by Al Sears, MD, CNS

Good old-fashioned lard has been unfairly demonized for too long.

I’ve told you how my grandmother made her pie crusts with lard and how most people used it until the government told us that animal fat caused heart disease. As a regular reader, you know that’s just not true. Your body needs animal fat to use as food and to help absorb important nutrients.

But what about other oils that are being touted as “healthy?” These oils are used in prepared foods like sandwiches, chicken salad, soups or even a loaf of whole grain bread. They are on the shelves at every “health food store,” yet they are some of the most unhealthy oils you’ll find.

I’m talking about seed oils.

Research shows these oils are linked with all the chronic diseases they’re supposed to help you avoid, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Industrialized seed oils, often called vegetable oils, are hard to avoid. They’re in everything from peanut butter to crackers and salad dressings.

And though seed oils and vegetables may sound like natural foods, they’re the farthest thing from it.

While native cultures put animal fats at the center of their diet and show no trace of heart disease, they never ate seed oils because they are chemically processed, lab-created oils and they don’t exist in nature. We never evolved to properly metabolize or digest them.

In the early 1900s, Proctor and Gamble began using a chemical process called hydrogenation to turn cottonseed oil into a solid fat that could be used for cooking instead of lard. The result, in 1911, was Crisco.1

The success of the world’s first vegetable shortening led to the marketing of soybean, corn, safflower, and canola (made from rapeseed) oils. They were cheap to make and manufacturers pushed them hard on the public. Soon, they were a staple of American cooking.

A few years later, the concept that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease was first presented by a physiologist named Ancel Keys. Even though there were epidemiologists at the time who strongly disputed his findings, the hypothesis that animal fats raise the risk of heart attacks became conventional wisdom in mainstream medicine.2

As I’ve been saying for years, this is entirely wrong, and research bears this out.3

As a substitute for animal fats, Keys urged people to consume—you guessed it—seed oils. He championed polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) from plant-based foods as a superior alternative.

Over time, this erroneous belief became entrenched in mainstream medicine.

Doctors and medical organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association declared war on animal fats. They strongly suggested lard and tallow should be avoided for cooking in favor of vegetable-based shortenings such as Crisco, corn oil or soybean oil. They insisted people should stop buying butter and use solid seed oil—margarine—instead.

It’s incredible, because scientific support for this nonsense is mainly based on deeply flawed, outdated studies from the ‘50s and ‘60s.

I recommend you rid your kitchen pantry of any vegetable shortenings such as Crisco and any of these oils: sunflower, cottonseed, soybean, corn, peanut, safflower, and canola.

Second, make a point of avoiding processed foods. These often contain seed oil in the form of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. The worst offenders include cookies, cakes, fried foods, frozen pizzas, margarine, biscuits, artificial coffee creamers, microwave popcorn, and pies.

The healthy fats I recommend instead of seed oils include:

Coconut oil. This healthy fat continues to get a bad rap. But, it’s made up of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are good for your brain and boost your immunity.4,5 They also prevent osteoporosis, protect your liver, and help your body burn fat.6,7,8

Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Studies show it protects against cancer, heart disease, stroke, obesity, Alzheimer’s, and arthritis.9 To make sure you’re getting the real thing, check the bottle labels. Look for these acronyms: PDO, DOC, DO, or DOP. These are European certifications of quality. The COOC (California Olive Oil Council) serves the same function for American-made olive oils. Also, only buy olive oil in dark or opaque containers. Exposure to light causes oxidation and rancidity.

Lard. Rendered from pig fat, it’s mainly made up of monounsaturated fat, the same as olive oil. But, it’s also rich in healthy saturated fat and a good source of vitamin D. Make sure the lard comes from a natural source. Check the label to be sure it hasn’t been hydrogenated to extend shelf life. If it’s not refrigerated, don’t buy it.

Tallow. Fat rendered from any animal other than pigs—usually beef—is called tallow. It has a high smoke point which means it’s excellent for cooking. Tallow is high in saturated and monounsaturated fats. Look for tallow from grass-fed cows—it’s higher in omega-3s. Like lard, tallow helps you absorb essential vitamins and helps keep your skin hydrated.

Other great sources of dietary fats include wild-caught fatty fish, avocados, and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pistachios.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD, CNS

1. “Crisco.” Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), accessed 10/27/20
2. “Ansel Keys.” Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), accessed 10/27/20
3. Harcombe Z. “US dietary guidelines: is saturated fat a nutrient of concern?” British Journal of Sports Medicine 2019;53:1393-1396.
4. “America’s most widely consumed cooking oil causes genetic changes in the brain.” University of California (http://health.universityofcalifornia), accessed 10/28/20 5. “Coconut Oil Offers Hope for Antibiotic-Resistant Germs” Coconut Oil (coconutoil.com), accessed 10/28/20
5. Hayatullina, Z., et al. “Virgin coconut oil supplementation prevents bone loss in osteoporosis rat model.” Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2012, 237236.
6. Nagao, K., et al. “Medium-chain fatty acids: functional lipids for the prevention and treatment of the metabolic syndrome.” Pharmacological research, 61(3), 208–212.
7. Otuechere, C. A., et al. “Virgin coconut oil protects against liver damage in albino rats challenged with the anti-folate combination, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.” Journal of basic and clinical physiology and pharmacology, 25(2), 249–253.
8. “11 Proven Benefits of Olive Oil” Healthline (healthline.com), accessed 10/28/20

by William Dufty: 

Dufty takes us back to the beginning of time, Paradise Lost and the Garden of Eden.  He references Biblical references to people living a very long time.  He discusses ancient Chinese acupuncture meridians, which are called beauty marks in the West, dark spots that appear at the time of birth or later.

