The Calorie Myth

We all know that Washington, DC, is home to many lobbyists. None of us like how much influence they have over our elected officials, yet we somehow overlook the fact that some of the largest lobbying efforts in the country are made by firms representing the food industry.

The days of family-run farms growing our crops are long gone. Today our food is grown by huge agribusiness concerns. According to a 2007 report by doctors Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan, of the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri, 83.5 percent of beef, 80 percent of soybeans, and 55 percent of flour are produced by the top four firms in those industries. A single company supplies the seeds for 90 percent of genetically modified corn and soybeans.

Or consider the dairy industry. Not all dairy products are inSANE, but how did dairy products end up with their own food group while becoming a “required” part of a “balanced” diet? Might the $1.4 billion dollars spent on agribusiness lobbying have played a part?

That’s why we need to watch where we get our nutrition information. Is the source driven by science or profits? When the answer is profits, we hear things like this from the Grocery Manufacturers of America—the people responsible for ensuring grocery stores are as profitable as possible: “Policies that declare foods ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are counterproductive.”¹²¹ A similar platitude is offered by the National Soft Drink Association: “As refreshing sources of needed liquids and energy, soft drinks represent a positive addition to a well-balanced diet.”¹²²

None of these statements are backed by science. Again, we will not become clogged if we treat ourselves to starch and soda occasionally. But starch and sweets should never be recommended as part of a “balanced” diet. Food corporations know better than anyone else what the facts are, but they are not going to condemn themselves. Quite the opposite. Food companies aggressively fight any scientific information that threatens their bottom line.

Sadly, the crowding out of sound science by money doesn’t stop there. Nearly two thirds, or 64 percent, of the members of national committees on nutrition and food receive compensation from food companies. David Willman at the Los Angeles Times reported that “at least 530 government scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s preeminent agency for medical research, have taken fees, stock, or stock options from biomedical companies in the last five years.”¹²³ Both the food industry and our government are paid to keep profits high, not to teach us about nutritional science. Don’t forget the old adage, “It is hard to get people to believe one thing when they are paid to believe another.”

The most common and powerful weapon in the food industry’s arsenal is added sweeteners. The problem has gotten so bad that at the turn of the millennium the average American ate over 150 pounds of sweeteners per year because food companies add them to at least the following products:

Thanks to this sweet saturation, the average American is eating a little under a half pound of added sweeteners per day. That is a cup of clog every single day. Two centuries ago, people ate about one-tenth of that. During the previous 99.8 percent of our evolution, our ancestors ate none.

As early as the 1950s, Barry Popkin, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pointed out that the research “link between sugar consumption and coronary heart disease . . . was stronger than the link between heart disease and the consumption of saturated fats from animal foods.”¹²⁴ This work, however, was ignored.

A Note about Sweeteners

When I talk about sweeteners, I am talking about sweeteners containing calories that are added to foods: substances like sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, etc. I am not talking about the sugars already found in natural foods like fruits. Those are fine for many people. I am also not talking about natural calorie-free sweeteners like stevia. Those are fine. I’m also not talking about artificial calorie-free sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, or saccharin. Those are not good, but are preferable to sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.

How did this inSANEity happen? Food that has all its fat removed doesn’t taste very good. It is hard to sell bad-tasting food. So food companies add sweeteners when they remove fat. Combine the government’s “food containing fat is evil” guidelines with $36 billion of “we have yummy low-fat food” marketing and the result is that nearly a fifth of the average American’s total calories come from sweeteners.

The worst part is that we have no practical choice under the Dietary Guidelines regimen. If foods that contain fat are off the table, then almost everything else has been stuffed with sweeteners. As a general rule, if it is not coming directly from a plant or an animal, then it has been sweetened. Even if it does not taste sweet, it has been altered with at least one of the following:

Memorizing this list isn’t necessary—just know that any form of caloric sweetener causes clogs. Our body does not care where we get caloric sweeteners. To our body, apple juice is basically the same as soda, since they both contain about thirty grams of sugar per cup. A “weight-loss” bar with thirty grams of sweeteners in it causes the same clog as a candy bar of the same size with thirty grams of sugar in it. And watch out for misleading “natural” marketing. Unnatural high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been rightfully demonized, owing in part to its high fructose content (42 percent). However, the supposedly “healthy” natural replacement agave nectar contains more than twice the amount of fructose (90 percent). Sure the juice, bar, cereal, and agave may have some additional accompanying nutrients, but that doesn’t make the sweeteners in them any less harmful. Dissolving a vitamin pill in a can of soda doesn’t make the soda healthy.

High-fructose corn syrup is especially common in low-calorie and low-fat products and is especially fattening. Combine this with the recommendation to avoid calories and foods containing fat, and we end up unintentionally eating 10,475 percent more HFCS than we did in 1970.

