Refined sugar depletes B-vitamins?

[djkvan]

I stumbled upon this the other day and was hoping to get some feedback:

...Refined sugar contains no fiber, no minerals, no proteins, no fats, no enzymes, only empty calories. What happens when you eat a refined carbohydrate like sugar? Your body must borrow vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize the incomplete food. Calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium are taken from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar.(http://macrobiotics.co.uk/sugar.htm)

Should this be a concern? I fundamentally understand what is being illustrated in terms of the body's metabolic needs but haven't located any biochemical information that illustrates the process. I only consume 2.8 liters of OJ a day, but am thinking of increasing my sugar intake. Could I safely add it to my existing OJ without worrying about b-vitamin shortages (already at 240g table sugar/2.5L OJ) or should I consider juicing more OJ if I want more sugar? Should this not even be a concern as long as I'm not relying on table sugar for more than 50% of my energy needs?

Another quote from the same source states:

EFFECT OF SUGAR ON NEUROLOGICAL PROCESSES ...One of the keys to orderly brain function is glutamic acid, and this compound is found in many vegetables. When sugar is consumed, the bacteria in the intestines, which manufacture B vitamin complexes, begin to die-these bacteria normally thrive in a symbiotic relationship with the human body. When the B vitamin complex level declines, the glutamic acid (normally transformed into “go” “no-go” directive neural enzymes by the B vitamins) is not processed and sleepiness occurs, as well as a decreased ability for short-term memory function and numerical calculative abilities. The removal of B vitamins when foods are “processed” makes the situation even more tenuous.(http://macrobiotics.co.uk/sugar.htm)

This is disturbing if it's true, unless I am consuming sufficient vitamins and minerals to counter this (alleged) effect.

[Oscar]

One of the principles of macrobiotic theory is that sucrose is bad. What does the qualification "empty calories" mean? Technically a calorie = the amount of energy needed to raise 1 (kilo)gram of water 1 degree Celcius. So it means sugar is 'pure' energy, nothing else.
To process any kind of food, several vitamins and minerals are used. That's one of the reasons why we need them! I've never heard of calcium being involved in the processing of carbs btw.
Unfortunately (or maybe conveniently) the site doesn't list any scientific sources, and I couldn't find any scientific articles about the second quote.
If you want to read unbiased info about sugar, I'd advice you not to look on sites about macrobiotics; it's a bit like looking for info about meat on a vegan site.

[RRM]

...Refined sugar contains no fiber, no minerals, no proteins, no fats, no enzymes, only empty calories.

Except for fiber (which is not a nutrient; enzymes are protein, so nutrients indirectly), all of these are nutrients.
Sugar is sucrose, which is also a nutrient.
Refined sugar is therefore 100% nutrient.
What they say about sucrose here, is also true for all other nutrients. For example:
Minerals contain no fiber, no vitamins, no proteins, no fats, no enzymes, no calories, only minerals.

What happens when you eat a refined carbohydrate like sugar? Your body must borrow vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize the incomplete food.

From healthy cells??? Not true.
To metabolize the glucose and fructose (the sole ingredients in sucrose), vitamins and minerals in the blood are used.
These vitamins and minerals are there for that purpose; to serve as co-enzymes in processes like that.
Thats why we need vitamins, to serve in such processes.
The same goes for metabolizing amino acids (protein) and fatty acids (fat); vitamins and minerals are required.
We consider vitamins as 'good' because they are essential in these processes.
Fuel (empty calories) is extremely essential.
Without those 'empty calories' no body function is possible.
Vitamins are there to make this possible.
Without such processes, we would not need vitamins.
So, its kind of ridiculous to regard using carbs, fat or protein as something 'bad' because it requires co-enzymes.

Calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium are taken from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar.

Thats is part of their purpose.
The suggestion that 'other parts of the body are depleted' because of this, is nonsense.
The blood is a big pool filled with nutrients (including vitamins and minerals) at our service.
No need to 'deplete healthy cells'.

Should this be a concern?

Only if you would not eat anything; no fruits, no juices, no fish; just sugar and oil.

I only consume 2.8 liters of OJ a day, but am thinking of increasing my sugar intake. Could I safely add it to my existing OJ without worrying about b-vitamin shortages (already at 240g table sugar/2.5L OJ) or should I consider juicing more OJ if I want more sugar?

