But my muffin is healthy - it’s Fat Free

There is a psychological connection between food being labeled fat free and considered healthy. In my personal (and totally unprofessional) opinion this connection is a major contributor to the American weight problem. You may have noticed in prior entries I mentioned that fat isn't fat, sugar is fat. I think its time to discuss what this really means.

The role of insulin, glucose and fat:
Insulin, glucose (a form of sugar) and fat are closely tied together in a somewhat complicated way. When glucose is consumed Insulin is released. Insulin is the delivery system your body uses to get glucose to your cells and when you eat more sugar you produce more insulin which tells your liver to store excess glucose as fat. From Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution p.33 - “the higher your resting insulin level the more your body “thinks” winter is coming and it better churn out more fat”.

The food industry loves sugar. Its cheap, it can be made from corn (High Fructose Corn Syrup), it tastes delicious and most importantly, humans are hard wired to consume a ton of it. In The End of Overeating, Dr. Kessler describes studies whereby our common sense knowledge of our love of junk food is confirmed; humans with unrestricted access to food high in sugar fat and salt will consume these items to a dangerous degree (up to 7,000 calories a day with totally unrestricted access). As further evidence of our hard wiring of our uncontrollable appetite for sugar, Dr. Gundry reminds us that “given the opportunity, all apes will gorge and fatten up on fruit and ignore other foods during certain seasons” p.24. Animals use the sugar in fruit to fatten themselves up for winter.

Fruit, however healthy, is loaded with sugar. Especially fruit juice - some bottles of which boast up to 6 pieces of fruit per bottle. The delivery system of sugar to the body through fruit juice is so fast, when you give blood and you get light headed, they feed you orange juice - nothing else compares in terms of speed to raise your blood sugar levels. Without the use of fiber to slow the delivery of sugar to the blood stream, fruit juice is a recipe for weight gain.

Additionally, I am convinced the food industry loves sugar because it is easy to sell to people on a diet - sugar has less than half the calories per volume as fat. Worse still, once you eat sugar it doesn’t take very long before you want more of it. From Dr. Kessler’s The End of Overeating p213. “Simple sugars offer the least satiation because they release from the stomach at a rate of about 10 calories per minute. That provides only a transient effect; sugary foods will typically satisfy hunger only for about an hour.”

It is in these ways that sugar is fat, and whenever you see a food that boasts it's lowered fat or fat free content, look on the back and see what flavor was added to make their product palatable, I can almost guarantee that flavor is some form of sugar.

So it seems the situation seems to be as follows: The food industry has food to sell and pressure to sell more of it to meet an ever expanding bottom line. Lucky for them they’ve got a culture obsessed with weight loss to sell it to, and you have a nifty trick to sell it to them with;  Make food fat free, but load it with sugar. Sugar is cheap, low calorie, and with no satiety factor so your customers keep coming back for more, which in turn makes the consumer more fat, and seeks out fat free food more intensely than before.

Nice.

From what I’ve learned good fat is an essential part of your diet, and if you aren't an emotional eater, it can help you lose weight to incorporate more of it into your diet if you don’t eat it. Good fat will help you feel full for longer, and coupled with leafy greens will fill you up very quickly. Fat is a vast topic, and I'll cover more on it later, but for now, keep in mind that if you eat a lot of fat free foods and fruit and you still aren't happy with your weight (oh my gosh how many times have I been there), consider the idea that you may be feeding your weight problem the very thing it wants to keep you fat - SUGAR!

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Next time on Popular Excuses, Super Food - Spinach
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Reading List
Marion Nestle “What to Eat” p314
Dr Gundry’s Diet Evolution
Dr.Kessler The End of Overeating