When these charts are compiled thousands of year ago, “natural death” was going to sleep without waking up—was the normal way to die….refined sugar [sucrose] did not form a part of the human diet.

He relays to us the diet of these early people which consisted of a variety of nuts including almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, and pistachios.  For fruits and vegetables they had apples, fig, grapes, mulberries, olives, melons, carob, mint, onion, anise, cucumbers, lentils, and mustard.  For grains they had barley, millet, rye, and wheat.  They had milk and honey and a multitude of natural goodies.  Most all of these had natural sugars.

Dufty explains that none of the ancient books, the Bible, the Code of Mann, the I Ching, the Yellow Emperors Classic of Internal Medicine, the New Testament and the Koran, make any reference to sugar.  He references “sweet cane” that may have come from India and Polynesian myths and legends that made much of this sweet cane.  It was native to tropical climes, and efforts to cultivate it elsewhere failed.

The sweet cane “was cultivated with great labor by husbandman who bruise it when ripe in mortars, set the juice in a vessel until concreted in form like snow or white salt.”

The Greeks described it as a “kind of honey” growing in canes of reeds.  Early Roman and Greek accounts compared it to basic staples of the time, “Indian salt” or “honey without bees; and they imported it at an enormous cost.  The Persians were credited with the research and development of a process for refining the juice of the cane into a solid form that would last without fermenting.  It was feasible to transport the product.  He sets the time around 600 A.D.  Dufty continues with this interesting quote:

The Persian empire rose and fell, as empires always do.  When the armies of Islam overran them, one of the trophies of victory was the secret for processing sweet cane into medicine.

Dufty recounts the victories of the Arab armies and the spread of the Arab empire.  He continues:

It is tempting to wonder from eyewitness reports that turn up later, what role sugar played in the decline of the Arab empire.  Sugar is not mentioned [in the Koran], but the heirs of the Prophet [Mohammad] are probably the first conquerors in history to have produced enough sugar to furnish both troops and courts with candy and sugared drinks.  An early European observer credits the widespread use of sugar by desert fighters as their reason for their loss of cutting edge.

 The author quotes Leonhard Rauwolf, a German botanist:

The Turks and Moors cut off one piece [of sugar] after another and so chew and eat them openly everywhere in the street without shame…in this way [they] accustom themselves to gluttony and are no longer the intrepid fighters they had formerly been.

Dufty comments, “This may be the first recorded warning from the scientific community on the subject of sugar abuse and its observed consequences.”  He draws a parallel with the Christian Crusaders.  They, too, acquired a taste for the “sauce of the Saracens”.  He quotes Pope Clement V advocating that the Christians, too, get in the sugar business.

…If the Christians could seize those lands [the Sultans] great injury would be inflicted on the Sultan and at the same time Christendom would be wholly supplied from Cyprus.  Sugar is also grown in the Morea, Malta, and Sicily, and it would grow in other Christian lands if cultivated there.  As regards Christendom, no harm would follow.

Dufty explains that Christians took a big bite of the “forbidden fruit”.  What followed was seven centuries in which the seven deadly sins flourished across the seven seas, leaving a trail of slavery, genocide, and organized crime.

My comments:  Yes, the forbidden fruit: I had a paper route, and in those days the paperboy collected for the monthly subscription. I had change jingling in my pocket, and there were little mom and pop markets all around me.  I could easily sneak a soda pop or a Snickers bar. It was easy to get hooked on the sweet stuff.

I recall my son’s morbidly obese Cub Scout leaders acting as drug pushers in tantalizing their charges with CAKE!! after the evening’s activities.  I remember fighting with my brother over splitting a leftover piece of cake, pie, or candy as to who got the biggest piece.  Funny thing, we never fought over who got how much of the leftover vegetables!  So yeah, it’s easy to understand how these people of hundreds of years ago went berserk over sugar.  I was no different.

Continuing: Dufty quotes the British historian, Noel Deerr: “It will be no exaggeration to put the tale and toll of the slave trade at 20 million Africans, of which two thirds are to be charges against sugar.”  He then spends the next couple of pages describing the growth of the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade and sugar cultivation.  Then the Dutch got into the act by 1500.

No other product has so profoundly influenced the political history of the Western world as has sugar. . .The Portuguese and Spanish empires rose swiftly in opulence and power.  As the Arabs before them had crumbled, so they too fell rapidly into a decline.  To what extent that decline was biological—occasioned by sugar bingeing at the royal level—we can only guess.  However, the British empire stood by waiting to pick up the pieces.

He tells us that Queen Elizabeth initially called the slave trade, “detestable”, but she soon capitulated.  The Queen sanctioned the Company of Royal Adventurers of England, which gave them a state monopoly of the West African slave trade.  In the West Indies the Spaniards had exterminated the natives and brought African slaves to tend their fields of cane.

Comment: What is a 20^th century parallel to the 15^th and 16^th century European sugar craze?  I would think that one parallel is the oil rush.  Just like the machinations of the governments back then, I think of the 1953 U.S. CIA sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.  He nationalized the Iranian oil industry, and the Western powers [Standard Oil and BP] didn’t like that.  Weren’t Gulf Wars I and II primarily about oil? Sugar then, oil now.

