Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Fiber, sucrose and ulcers

Thanks to g for this paper. It's a little observational study looking sucrose vs fiber and their possible association with peptic ulcer. Cleave suggested refined carbohydrate caused duodenal ulcers. The carbophillic nature of post-Keys medicine suggested that fiber could redeem carbohydrate as a source of nutrition. This group from Nottingham (my place of origin) appear to be dubious about this. This phrase comes from the discussion:

"Despite the current healthy diet lobby there were no claims of increased (or decreased) fibre intake by patients or control subjects"

The clear association of ulcers with sucrose was interesting. The total lack of protection from cereal fiber was too (sorry, lack of negative association). But the best bit was vegetable fiber. This was slightly "protective". Until you corrected for social class (and a few other things), at which point the association was lost. Looks a bit suggestive that vegetable fiber intake might just be a surrogate for being more well off.

Another throw away comment from Nottingham in the late 1980s was that Crohn's disease is consistently associated with high refined sugar intake. I think I've seen quite a number of studies coming to that conclusion. But surely sucrose (or HFCS for that matter) can form part of a healthy balanced diet...

Peter

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"But surely sucrose (or HFCS for that matter) can form part of a healthy balanced diet..."

It seems you think so, or you would stop eating 85% chocolate, glucose, and other refined carbs. Ideally, I would use cocoa butter for cooking, and avoid even 85% chocolate unless it was sweetened with honey. Eating refined carbs (like glucose) is not doing us any good IMO. They are all deadly, in different ways.

Anna said...

Chocolate or cocoa & honey don't create a very good taste, IMO. For the little bit of high cocoa % chocolate I consume, I'll risk the bit of sugar that comes with it. But YMMV, of course.

Anonymous said...

I have made my own chocolate out of cocoa powder, fresh unheated honey, coconut oil, and vanilla. It tastes OK, but I prefer the Lindt 85% bars (USA recipe). People may react even to the small amount of sugar in the 85% chocolates. I've also found soy lecithin to be problematic. It will make my mouth sore sometimes, while chocolate without soy lecithin does not cause any trouble. Sometimes it pays to consider the small details.