Now Sugar Causes Cancer?

Anti-carb crusader Gary Taubes has an article in the NY Times magazine focusing on sugar as the cause of insulin resistance.  This works as a bit of a response to Megan McArdle, who oversimplifies Taubes' position in her "Are Grains Making Us Fat?" post. 

(To briefly recap Taubes' view - something, possibly sugar or excess carbs, provokes insulin resistance; once a person has developed insulin resistance, all refined and easily digestible carbohydrates will cause a problem.  There is also a whole different set of arguments against grains, but Taubes is not making them.)

Back to the Times (Mr. Sulzberger, tear down this wall!):

Is Sugar Toxic?

By GARY TAUBES

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, which is one of the best medical schools in the country. He published his first paper on childhood obesity a dozen years ago, and he has been treating patients and doing research on the disorder ever since.

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”

It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

Before we highlight the cancer scare let's have a little history:

This correlation between sugar consumption and diabetes [over the last thirty years - TM] is what defense attorneys call circumstantial evidence. It’s more compelling than it otherwise might be, though, because the last time sugar consumption jumped markedly in this country, it was also associated with a diabetes epidemic.

In the early 20th century, many of the leading authorities on diabetes in North America and Europe (including Frederick Banting, who shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin) suspected that sugar causes diabetes based on the observation that the disease was rare in populations that didn’t consume refined sugar and widespread in those that did. In 1924, Haven Emerson, director of the institute of public health at Columbia University, reported that diabetes deaths in New York City had increased as much as 15-fold since the Civil War years, and that deaths increased as much as fourfold in some U.S. cities between 1900 and 1920 alone. This coincided, he noted, with an equally significant increase in sugar consumption — almost doubling from 1890 to the early 1920s — with the birth and subsequent growth of the candy and soft-drink industries.

And the cancer:

One more question still needs to be asked, and this is what my wife, who has had to live with my journalistic obsession on this subject, calls the Grinch-trying-to-steal-Christmas problem. What are the chances that sugar is actually worse than Lustig says it is?

One of the diseases that increases in incidence with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. This is why I said earlier that insulin resistance may be a fundamental underlying defect in many cancers, as it is in type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.

This goes along with two other observations that have led to the well-accepted idea that some large percentage of cancers are caused by our Western diets and lifestyles. This means they could actually be prevented if we could pinpoint exactly what the problem is and prevent or avoid that.

...

Now most researchers will agree that the link between Western diet or lifestyle and cancer manifests itself through this association with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome — i.e., insulin resistance. This was the conclusion, for instance, of a 2007 report published by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research — “Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer.”

So how does it work? Cancer researchers now consider that the problem with insulin resistance is that it leads us to secrete more insulin, and insulin (as well as a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor) actually promotes tumor growth.

As it was explained to me by Craig Thompson, who has done much of this research and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do. Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some do both. Thompson believes that many pre-cancerous cells would never acquire the mutations that turn them into malignant tumors if they weren’t being driven by insulin to take up more and more blood sugar and metabolize it.

What these researchers call elevated insulin (or insulin-like growth factor) signaling appears to be a necessary step in many human cancers, particularly cancers like breast and colon cancer. Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, says that up to 80 percent of all human cancers are driven by either mutations or environmental factors that work to enhance or mimic the effect of insulin on the incipient tumor cells. Cantley is now the leader of one of five scientific “dream teams,” financed by a national coalition called Stand Up to Cancer, to study, in the case of Cantley’s team, precisely this link between a specific insulin-signaling gene (known technically as PI3K) and tumor development in breast and other cancers common to women.

Most of the researchers studying this insulin/cancer link seem concerned primarily with finding a drug that might work to suppress insulin signaling in incipient cancer cells and so, they hope, inhibit or prevent their growth entirely. Many of the experts writing about the insulin/cancer link from a public health perspective — as in the 2007 report from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research — work from the assumption that chronically elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance are both caused by being fat or by getting fatter. They recommend, as the 2007 report did, that we should all work to be lean and more physically active, and that in turn will help us prevent cancer.