Continuing: The sugar trade in the West Indies grew in another way.  Fermented cane juice was turned into rum.  The first rum runner imported their precious tonic to New England where a “pennies worth” of rum was traded with the Indians for furs.  That latter were sold in Europe for a fortune.  On the return voyage back to the New World, the ships of the Queen’s Company of Royal Adventurers visited the West African coast to pick up more slaves, who in turn would tend the sugar cane fields to produce more sugar, molasses and rum.

It was rum for the American Indians, molasses for the American colonists, and sugar and furs for Europe.  It was quite a neat deal until the land in Barbados and other British islands was worn out and exhausted.

Britain’s Navigation Acts of 1660 required that the trade of all British colonies had to be with England, Ireland, and British possessions.  Mother England wanted to protect her revenues and maintain the priceless shipping monopoly.  Dufty explains that by the 1860’s sugar became a synonym for “money” in the English language.

He explains that the Molasses Act of 1733 did as much or more to precipitate the American War of Independence as did the Boston Tea Party.  The act levied a heavy tax on sugar or molasses coming from anywhere other than the British sugar islands in the Caribbean.  The ship owners of New England cut themselves in.  They delivered rum to West Africa in exchange for more slaves, who were then sold to the British plantation owners.  Then they shipped molasses back to the colonies which was to be distilled into rum.  Dufty explains that the per capita consumption of rum in the colonies was an annual four gallons per person.

Dufty quotes the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvetius: “No cask of sugar arrives in Europe to which blood is not sticking.  In view of the misery of these slaves anyone with feelings should renounce these wares and refuse the enjoyment of what is only to be bought with tears and death of countless unhappy creatures.”

Helvetius was forced to recant [in part to save his skin], as the French were cutting themselves in on the sugar trade.  The Sorbonne [University of Paris] condemned him and his books were burned.  Nevertheless, the genie was out of the bottle.

The stigma of slavery was on sugar everywhere, but most particularly in Britain.  Everywhere sugar had become a source of public wealth and national importance.  Through taxes and tariffs on sugar, government had remained a partner in organized crime.  Fabulous fortunes were being amassed by plantation owners, planters, traders and shippers; and the sole concern of European royalty was how they would take their cut.

My comments:  Are things much different today?  President Nixon was paranoid about the 1972 election, and one of his concerns was rising food prices.  He teamed up with the then Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, to start massive government subsidies for the growing of corn in an effort to keep food prices low.  Japanese scientists figured out in the early 1970’s how to make high fructose corn syrup [HFCS] from that cheap corn.  Therefore, we now have the price HFCS being kept artificially low through government subsidies and the price of imported sugar kept artificially higher because of tariffs.  Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, large multi-national corporations are making a fortune by selling, cheap, low quality, disease-facilitating food [if you can call it food] and beverages to the unsuspecting public all laced with HFCS.  And on the farm we now have herbicide-resistant genetically modified organisms [GMO’s] being doused with herbicides.  The lobbyists in the corn producing states push to keep the cash cow flowing. And the politicians are bribed [through campaign contributions] to continue to vote the status quo, and the tax-payers are pick-pocketed to finance the entire scheme.

Future generations have to be properly trained to keep the show rolling along.  Schools have gotten in on the act by allowing soda-pop vending machines on campus, although due to protests, some have since been removed.  At least one elementary school in Lewiston, ID has a Pepsi logo on its outdoor info sign.  Our local skateboard park is called “Mountain Dew Skateboard Park”. The objective is to burn the logos of these sugary drinks into the minds of new consumers.

The craze for sugar certainly continues.  What about the slaves?  We don’t have them anymore, or do we?  If we do, who are they?

Continuing: Dufty explains the British Empire was totally hooked on the issue of sugar.  Gluttony had produced necessity.  Sugar and slavery were indivisible.  Therefore, they were defended together.  When sugar was originally introduced in England, a pound cost an entire year’s salary for the average working man.  As the sugar trade increased, the price fell precipitously.  By 1700 the British Isles were accounting for 20 million pounds of sugar per year.  By 1800 it was 160 million pounds per year.  The consumption had gone up eight-fold.  A hundred years later the British were spending as much on sugar as they were on bread.  The consumption had increased to 73 pounds per person per year.

The French didn’t sit idly by.  By 1700 refined sugar was France’s most important export.  The British struck back with naval blockades, cutting off their source of sugar cane.  A German scientist, Franz Carl Achard, was experimenting with a “type of parsnip” from Italy, originally believed to be from Babylonia.  Under pressure from the blockade, French scientists found a way to process the beet into a new kind of sugar “loaf”.  Napoleon ordered beets to be planted everywhere in France.  [Sound familiar?]

After Napoleon had beaten Britain’s naval blockade, the Quakers in Britain took up the cultivation of sugar beets as an anti-slavery gesture.  The status quo producers of sugar from sugar cane saw that as a serious threat and demanded that the “Quakers be uprooted”.  Most of their beets were fed to cows, and it wasn’t until a shipping shortage spawned by WW-I that Britain resumed the growing of sugar beets. [

The French abolished the slave trade in 1807, and the British did so 26 years later.  The British indemnified slaveholders in Barbados and Jamaica $75 to $399 a head.  Before then, there were plenty of slave revolts threatening those that ran the plantations.  After the abolition of slavery, East Indian immigrants were imported to man what was left of the powerful sugar business.

Up until this time, refined sugar was a raw, light brown-like sugar.  New American inventions were about to change that forever.  James Watt perfected the steam engine, Figuier developed a method for making charcoal out of animal bones, and Howard produced the vacuum pan.  Now the Americans could produce white, crystalline sugar.  Cuba became the new, back door colony for the U.S.  Import duties of $0.02 per pound provided for 20% of federal revenues.

