MrRippedZilla
Retired
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2014
- Messages
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I did want to use this sub-forum to help people separate the good from the bad science and the easiest way to do this is to focus on the bad while explaining exactly WHY it is so bad. So here we are...
Consuming fructose, not glucose, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humanshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/
Abstract
Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks.
Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose.
Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle-triglyceride and -cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption.
In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose.
These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults.
I want to make it very clear that I absolutely hate this paper, for reasons that will become apparent as you read on, and so if your interested in a more "friendly" form of critique then I recommend checking this out instead.
Methodology
This study is a classic example of some researchers being so far up their own asses that getting published is more important than producing results that have even a slight whiff of reality to them. The study design is so flawed that, no matter how accurate the results are, it simply doesn't matter in real life because this specific scenario NEVER happens in real life.
Let's start with some baseline stats of the subjects:
- Sedentary men & women in their 50s.
- Both sexes are extremely obese with men around the high 20's & women low 40's for bf%.
- No significant differences to start with when it comes to lipids, glucose, insulin or other parameters between the two groups.
- Full stats can be seen here.
So they took these sedentary, and very fat, subjects and put them into either a "fructose" or "glucose" group consuming a diet composed of 55% carbs (25% from fructose/glucose), 30% fat, 15% protein.
The study involved a 2 week control period to establish baseline stats, then 8 weeks ad-libitum (eat whatever you want, no tracking, as long as it includes the 25% fructose/glucose), and 2 weeks control to finish for final assessments.
Now let's get the positives out of the way before I rant.
During the initial and end 2 week phases, diet was completely controlled by the lab and they did use a bunch of cool assessment tools.
The initial phase established dietary maintenance along with a wide range of clinical indexes being assessed like DEXA for body comp, CT scans for visceral & sub fat, needle biopsy's of adipose tissue to assess gene expression and measuring DNL.
Unfortunately, no matter how thorough your methods of assessment, it will all be a giant waste of funds if what your actually assessing is pointless & retarded...
Immediately, we have an ethical issue here.
Considering one of the main reasons a lot of pharmaceutical research never gets done is due to the fear of harming the subjects involved, why the **** were extremely obese, sedentary, people allowed to consume a fantasy amount of sugar? I have no answer.
The researches knew damn well that these folks would overeat during the ad libitum phase and therefore get fatter, increase insulin resistance & lipid levels - they just wanted to know which sugar would do the most damage. This study already smells bad.
Then we have this issue - WHY WOULD YOU MAKE ALMOST LITTLE ATTEMPT TO CONTROL THE VARIABLES DURING THE 8 WEEK AD-LIBITUM MIDDLE PHASE?
As a result of this complete lack of dietary control both groups gained weight & fat during the ad-libitum phase only. This goes back to the researchers knowing exactly what was going to happen - they wanted these subjects to become more unhealthy.
And the biggest issue of them all, and the reason why the study design makes this study WORTHLESS, the dosing of fructose and glucose used here would be close to IMPOSSIBLE to find in real life.
Specifically, there is NO soft-drink that is sweetened exclusively with fructose or glucose only. Most, if not ALL, non-diet soft drinks are sweetened with sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, etc - these ingredients contain a mix of fructose/glucose that tends to be around 50/50.
To illustrate how RETARDED this dosing was, let's break it down even further.
They had 25% of total cals coming from these drinks = approx 600 cals = 150g of either fructose or glucose.
To achieve that total in real life you would need to drink around 7 CANS OF NONDIET SODA EVERYDAY - who the **** does this?
The authors then have the balls admit, and reference, the fact that the average sugar intake of Americans is around 15.8%. Since fructose makes up half of that, we're talking about 7.9% of the daily diet - not even CLOSE to the 25% used in this study.
AFAIC, this is the authors pretty much admitting that this was going to be a bunch of mental masturbation with ZERO influence on reality. I did mention that I hate this paper right?
Results & discussion
Considering the fantasy-booked nature of the diet, I honestly couldn't give a shit about the results of this paper but for those interested we have changes in bodyweight & fat, glucose & insulin response along with lipid & DNL levels that give the general, misleading, picture that fructose is worse than glucose.