Eating all that HFCS is particularly harmful. Rats and people fed fructose consistently get fatter and sicker than rats and people fed the exact same amount of other sugars. HFCS sabotages our ability to feel satisfied by other foods as well. HFCS does not have low Satiety—it has negative Satiety. HFCS leaves us hungrier than if we did not eat it, altering our baseline levels of Satiety hormones and driving us to eat more and more over time. HFCS consumption also has a negative impact on insulin and leptin and contributes to an elevated set-point.

Experts at major research institutions have been quickly amassing evidence about the addictive nature of sugar. Studies at Princeton University show that lab rats that were repeatedly given a high-sugar diet and then had it taken away from them experienced behavioral and brain chemistry changes that mirror withdrawal from drugs such as morphine or nicotine. Other studies have found that sugar dependence is similar to dependence on amphetamines. The evidence is piling up: sweeteners are addictive.

Seem like a stretch? Consider this: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition IV (DSM-IV), defines us as chemically dependent on a substance if we experience at least three of the following symptoms in twelve months:

Overprioritization—allowing its use to interfere with more important activities

Ignoring negative consequences—continuing use regardless of disproportionately negative consequences

Using those guidelines—have any of us ever experienced any of these symptoms in conjunction with our sweetener habits?

Withdrawal: Ever tried to give up caloric sweeteners altogether? If so, how did that feel? If not, give it a whirl and you will experience how deeply this substance affects your brain.

Overuse: As the University of Washington’s Stephan Guyenet, PhD, tells us, “in 1822, we ate the amount of added sugar in one 12 ounce can of soda every five days, while today we eat that much sugar every seven hours.”¹²⁵

Exceptional effort to obtain: Ever waited in line for way too long at your favorite ice cream place or gone out of your way to obtain a sweet treat?

Overprioritization: Ever been late to an appointment or meeting so that you could run to Starbucks and get your caramel mocha frappuccino?

Common sense and science seem to show sugar addiction quite clearly, but couldn’t we say the same thing for any type of food? The research says no. Nicole Avena, PhD, a professor at the University of Florida’s Center for Addiction Research and Education, tells us that studies show caloric sweeteners are unique in their ability to trigger “a series of behaviors similar to the effects of drugs of abuse.”¹²⁶ She continues: “These are categorized as ‘bingeing,’ meaning unusually large bouts of intake, opiate-like ‘withdrawal’ indicated by signs of anxiety and behavioral depression, and ‘craving’ measured during sugar abstinence as enhanced responding for sugar. There are also signs of both locomotor and consummatory ‘cross-sensitization’ from sugar to drugs of abuse (i.e., animals fed sugar are more likely to consume amphetamine, cocaine, alcohol).”

This unique and terrifying behavior is due to caloric sweeteners’ distinctive ability to activate a set of brain and hormonal responses previously thought to be limited to highly regulated drugs. As Carlo Colantuoni, PhD, an investigator in the Basic Sciences Division of the Lieber Institute, tells us, “An opioid-mediated [morphine-like] dependence on sugar has been demonstrated at both the behavioral and neurochemical level.”¹²⁷ University of Florida researchers add, “Based on the observed behavioral and neurochemical similarities between the effects of intermittent sugar access and drugs of abuse, we suggest that sugar, as common as it is, nonetheless meets the criteria for a substance of abuse and may be ‘addictive’ for some individuals when consumed in a ‘binge-like’ manner.”¹²⁸ Put plainly by Bartley Hoebel, PhD, professor of psychology in the Program in Neuroscience at Princeton University, “In summary, sugar has the addictive-like properties of both a psychostimulant and an opiate [common opiates include morphine, opium, and heroin].”¹²⁹

I don’t mean to scare you, but for many, understanding and freeing oneself from sweetener addiction is literally a matter of life and death. When you switch to SANE eating, you will temporarily feel you are going through withdrawal because you are. It takes the body a couple of weeks to overcome the chemical dependence caused by the sea of sweeteners we have been led to eat. But the switch is worth the effort. After all, who wants to be an addict?

In 1998 Coca-Cola offered schools $10,000 to advertise Coke discount cards to their students. Deeply in need of the funds, Greenbrier High School in Augusta, Georgia, invited Coke employees to lecture in classes and added the analysis of Coca-Cola to its chemistry curriculum. The school went on to make all 1,230 students dress in red or white shirts and to spell-out “Coke” while they snapped photos to send to Coke execs.

Considering how harmful and addictive sweeteners are, why was the Coke stunt considered harmless fun while it would be illegal to do the same thing with other harmful and addictive substances? Can you imagine a group of schoolkids being asked to create a live depiction of the Marlboro Man?

