Is Fructose Really The Problem?

I’ve been spending a lot of time researching diseases and nutrition after watching Doug Kaufmann’s presentation on cancer and the linkage between fungus/bacteria/viruses.  I’m really shocked by what I keep uncovering.  At this point, I really believe that virtually all metabolic diseases (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc..) are the result of poor diet and lack of exercise, and conversely, that all of those diseases can be cured by a change in diet and exercise.

The SAD (Standard American Diet) has basically removed all of the fiber from virtually everything.  Fiberless flour, fiberless sweeteners, practically every processed item on a grocery store shelf has no fiber in it because fiber doesn’t store well and it doesn’t have any real flavor to it.

The reason why we can eat piles of fruit and not get fat, even though it has large amounts of sugar in it, is because it’s also packed with fiber.  If you remove the fiber from the fruit by juicing it, now you have a substance that will make you fat.  It’s easy to drink a glass of OJ and eat a full meal on top of that, but try eating a full meal after eating three large oranges. It’s much harder to overeat in terms of caloric intake if the food you are eating has a lot of fiber in it.

The takeaway here is the SAD results in super-calorie-dense foods because of the lack of fiber, which in turn means it is far easier to get fat and far easier to get a metabolic disease.  Dr. Lustig likes to point the blame for obesity and metabolic disease at fructose, but it’s not really the fructose that’s the problem.  The real problem is consuming fructose without fiber.  You can eat as much fructose as you want if you balance that against enough fiber to fill you up before it makes you fat and sick.

Fiber has other critical roles in the body besides just making us feel full.  Beneficial gut bacteria require large amounts of it, and a lack of it results in bad microorganisms overrunning our good microorganisms.  So removing fiber not only causes us to eat more calories, it also causes a breakdown of our beneficial gut flora.  The role these beneficial bacteria play in keeping us healthy is enormous.

Further, the process of removing fiber almost always removes a huge amount of nutrients along with it.  For example, white rice and white four are required to be “fortified” by the USDA with vitamins because all the nutrients are stripped out of the flour and rice during processing.  These man-made vitamin additives don’t replace all of the various micro-nutrients that were lost when the fiber was processed out.  So now we have vitamin deficient food on top of more calorie dense food due to the way our food is being processed.

I’m really digging the “Linus Pauling” theory that virtually all metabolic diseases are the result of nutrient deficiencies.  This view holds that the body has a virtually unlimited capacity to heal itself given the proper inputs.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe over the course of my research:

Virtually all metabolic diseases are the result of an infection, either bacterial, viral or fungal.  The observed cellular damage in metabolic diseases are the result of either the body’s own immune system trying to stop an infection or from the infectious source itself.  If no infectious source is visible, it may be because the infectious agent is simply too small to be visibly observed in an optical microscope.

Cellular damage will never result in additive novel properties emerging in cellular behavior. If I take a strand of DNA from a cell and destroy a few random pieces of that DNA chain, then pack it back in the cell, the cell will never gain any new abilities from this damage.  Damaging a cell will never cause it to suddenly replicate itself in an out-of-control fashion, or suddenly give it the ability to avoid dying, because these are additive new novel properties.

Damage can only result in increasing entropy.  A billion monkeys banging on keyboards for a hundred years will never write the encyclopedia Britannica, and a billion random bits of damage to 3 billion DNA sequence pairs will never result in an immortal super-replicating cellular organism.  The “damage” that causes these abilities to emerge in cancer cells has to be intentional and directed.  The “damage” has to be caused by a living entity making intentional changes to its environment that leads to what we observe to be as cancer.

Home remedies for cancer, such as vitamin C, coniferous oil, mushroom extracts, vitamin D, hash oil, etc.. etc.. all display antifungal or antibacterial properties.  The reason why they work is because they help the body clear the underlying infectious disease responsible for causing the cancer.

People get “metabolic” diseases like cancer in the first place because their diet lacks proper nutrients and the fiber necessary for the body to fight off infections.  The reason why smokers get lung cancer is because cancer causing microbes live on the tobacco leaves and the carcinogenic toxins in the smoke reduce their body’s ability to fight off those microbes.  It’s never about the damage caused by carcinogens directly, it’s about their effect on the body’s ability to fight off infections.

Exercise also alters the chemical balance of our body making it more difficult for infections to take hold.  It is a well known medical fact that exercise reduces your chances for getting an infectious disease.  This is also why your odds of getting cancer (which is an infectious disease, not a “metabolic” disease) decrease with exercise.  In fact, your odds of getting any “metabolic” disease decrease with exercise precisely because exercise creates an inhospitable environment for bad microbes.  It has nothing to do with exercise altering a person’s metabolism, and everything to do with creating an inhospitable environment in the body for harmful microbes.

So here’s the deal, stop eating anything that has refined products in it.  That means any refined flour, any refined sugar, any refined fillers or preservatives.  Ideally you want to cut grains and meats (meat has no fiber) down as much as possible and up the amount of foods that taste good and fill you up, like fruit.  The human digestive system is similar to a chimp’s, and we all know what chimps eat!  Fruit!  Lots of fruit!  Chimps aren’t running around fat and getting cancer on a diet of fruits and nuts.

Primal diets, fruitarian diets or other diets that get people eating large amounts of unprocessed fibrous foods are the way to go.  Diets based on fruits, succulent vegetables, nuts and seeds are ideal.  Hunger should be the guide when it comes to a diet.  Chimps don’t count calories.  The only diet I’m aware of that allows a person to eat as much as they want while losing weight is a raw diet based on fruits and succulent vegetables. These diets should also be supplemented by B vitamin complex and adequate exercise.  Follow that path and you will most likely live a long and healthy life.

  • Matthew Alexander

    The fruitarian diet is what killed Steve Jobs. It also put Ashton Kutcher in the hospital when he went all method for his role as Steve Jobs. Fruit is important, but less important than vegetables and meat. Fiber is one thing, but let’s not lose focus of everything meat does for you (of course you’ll want less grain-fed meat).

    • I don’t think it was the fruit that killed Jobs. That’s pure speculation. Plenty of people live cancer free lives on fruit based diets. Further, I’m not advocating a 100% fruit diet, just the bulk of it like a chimp. 60% of a diet should be made up of fruits, with the remainder being succulent vegetables and grass fed meat.