Thanks for clueing me in on the more likely real cause of Spurlock's fatty liver. I had always assumed it was the sugar in all that supersized soda.
When you consume sugar (sucrose), the sucrase enzyme splits it in two during the digestive process into fructose and glucose, both of which are readily absorbed. The glucose is indistinguishable from any other glucose molecule in your bloodstream and can be used as is by any cell in the body. However, the fructose has to be metabolized first in the liver before it can be used for energy by your body at large.
This does unfortunately wind up constituting a load on the liver, and alcohol is the only other common foodstuff that is handled similarly. Either can contribute to fatty liver - my perception is that alcohol is vastly more powerful, but because sugar is so much more widely overconsumed than alcohol (only 54% of Americans currently drink alcohol according to a recent WSJ article), I think sugar is most likely the root cause of the majority of the 90 million or so cases of fatty liver in the US.
Two books that discuss the negative aspects of fructose and/or sugar:
Fructose Exposed, M. Frank Lyons II, M.D., 2010. This author's thesis is that the human liver can only handle about 15g fructose per day (equivalent to 30g sugar), and fructose in foodstuffs besides sugar have the same problem. As an example, he lists 8 oz of unsweetened orange juice as containing 11.1 grams total fructose. I found the most useful aspect of the book to be these lists of the fructose content in a wide variety of foods.
Pure, White, and Deadly, John Yudkin, 1986. The author and his team at Queen Elizabeth College in London conducted countless experiments on lab animals and human volunteers during the mid-20th century comparing the effects upon health of sugar and starch. In most of the cases he reports, sugar was more harmful.
Interesting, I’ll check out those references. FWIW, I’m skeptical about one-size-fits-all explanations (“calories!”, “carbs!”, “fat!”, “Sugar!”) and I wonder if sugar is just the most recent bogeyman blamed for something that has multi factorial causes
Dr. Lyons would say only the fructose component of sugar is truly harmful. The book that has actually had the greatest influence on me is The Case Against Sugar (2016) by Gary Taubes. After reading it several times over a couple of years, it finally caused me to reduce my sugar consumption to <25g/day, which I found extraordinarily difficult. I lost about 15 pounds, and 6 months later, I noticed my gout and the peripheral neuropathy in my toes had also gone away. I feel the reduction in sugar is the most reasonable explanation.
Thanks for clueing me in on the more likely real cause of Spurlock's fatty liver. I had always assumed it was the sugar in all that supersized soda.
When you consume sugar (sucrose), the sucrase enzyme splits it in two during the digestive process into fructose and glucose, both of which are readily absorbed. The glucose is indistinguishable from any other glucose molecule in your bloodstream and can be used as is by any cell in the body. However, the fructose has to be metabolized first in the liver before it can be used for energy by your body at large.
This does unfortunately wind up constituting a load on the liver, and alcohol is the only other common foodstuff that is handled similarly. Either can contribute to fatty liver - my perception is that alcohol is vastly more powerful, but because sugar is so much more widely overconsumed than alcohol (only 54% of Americans currently drink alcohol according to a recent WSJ article), I think sugar is most likely the root cause of the majority of the 90 million or so cases of fatty liver in the US.
Two books that discuss the negative aspects of fructose and/or sugar:
Fructose Exposed, M. Frank Lyons II, M.D., 2010. This author's thesis is that the human liver can only handle about 15g fructose per day (equivalent to 30g sugar), and fructose in foodstuffs besides sugar have the same problem. As an example, he lists 8 oz of unsweetened orange juice as containing 11.1 grams total fructose. I found the most useful aspect of the book to be these lists of the fructose content in a wide variety of foods.
Pure, White, and Deadly, John Yudkin, 1986. The author and his team at Queen Elizabeth College in London conducted countless experiments on lab animals and human volunteers during the mid-20th century comparing the effects upon health of sugar and starch. In most of the cases he reports, sugar was more harmful.
Interesting, I’ll check out those references. FWIW, I’m skeptical about one-size-fits-all explanations (“calories!”, “carbs!”, “fat!”, “Sugar!”) and I wonder if sugar is just the most recent bogeyman blamed for something that has multi factorial causes
Dr. Lyons would say only the fructose component of sugar is truly harmful. The book that has actually had the greatest influence on me is The Case Against Sugar (2016) by Gary Taubes. After reading it several times over a couple of years, it finally caused me to reduce my sugar consumption to <25g/day, which I found extraordinarily difficult. I lost about 15 pounds, and 6 months later, I noticed my gout and the peripheral neuropathy in my toes had also gone away. I feel the reduction in sugar is the most reasonable explanation.
"decreased energy" This is a clear indicator of poor health and thus is really important.
Definitely not something I'd want to try!