Researchers have proved that sweeteners and tobacco are both harmful and addictive. They’ve proved that sweeteners are to diabetes what smoking is to lung cancer. Yet the promotion of the former is encouraged while the promotion of the latter is highly regulated. The rationale cannot be that tobacco is so much more harmful. Tobacco kills only 8 percent more people. Both industries are even run by the same companies:

Sweeteners and tobacco are even rationalized the same way by industry insiders. Here is how both describe the safety of their products:

Since tobacco and sweeteners have so much in common, it seems odd that one of these is treated like the plague while it is fine for the food industry to spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year advertising sweets to children—particularly when psychologists have shown that before the age of eight, children do not see commercials as marketing; they see them as fact.

Consider the study from the Journal of Marketing that showed 70 percent of six- through eight-year-olds believe fast foods are healthier than food prepared at home. Kelly Brownell, PhD, former director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, reports, “A study of Australian children ages nine to ten indicated that more than half believe that Ronald McDonald knows best what children should eat.”¹³⁸ Brownell’s research also reveals that the average American child sees ten thousand food advertisements each year, just on television. Children watching Saturday morning cartoons see a food commercial every five minutes. The vast majority are for sugared cereals, fast foods, soft drinks, sugary and salty snacks, and candy.

What’s the moral of the story? Food companies are not going to stop with sweeteners. Nor can we rely on our government for help—it is the very source of the guidelines that leave us no practical choice other than to be slathered with sweeteners. Let’s talk about how we can get our SANEity back.

Can SANE Eating and Smarter Exercise Save Your Life? Jim’s Story

The story of seventy-year-old Jim is nothing short of remarkable. In Jim’s words:

It started in 1959. I stood at my father’s hospital bedside and watched while he suffered a fatal heart attack. It was also my sister’s birthday. She was only 11 and my twin brother and I were 16. Dad was only 39 and I feared I would have the same fate. That memory still haunts me today. Don’t worry, this story has a happy ending.

Fast-forward a few decades and I followed in my father’s footsteps—suffering from a major heart attack at age 40. Then at age 63, my heart did its best to throw in the towel. However, my surgeon performed a quadruple bypass and my electrophysiologist installed an internal cardio defibrillator (ICD). The unit records all abnormal cardiac events and works to keep me alive if and when I go into fibrillation. That has happened two times since the device was installed.

A year later at age 64, I went into heart failure and started having daily events of tachycardia. I had low energy, sleep apnea, and chronic events of premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) that could not be controlled. Drugs helped somewhat but also caused hypotension and my energy was nil. My heart wanted to stop, I felt it, but I wasn’t ready to stop.

Knowing something had to change and figuring I had little to lose, I discontinued all medications except baby aspirin, prayed my dad was watching over me, looked for answers elsewhere, and discovered SANE eating and smarter exercise. Within two days I was eating ten servings of green vegetables; eating healthy protein and fats; giving up grains, starch, and sugar; and starting eccentric and smarter interval training.

What happened next was nothing short of spectacular. I got stronger than I’ve been in decades while shedding 6 inches from my waist. My LDL cholesterol dropped from 220 to 165 and my blood pressure dropped from 150/90 to 110/70. The greatest improvement was a 90 percent reduction in PVCs (as counted on my ICD) and a 100 percent cure for sleep apnea. My energy is the highest it has been in 30 years. I feel fully alive for the first time in decades.

Now for the happy ending I promised. During a recent visit, my cardiologist downloaded data from my ICD and happily reported my events of ventricular tachycardia were zero. I happily suggested she start SANE eating and smarter exercise as a cure for heart disease; it certainly cured mine. She responded with a resounding “Will do!”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BIG TOBACCO AND THE “FOOD” INDUSTRY
1970	Philip Morris buys Miller Brewing
1978	Philip Morris buys 97 percent of Seven-Up
1985	R.J. Reynolds buys Nabisco Foods
1985	Philip Morris buys General Foods
1988	Philip Morris buys Kraft, Inc.
1990	Philip Morris acquires Jacobs Suchard
1993	Philip Morris buys Nabisco cereals
2000	Philip Morris buys Nabisco Holdings

Tobacco	InSANE Food Products
“We believe the products we make are not injurious to health.” —Tobacco Industry Research Committee¹³⁴	“Actually, our product is quite healthy. Fluid replenishment is a key to health. . . . Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids.” —Coke’s CEO¹³⁵
“We accept an interest in people’s health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business.”	“The soft drink industry has a long commitment to promoting a healthy lifestyle for individuals—especially children.”
—Tobacco Industry Research Committee¹³⁶	—The National Soft Drink Association¹³⁷