I haven't tried many of these products myself aside from maybe Halo Top and that was years ago when it first became popular. I remember it tasting OK- like with many foods you can tell that you're eating a product sweetened with something besides sugar, and I guess for me that was enough to not consume a good deal of the stuff.
That being said, I remember there being one Halo Top flavor that I absolutely hated! I think it was maybe chocolate chip cookie dough, but it honestly tasted like what Playdoh smelled like. It was so bad that I hardly ate any of it and it just sat in my freezer for months with me coming back every now and then thinking that it's not as bad as I remembered (it always was).
Well, there's food and then there's "food". Consumption of the latter has been normalized in many if not most cultures, so that people don't think about it, or the potential consequences, many of which may still remain unidentified.
Our bodies are part of a created order, and that places constraints upon what we can safely eat. I'm not writing in religious terms here. If you have a car, for instance, it is a human-created object with its own place in a created order that makes cars possible. Order is what makes a car what it is and makes it useful. It is what Flintstones cars lacked.
If you had a car, a fossil-fueled one, and because it seemed appealing to do so, and perhaps under the advice of a trusted authority that was an idiot, you drained the radiator of coolant and filled it with gasoline instead, and then drove the car, what do you imagine would happen? (You can imagine somebody else doing this if you like.)
I can guess that it would start, but I can also guess that it would not run well for very long. I would guess that the "order" of the car-object would soon be greatly reduced, to the point where it would no longer be useful for its intended purpose. The same could possibly happen to the driver -- it depends -- not to mention innocent bystanders.
A human body is a much higher-ordered thing. Feeding junk into it misidentified as food has consequences, and reduces its order (homeostasis). This happens whether we realize what we are doing or not, or whether we were misled or tricked. The author of this report that you are reviewing is indirectly claiming something similar, but he's way out on a limb somewhere (in the order of things), writing about a perceived problem with sugar alcohols. He's not even thinking, I don't imagine, about the food quality of the items that contain the sugar alcohols in question and what effects that has upon health. Maybe that matter falls outside his business model.
Up to a certain age, I grew up eating all sorts of junk as it was sold in the 1950s and early 60s, and there was plenty to choose from. From about 13 years old onward I flip-flopped, sometimes eating well and sometimes not. I've somehow managed to live so far to a few days shy of 74, quite to my surprise, but the body is not working all that well, which is not a surprise given what I have put it through.
Our culture, along with others influenced by it, appears to have become detached from reality. I personally would say this was done to it intentionally, to destroy it, but the cause doesn't matter so much with regard to health. Things don't work a certain way just because you want them to, or because you have been persuaded that they do. They work the way they do, and they depend upon maintenance of very high levels of order where organic life is involved. But the required order is not being maintained.
The problem can be seen rather easily when people from more "basic" cultures, close to the land and natural foods, and possibly far from electromagnetic radiation, migrate into Western culture and become exposed to everything that we are. If they assimilate into our culture, their health may decline markedly. They are impacted in some ways even if they don't. We wouldn't have to spend billions of dollars on research to see this, but science, technology, and industry are invested in things that cause declining health. It's part of the business model.
Then there are "the people", and what they've come to believe. Can this end well, if nothing changes? I don't expect the direction of science, technology, and industry to change course on its own, and the consequences are likely to be considerably worse than filling one's radiator with gasoline. What remains is for the people -- the enablers of the rest -- to change, or to be changed.
So anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I made the earlier comment. This is the long version.
While I agree with you with regard to the hypothetical dangers of these sugar alcohols, I do have friends who are diabetic and I can tell you they most definitely are eating an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, along with other sugar-free treats on a regular basis.
When writing this article I approached it from the perspective of what should be a typical or "ideal" situation. In many cases we would assume that most people would not be eating entire pints of ice cream or many sweets throughout the day, but that doesn't mean that this doesn't occur for some individuals. Many people do overindulge, and likely one of the reasons we are dealing with a serious obesity epidemic.
But even then these would not be ideal situations. In order to make the approach Hazen's team took relevant to many individuals it would require people to eat excessive amounts, which itself isn't something that people should do even if low calorie.
That being said, even if your friends are diabetic and eating pints of ice cream I would assume that it's not occurring on a daily basis given how expensive that would become. It's the idea that constant, excessive consumption needs to occur in order to recreate the scenario that Hazen is trying to make appear commonplace.
That TMAO study was part of the many fishing expeditions of Hazen's team. They all rely on the same database and the same correlative approach, which is how they also hit erythritol, xylitol, and niacin in their studies. TMAO is an interesting one since that seems to be the only study where they were doing deeper looks into the microbiome.
Either way, it's pretty interesting how many of the new warnings are related to red meat and sugar substitutes used by people doing keto and other diets. I try to stay objective, but it seems more than coincidental that these foods are being targeted. I'm not sure if you read my prior post on the matter but Hazen's group has received 12 million in grant money from the NIH for this research, so it almost seems as if the NIH has some incentive to have this sort of research get out.
Oh yes. These people are big vegan propagandists. You would think that xylitol and erythritol would be OK in their world. Maybe they are going after the keto diet for some reason?
Just looking at the names of these "food" products makes me feel ill.