Americans soon outdistanced the British and virtually every other nation in sugar bingeing.  The U.S. had consumed one-fifth of the world’s production of sugar every year but one since the Civil War.  By 1893 America was consuming more sugar than the whole world had produced in 1865.  By 1920…that figure for sugar production had doubled….It is doubtful there has ever been more of a challenge to the human body in the entire history of man.

Dufty draws several parallels of opium trade and production of the “mark of cane”.  They both began as medicines and ended up being used for habit forming sensory pleasures.  The opium traffic, as with sugar, seems to have originated in Persia.  Fortunes were made in their trade.  Opium was refined into morphine which was injected into those with sugar-induced diabetes, as the hypodermic needle had been invented by then.  Taxes were collected from both of them.  Many Union soldiers came home that were completely addicted to morphine.  Morphine was further refined into heroin, and the latter was also used to treat sugar diabetes.

Dufty quotes Dr. Robert Boesler’s [a dentist] 1912 comments:

Modern manufacturing of sugar has brought about entirely new diseases.  The sugar of commerce is nothing else but concentrated crystalized acid. If, in former times sugar was so costly that only the wealthy could afford to use it, it was, from the national economic standpoint, of no consequence. Today…because of its low cost, sugar has caused a degeneration of the people….The loss of energy through the consumption of sugar in the last century and the first decade of this century can never be made good, as it has left its mark on the race….

 Dufty concludes “The Mark of Cane” with a quote from Mark Twain’s autobiography.  His uncle ran a general store in Florida, Missouri around 1840.

It was a small establishment…a few barrels of salt mackerel, coffee, and New Orleans sugar behind the counter.  [They had the usual hardware items.] and…a barrel of two of New Orleans molasses and native corn whiskey on tap.  If a boy bought five or ten cents’ worth of anything, he was entitled to half a handful of sugar from the barrel…Everything was cheap…sugar, five cents a pound; whiskey ten cents a gallon.

The author explains that sugar was more expensive than whiskey, but they were pushing free samples on the kids.

By 1840 the sugar pushers and disease-establishment* were solid partners. Washington raked in two cents in federal taxes on every five-cent pound bag of sugar for another fifty years. Addicts supported the government—rather than vice versa—once upon a time. *That part of the establishment—once minor, now major—which profits directly and indirectly, legally and illegally, from human misery and malaise.

End

by Dr. Bruce Fife

Chapter 4, Part 3

Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs)

My Initial Comments: I wish I had known in my younger years just how potentially destructive sugar is on one’s health. Hopefully my sugar addiction from decades ago didn’t do any permanent damage. As I continue to read and understand from several experts who have researched this subject, it’s clear that the average person’s consumption of sugar is unhealthy.

Understanding the destructiveness of Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs) is really important if you consume refined sugars and are concerned about your health.

Sadly, I have spoken with too many people that preferred to continue with their sugar addiction and their resulting prescription addiction. Why do so many insist to continue with this insanity? I think much of it has to do with the same reasons that people are addicted to caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, mind altering drugs, and behaviors such as gambling. It teases our dopamine part of our brains. It’s pleasurable.

However, what we eat or drink, are behaviors, and we can choose what we will and what we won’t eat. We can choose to pass up the sweets when everyone around us is indulging. We can tell ourselves that the momentary pleasure I get from eating that doughnut or other sweet treat isn’t worth the damage it does to my health. We can choose to be the captain of our own ship.

At a recent family reunion everyone else was partaking of the pie and ice cream dessert except for my wife and I. She refrained due to food allergies, and I passed up the dessert as I didn’t want to fall off the wagon. I’d rather just “say no” to the high sugar eats and treats. Yes, it’s hard to do, initially, but once you get in the habit of doing so, it becomes much easier.

Continuing:

Dr. Fife begins this section by stating that sugar accelerates the aging process making you look and feel much older than you really are. He explains that elevated blood glucose levels increase molecular entities known as advanced glycation end-products or AGEs for short. The sticky glucose in your bloodstream could stick to fats, but it’s especially attracted to proteins.

He points out that aging is the accumulation of damaged cells.

The more AGEs you have in your body, the “older” you become functionally regardless of how many years you’ve lived. AGEs adversely affect other molecules generating free radicals, oxidizing LDL cholesterol (thus creating the type of cholesterol that collects in arteries and promotes atherosclerosis, heart attacks, and strokes), degrading collagen (the major supporting structure in our organs and skin), damaging nerve tissue (including the brain), and wreaking havoc on just about every organ in the body. AGEs are known to play an important role in the chronic complications of [type 2] diabetes and in the development of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. [Ed: My emphasis]

My comments: Many people will read the above paragraph and will say, yeah, yeah, I know all of that only to continue to indulge in what’s causing these various degenerative illnesses. When they see their doctor next, the doc is concerned because their A-1C is up, their blood pressure reading is up, and/or their “bad” LDL cholesterol is up. Solution? You guessed it: Up the dose of the meds and maybe a new one.

The doctor might give lip service about better nutrition, but that’s about it. The doc might even comment that you need to get your weight down by 15 or 20 pounds, but that about as far as it goes.

You the patient do not have to agonize by quitting your sugar addiction; the doc doesn’t have to fight to get a reluctant patient to change his/her lifestyle; the pharmacist will dutifully fill your prescriptions; and everyone is happy, or so they think.