Ive experimented with this, and 500 gram daily is my maximum (considering this intake of OJ),
so you might safely go a little higher.
We are all different, so simply monitor your body's capacity to recover and your defense;
for example by keeping a close eye on wound repair and catching a cold.

One of the keys to orderly brain function is glutamic acid, and this compound is found in many vegetables.

Ha ha ha
Glutamic acid is an amino acid present in ALL foods that contain a lot (fish, egg yolks) or little protein (including all fruits).
Its a non-essential amino acid that is readily composed by the body.

When sugar is consumed, the bacteria in the intestines, which manufacture B vitamin complexes, begin to die

Well, then we must forbid all fruits, as virtually all fruits contain sugar (=sucrose).
This would show in the blood; it would show a lack of B-vitamins.
There are no studies showing that eating fruits (or sugar) causes a lack of B-vitamins.

[djkvan]

Thanks for your quick reply, Oscar, RRM. Regarding depletion you make the point yourself, RRM, by saying:

Should this be a concern?



Only if you would not eat anything; no fruits, no juices, no fish; just sugar and oil.

Foods are (intelligently? luckily?) packaged with the required nutrient helpers to aid in their proper digestion, I'm deducing. So since refined sugars contain none of these "helpers" additional help is recruited from the body's available resources in the blood stream.

To metabolize the glucose and fructose (the sole ingredients in sucrose), vitamins and minerals in the blood are used.
These vitamins and minerals are there for that purpose; to serve as co-enzymes in processes like that.
Thats why we need vitamins, to serve in such processes.

The concern for me becomes the tipping point- i.e. at what point has enough refined sugar been consumed that additional vitamin/mineral, etc..., intake is required to avoid depletion. Hence the question about OJ ratios.

We are all different, so simply monitor your body's capacity to recover and your defense;
for example by keeping a close eye on wound repair and catching a cold.

I don't get sick at all these days, but general wound repair seems sluggish to me. I had a small, superficial wound on my elbow tip that I sustained in early September and it hasn't completely healed. It has healed to the point where the skin is still pink and tender and fragile (elevated and smooth.. almost like a skin-scab). I understand that being on the elbow makes it vulnerable to daily abrasion, when sleeping for instance, so maybe this isn't the best example. The mild groin strain that I sustained in April, however (groins are notoriously slow to heal, d'oh!) has yet to properly heal, so I wonder about things like this or zinc levels, for instance, especially since I have been experiencing prolonged stress and upheavals in life over the last two years (stress...another depletion source).

Fuel (empty calories) is extremely essential.
Without those 'empty calories' no body function is possible.
Vitamins are there to make this possible.

Again same question, please. Orange juice is sugar with the "supporting cast", refined sugar is a "lone player", which leads me to believe that it taxes the body's reserves.

The blood is a big pool filled with nutrients (including vitamins and minerals) at our service.
No need to 'deplete healthy cells'.

So what fills the pool? The food we eat, of course. If it is true that each food that we eat is packaged with enough vitamins/minerals, etc..., to aid in its digestion alone, where are the helpers which digest the whopping amount of table sugar I consume each day coming from? I would have to hope that there is a bunch of extra helpers in OJ and yolks or salmon for this purpose (redundancy), but this can only be borne out through, as you observe, vigilance and time.

The diet warns of consuming too much protein as well:

Consuming too much protein can cause depressions, sleeplessness, vitamin D deficiency, and lack of vitamin B2, B6 and folic acid for these are required to process protein.

So are not these required for digestion of naked sugar? I'm not ripping on sugar, just concerned for my health.

Ive experimented with this, and 500 gram daily is my maximum (considering this intake of OJ),

What observation (health, mood, etc.) made it your daily maximum?

When sugar is consumed, the bacteria in the intestines, which manufacture B vitamin complexes, begin to die



Well, then we must forbid all fruits, as virtually all fruits contain sugar (=sucrose).

No, because fruits have the supporting cast of vitamins and minerals, etc...,.

[djkvan]

If you want to read unbiased info about sugar, I'd advice you not to look on sites about macrobiotics; it's a bit like looking for info about meat on a vegan site.

Point taken, Oscar. Again, I'm not trying to disparage sugar, just seeking answers.

[Kookaburra]

Wow RRM, you are knowledgeable. Just curious, how do you remember about the names of all the different vitamins, proteins, etc etc and their functions? Like for example in an earlier post you said that glutamic acid is a non-essential amino acid. Do you look over your notes first, or is that info already in your memory? And also, do you know which fruits are high in B1 by heart or do you have to look through the Waisays article first?