I haven't tried many of these products myself aside from maybe Halo Top and that was years ago when it first became popular. I remember it tasting OK- like with many foods you can tell that you're eating a product sweetened with something besides sugar, and I guess for me that was enough to not consume a good deal of the stuff.
That being said, I remember there being one Halo Top flavor that I absolutely hated! I think it was maybe chocolate chip cookie dough, but it honestly tasted like what Playdoh smelled like. It was so bad that I hardly ate any of it and it just sat in my freezer for months with me coming back every now and then thinking that it's not as bad as I remembered (it always was).
Well, there's food and then there's "food". Consumption of the latter has been normalized in many if not most cultures, so that people don't think about it, or the potential consequences, many of which may still remain unidentified.
Our bodies are part of a created order, and that places constraints upon what we can safely eat. I'm not writing in religious terms here. If you have a car, for instance, it is a human-created object with its own place in a created order that makes cars possible. Order is what makes a car what it is and makes it useful. It is what Flintstones cars lacked.
If you had a car, a fossil-fueled one, and because it seemed appealing to do so, and perhaps under the advice of a trusted authority that was an idiot, you drained the radiator of coolant and filled it with gasoline instead, and then drove the car, what do you imagine would happen? (You can imagine somebody else doing this if you like.)
I can guess that it would start, but I can also guess that it would not run well for very long. I would guess that the "order" of the car-object would soon be greatly reduced, to the point where it would no longer be useful for its intended purpose. The same could possibly happen to the driver -- it depends -- not to mention innocent bystanders.
A human body is a much higher-ordered thing. Feeding junk into it misidentified as food has consequences, and reduces its order (homeostasis). This happens whether we realize what we are doing or not, or whether we were misled or tricked. The author of this report that you are reviewing is indirectly claiming something similar, but he's way out on a limb somewhere (in the order of things), writing about a perceived problem with sugar alcohols. He's not even thinking, I don't imagine, about the food quality of the items that contain the sugar alcohols in question and what effects that has upon health. Maybe that matter falls outside his business model.
Up to a certain age, I grew up eating all sorts of junk as it was sold in the 1950s and early 60s, and there was plenty to choose from. From about 13 years old onward I flip-flopped, sometimes eating well and sometimes not. I've somehow managed to live so far to a few days shy of 74, quite to my surprise, but the body is not working all that well, which is not a surprise given what I have put it through.
Our culture, along with others influenced by it, appears to have become detached from reality. I personally would say this was done to it intentionally, to destroy it, but the cause doesn't matter so much with regard to health. Things don't work a certain way just because you want them to, or because you have been persuaded that they do. They work the way they do, and they depend upon maintenance of very high levels of order where organic life is involved. But the required order is not being maintained.
The problem can be seen rather easily when people from more "basic" cultures, close to the land and natural foods, and possibly far from electromagnetic radiation, migrate into Western culture and become exposed to everything that we are. If they assimilate into our culture, their health may decline markedly. They are impacted in some ways even if they don't. We wouldn't have to spend billions of dollars on research to see this, but science, technology, and industry are invested in things that cause declining health. It's part of the business model.
Then there are "the people", and what they've come to believe. Can this end well, if nothing changes? I don't expect the direction of science, technology, and industry to change course on its own, and the consequences are likely to be considerably worse than filling one's radiator with gasoline. What remains is for the people -- the enablers of the rest -- to change, or to be changed.
So anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I made the earlier comment. This is the long version.
Great comment!
While I agree with you with regard to the hypothetical dangers of these sugar alcohols, I do have friends who are diabetic and I can tell you they most definitely are eating an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, along with other sugar-free treats on a regular basis.
When writing this article I approached it from the perspective of what should be a typical or "ideal" situation. In many cases we would assume that most people would not be eating entire pints of ice cream or many sweets throughout the day, but that doesn't mean that this doesn't occur for some individuals. Many people do overindulge, and likely one of the reasons we are dealing with a serious obesity epidemic.
But even then these would not be ideal situations. In order to make the approach Hazen's team took relevant to many individuals it would require people to eat excessive amounts, which itself isn't something that people should do even if low calorie.
That being said, even if your friends are diabetic and eating pints of ice cream I would assume that it's not occurring on a daily basis given how expensive that would become. It's the idea that constant, excessive consumption needs to occur in order to recreate the scenario that Hazen is trying to make appear commonplace.
I don’t trust anything coming out of the Cleveland Clinic and especially Hazen. He is famous for pushing TMAO in meat as being a cardiac poison
That TMAO study was part of the many fishing expeditions of Hazen's team. They all rely on the same database and the same correlative approach, which is how they also hit erythritol, xylitol, and niacin in their studies. TMAO is an interesting one since that seems to be the only study where they were doing deeper looks into the microbiome.
Either way, it's pretty interesting how many of the new warnings are related to red meat and sugar substitutes used by people doing keto and other diets. I try to stay objective, but it seems more than coincidental that these foods are being targeted. I'm not sure if you read my prior post on the matter but Hazen's group has received 12 million in grant money from the NIH for this research, so it almost seems as if the NIH has some incentive to have this sort of research get out.
Oh yes. These people are big vegan propagandists. You would think that xylitol and erythritol would be OK in their world. Maybe they are going after the keto diet for some reason?