacon I can smell?"

I corrupted my vegetarian roommate in South Africa with bacon. I'm out cooking bacon and eggs for my breakfast one Sunday morning and he comes out of his bedroom.

"So, do you have any extra bacon?"
"Extra bacon? I thought you didn't eat meat."
"Dude, just answer the ******* question."

So he joined me for bacon and eggs every weekend after that. Closet carnivores, LOL.

[Scotius]

14 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

And, if you want to reduce your sugar intake, you might want to expand your view beyond just your beverages. If you look at most processed/pre-made foods, one of the first ingredients in them will usually be some form of sugar (many times they will disguise it by using a scientific name: glucose, fructose, etc). So another great way to reduce your sugar intake is to cook your own food from scratch. If you're smart about it, it's cheaper too. And once you have some basic skills down, it tastes better.

Commercially processed milk is very much this. Especially low - fat products. Because with removed fats milk and dairy products lose a lot of their taste. Solution? Add sugar until it tastes fine again

[Tex]

12 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Commercially processed milk is very much this. Especially low - fat products. Because with removed fats milk and dairy products lose a lot of their taste. Solution? Add sugar until it tastes fine again

Yup, this is exactly what I've found in my own searches.

[TheSaint]

13 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Commercially processed milk is very much this. Especially low - fat products. Because with removed fats milk and dairy products lose a lot of their taste. Solution? Add sugar until it tastes fine again

We know a lady down the road who keeps cows....

[WinkAllKerb'']

the moar they are the more they are , until it just splode

[insert meme kermit] but that's none of my business in/out

Edited April 13, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[Scotius]

4 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

We know a lady down the road who keeps cows....

What does she feed them? If it's fermented corn or other form of silage you might be in for a rude surprise. Couple of years ago i went to my cousin's dairy farm. I like fresh milk, so i asked for some, straight from a cow. My cousin warned me that i won't like it - he made milk for a big food company, not for consumption on the spot. But i was insistent, and... well - i regretted my stubborness after the first mouthful. Danged thing had a sour taste and a nasty, chemical smell - i shudder to think what needed to be done to make it palatable again before bottling it for customer's consumption.

[TheSaint]

1 minute ago, Scotius said:

What does she feed them? If it's fermented corn or other form of silage you might be in for a rude surprise. Couple of years ago i went to my cousin's dairy farm. I like fresh milk, so i asked for some, straight from a cow. My cousin warned me that i won't like it - he made milk for a big food company, not for consumption on the spot. But i was insistent, and... well - i regretted my stubborness after the first mouthful. Danged thing had a sour taste and a nasty, chemical smell - i shudder to think what needed to be done to make it palatable again before bottling it for customer's consumption.

Couldn't tell you. All I know is it's the best milk I've ever tasted. My kids are seriously disappointed when we have to buy store milk. We skim the cream off and it's awesome in coffee. (Makes kick-ass White Russians too. )

[Green Baron]

51 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

PS: who drinks less water in hot places? Is that a thing?

Loosing the sense of thirst can happen. People first get a headache, then get dizzy and finally start to fantasize. For example students on excavation in arid areas usually grossly underestimate the risks of dehydration and frequently must be urged to drink enough.

I am not sure whether "professionals" really can acclimatise or train the body to use less water. I would never recommend such a thing. "Drink enough, 3* pee a day are the minimum". Not my idea ... :-)