Continuing: Dr. Fife explains that the AGE’s process is understood simply by observation. AGEs are involved in a vicious cycle of inflammation, generation of free radicals, amplified production of AGEs, more inflammation, and so on.

He goes on to say that everyone experiences the effects of AGEs to some extent and that it’s a part of getting older. The effects are the loss of skin tone, decreased organ function, reduction of motor skills, reduced ability to fight off infections, and other aging issues.

The problem is that insulin resistance raises blood glucose levels. Chronically elevated blood glucose levels can remain high even with the use of medications. The longer glucose is in contact with proteins, the greater the opportunity they have of forming AGEs. High blood sugar accelerates AGEing. [Ed: My emphasis]

Fortunately, we are not totally defenseless against the formation of AGEs. Our white blood cells have receptors to latch on to the AGEs and remove them. However, not all of them are easily removable, as this process sets off an inflammatory response. This, in turn, can lead to chronic inflammation.

Fife continues by explaining that heart disease is the leading cause of death in diabetics, and that heart disease is caused by diseased arteries. Studies have shown that the destructive effects of AGEs on blood vessels accounts for the rapidly progressive atherosclerosis experienced by diabetes.

It is this chronic high blood sugar characteristic of diabetics that leads to deterioration of the arteries that causes peripheral vascular disease, diabetic retinopathy, kidney disease, and other diabetic complications. …Elevated blood sugar itself, whether diabetes is diagnosed or not, is considered a risk factor for heart disease. [Ed: My emphasis] Elevated blood sugar is referred to as hyperglycemia.

Fife continues by explaining that AGEs have been identified as the primary mechanism that initiates the steps the lead to the development of atherosclerosis.

AGEs are highly damaging to the integrity and function of the blood vessel walls. They easily attach themselves to artery walls, generating free radicals and chronic inflammation. As tissues break down, proinflammatory cytokines, growth factors, and adhesion molecules are generated. Blood proteins, immune cells, LDL cholesterol, and fats infiltrate the damaged artery tissue where they are trapped. Cholesterol and fats are oxidized, and more inflammation is generated.

And now the process of occluded (partially, plugged, blocked, or restricted) artery vessels in your heart is in full swing.

My Comments: I have a father and brother that both had a coronary bypass surgery due to mostly blocked coronary arteries. A few years later they both died from heart illness. My paternal grandfather never made it to the surgeon’s table. He died from a massive stroke at 69.

The wife of my deceased brother Alan warned me about how heart disease was running in the males in our family. She urged me to see a specialist and have all sorts of tests done Her perspective was that she had seen three generations of men die from artery related disease. I responded with the following explanation:

I pointed out to her that the common factor was that all three were once very overweight and consumed way, way too many sugar-laden foods. I also reminded her that the potato chips Alan ate contained unhealthy fats which likely were a contributory factor towards his heart illness.

The real irony is that the wives were unwitting enablers to their husbands’ illnesses. My paternal grandmother lived in Yuba City, CA, the peach tree capital of at least California. She baked plenty of peach pies. After all, who could turn down her tasty culinary efforts? Sadly, Grandpa was at least 40 pounds overweight. He was warned about his high blood pressure, but it was too late.

My mother, although a dietician by training, also did plenty of baking. There were the cookies, pies and cakes for special occasions and rich Christmas candies of various sorts. I would be woefully guilty of omitting important details if I failed to mention the fact that the household of my upbringing laid the seedbed for my sugar addiction. My sister-in-law wasn’t a baker, but she purchased plenty of unhealthy processed and sugary foods.

Isn’t it ironic that the wives who care about and love their husbands bake their husbands on their way to diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and a premature death? What are two most common ingredients of most baked goods? Yep, you guessed it, sugar and white, relined flour. And then you throw in unhealthy fats made from seed oils (aka vegetable oils) such as soybean and canola oil. To add insult to injury, you use the hydrogenated forms of these oils which are margarine and shortening.

I have been in households where the wives’ love of baking has contributed to their husbands being overweight, spiked their blood sugar, and been a factor in their diagnosis of adult onset diabetes.

Continuing:

Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs) have the following characteristics:

• They serve no useful purpose whereas cholesterol is needed for cellular function.
• They are toxic by-products of non-enzymatic reactions between sugar and body tissues and are highly destructive.
• They tend to increase with age.
• In addition to diabetes and heart disease, elevated levels of AGEs are often associated with kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and other maladies.

Dr. Fife explains that various studies show the connection between diets with high levels of refined carbohydrates and the acceleration of the aging process. The research also found that indicators of inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance increased with age regardless of the subject’s [actual] age.

It’s not how old you are but how much accumulated damage you have sustained that really determines you level of health. Dr Fife concludes this section by saying that the formation of AGEs is an ongoing process but that we can minimize the problem my reducing our sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption.

My comments: I think to speak in terms of “reducing our sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption” is like telling a smoker to reduce the number of cigarettes he/she smokes. While reducing the number of cigarettes is an improvement, kicking the habit far more beneficial.

How much are you going to reduce your consumption of sugar and other refined carbs? If you drink two cans of pop per day, do you reduce it to one? Do you cut in half the number of times you have pie and ice cream? If you normally have four cookies, do you only have two?

My take is that if you know you are addicted to sweets and refined carbs, the very best thing to do is to kick the addiction. Which is better for an alcoholic, cut a two or three per day beer habit to one six pack per week or to eliminate the consumption of all alcoholic beverages?

Maybe you the reader might be different, but I know what can happen to me. If I have just one cookie, then I want a second and so on. For me, it’s better and easier to abstain.