I can hear you readers saying "surely the researchers aren't that impractical, they must have found some evidence to support the 25% dosing?"
Unfortunately, impracticality is what a lot of researchers specialize in. Even if the 25% figure is supported in SOME populations, like college students we still have the issue of sugar being half fructose & half glucose. So even in that scenario fructose intake would only make up 12.5%, NOT 25%, of the diet.
To really drive home the retarded nature of the study design used, here are a few examples of what getting 25% of your diet from fructose would actually look like for someone who maintains at around 2000-4000cals:
- 42-84 tsp of sugar.
- 20-40 apples (one of the higher fructose fruits)
- 300-600g of honey
- 7-14 cans of nondiet soda
Assuming we all agree on the impracticality of this paper, I'm left with 2 explanations for the methodology used:
- As I've stated before, this was simply an exercise in mental masturbation or as another researcher so eloquently put it:
" "Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption.""
- The researchers were simply doing what it takes to get published with no interest in having their data translated to helping people in real life.
The chances of getting published dramatically fall when you find no difference between groups in your study or results that have already been published and either scenario was high likely in a more realistic study design. You need something new and exciting that preferably creates significant differences...hence the study design here.
Disgraceful, mental jacking off, bullshit that benefits no one but the authors themselves AFAIC.
Take home points
If your a fat, inactive, person on a hypercaloric diet do NOT drink multiple cans of nondiet soda drinks every day - it can lead to dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, increased DNL, TG levels, etc.
This practice can become even more harmful if your a wizard with access to a special lab to get your hands on some fructose-only soda drinks.
While we're at it, you might want to address the "fat", "inactive" and/or "hypercaloric" parts of the equation too. Just saying.
Sarcasm aside, the real take home point here is to LEARN HOW TO INTERPRET DATA so that you can rule out the bad from the good science.
Don't be one of the many fitness media monkeys who will misapply study conclusions without paying any attention to the fantasy methodology used. This leads to consumers reading these headlines and mistakenly equating massive consumption of isolated fructose to eating a few pieces of fruit per day and on & on the cycle goes.
When you only read the abstract/conclusion to the paper like this and then read the methodology behind it, man, does the picture change dramatically
Consuming fructose, not glucose, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humanshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/
Abstract
Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks.
Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose.
Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle-triglyceride and -cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption.
In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose.
These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults.
I want to make it very clear that I absolutely hate this paper, for reasons that will become apparent as you read on, and so if your interested in a more "friendly" form of critique then I recommend checking this out instead.
Methodology
This study is a classic example of some researchers being so far up their own asses that getting published is more important than producing results that have even a slight whiff of reality to them. The study design is so flawed that, no matter how accurate the results are, it simply doesn't matter in real life because this specific scenario NEVER happens in real life.
Let's start with some baseline stats of the subjects:
- Sedentary men & women in their 50s.
- Both sexes are extremely obese with men around the high 20's & women low 40's for bf%.
- No significant differences to start with when it comes to lipids, glucose, insulin or other parameters between the two groups.
- Full stats can be seen here.
So they took these sedentary, and very fat, subjects and put them into either a "fructose" or "glucose" group consuming a diet composed of 55% carbs (25% from fructose/glucose), 30% fat, 15% protein.
The study involved a 2 week control period to establish baseline stats, then 8 weeks ad-libitum (eat whatever you want, no tracking, as long as it includes the 25% fructose/glucose), and 2 weeks control to finish for final assessments.
Now let's get the positives out of the way before I rant.
During the initial and end 2 week phases, diet was completely controlled by the lab and they did use a bunch of cool assessment tools.
The initial phase established dietary maintenance along with a wide range of clinical indexes being assessed like DEXA for body comp, CT scans for visceral & sub fat, needle biopsy's of adipose tissue to assess gene expression and measuring DNL.
Unfortunately, no matter how thorough your methods of assessment, it will all be a giant waste of funds if what your actually assessing is pointless & retarded...
Immediately, we have an ethical issue here.
Considering one of the main reasons a lot of pharmaceutical research never gets done is due to the fear of harming the subjects involved, why the **** were extremely obese, sedentary, people allowed to consume a fantasy amount of sugar? I have no answer.