But some researchers will make the case, as Cantley and Thompson do, that if something other than just being fatter is causing insulin resistance to begin with, that’s quite likely the dietary cause of many cancers. If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. For just this reason, neither of these men will eat sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, if they can avoid it.

“I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can,” Thompson told me, “because I believe ultimately it’s something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer.” Cantley put it this way: “Sugar scares me.”

Obviously this is all preliminary and inconclusive, but still...

HOW INCONCLUSIVE?  On April 4, 2011 a link between metabolic syndrome and liver cancer was reported.  Another study showed a link between diabetes and the incidence of cancer:

SUNDAY, April 3 (HealthDay News) -- Diabetes is already linked to a number of complications, but emerging evidence suggests an increased risk of cancer can be added to that list.

A new study found that women with diabetes had an 8 percent increased risk of developing cancer generally, while men with diabetes had a 9 percent higher risk when rates of prostate cancer were excluded from the calculation.

The risk of dying from a cancer was also higher in people with diabetes -- 11 percent greater for women and 17 percent higher in men.

If it can be shown that excessive sugar consumption leads to metabolic syndrome and diabetes, then the sugar-cancer chain is forged.

ERRATA:  Sugar in the American diet is estimated by the USDA here (p. 8 of 10). The USDA describes trends in the American diet from 1970 to 2005 in this report; added sugars rose by 19 percent and that excludes the surge in apple juice consumption (fruit consumption rose from 241 to 272 lbs per person per year, but apple juice contributed 16 lbs of that 31 lbs increase.)

BOLD PREDICTIONS:  Within fifty years Coca Cola and the NFL will be the fodder of campfire stories meant to scare excitable pre-teens.  It can't happen?  Sixty years ago Frank and Dean were the Kings of Cool, smoking cigarettes live on national television; now they would get busted and the President of the United States is heckled in his own home for being a smoker.

If high school football were invented today, any school board listening to the injury rate and equipment expense would laugh out loud.  It's days are numbered.

And Coke?  Sales will be regulated as cigarettes are today, and sales to minors won't be legal.  And someone somewhere will be charged with child abuse for giving a kid a Coke.  Really.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN:  Here is Jack Lalanne decrying "sugarholics" back in the 50's (or 60's?).

THE GOOD NEWS:  Although individuals can opt for a low carb diet, no President or Surgeon General could endorse a diet free of corn, wheat, rice and potatoes - how would America (or the world) feed itself?  However, refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup are simply not essential to nutrition or subsistence.

REASONING BY ANALOGY:  Most cigarette smokers don't get lung cancer; most drinkers don't become alcoholics.  Would we conclude that neither tobacco nor alcohol have toxic potential?

The fact that some people consume a lot of sugar with no ill effect proves little.

Comments

[Sue]

I always said breathing caused cancer. At some point, people will have to give up living because it causes cancer.

[Rob Crawford]

Life causes cancer. Time to ban it.

[anduril]

I don't understand the formatting of this post.

BTW, I happen to own a copy of John Yudkin's "Sweet and Dangerous," (c) 1972. See the article for lots re Yudkin.

[anduril]

McArdle's Freudian slip:

In fact, almost every fruit or vegetable you enjoy eating has been bread to be larger, higher-calorie, and full of less in the way of fibers and natural pesticides than what our pre-agricultural ancestors ate.

