Year of No Sugar

by Eve O. Schaub

fructose does not suppress ghrelin (the hunger hormone) nor does it stimulate insulin or leptin (the full-feeling hormone).

Lustig compares the effects of fructose to those of a toxin we know and love: ethanol (alcohol). A comparison of the symptoms of chronic alcohol consumption to those of chronic fructose consumption reveals that they share eight out of twelve disorders, fun things like pancreatitis and dyslipidemia. He concludes that “fructose is ethanol without the buzz” and asserts that giving your kid a soda—or juice—is the metabolic equivalent of giving your kid a beer.

When you consume fructose, the pancreas doesn’t know and doesn’t care; no corresponding insulin gets released.

Instead of hiding treats, therefore, our daughters were encouraged to tell us about them as part of our broader family conversation about sugar—it became almost a contest to see who of the four of us could come home with the most outrageous sugar story.

Because you can have sugar without glucose and you can have glucose without sugar, but you can’t have sugar without fructose and you can’t have fructose without sugar.

It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment on your dish, and it will poison you.

Walden