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Sugar: Not So Sweet
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Sugar is like a heroin addiction. The effects are bingeing, withdrawal and craving or cross-sensitization. But, you don’t just have to literally eat it to get the effect of the kick that it provides. Sugar is hot property right now and the prices are rising and that’s because there is going to be a fall in production for the first time in five years this year and it’s all down to the weather. Oh! I can hear the scare-mongers voicing off about the planet, doom, gloom and global-warming, citing the Brits that are water-logged up to their armpits. Sugar hasn’t increased as much for the past five months and yesterday raw sugar rose by 4.1%, reaching 17.41 cents per pound.
Sugar has gone up and down over the years as with any commodity, but in October 1974 it reached the all-time high of 64 cents per pound. The opposite end of the spectrum was when it fell to just 2 cents per pound in the 1960s. Today, it’s Brazil that is the largest world producer and it’s sugar-based ethanol that has managed to maintain prices of sugar over the past 8 years. The world’s (sugar) eggs are all in one basket these days as Brazil accounts for 80% of world production. World production stands at approximately 23.8 million hectares of sugarcane and a harvest of 1.69 billion tons. After Brazil the top producers are India, China, Thailand and Pakistan.
But, the dire weather conditions in Brazil over the past few months have meant that the country is now being rationed on water supplies in 11 states. Crops have been wiped out and there are 6 million people that are suffering directly from the consequences of the adverse seasonal conditions.
The International Sugar Organization is now warning that sugar will see its output fall this year for the first time in half a decade. Supply will be disrupted and that means that prices will rise. According to data from theCommodities Futures Trading Commission investors cut net short positions by 22% last week. Prices may come back to around 19 cents per pound this year at the end of the year when supply and demand have come back into equilibrium. Until then, it is the rise in prices that will be foreseen due to a lack of output.
Some might see the saving grace of the sugar losses with regard to the output falling. Sugar cane has the highest toll on biodiversity according to some experts, destroying the soil, the water and creating air pollution. The habitat is destroyed to make way for the planting of sugar cane and there is extensive irrigation and use of chemical pesticides, routinely discharged into the watertable. Or perhaps it will just lead to greater destruction as the farmers scramble to produce more to fill the shortfall in production. The world has gone mad on sugar and there is a growing appetite for it.
• At the end of 2013 Chinese imports of sugar soared by 20%. India consumes the most sugar in the world and is closely followed by China, importing 709, 873 metric tons.
• China has increased by 109% its imports in comparison with 2012.
• There are 40 million sugar farmers in China at the moment and the government is largely responsible for importing so much to support them.
• High prices on the domestic sugar market have meant that importers have increased the quantities they are buying from the global market.
The International Sugar Organization shows that the price of sugar yesterday stood at 17.62 cts/lb for the daily price, 16.36 cts/lb for the last 15-day average and a white-sugar price index (average of the close of the quotes for the first two future positions of White Sugar Contract in the UK) of $479.65 per ton or 21.76 cts/lb.
Originally posted: Sugar: Not So Sweet
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I don't care about the health crap. Prices will rise because they were at a 5 year low, and then the weather hit. Good for a small invester.
LOL
Keepin it real ; )
Ya'll are a bunch of morons. People consumed sugar for a long time before diabetes became prominent.
What they did not consume was soybean oil, corn oil and other PUFA rich fats that cause pancreatis, suppressed metabolism, suppress T3 and T4 thyroid hormones, and reduce insulin sensitivity. Why would fasting blood sugar be high from dietary sugar consumption instead of endogenous sugar production from muscle catabolism and glycolysis instead of cellular respiration (the use of sugar for energy)?
The simple answer is ALWAYS wrong. See the work of Ray Peat. We are hard-wired for sweet and salty things. Think that this is some trick?
it is also a matter of volume
we eat more than 10-15 times the sugar we once ate
and we used to eat mostly glucose and lactose
you are only looking at a single piece of the puzzle
read john yudkins work
I'm not sure what food you're referring to as mostly glucose. Starch is chains of glucose. Most fruit is fructose, glucose and sucrose. You're right about milk with lactose.
We're also living a lot longer while consuming a lot more sugar and calories as a whole.
http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/2013/2/10/q-and-a-with-andrew-kim-sugar-vs-starch
Most fruits are 40 to 55 percent fructose (there's some variation: 65 percent in apples and pears; 20 percent in cranberries), and table sugar (aka sucrose) is 50/50. Neither type of sugar is better or worse for you, but your body processes them differently. Fructose breaks down in your liver and doesn’t provoke an insulin response. Glucose starts to break down in the stomach and requires the release of insulin into the bloodstream to be metabolized completely.
For a while there I thought this was about FED QE and Cotton Candy equities.
Nope, really is about sugar.