[Thomas Collins]

I wonder whether there is any way for today's so-called science to conduct an experiment to prove the obvious, namely, that with all of our fitness clubs and wellness programs and health books, we ignore the fact that we are far more sedentary than we should be. For example, our kids may go to structured soccer practice, but they are not out running around in the streets after school as much. Adults may join a fancy health club with a personal fitness trainer who has been deemed the best by those in the know, but those workouts don't make up for less lawn mowing with a non-power mower, less walking, and less activity in what we consider to be normal life. As far as nutrition goes, eating has become a fetish activity, with different fetishes in vogue at different times. For those without a specific condition, eating a balanced diet, avoiding second helpings, drinking water when the urge is to have a sugary drink (but remembering to indulge that sugary drink urge a couple of times a week) will work better than slavishly following the latest food fetish.

In the above paragraph I believe I have stated the obvious. However, we also apparently have a fetish for not listening to the obvious unless there is some study to support the obvious by somebody with the requisite PhD or MA or MD after the study author's name.

[macphisto]

"Sugar scares me."

Jesus, is there anything these people aren't scared by? i was just talking to someone on another forum who was afraid to purchase a guitar made in Japan because he was afraid there'd be radioactive particles on it that might harm him and his family. even though the instruments currently in the marketplace were made months ago.

[Neo]

Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer

[anduril]

In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.

I don't think of cigarettes as killing me, because I don't smoke or live with a smoker. I do drink, but I don't think of alcohol as killing me, either, because I haven't seen any evidence of it.

[clarice]

I'm calling B.S.

It reminds me of a couple I once knew--now divorced who were very high drama. Throwing things at each other, screaming and--well, you have the picture. Whenever their kid got out of hand they blamed it on a "sugar high". A lot easier-

We have people living longer than ever in this country (discounting recent immigrants) and if they are dying of cancer it's because they escaped all the stuff that use to kill people at a younger age. PHEH on this craziness.

[MarkO]

Does TM have a "man crush" on Taubes?

Now that I think about it, I'm certain my Great Aunt died of cancer in 1958 because she was so sweet.

[bgates]

Does TM have a "man crush" on Taubes?

If it's going to be him, Tom Friedman, or Ezra Klein, I think he's made the right choice.

I've come around to eating kind of Taubish myself lately. Regular servings from each of the four food groups, meats, vegetables, cheese, and eggs. Some fruit in the post-workout smoothie. Been doing that for about a month and I'm still the svelte side of 200 pounds. Makes grocery shopping pretty simple too: meats, vegetables, cheese, eggs, and fruit. Then I go home.

[clarice]

Personally, I blame TM for my expanding girth. If he didn't run such an amusing place, I'd be moving around a lot more than I do.
I few more math and diet threads might help me.

[Jeff]

I would point out that what is being described as Diabetes is what should be called Type 2 Diabetes or insulin resistant. Type 1 Diabetes or insulin dependent is usually a completely different disease.
In the first case your body produces plenty of insulin, you just can't use it properly. In the second case you are no longer producing insulin. People assume that you can "cure" diabetes because they don't know the difference. My wife is a Type 1 and she runs into people all the time that tell her that she can be cured if she would just change her diet.

Yes, we do have too much “sugar” in our diets, I think mainly because that is the cheapest way to intake calories. But moderation can dramatically reduce this excess and reduce your chances of pushing yourself into Type 2 diabetes.

[narciso]

In the words of Private Hudson 'game over man'
we have been using sugar for a little more than 2500 years,

[Threadkiller]

So much for the The Shangri-La Diet plan.

"The key to The Shangri-La Diet, according to Roberts, is to have 1-3 tablespoons of fructose water and/or 1-2 tablespoons of extra-light olive oil twice daily between meals."

[Ignatz]

I am aware of at least 50 equally plausible theories about what causes cancer, none of which has led to much of any use.
This article from 5 years ago remains the best synopsis of what happens at the cellular level, specifically the stem cell level, with cancer.
What thing, or things, cause the changes remain for most cancers unknown and/or unproven.

[(Another) Barbara]

we have been using sugar for a little more than 2500 years,

According to the Journal of the American Medical Ass'n., per capita sugar consumption in the US a hundred years ago was just over 10 lbs annually. Today it's about 155 lbs. annually, per person. That may not point to our doom, but it ought to get our sober attention, seems to me.

