Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Sorry but I'm going to go a little testy on you. I get all kinds of crap from people about my credentials from all kinds of people on these forums who keep telling me that I'm stupid and not a 'real' scientist. Let me assure you that I am, in fact, a real live practicing bench chemist...a true test tube clinker...with nearly 3 decades of hands-on daily science work like designing experiments, building equipment to carry out those experiments, interpreting the data, writing up the data, developing new hypotheses and testing them, etc. I know what is a crack pot idea...I've even had a few myself
...when I see one.
Based on past posts I find it impossible to believe that this guy is a professional scientist. Giving him the maximum possible benefit of a doubt maybe he's a lab tech or basement tinkerer who thinks that he deserves the title.
Since ethanol is an intoxicant and fructose isn't, the metabolic pathways cannot be the same...or even similar for that matter.
This is silliness. Lustig's point is that fructose is like alcohol in that it has to take a metabolic path through the liver before it becomes useful glycogen, and that overworking the liver with either has similar consequences. In the sense that is important to Lustig's argument the pathways are irrefutably similar! He didn't say "The chemistry of metabolizing alcohol and fructose in the liver are the same!" but "Fructose and alcohol are both have to be processed by the liver in a way that other energy sources do not, and the over consumption of each has similar biological consequences. Thus you can no more equate consuming 3000cals of a day brown rice with consuming 3000calories of fructose than you can with consuming 3000cals of grain whisky. In each case there will be consequences!"
To give you an idea of how lazy cycommute was in "analyzing" Lustig's work and concluding that because fructose ends as glycogen it doesn't matter that it passes through the liver on the way:-
http://today.ucsf.edu/stories/on-the...stig-responds/
White sugar is sucrose, which is half glucose and half fructose (fruit sugar). Although glucose generates an insulin response (and therefore promotes deposition of energy into fat and weight gain right after a meal), fructose is the really bad actor. Fructose is like “alcohol without the buzz.” It poisons your liver, and makes it insulin resistant; therefore, your pancreas makes even more insulin to make the liver work properly. This forces energy into fat all the time. Maple syrup and honey are just glucose. While caloric and insulin generating (therefore obesogenic), they don’t have fructose to damage the liver and promote insulin resistance. So, although not perfect, they would be better than sucrose.
Whether Lustig is right or wrong, it is this passage through the liver that is the key claim. The messed up insulin response triggers - according to Lustig - abnormal fat storage and by-passes the body's normal satiation triggers.
I.e. cycocommute has misunderstood literally
everything - except that the liver, alcohol, and fructose were mentioned!
Best overview I could find:
http://www.ucsf.edu/science-cafe/art...se-sugar-diet/