DB#439 - Sweet Sugar
Today on the Daily Breakfast: Women and the Church; from Zune to iPod; Apple TV Take 2; Hardware failures; running with a confused Nike+; Sugar, sugar substitutes and rats; the end of the writer’s strike; The Score movie review; Star Wars, Lourdes and the phonejingle contest; Isaac Newton and the giants.
Link: Can sugar substitutes make you fat?
Download or listen: Today’s Show
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PS: He did a really good job 
sugar — I read something very similar to what you have said a while ago. Happens that by taking in real sugar the body gets satisfied and stops craving the sweet. But when using substitutes ( esp. corn syrup) the body is looking to satistfy the sweet persuit and wants more. BTW — suagr has 16 calories to teaspoon ( not bad).
Such a teaser Father…lol….was exitedly waiting to hear about Star Wars… lol
As Yoda would say: “Patience! Patience you must have.”
I recently bought a book that had the best piece advice I’ve ever read: if you can’t trace a food to it’s source, don’t eat it.
Ex: bananas grow on trees while oreos… well, you can’t really trace it to a particular source in nature!
Our bodies were built/created to eat natural foods (fruits, vegetables, meat). Not the processed kinds we find in the middle of the grocery store. Once you take in fake food, bad things happen (weight gain, cancer).
There’s no need to artificially sweeten food. A lot of food contains natural sugars, like milk. Milk is mildy sweet because it contains phenylalanine (of natural origin), giving it that taste.
Aspartame and ‘Nutrasweet’ are made from milk, because of this. They were designed to function as a medicine for diabetics as a sugar replacement. The US FDA approved it to be used as a medicine. The rules for approval are very strict, so it needs to be safe to get approved.
Rumors about those substances to be dangerous are unfounded, sites and other sources stating it is dangerous use one certain experiment in mice as ‘proof’ that it’s dangerous. But: you cannot use an animal model on humans. Mice aren’t humans. The experiment’s outcomes could be taken seriously if replication shows the same outcome over and over again. This isn’t the case, so you cannot say aspartame and other related substances are dangerous because of that single experiment. The results are probably due to chance (’probability’).
Totally unrelated, but possibly of interest to Daily Breakfast listeners, the new Indiana Jones trailer is on line: http://www.indianajones.com/site/index.html
That was a great tease Father about Star Wars…this is something that I ran across on The Official Star Wars blog, about the Clone Wars. Here is the link for the blog http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/. It also has a link to Star Wars cite which has more information.
The above posted opinion on “Phenylaline” and “Aspartame/Nutrasweet” are Incorrect.
The sweetness component that is in milk is called Lactose not Phenylaline. In addition there is a large number of people who can not drink milk(many blacks, asians, etc.) because they are lactose intolerant.
More info here on Lactose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose
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Phenylaline is Not a sweetener but sometimes sold as a “nutritional supplement”. In fact phenylaline is a “Unnatural” synthetic chemical that is either chemically processed or made when the body metabolizes other substances, Many people can not tolerate it and are called “phenylketonurics”. The problem for them with regard to Aspartame/Equal is that when aspartame is metabolized in the body it creates phenylaline.
More info here on Phenylaline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylalanine
I use a herb called Stevia as a sugar substitute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia
@ michael…you beat me to make that comment….The lactose in milk, is why steamed milk (i.e. in a Caffe latte or Capuccino) is sweater. As you heat the milk the sweeter it tastes. I was a Barista for a couple of years, and one way to know if the milk is steamed enough is if it is sufficiently sweat tasting.
Woops :$ that was supposed to be sweet tasting, not sweat tasting…big difference
I think, although I have no scientific degree or backup but just my memory from university college bio-chemistry, that the chemical structure of synthtic sugar substitutes is so complex the body cannot ‘cut’ these mocecules into parts fit for our metabolism. We lack the proper enzymes [read: scissors] to do so. Because of that our body cannot process these molecules, but nevertheless it registers an increase in energy. Because this energy cannot be used for burning the food gets either stored as fat (if possible) or processed as a toxic. Both result in a non-satisfied eating sensation. Our entire energy management system or metabolism is based on the production, storage and burning of glucose, regular sugar. Therefore I think it’s only wise to use this regular sugar, be it with moderation in mind.
As I said, I have’nt verified my information and I’m not sure if I’m right, but this is how I remember bio-chemistry.
@ Fr. Roderick: would you mind sharing the url of the website that gives information about West Wing episodes? I’m making my way through Season 1, and that would be helpful (even though I’m American, I don’t understand politics at all!)
I LOVE my iPod touch - especially being able to check my email without going to my computer where I tend to waste a lot of time surfing the Web. Thanks and God Bless.
@Michael C - Phenylalanine is a component of lactose, called an amino acid. Lactose is a rather big molecule. When Phenylalanine is removed from that molecule, and combined with another amino acid (aspartic acid) and methanol. The product you get is a methyl ester of this dipeptic substance is called aspartame. All amino acids are obtained from milk and other animal products and are therefore not dangerous. It’s true that lactose also is found in sugar, but that molecule is formed from different sugars (galactose and glucose). The artificial sweeteners that Fr. mentioned don’t use these components but other amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine to make a new sweetener much more sweeter tasting than lactose.
I apologize for the confusion I created because I didn’t write clear phrases.
@Pearl: FootnoteTV gives a wealth of background information for each episode:
http://www.footnotetv.com/ftvwwindex.html
and so does The West Wing Guide:
http://www.westwingepguide.com/
Taquorian wrote:
“When Phenylalanine is removed from that molecule, and combined with another amino acid (aspartic acid) and methanol. The product you get is a methyl ester of this dipeptic substance is called aspartame. All amino acids are obtained from milk and other animal products and are therefore not dangerous.”
I don’t think most people would agree with you on that regarding aspartame that contains the very toxic component precursor of methanol. Also there are many people severely allergic to the phenylaline in aspartame as I described in my earlier comment.
The most recent study that showed people would gain weight from diet soda’s was based on a blind control one involving saccharine. There are also many negative studies in regard to high fructose corn syrup. Everyone should definitely stay away from that as much as possible.
So far the only sweetener that hasn’t had any negative studies when used in small amounts is sucralose/splenda but that is still rather new in commercial use. Of course another big negative of sodas is how extremely acidic they are.
The best thing for health one can do is to not drink any sodas. Instead it would be much better to drink more water, pure fruit juice(not fruit drink) and moderate amounts of tea and/or coffee.
Diet drinks may not help me lose weight, but I know what’s happened in the past when I’ve followed the advice to drink regular Coke or fruit juice instead–I started rapidly gaining weight.
So, maybe, that advice is good for some who have super high metabolisms but not for those of us who struggle to lose weight or keep it off.