[Sue]

That is the funniest damn thing I've ever seen. Obama put them to sleep. ::grin::

[clarice]

AB, and before that we ate honey, agave nectar fruits (fructose) to get sweets.
I believe there is little difference between honey, fructose and nectar and sugar.

[Sue]

Oops. Does sugar also cause you to post on the wrong thread?

[Army of Davids]

Inflation is our friend....food costs more = eat less and lose weight.

See... Obama does Care.

[Army of Davids]

Obama and the Justice Dept dither on SCOTUS ruling on ObamaCare.

Faster please. Kill this beast.

[peter]

Does TM have a "man crush" on Taubes?
Can switching to Geico save you fifteen per cent or more on your car insurance?

[dataservices/dealer/job]

Clarice is right its luciferian shit.Cracky wants a dollar,O wants to be pres.The blood pressure shit is cool,but we all know its luciferians wanting money or politics or something else from a toilet.PDSD same shit.O made you.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

When my Mother was taking care of her best friend/roommate when they were both in their 80s, she tried hard to control Helen's sugar intake since she was insulin dependent. Label reading and careful buying kept Helen's diabetes under control and reduced the number of shots per day. The side effect was that my Mother was eating the same foods she was serving Helen and her next trip to the doctor revealed that she had lost over 20 lbs off her normal 125 lbs and the doctor wanted to put her in the hospital because she had become so thin and frail.

Instead, my Mother continued to eat the same main meals she served Helen, but she added cheesecake, Klondike bars, apple pie a la mode, and lots and lots of other sweets. In order not to temp Helen, she would wait until Helen was napping or had gone to bed.

It took about six months, but she managed to gain back about 10 of the pounds.

When I came to visit, I was hungry all the time, so I started skipping their prepared meals and running down to Jack in the Box or McDonalds and bringing home my own, and joining them at the table and eat with them. After a few days, my Mother was asking me to bring her home milkshakes and hot apple pies and curly fries.

For myself, if I forget to take my vitamins, I find myself craving sugar, obviously for the energy boost. As soon as I get back on my vitamin regime, I have no interest in sweets.

[Neo]

Speaking of cancer ...
SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice Wednesday but a jury failed to reach a verdict on three other counts that the home run king lied to a grand jury when he denied knowingly using steroids and human growth hormone.

[RattlerGator]

Hold the hell up, TM. Your quote:

If high school football were invented today, any school board listening to the injury rate and equipment expense would laugh out loud. It's days are numbered.

On the contrary, my friend. School boards may have numbered days but football will live on. Those that don't understand this tend to not understand the resolute American revulsion for the inferior game of soccer. Are you one in that number, TM???

I ask the question as I'm watching the NFL Network playing a commercial of T.O. screaming "I love me some ME!!!" Well, I hate the narcissism of T.O. but goodness knows I love me some football.

[anduril]

Wow! 20 years of Linux--1991 to 2011. Here's a short interview with Linus Torvalds on the occasion: Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds. On the second page there's a brief (3:39 minutes) but fun video history of Linux.

So long ago, it seems. I first started with, what, SuSE 5.1 or 5.2? I installed it from floppies! Heh. Took me days sometimes. Now, 10 minutes? Well...

[bunky]

To paraphrase: we are all chicks now.

[hit and run]

anduril:
I do drink, but I don't think of alcohol as killing me, either, because I haven't seen any evidence of it.

You,me,same page.

Oh and by the way...

WORD COUNT (as of 8:15):

TM: 1,781
All other commenters: 1,748
anduril: 224

[Rocco]

HEH

[jorod]

The problem with is when more and more people are drinking diet soda, why is cancer increasing? Something doesn't add up.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

If high school football were invented today, any school board listening to the injury rate and equipment expense would laugh out loud. It's days are numbered.

