Sweet and Fat

[danaeris]

So a while back I remember reading an article about some research that showed that if sweet formed more than a certain percentage of a meal, that meal would be digested directly to fat -- all of it. Or something along those lines.

I just searched the internet for it (not very thoroughly), and instead found this article, with the following interesting quotes.

"Twelve double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of sugar challenges failed to provide any evidence that sugar ingestion leads to untoward behavior in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or in normal children."

Perhaps ironically, the most recent research actually suggests that, far from being a hyperactivity-inducing food, sweets actually appear to play a significant role in helping to calm us down when we are stressed. It turns out that both high sugar and high fat foods are capable of turning off our metabolic responses to chronic stress, decreasing the potential damaging effects of excess stress hormones. (14)

And here, you can read a press release from the researches who studied fructose as opposed to glucose. The conclusion is that large amounts of fructose in particular are bad for you.

Also, here, an article on the discovery that we can not only taste sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, but also fat... which explains why low-fat never tastes right.

But still no sign of the article I was looking for. Oh well.

Comments

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

...which explains why low-fat never tastes right.

funny, most of the time I think it tastes better. I really liked low-fat twinkies and was sad when they stopped making them (of course it's probably a good thing because even low-fat twinkies are certainly HORRIBLE for me). One of my favorite snacks is Pillsbury Crescent Rolls... but I only ever buy the reduced fat ones because the normal ones taste too greasy to me. I am so used to drinking non-fat milk that even 1% now tastes to me like I'm drinking half-n-half. I love my non-fat milk. The only exception I can think of where I like the fatty version better than the low-fat version is yogurt - I get the brown cow stuff with the fruit on the bottom and the cream on top and I skim off and save the cream to mix in with the fruit at the end... the low fat or non fat versions have no cream on top.

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

I don't like fatty-tasting things in general, but the problem I have with low-fat processed food is that they usually add a lot more sugar or random nasty chemicals to make up for it, which tastes worse to me.

I do prefer naturally-low-fat foods (not skim milk, though). I'm indecisive about yogurt. I usually get the nonfat types but since they have to thicken it somehow when there's no fat, they add either dried skim milk (not bad) or pectin (makes it way too firm). So for a while I got the Brown Cow whole milk yogurt and threw away the cream top (tried using it as butter for toast til I realized that I don't put butter on toast anyway. ;)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

non-fat milk and skim milk aren't exactly the same thing though. I asked a nutritionist about this once. They both have no fat but skim also has less protein. So non-fat tastes somewhat richer than skim. Also, since I drink 100% lactose reduced it is somewhat sweeter - the partially-broken-down sugars are for some reason sweeter than the normal milk sugar.

[dazzlynn.livejournal.com]

I made some ice cream/sorbet last night. After a while milling around why it didn't taste quite right, I realized it needed fat.