For me, despite being on the diet for 1 and a half years, I still have to search wiki/waisays/freeacnebook in order to refresh my memory about the different amino acids and whatnot.

[RRM]

Regarding depletion you make the point yourself, RRM, by saying:

Only if you would not eat anything; no fruits, no juices, no fish; just sugar and oil.

What point am i making?
That if you do not consume any vitamins / minerals, you will lack those vitamins / minerals?
Seems logical to me, no?

since refined sugars contain none of these "helpers" additional help is recruited from the body's available resources in the blood stream.

Whatever food you consume, the body will always use vitamins / minerals present in the blood for subsequent various conversions of various ingredients.
If that food contains little of a specific vitamin / mineral involved in conversions, that level will go down a bit, until repleted.
If that food contains no such vitamin/ mineral, the level of all vitamins / minerals involved in subsequent conversions will go down a bit until repleted.

The concern for me becomes the tipping point

The tipping point is not absolute, and will be different for everybody.
If you are concerned, simply stay on the safe side (250 g/day) or even lower.

Orange juice is sugar with the "supporting cast"

It doesnt contain everything in abundance, so, it will too 'tax some reserve'.
All foods tax some reserves, but sugar more so.
And all foods contribute to those reserves, including sugar.

If it is true that each food that we eat is packaged with enough vitamins/minerals, etc..., to aid in its digestion alone

Its not. All foods contribute at least something, but not everything, including sugar, which contributes glucose and sucrose.

I would have to hope that there is a bunch of extra helpers in OJ and yolks or salmon for this purpose (redundancy)

Of course there is.
Why?
Because in nature we never had abundance daily.
So that even when we lacked the proper foods, our body still had to be able to function normally.
Redundancy to compensate for starvation.

The diet warns of consuming too much protein as well: ...
So are not these required for digestion of naked sugar?

For the conversion of protein (B2, for example) and sugars (B1, for example) not the same vitamins / minerals are used.
Warning against excess protein was more about the influence of elevated blood protein levels on depression and sleeplessness,
as protein (amino acids) levels may vary greatly (100 to 900%).
The latter part of that warning is kind of unlikely, unless your diet is inadequate.

What observation (health, mood, etc.) made it your daily maximum?

Catching a mild cold that didnt subside and poor wound healing,
which both were eliminated after reducing sugar intake and increasing OJ intake to normal.

When sugar is consumed, the bacteria in the intestines, which manufacture B vitamin complexes, begin to die

Well, then we must forbid all fruits, as virtually all fruits contain sugar (=sucrose).

No, because fruits have the supporting cast of vitamins and minerals, etc...,.

That 'supporting cast' is primarily required for the conversion of (metabolizing) sugars in the blood,
after they have been taken up in the blood, and that 'supporting cast' is primarily obtained from the blood pool,
and replenished by consumed foods (that have been digested, and its nutrients taken up) throughout the day.
Its about sugar in the intestines, right?
There will always get some sugars from digested food in your intestines.
The good thing about white sugar is that it does not contain any ant-nutrients, fiber etc.,
and also does not require any enzymatic digestion, so that its readily absorbed from the digestive tract.
Particularly whole foods are much harder to digest, so that particularly complex sugars end up in our bowels.
In the bowels they are partially decomposed bacterially (causing gasses), releasing more simple sugars.
Only if sugar is added to hard-to-digest-foods, or when digestion is hindered (by extreme physical activity, for example)
more sugar might end up in the bowels.

[RRM]

how do you remember about the names of all the different vitamins, proteins, etc etc and their functions?

It works exactly the same as in school:
its about repetition, repetition and repetition (check out the number of posts i made).
And on this forum we are taking about the same things over and over and over again,
so that one automatically starts to remember something eventually.
The more you repeat, the more you will remember.
Im on the diet since 1995, and you since 2008. Thats the difference.

[RRM]

'Empty calories' sounds bad, but they are good, as it actually means 'just energy', in as much as B2 is 'just B2'.
Empty calories are the major nutrients (fat, protein, sugar), in as much as vitamins and minerals are micronutrients.
'Empty calories' are essential, in as much as (just) vitamins and (just) minerals are essential.

[djkvan]

RRM wrote:

djkvan wrote:Regarding depletion you make the point yourself, RRM, by saying:


Only if you would not eat anything; no fruits, no juices, no fish; just sugar and oil.



What point am i making?
That if you do not consume any vitamins / minerals, you will lack those vitamins / minerals?
Seems logical to me, no?