There are two things that really tee me off, one is abuse of the contract with the military and two, people who want to do away with football or school sports, in general.

Not everyone loves learning like most of us who have found JOM do. In fact, some only make it through school because they were required to keep a B average for eligibility. My son was one of these. He tested well above average and even a couple of grade levels higher in some areas, but hyperactivity and bad eyesight made sitting in a class very hard for him and he hated it. He lived to get out on the field and if it meant he had to pay attention and do some study in order to get out on the field, so be it. It was his only motivation.

There are thousands of kids like this. As they get older, if they are naturally bright, they'll start to enjoy learning. I realized early on that my son was teaching himself in many areas. He read the newspaper front to back every day, if he wasn't watching sports on TV, he would try to find a nature or science documentary, and although he said he didn't like reading, his favorite presents were biographies of historical figures and his sports heroes.

It took years for the eye doctors to finally diagnose his vision properly, when it was finally figured out that his eyes didn't focus together and he was seeing the world as if looking at a double exposure and corrected the problem, the world of learning changed for him. It took him almost 20 years to go back to school and get a degree, but when he did, he pretty much breezed through. But...without football and baseball, he never would have made it past the 9th grade.

Do not let the eggheads do away with high school sports, please. They may not need them nor have any interest in them, but they are life savers for many parents and students.

[Rocco]

Nintendo!

[Lab Rat]

That's it, I'm switching to Saccharin.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Yea, that's the ticket. Sorry, I never wanted either of my kids nor my foster kids to waste time sitting on the couch, getting fat and friendless, playing video games. And thank goodness, neither one wanted to.

[Rob Crawford]

The problem with is when more and more people are drinking diet soda, why is cancer increasing? Something doesn't add up.

Except that cancer isn't increasing.

[hit and run]

Thank goodness my kids can play the playstation without getting fat and friendless.

It's almost as if the computer games themselves are . . . neutral. Like you could forge some . . . middle ground between outright banning and complete addiction.

Something a parent could,you know,be in the process of deciding . . . what's right for his kid.

It's like there's not a one-size-fits-all solution? How weird.

[Gmax]

So Hit, you think that TM was channeling Anduril? LOL We will know for sure if the next post is some blood libel anti semitic rant!

[clarice]

We're getting fat because of central heating and air conditioning. Shivering burns off calories in winter and sweating burns them off in the summer.

Everyone knows that.

And it will solve the energy crisis. And put more money back into the federal treasury where it belongs..

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Hit: You are young enough to be my kid. My son was in high school when Pong came out. It really wasn't an issue, but couch potato kids watching stupid cartoons was.

[hit and run]

clarice:
We're getting fat because of central heating and air conditioning.

Oh. Yeah.

“We can’t ... keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,”

Obama has a plan to end central heating and air conditioning.

[bgates]

Obama has a plan to end central heating and air conditioning.

He was really excited about it at first, but it turned out "central" didn't mean what he thought it did.

[Gmax]

Yes and shivering in the cold in the dark while starving to death in a cave will certainly solve the problem of way too many overweight folks.

[maryrose]

H&R:
You are so funny tonight! Moderation in all things sugar, video games, heating and air conditioning and dare I say it Football. But being Afraid of sugar-Come on. It's not going to bite you. My mom was and my sister is diabetic. My sister just brings along her insulin on ice and she's good to go.

[hit and run]

Sara:
You are young enough to be my kid.

I am. And if my mom weren't the schizzle (or whatever the kidz are saying these days for totally awesome),then I would want to be your kid!

But you would probably be horrified at the video game playing,tv watching,ice cream eating ways of my youth.

For any number of kids that would have been a recipe for being fat and friendless.

And yet I was still all that and a bag of chips in highschool baseball and got the baseball scholarship to college (minor school, but still).

I just wish I had the time now for the video playing and the constitution for the ice cream eating.

Drats!