Another big bonus of avoiding refined carbohydrates is that it’s much easier to either lose weight or to maintain your desired weight. Needless to say, absolutely avoid putting toxic chemicals such as artificial sweeteners into your body. That’s a discussion for another time, but I’d hope for now that everyone would understand the nature never intended for you to ingest laboratory concocted chemicals into your body.

To be continued…

by Dr. Bruce Fife

Review of Chapter 3

Dr. Fife outlined the sordid history of Ancel Keys’ fraudulent research which attempted to pin the blame for the increasing rates of heart illness on dietary fat, particularly saturated fat. A British researcher, Dr. John Yudkin, pointed the blame for heart disease on the dramatically increased amount of sugar in Western diets. Ancel Keys along with his sugar industry promoters vilified Yudkin to the point that Keys’ diet-heart-hypothesis, also known as the lipid or cholesterol hypothesis, linking dietary saturated fat to heart disease, gained traction and was generally accepted as true for over a half of a century.

Chapter 4, Part 1

Carbohydrate is Sugar

The primary purpose of carbohydrates is to produce energy. Fats and protein serve as building blocks in our bodies, although they can be used to provide energy. Carbs are mainly derived from plant foods, diary being the exception.

The carbs we’ll look at are glucose, fructose, and galactose (aka lactose). Fiber is also a carb, but humans do not have the enzymes to digest it.  Plants with the highest amount of carbs are legumes, grains, and tubers. The latter are carrots, potatoes, parsnips, etc. Refined carbs such as white flour have been stripped of most of their fiber, fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals. When digested, these refined carbs, also known as starch, are broken down into glucose.

Our blood sugar refers to the amount of glucose in our blood. For our bodies to operate efficiently, we need to have the proper level of blood sugar. From WebMD:

Normal blood sugar levels are less than 100 mg/dL after not eating (fasting) for at least eight hours. And they’re less than 140 mg/dL two hours after eating.

During the day, levels tend to be at their lowest just before meals. For most people without diabetes, blood sugar levels before meals hover around 70 to 80 mg/dL. For some people, 60 is normal; for others, 90 is the norm.

Blood sugar is not the problem; it is the over consumption of sugar that is the problem.

My Comment: What is over consumption? Some dietary experts hold the line at about 100 calories of sugar per day.  Considering that a 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda pop runs around 140-150 calories, it’s really easy to exceed those limits. For sugar addicts, those limits are hopelessly too low and are usually ignored.

Continuing: Fife points out that just as alcohol can be addictive, sugar can likewise be addictive. The problem with refined carbs is that the milling process, which has stripped everything away but the starch, concentrates the starch. This in turn, allows the starch to be digested much more quickly, and that results in a too rapid of an increase in blood sugar levels.

Me Comments: So you try to be a smart shopper and purchase bread labeled as “Whole Wheat.” Unfortunately, just as there are so many other “Fake” things in life, there is also fake whole wheat bread. Let’s look at some ingredients lists from several so-called “whole grain” breads. As you will see, many of these so-called whole grain breads list unbleached, enriched flour as their first ingredient.

Look at the second list of ingredients from a bread wrapper. For the benefit of those reading this article on their mobile devices, I’ll list the ingredients here:  INGREDIENTS: UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATGE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID, WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT FLOUR, SOYBEAN OIL, SUGAR, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL, LEAVENING (CALCIUM PHOSPHATE AND/OR BAKING SODA), SALT, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SOY LECITHIN.

Wow, that list has problem sirens are going off all over the place.

1) This is primarily white bread, but they throw in some whole wheat flour to make their claim to fame…whole grain. Notice the label: “Baked with Whole Wheat”

2) There are two sugar listings: sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

3) They also use two of the unhealthiest oils on the planet, soybean oil and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil.

4) This is a classic SORF product made from three cheap ingredients.

• Sugar
• Oils (Highly processed oils derived from seeds
• Refined Flour

The food industry manufactures hundreds and hundreds of “foods” made from these three, cheap ingredients.

By contrast, Ezekiel 4:9 bread has the following for its ingredients: INGREDIENTS: ORGANIC SPROUTED WHEAT, FILTERED WATER, ORGANIC SPROUTED BARLEY, ORGANIC SPROUTED MILLET, ORGANIC MALTED BARLEY, ORGANIC SPROUTED LENTILS, ORGANIC SPROUTED SOYBEANS, ORGANIC SPROUTED SPELT, FRESH YEAST, ORGNAIC WHEAT GLUTEN, SEA SALT

That’s quite a contract to the above fake, whole wheat bread. Here is a worthwhile quote from the article:

According to Food For Life, the glycemic index of Ezekiel bread is only 36. That’s half the reading for normal white bread, which is 70. Not even 100% whole grain [bread] can compare, as its GI is 62

Not only is the lower glycemic number better for diabetics, it’s better for everyone.

Sugar Overload

Continuing: Fife points out that the food industry puts an immense effort in putting just the right amount of sugar into their products to make them either sweet or savory.

The reason sugar is so pervasive in processed foods is due to the work or Howard Moskowitz, PhD, an American marketing researcher and psycho-physicist.* In the 1970s he was assigned the task of maximizing the appeal or Dr. Pepper. He tested 61 levels of sweetness to find the optimum level of sweetness to guarantee the new soda would fly off the shelf. This level is called the bliss point. It is at this point at which the sweetness is the most desirable, sweet enough but not too sweet.