That sugar requires a supporting cast for digestion. I could eat only fruit, fish and juices to meet my needs, but not sugar and oil only. You see? I agree, it is logical, but what is logical isn't always what is obvious. I wasn't thinking of the fact that sugar requires additional nutrients for it's proper digestion. It was the thought of long-term (silent, gradual) depletion that concerned me. The diet warns me not to exceed 50% of my maximum daily caloric intake in the form of sugar, so there is a good starting point I suppose.

The diet warns of consuming too much protein as well: ...
So are not these required for digestion of naked sugar?



For the conversion of protein (B2, for example) and sugars (B1, for example) not the same vitamins / minerals are used.
Warning against excess protein was more about the influence of elevated blood protein levels on depression and sleeplessness,
as protein (amino acids) levels may vary greatly (100 to 900%).

I was saying that the protein example illustrated the idea of the supporting cast required for digestion of macro nutrients

Its about sugar in the intestines, right?
There will always get some sugars from digested food in your intestines.
The good thing about white sugar is that it does not contain any ant-nutrients, fiber etc.,
and also does not require any enzymatic digestion, so that its readily absorbed from the digestive tract.

.

As per wiki:
Monosaccharides in a closed-chain form can form glycosidic bonds with other monosaccharides, creating disaccharides (such as sucrose) and polysaccharides (such as starch). Enzymes must hydrolyse or otherwise break these glycosidic bonds before such compounds become metabolised.

Sugar is actively transported across cell membranes and its digestion does require brush-border enzymes (nutrients, proteins, whatever...). Although ptyalin initiates digestion of sugar in the mouth, there is little chewing going on when I swallow juice, so little involvement of salivary enzymes at that stage. I would imagine that I am using quite a bit of brush-border enzymes daily (little by little)

What observation (health, mood, etc.) made it your daily maximum?


Catching a mild cold that didnt subside and poor wound healing,
which both were eliminated after reducing sugar intake and increasing OJ intake to normal.

What I guessed.
So once again I am relegated to the role of guinea pig.

Such is life...

I'll be watching those cuts and colds, I guess.

[Oscar]

I think RRM meant that sucrose, unlike starches, doesn't need (pancreatic) amylase to reduce it to its building blocks. Of course sucrose does need sucrase/invertase from the epithelial cells in the small intestine wall, which hydrolyzes sucrose into glucose and fructose.

[djkvan]

Nice save, Oscar.

[RRM]

That sugar requires a supporting cast for digestion.

A supporting cast is the rest of the members (besides the leading cast) in the same team / cast.
So, this suggests that you need to have the sugar and the B-vitamins & minerals present in the same food.
This is not true at all.
So, sugar does NOT 'require a supporting cast for digestion'.
It may perfectly come without any supporting cast, and still get properly digested,
simply because all the required nutrients are already there.

the fact that sugar requires additional nutrients for it's proper digestion.

Not just sugar, but all nutrients do.

[djkvan]

That sugar requires a supporting cast for digestion.

A supporting cast is the rest of the members (besides the leading cast) in the same team / cast.
So, this suggests that you need to have the sugar and the B-vitamins & minerals present in the same food.
This is not true at all.

This is not what I was suggesting. I was stating that sugar does not digest itself. I ingest a heck of a lot of granular table sugar daily, so I am concerned that my nutrient pool has adequate resources to accommodate this fact

the fact that sugar requires additional nutrients for it's proper digestion.

Not just sugar, but all nutrients do.

I don't consume 2 cups of the other nutrients everyday.

So, sugar does NOT 'require a supporting cast for digestion'.

My point is that sugar does not and cannot use itself to digest itself.

[RRM]

I ingest a heck of a lot of granular table sugar daily, so I am concerned that my nutrient pool has adequate resources to accommodate this fact

The WHO and the FDA state that total carb intake (complex + simple) should represent between 55% and 75% of the energy intake.
According to the (US) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about half the calories consumed come from carbs.
With normal diets, much of that comes from added sugars in junk food, soft drinks, snacks, soups, yogurt, cereals and many breads.
The average added sugar consumption in the US (in 1999) was 196 grams per person, which is one cup of white sugar.
So, if you stick to that 1 cup daily, you will be an average Joe.
We can safely assume that your fruits and animal food will contain at least as much vitamins as 'normal foods' (including soft drinks) do.

sugar does not and cannot use itself to digest itself.

No nutrient can.
Sugar is no different.