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Hit: You make my point. You got out and participated and made friends, not just avatars. You most likely learned that you lose if you don't commit and work hard and there are no do-overs. Video games say death is fleeting if you saved the prior level or just start over. I realize I'm simplifying, but I hope you get the point. Kids need to be outside and get exercise and play just to play. They need to learn how to be social and how to get along with their peers, etc, etc.

I play video games sometimes and I have nothing against ice cream or TV watching, just not all the time and in lieu of getting out in the fresh air and eating a little dirt.

[hit and run]

Sara:
Hit: You make my point. You got out and participated and made friends, not just avatars

My bad.

I never wanted either of my kids nor my foster kids to waste time sitting on the couch, getting fat and friendless, playing video games.

I misread "waste time" to mean that playing video games qua playing video games led to getting fat and friendless.

So we agree -- a proper amount of video games can be healthy if mixed with other activities.

Not sure if what Rocco said above regarding Nintendo can be interpreted as indicating a desire for an unhealthy amount of video games though.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

LOL. Truth be told, Hit, when I wrote "waste time," the Mother in me was thinking, "instead of cutting the grass." Just kidding.

Because their Dad seemed to be forever deployed year after year, I was a working single Mom most of the time. The only way was to be pretty strict with scheduling time with outdoor time considered a priority and indoor TV watching and non-violent games for before bedtime. Bedtime was 8 pm during elementary school and 9:30 pm in high school. It had to be that way or I would never get everything done and still get any sleep and be able to be up at 5 AM to go to work. Since I did not get home until 6, we had a lot to pack into 2 hours, including dinner and homework checking. And once they got into Pop Warner, Little League, cheerleading, dance, and softball, it was a madhouse trying to pick them up, maybe get to see a few minutes of a game, and get them home for dinner and homework.

[RichatUF]

Obama has a plan to end central heating and air conditioning.

Except for the White House.

[Jim Miller]

So what's the Maguire position on required school lunches, as one Chicago school was doing?

OK, if they follow a Taube diet?

Or, too big an imposition on freedom-loving families?

[ddealerob]

Go west

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

As I recall, school lunches were terrible concoctions. Our school served every single day for an entire school year one year, because they got them from government surplus. Beets with spaghetti, beets with inedible pizza, beets with everything. My kids wanted packed lunches. I was happy to do it since it was a hardship to pay for lunches and I never seemed to have the right amount early in the morning. At least when I packed the lunch, I knew they were getting whole wheat bread, a fruit, and some form of protein. My son thought the best treat was a container of cold string beans. Yuck! but he loved them.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

school served BEETS every single day

[narciso]

I recall one of those breaded fish sandwiches
with cheese mixed in the fish, the horror!

[hit and run]

Sara:
Truth be told, Hit, when I wrote "waste time," the Mother in me was thinking, "instead of cutting the grass." Just kidding.

Heh,of course! Before I was old enough to cut the grass - we used to wait until my dad cut the first outline of the square half of our yard which would leave what looked to any normal 7 year old boy like baselines - and we would pretend swing a bat and start running the bases.

Once I was old enough to cut the grass it was really really annoying when my two year younger brother continued to do the same. So I began cutting the grass on a diagonal just to thwart his fun.

[eMBA]

Lets join BEBO!!!W e can share shit there.Its okay to be ugly and creepy,just lie about your pen name.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Once I was old enough to cut the grass it was really really annoying when my two year younger brother continued to do the same. So I began cutting the grass on a diagonal just to thwart his fun.

LOL. Now that sounds like something I would have done.

[Barbara]

We have people living longer than ever in this country (discounting recent immigrants) and if they are dying of cancer it's because they escaped all the stuff that use to kill people at a younger age. PHEH on this craziness.