The bliss point was first used in the formulation of soda, but is now used in all types of products—pasta sauce, cereals, tomato soup, bread, and so on. An unfortunate consequence of putting sugar in everything is that people to expect everything to have a slightly sweet taste. A generation of children has grown up eating foods sweetened to the bliss point. By comparison, foods such as vegetables, have become unappealing. *The branch of psychology that deals with the relationship between physical stimuli and sensory response.

Sugar in foods, sweets, and snack foods has created a nation of sugar addicts. Sugar is so addictive that some people admit they can’t live without it. Ed: My emphasis.

My comments: Volumes and volumes could be written concerning the above paragraphs. Dr. Fife said it in a minimum of words:  …a nation of sugar addicts. A result of this addiction is that we now have a national pandemic of adult-onset, type 2 diabetes. Sadly, this isn’t just occurring in adults, either.

Primitive peoples who don’t have the luxury of our modern, processed foods have an absence of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. There surely must be a cause-and-effect relationship!

Continuing: Dr. Fife reminds us that the sugar culture is a modern phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s, sugar was used in desserts and sweets. Nowadays, it’s a staple. Sugar consumption worldwide has tripled in the last 50 years, and most of this is in the form of hidden sugar.

Sugar is found in hundreds of processed foods such as bread and most baked goods, breakfast cereals, catsup and barbecue sauce, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, canned goods, and frozen foods.

My comment: Years ago, a cook at a school cafeteria told me that when she started adding corn syrup to the peanut butter, the kids liked it better than unsweetened peanut butter. She was contributing to training the kids to like things sweet.

Continuing: Fife lists various sources of sugar founds in processed foods: agave, barley malt, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, coconut sugar, corn syrup, date sugar, dextrin, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, levulose, maltodextrin, maltose, maple syrup, molasses, nonfat dry milk, palm sugar, saccharose, skimmed milk powder, sorghum, sucrose, treacle, and turbinado.

The ingredients list on food packaging lists the ingredients most predominant by weight. Some labels can list multiple sugars as you go through the list of ingredients.

My comments: Have you noticed that the ingredient lists on food packaging are usually spelled out in upper case letters? Additionally, they are often scrunched together in a condensed font. Worse, in many instances the contrast between the font color and the background is indistinct. An example is black letters on a red background. Elsewhere on the packaging, such as the nutrition information, things are much more readable. I think the most logical answer is to make it more difficult for the consumer to read the lists. Apparently, the manufacturers do not have the same requirements for the ingredient listings as they do elsewhere on the labeling. Please click here for a more complete explanation of food labeling requirements.

Continuing: Fife says the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture recommends limiting your daily sugar intake to no more than 8 teaspoons for the average adult. That’s about 128 calories. One 12 ounce can of sugar soda pop will put a person over the limit.

He reminds the reader that “natural sugars” such as fruit juice concentrate and agave nectar are no better than refined sucrose. Dr. Fife next segues into a discussion of the various types of sugars.

Sucrose

Sucrose is better known as white, table sugar. It is highly processed. Dr. Fife states that the only advantage of so-called “natural sugars” is that they might retain some nutritional value, but it isn’t much. He makes the point that so-called natural sugars such as Agave nectar or syrup are still sugar.

Glucose

Blood Sugar and Insulin Resistance

Digestible carbs are broken down and converted into glucose. The glucose is picked up by our bodies’ cells and transformed into energy. But first, the hormone insulin unlocks the doors to the cells and allows the glucose in. If the insulin was not present, glucose could not pass into our cells.

If cells don’t get enough glucose on a steady basis, they degenerate and die. On the other hand, too much glucose is toxic and can lead to mental confusion, coma, and death. Aren’t we fortunate that our bodies have a feed back mechanism to maintain our blood sugar (glucose) within a narrow range?

The way our bodies self-regulate is quite remarkable. The pancreas secretes insulin as blood sugar rises. As insulin shuttles glucose into the cells, blood sugar levels drop. Another signal tells the pancreas to stop producing insulin.

If blood sugar levels fall too low, then another signal triggers the pancreas to release another hormone, glucagon. Glucagon helps to release stored glucose from the liver. Our bodies have the ability to maintain blood sugar levels in a fairly tight range.

Refined carbohydrates whether they be some form of sugar or refined starches such as white flour, will quickly elevate blood sugar levels. The bran, fat, and protein in whole grains slows down the digestive process, which mitigates this problem.

If you eat high carb meals, snack on high carb foods such as donuts or cookies, and/or use a sweetener in your coffee, you will keep your insulin levels elevated throughout the day. That’s bad.

Dr. Fife reminds us that we can become desensitized to a variety of stimuli. For example, if we are in a room with an odor, after a while we don’t notice the odor anymore.

Chronic exposure to high insulin levels desensitizes the cells, and they become unresponsive or resistant to the action of insulin. This is referred to as insulin resistance. In order to move insulin into the cells, a higher-than-normal concentration of insulin is needed, which puts more strain on the pancreas to produce more of the hormone. Insulin resistance is the hallmark feature and first step toward developing diabetes.

End of Part 1. Please continue with Part 2 in this issue.

by William Dufty

Introduction

Seven years ago, we published our review and digest of Chapter 1 of William Dufty’s legendary book, Sugar Blues in our annual paper newsletter that we mail out in January. Being that we’re dissecting another book dealing with the subject of sugar addiction, Fat Heals-Sugar Kills, The Cause and Cure for Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, and Other Metabolic Diseases, it seems appropriate that we re-publish Dufty’s story.

Additionally, many new clients have come onboard with us in the past seven years. Also, many people have added email addresses during this period.