The researches knew damn well that these folks would overeat during the ad libitum phase and therefore get fatter, increase insulin resistance & lipid levels - they just wanted to know which sugar would do the most damage. This study already smells bad.
Then we have this issue - WHY WOULD YOU MAKE ALMOST LITTLE ATTEMPT TO CONTROL THE VARIABLES DURING THE 8 WEEK AD-LIBITUM MIDDLE PHASE?
As a result of this complete lack of dietary control both groups gained weight & fat during the ad-libitum phase only. This goes back to the researchers knowing exactly what was going to happen - they wanted these subjects to become more unhealthy.
And the biggest issue of them all, and the reason why the study design makes this study WORTHLESS, the dosing of fructose and glucose used here would be close to IMPOSSIBLE to find in real life.
Specifically, there is NO soft-drink that is sweetened exclusively with fructose or glucose only. Most, if not ALL, non-diet soft drinks are sweetened with sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, etc - these ingredients contain a mix of fructose/glucose that tends to be around 50/50.
To illustrate how RETARDED this dosing was, let's break it down even further.
They had 25% of total cals coming from these drinks = approx 600 cals = 150g of either fructose or glucose.
To achieve that total in real life you would need to drink around 7 CANS OF NONDIET SODA EVERYDAY - who the **** does this?
The authors then have the balls admit, and reference, the fact that the average sugar intake of Americans is around 15.8%. Since fructose makes up half of that, we're talking about 7.9% of the daily diet - not even CLOSE to the 25% used in this study.
AFAIC, this is the authors pretty much admitting that this was going to be a bunch of mental masturbation with ZERO influence on reality. I did mention that I hate this paper right?
Results & discussion
Considering the fantasy-booked nature of the diet, I honestly couldn't give a shit about the results of this paper but for those interested we have changes in bodyweight & fat, glucose & insulin response along with lipid & DNL levels that give the general, misleading, picture that fructose is worse than glucose.
I can hear you readers saying "surely the researchers aren't that impractical, they must have found some evidence to support the 25% dosing?"
Unfortunately, impracticality is what a lot of researchers specialize in. Even if the 25% figure is supported in SOME populations, like college students we still have the issue of sugar being half fructose & half glucose. So even in that scenario fructose intake would only make up 12.5%, NOT 25%, of the diet.
To really drive home the retarded nature of the study design used, here are a few examples of what getting 25% of your diet from fructose would actually look like for someone who maintains at around 2000-4000cals:
- 42-84 tsp of sugar.
- 20-40 apples (one of the higher fructose fruits)
- 300-600g of honey
- 7-14 cans of nondiet soda
Assuming we all agree on the impracticality of this paper, I'm left with 2 explanations for the methodology used:
- As I've stated before, this was simply an exercise in mental masturbation or as another researcher so eloquently put it:
" "Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption.""
- The researchers were simply doing what it takes to get published with no interest in having their data translated to helping people in real life.
The chances of getting published dramatically fall when you find no difference between groups in your study or results that have already been published and either scenario was high likely in a more realistic study design. You need something new and exciting that preferably creates significant differences...hence the study design here.
Disgraceful, mental jacking off, bullshit that benefits no one but the authors themselves AFAIC.
Take home points
If your a fat, inactive, person on a hypercaloric diet do NOT drink multiple cans of nondiet soda drinks every day - it can lead to dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, increased DNL, TG levels, etc.
This practice can become even more harmful if your a wizard with access to a special lab to get your hands on some fructose-only soda drinks.
While we're at it, you might want to address the "fat", "inactive" and/or "hypercaloric" parts of the equation too. Just saying.
Sarcasm aside, the real take home point here is to LEARN HOW TO INTERPRET DATA so that you can rule out the bad from the good science.
Don't be one of the many fitness media monkeys who will misapply study conclusions without paying any attention to the fantasy methodology used. This leads to consumers reading these headlines and mistakenly equating massive consumption of isolated fructose to eating a few pieces of fruit per day and on & on the cycle goes.
When you only read the abstract/conclusion to the paper like this and then read the methodology behind it, man, does the picture change dramatically
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