Thank you, Clarice for the voice of sanity. My paternal grandfather died of cancer at the age of 84. He was a very fit man who walked every day, ate an excellent diet that didn't include a lot of sweets. My aunt, his daughter, also had a similar lifestyle. She had a large, beautiful garden that she tended everyday, walked everywhere and never had time to sit still because she was always busy helping someone else. Nonetheless, at age 76 she died of cancer. She did like the occasional sweet like a slice of birthday cake or an amaretti with a glass of wine after dinner, but that was about it.

My Dad who lived to be 94 had the best approach. Take a positive attitude, don’t let little things bother you, do as much good as you can for others, love one another, and enjoy life. In addition to these things, he ate little meat, focused mainly on vegetables. He loved salads. His one weakness was ice cream. He died of old age.

[AL]

Old age health deterioration and finally death if first of all caused by brain deterioration.

I bet Barbara (“…per capita sugar consumption in the US a hundred years ago was just over 10 lbs annually. Today it's about 155 lbs.) won’t be with us next year.

[sportsnet]

Lets do a walkathon against sugar and fatness!!!!Popular O s wife already claimed the fatness cause of its youth,not cause of the cloning,really.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Life is short, eat dessert first!

My Mother always did and she lived to 94, no cancer either. And she tramped around China and climbed the Great Wall when she was 89. She smoked and until 53, like most in her generation, she was a fairly heavy drinker. She quit, however. She also lived in Pittsburgh, PA at its steel mill dirtiest and in NYC, where the doctor said it was unsafe to walk the dog because of the bad air.

If you asked her what her secret was, she would tell you, 2 tablespoons of brewer's yeast in a glass of juice and wheat germ in almost everything from meatloaf to a topping for ice cream, every day. She also walked 3 miles a day and swam 3 times a week. Lastly an active mind. She tried to learn (and master) one new task at least once a week plus as a speed reader she consumed massive amounts of reading material. And Hit, once she got her computer at age 85, she learned the basics and then started playing games. When I was living in Indiana and she in Calif., we played email Scrabble, a game she found herself and paid for so we could play a game back and forth every day, except the days she was playing bridge with her bridge club. She painted, she wrote, and in her spare time she volunteered at the library teaching adults to read. Plus after her friend Helen died, we got back to camping and doing some traveling together during my bi-yearly visits. On one visit, I found her very excited about her line dancing class.

Eat sensibly, eat what you want, keep your mind and body active and enjoy the life you have. Don't shorten it by worrying all the time or being anal about what foods you eat. Take a good vitamin, such as Centrum Silver and make sure you get enough iron, calcium, and Vitamin D (that means get outside in the sun without lathering on the sun screen for at least 20 minutes, after that if you want to lather up, fine.

And my personal advice ... remember that no one knows your body as well as you do. Pay attention to what it is telling you. For parents of younger children, take care of yourself first, it isn't selfish, it is prudent. You can't take care of those you love if you aren't up to par. This was always the hardest for me.

[lonetown]

I wonder why no mention of Barry Sears. Hyperinsulinemia is his pet theoy as well and throw in eicosenoids, oof fah!

I think you'll find in general 30% respond well to a high carb diet 30% to a high protein diet and the rest, well , you fat bastards are on your own.

[Bill in AZ sez it's time for Zero to resign]

If ya'll dismissed the climate skeptics as easily as you dismiss the sugar/diet issue, we'd all be driving broke down on the side of the highway in our GovMo electric vehicle with tinkertoy windmill mounted on top. Well, maybe we could drink the alcohol out of the fuel tank while waiting for the GovMo tow truck.

[sbw]

Taubish?

Are people of girth Tauby?

[Danube of Thought]

I detest these threads.

[narciso]

The problem with the likes of Lustig, is they take a sensible observations, too much refined
sugar is bad for you, and then 'dial up to eleven'; Sugar is carcinogenic, on the other
hand, red meat isn't good for you either,

[sbw]

I'm more likely to pay attention when the mechanics are understood and explained.

[Extraneus]

He was really excited about it at first, but it turned out "central" didn't mean what he thought it did.