Lastly, in light of other books that we have done reviews and digests, we’ll make some additional comments that we hope will shed light on the issue of sugar addiction and how it can destroy one’s health. For those of you that are struggling with sugar addiction, we hope that you will do as Dufty did, have an epiphany and kick the habit.

Sugar Blues: Multiple physical and mental miseries caused by human consumption of refined sucrose—commonly called sugar.

Chapter 1: It Is Necessary to be Personal. 

Dufty grew up in a small Mid-western town during Prohibition.  When Dufty was eight, a visitor introduced to him the idea of floating a scoop of ice cream in a glass of Canada Dry ginger ale.  That was the spark that started his sugar addiction.  His access to grape soda pop kicked his addiction into high gear.  He writes, “When my summer grape pop habit got out of control, I had to lie, cheat, and steal to support it.”

He discovered malted milks in high school.  Rather than smoking, he got a better high off of a banana split.  He writes that the tobacco companies hired pretty girls to hook others on cigarettes.  Dufty smoked a few of the free ones, but he preferred a sweet treat.  He recounts summer hitch-hiking and living off Pepsi-Cola sold in a nickel bottle.

Dufty was drafted in 1942 and described his dislike of Army chow.  He writes, “I haunted the Post Exchange.  It was a two-year orgy of malted milks, sugared coffee, pastry, candy, chocolate, and Coca-Cola.”  He recounts that he was scared to death when he developed bleeding hemorrhoids.  Then he was hospitalized with pneumonia.

He finally became well enough and was shipped off to Algeria.  He remembered living off the land with a diet of “horsemeat, rabbit, squirrel, dark French peasant bread and whatever could be scrounged.”  He recalled never being sick or having a sniffle during those eighteen months.

He returned stateside after the war and reminisces…

Was I bright enough to understand the controlled experiment in nutrition I’d been unwittingly involved in?  I might have saved myself years of total waste, but I was a total idiot, without half the brain or instinct for survival…  On my return to the States, I went on a glorious bender; Pie à la mode, cake and whipped cream, malted milks by the dozen, chocolate and Pepsi.  Sugar…sugar…sugar.

He was flat on his back and had one malady after another.  His hemorrhoids returned, and he experienced infectious mononucleosis, atypical malaria, hepatitis, shingles, exotic skin conditions, ear infections, and eye diseases.  He says that he ran out of money and “discovered the wonders of socialized medicine at the VA… “

Dufty continues:

For over fifteen years I subjected myself to an endless whirligig of doctors, hospitals, diagnosis, treatment, tests, and more tests, drugs and more drugs.  During all that rigamarole, I cannot recall a single doctor (out of the dozens that treated me) who ever displayed the slightest curiosity about what I ate or drank.

One night in one sitting I read a little book that said if you’re sick, it’s your own damn fault.  Pain is the final warning.  You know better than anyone else how you’ve abusing your body, so stop it.  Sugar is poison, it said, more lethal than opium and more dangerous than atomic fallout. Ed: My emphasis.

He recalled a warning that a woman gave to him about sugar cubes as a child. “Everyone has to find out for themselves—the hard way.”

His epiphany hit him like a lightning bolt.  Dufty continues his account:

I threw all the sugar out of my kitchen. Then I threw out everything that had sugar in it, cereals and canned fruit, soups and bread.  Since I had never really read any labels carefully, I was shocked to find the shelves were soon empty; so was the refrigerator.  I began eating nothing but whole grains and vegetables.

The worst was yet to come.

In about forty-eight hours I was in total agony, overcome with nausea, with a crashing migraine.

Dufty compares refined sugar to heroin, a refined chemical that is highly addictive.

I was kicking all kinds of chemicals cold turkey—sugar, aspirin, cocaine, caffeine, chlorine, fluorine, sodium, monosodium glutamate etc.

Things started to improve.

The next few days brought a succession of wonders.  My rear stopped bleeding, and so did my gums.  My skin began to clear up and had a totally different texture when I washed.  I discovered bones in my hands and feet that had been buried under bloat.  I bounced out of bed at strange hours in the early morning, raring to go.  …My shirts and shoes were too big…I discovered my jaw while shaving…I dropped from 205 pounds to a neat 135 in five months and ended up with a new body, a new head, a new life.”  He continues.  “I burned my Blue Cross card.”  He wrote the woman that warned him about the sugar cubes, “Wow, were you ever right.  I didn’t get your message then, but I’ve got it now.

Since then [the 1960’s] I have been sugar free.  I haven’t seen a doctor, a pill, or a shot in all that time.  I haven’t even touched so much as an aspirin.

My Comments: Dufty is ever so right; sugar is a highly addictive substance. Sometime in the future, I (Lance) will write an article about my own history of sugar addiction. However, for now I’ll share with you a very recent experience.

As I went over to the photocopier shop to pickup my copies of our 2021 paper newsletters, I noticed a plate of mostly eaten Christmas cookies sitting on a counter. The one that was left was one of those white flour jobs, sweetened with sugar, of held together with butter. I couldn’t avoid taking in a whiff of the aroma coming off that cookie. It reminded me of the pleasures of eating such sweet treasures, the wonderful taste in my mouth, and the smooth feeling when going down my throat.

I think the sensation was remarkably similar to the former smoker that feels a craving and taste for a cigarette when he/she is around someone smoking. The same could said for the reformed alcoholic that gets a whiff of booze and relives the wonderful feeling of the drink trickling down his throat.

Sugar is addictive! End