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- Ben Fuchs
Sugar is pretty interesting stuff. It’s also misunderstood. For one thing, we all love how “sugar” tastes, but we don’t necessarily love its effects. That presents a problem. Despite it’s well-documented health hazards, just because we love the stuff, no matter how much we try to abstain, when it comes right down to it, turning down that apple pie a la mode or peach gelato, as much as we’d like to, can be pretty difficult and at times impossible. That’s because our brainy cells which are fueled by the sweet and sticky substance, are hardwired to love sugar! On the other hand, the downside of sugar ingestion includes weight gain, diabetes, eye disease, hypertension, jittery-ness and anxiety. Well, those we would rather do without. Thus the love-hate relationship we have with what is generally referred to as “sugar”.
However, unbeknownst to many, there’s a whole other side to the subject of sugar! The chemical that most of us know as “sugar” and the substance that is so problematic is actually a special type of sugar called “glucose”. As it turns out, glucose is just one version of 8 different sugars that are collectively, if not entirely accurately, referred to as “essential”. These 7 other essential sugars aren’t very tasty or sweet but, importantly, they provide lots of health benefits.
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- Ben Fuchs
Lol, despite the provocative and somewhat incendiary headlines plastered all over the media, even a cursory reading of the actual article originally published the Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM), reveals scant evidence that taking a multi-vitamin is indeed a waste of money.
The breathless headlines and catchy captions refer to the conclusions of an AIM editorial that was based on the result of two studies. The first one looked at 1700 North American adults aged 50 and older who had a myocardial infarction at least 6 weeks prior to the beginning of the study and who randomly received EITHER a high dose 28 component vitamin mineral formulation or a placebo. The second study was done on 6000 male physicians, aged 65 or older, who randomly received a daily multi-vitamin or a placebo. In the first study, after 4.5 years follow-up, mortality was no different between the vitamin group and the placebo group. In the second, after 6.5 years follow-up, vitamin-popping medical men showed no significant improvements in global cognition or verbal memory over their placebo taking colleagues.
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- Ben Fuchs
If you’re a label reader, you’ve probably run across the terms inulin and oligofructose (also known as fructooligosaccharides or FOS) on various processed food ingredient decks including those on soups, yogurt, cereals, breads, snack and energy bars, cookies and cakes. Although naturally found in various plants and veggies, like onions and grains and bananas, asparagus and Jerusalem artichoke, and chicory root, inulin and oligofructose are also industrially prized for their ability to provide a non-caloric sweetening benefit and are most often found in the standard American diet in the form of processed food additives. In addition to their inclusion in processed foods, these ingredients can be found as stand-alone products marketed as diabetic friendly sweeteners, with names like Fruta-Fit, Frutalose or simply Inulin/FOS.
Technically inulins and FOS are “fructans”, which are long molecular chains of the fruit sugar known as fructose. By linking many fructose molecules together, the characteristic sweetness of the fruit sugar is dampened and its spiking effects on blood sugar are mitigated. From a chemical structure standpoint, the only difference between inulin and FOS involves the sizes (lengths) of FOS molecules, basically being little inulin chunks or short chains of fructose that are formed by the breakdown of the parent inulin element.