LOL

[Danube of Thought]

Walker to Washington today:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) could be in for a rowdy welcome from unions and liberal groups when he comes to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify about his work on reducing the state’s budget deficit.

A coalition of liberal groups including People for the American Way, Common Cause and Public Campaign is scheduled to give a press conference outside the hearing room before Walker testifies, and union members are traveling in from Wisconsin to attend.

I dearly hope that these pigs are hurting themselves with these antics.

On the other hand, this is one of those days when my faith in my countrymen is at a very low ebb.

[Faith+1]

Gloom and Doom. Someone else who wants to control my life with their choices. Cancer rates have not been increasing in some time, life spans have steadily increased over the last few decades but somehow we're supposed to return to the days where 65 was old and near death?

Keep your self righteous paws off my oreos.

[Abadman]

Another entry on the other great secular religion, dieting.

[Thomas Collins]

The news that the man Crystal Mangum stabbed has died prompted me to revisit the DurhamWonderland blog site. In the course of catching up on posts there, I came across the LUNed post. Although not directly related to the current Mangum story, it does show the extent to which well thought of schools (in this case, Duke and Stanford) will degrade their own academic standards for politically correct faculty candidates.

[Tonto]

When I pause to nod in agreement with the Luciferian poster something is terribly wrong.

[MayBee]

will degrade their own academic standards for politically correct faculty candidates.

No kidding. Political Punch reported yesterday that the State Department offered the outgoing dictator of Ivory Coast a professorship at BU so he would step down (offer expired in fall 2010)

[Extraneus]

What did that have to do with "English," TC? Just more corruption.

[(Another) Barbara]

I bet Barbara (“…per capita sugar consumption in the US a hundred years ago was just over 10 lbs annually. Today it's about 155 lbs.) won’t be with us next year.

You're right about that AL. I won't be "with you" after this morning.

Bye.

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

You damn well better be with the rest of us AB.

[Extraneus]

I hope that's just a narcisolator entry, AB.

[narciso]

That piece, and the link, brings me back to when Roger Kimball was pointing out frauds
like Gates, and Houston Baker, back in the late 80s

[DebinNC]

I hope that's just a narcisolator entry, AB.

I do too. What (Another)Barbara has to say is always worth reading. I've learned so much from TM's diet threads and informed posters like AB.

[Alborn]

All I know is that I have a mother and father who never ran a mile or worked out at a gym. They worked everyday to raise three children. We ate what was available and never concerned ourselves with all the crap taht is out there today. My parents are now 82 and 83 not diabetic or many health problems. My mother did have breast cancer at 65 which I contribute to her taking hormones. My brother and sister are 64 and 65 with no health problems requiring medication. I just learn at 62 that my thyroid has slowed down enough to need treatment. Otherwise healthy. Enjoy life and live an active life and forget about the DOOM sayers.

[DC]

We really are MORE active than our ancestors. If you look at the physical activity of hunter-gather tribes there is a lot of sitting around. There are hunts when necessary but not that much "exercise" going on.

[Barbara]

I bet Barbara (“…per capita sugar consumption in the US a hundred years ago was just over 10 lbs annually. Today it's about 155 lbs.) won’t be with us next year.

What a strange thing to say, Al. I certainly plan on being here.

More to the point, I believe that you misunderstood my comments. Diet is important, and as Sara said above, you must pay attention to what your body is telling you. Nonetheless, we are all going to die of something, someday, what matters is how we live today.

While I do not believe that sugar or the lack of sugar caused my grandfather and aunt's cancers, I know that my body tells me that an excess of sugar is a problem, so I modify accordingly. Enough said.

===========

BIG HUG TO AB!

[Wills]

Folks - most sodas and other "sugary" foods replaced sugar with High Fuctose Corn Syrup years ago. that's the correlation I think needs to be explored.

[_Jon]

I read a post on Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body blog that sugar is also a possible culprit in gout - not protein.