Omega
Moderator
We watched this last night and it was really very interesting... It was the best weight related program that I have seen in a long time...
Sugar v Fat
Watch now4 WEEKS LEFT
ALSO AVAILABLE IN: HD
2013-2014
DURATION: 1 HOUR
What's worse for us: sugar or fat?
To answer the hottest question in nutrition, twin doctors Chris and Xand Van Tulleken go on month long high-fat and high-sugar diets. The effects on their bodies are shocking and surprising.
But they also discover that in the debate about fat and sugar, the real enemy might have been hiding in plain sight.
Anyone in the UK should be currently able to get to it with this link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h
It is bound to be shown elsewhere too...
Basically (in the tiniest of studies) a pair of identical twins go on different diets for a month...
One went on a high sugar diet with no fat. The other went on a high fat diet with no carbs at all including no fruit and veg.
They could both eat as much as they wanted for the majority of the time - with the only real restriction being that they had to stick to their list of "allowed food" only.
They ran various tests on them to see how people that were otherwise identical fared on a vastly different food plan.
They did a mock stock market trading test where both were set up and had to see how they fared with all the abbreviations for companies and market fluctuations which gave them both quite a difficult puzzle to try to get their heads around. The twin on the high sugar diet was much more capable of brainwork.
They did a food satisfaction test where they did not eat for x hours then had a breakfast of identical calorie total (but in their allocated foodstuffs). At lunchtime they were told to eat as much as they wanted until they felt satisfied. They calorie counted everything including the left when they felt that they had eaten enough.
The twin on a high fat no carb diet ate about 800 calories for lunch. The twin on a high carb / sugar no fat diet had over 1200 calories and was hungry again afterwards much earlier...
They did an exercise test - cycling up Box Hill and the high carb / sugar twin was much better at exercise.
On doing the exercise - they took blood test and the twin that had eaten no sugar had much more glucose in his bloodstream than they (both doctors) would have imagined after a month of eating no carbs / sugar whatsoever. The reason given was that his body had converted muscle into fuel for the exercise that he was pushing himself to do... He was eroding his muscle.
At the end of the month - both lost weight... The high sugar twin lost about 1kg and the high fat twin lost about 4kg... The killer was that about 2kg of those 4kg had been muscle...
They were surprised to learn that the cholesterol level had not been raised on the high fat twin where they had anticipated might be the case with eating all that fat.
They were shocked to learn that the high fat twin had raised insulin levels to the level where they were borderline diabetic...
The conclusion was that NEITHER high fat with no carbs nor high carb with no fat were the ideal answer and a much more balanced approach really was more healthy and more effective in real terms (since people do not diet to lose their muscle mass they want to lose fat).
They spoke to an Oxford professor who said that their results were born out in much bigger studies...
Anyway the big conclusion was that we have a natural brake that makes us not want too much pure fat or pure sugar... They described it by saying that if you sat with a bowl full of double cream you would probably get sick of the blandness of it after a while and stop eating... If you sat with a bowl of sugar - and tried eating spoon after spoon of that you would probably find it too sweet and stop.... The real killer foods are those with a 50% mix of fat and sugar... These are the things that we can eat all day long and do the real damage... The conclusion was that if we cut out the things with that 50% fat 50% sugar split like ice cream and cheesecake and build a healthy diet we should be able to control our food.
Sugar v Fat
Watch now4 WEEKS LEFT
ALSO AVAILABLE IN: HD
2013-2014
DURATION: 1 HOUR
What's worse for us: sugar or fat?
To answer the hottest question in nutrition, twin doctors Chris and Xand Van Tulleken go on month long high-fat and high-sugar diets. The effects on their bodies are shocking and surprising.
But they also discover that in the debate about fat and sugar, the real enemy might have been hiding in plain sight.
Anyone in the UK should be currently able to get to it with this link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h
It is bound to be shown elsewhere too...
Basically (in the tiniest of studies) a pair of identical twins go on different diets for a month...
One went on a high sugar diet with no fat. The other went on a high fat diet with no carbs at all including no fruit and veg.
They could both eat as much as they wanted for the majority of the time - with the only real restriction being that they had to stick to their list of "allowed food" only.
They ran various tests on them to see how people that were otherwise identical fared on a vastly different food plan.
They did a mock stock market trading test where both were set up and had to see how they fared with all the abbreviations for companies and market fluctuations which gave them both quite a difficult puzzle to try to get their heads around. The twin on the high sugar diet was much more capable of brainwork.
They did a food satisfaction test where they did not eat for x hours then had a breakfast of identical calorie total (but in their allocated foodstuffs). At lunchtime they were told to eat as much as they wanted until they felt satisfied. They calorie counted everything including the left when they felt that they had eaten enough.
The twin on a high fat no carb diet ate about 800 calories for lunch. The twin on a high carb / sugar no fat diet had over 1200 calories and was hungry again afterwards much earlier...
They did an exercise test - cycling up Box Hill and the high carb / sugar twin was much better at exercise.
On doing the exercise - they took blood test and the twin that had eaten no sugar had much more glucose in his bloodstream than they (both doctors) would have imagined after a month of eating no carbs / sugar whatsoever. The reason given was that his body had converted muscle into fuel for the exercise that he was pushing himself to do... He was eroding his muscle.
At the end of the month - both lost weight... The high sugar twin lost about 1kg and the high fat twin lost about 4kg... The killer was that about 2kg of those 4kg had been muscle...
They were surprised to learn that the cholesterol level had not been raised on the high fat twin where they had anticipated might be the case with eating all that fat.
They were shocked to learn that the high fat twin had raised insulin levels to the level where they were borderline diabetic...
The conclusion was that NEITHER high fat with no carbs nor high carb with no fat were the ideal answer and a much more balanced approach really was more healthy and more effective in real terms (since people do not diet to lose their muscle mass they want to lose fat).
They spoke to an Oxford professor who said that their results were born out in much bigger studies...
Anyway the big conclusion was that we have a natural brake that makes us not want too much pure fat or pure sugar... They described it by saying that if you sat with a bowl full of double cream you would probably get sick of the blandness of it after a while and stop eating... If you sat with a bowl of sugar - and tried eating spoon after spoon of that you would probably find it too sweet and stop.... The real killer foods are those with a 50% mix of fat and sugar... These are the things that we can eat all day long and do the real damage... The conclusion was that if we cut out the things with that 50% fat 50% sugar split like ice cream and cheesecake and build a healthy diet we should be able to control our food.