"How many lumps do you want?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKyhTX9LQEA
More crap from PivotFarm.....
Tries to grab the reader with an obvious truth...(sugar is bad)...then continues with his usual BS.
In case PF forgot, Archer Daniels has the sweetner market pretty much under control with their high fructose corn extract sweeter...that is (by conservative estimates) is about 80% of everything you buy.
and 80% of statistics are made up on the spot. The big problem with HFCS is that it is cheap and helpful to packaged food engineers. Otherwise, metabolically speaking as to effects on the human body, it is scarcely worse than sucrose(standard table sugar), for most people, on a calorie per calorie basis. Arguablly it could be a little better(less horrible), as it takes a tad less of it to impart equal impressions of sweetness: When it hits the tongue, the fructose component of it, which is sweeter molecule per molecule, is free, not chemically bound to a glucose, as it is in table sugar.
john yudkin
"pure white and deadly"
all sugar that is not glucose/lactose is really bad
read the book and you will understand everything he said back in 1972 has come to pass
fructose,high fructose, sucrose all metabolize basically the same
educate yourselves
sugar calorie per calorie hits your liver the same as alcohol
only difference is the brain can metabolize some alcohol, thus the buzz
Now yer talkin. Sugar is not for eat'n! Sugar is for making the corn squeeze'ns!
(I've been watching Moonshiners. Apearently it has affected me.)
Heinz Ketchup equals Corn Syrup. Oh, I forgot- with fresh red tomatoes.
Sugar is one thing Saturday cartoons another. As long as one don't affect other than man doesn't bite dog and its about the dollar and not the weather or if its so important call. In the loans before the harvest
Doctor Lustig, bitches
Point o' Odor!!! Point o' odor!!
Sugar AND chocolate are rising in price (missed my overnight on Monday Choc futures that would have paid for my next ten years' consumption).
These are the two main ingredients in Hershey's Caramel filled kisses, and two of the essential food groups for healthy nutrition, healthy human beans.
I'd like to lodge a protest against those scurrlil.......squirrala........skuril.......those mean-spirited human beans who are putting Sugar and Chocoate on a par with Heroin, Crystal Meth, and Alcohol. For the population with D1 or D2 and other diseases that affect the pancreas, you make a solid point.
But for those of us without weight, or medical problems in which our Pancreas is able to easily process them, this is hyperbole of the most pernicious sort and I believe is only raised to alarming levels out of spite, jealousy, envy and a sense of Weldenschmertz at their own misfortune.
I am sitting here right now with a bag of Kisses, and Mason Dots for breakfast as well as a coff of cuppee, a quadruple spresso, decaf with Splenda and almond milk a near perfect meal.
Chicken littles all o' you.
We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: Candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.
Some nights I prefer to drink my dinner..., cold olive soup.
now theres a man of my type tastes
tell me sir, do you ever have blue cheese stuufed olives in your olive soup?
and pray tell, potato or juniper ?
chilled vodka straight up with a blue cheese stuffed olive or three...its whats for dinner
It isn't just diabetes, Metabolic Disease now affects more than 50% of the N. American population.
Studies has shown that Metabolic Diseases affect 40% of thin people and 80% of fat people. Since we have approximately 40% of the population who are fat, the overall aggregate of North America who have Metabolic Diseases is 56% (ie. 0.8*0.4 + 0.4*0.6= 0.56= 56%).
Metabolic Diseases include: Type II Diabetes, blood lipid problems, hypertension, and heart disease. In addition, we have 4 other diseases that travel with the Metabolic Diseases: Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver (33% of N. Americans), polysystic ovarian syndrome (10% of all women), dementia (ie. Alzheimer’s) 1.4%, and cancer (2.25%).
Sugar causes or contributes to these expensive and deadly medical problems, but is aided by excessive amounts of processed foods with high carbohydrate loads (eg. starches, etc.).
For more info, see Dr. Yudkin (Pure, White, Deadly) Dr. Lustig (Sugar: The Bitter Truth), Dr. Jay Wortman (My Big Fat Diet), and Gary Taubes (Good Calorie, Bad Calorie)
Sugar will destroy your health, but not half as bad as wheat.
For anyone with weight problems, diabetes etc, I post below 2 MUST WATCH videos.
These have changed my life! 2 stone weightloss in less than 2 months, and I feel like a spring born lamb!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPnnDDCIjo Diet, health and the wisdom of crowds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeyKvCkxp2o Wheatlessness
wheat is food.
Sugar is food.
Those of us with healthy digestive & immune systems have NO problem eating them, ever.
Those of us who are not retards don't eat 10x the healthy amount in one meal either.
Those of you who are having problems either come from a failing genome or are over-eating because you're gluttonous pigs.
Yup, and speaking back to the article, some people cannot just give a go quitting wheat products for a few days just to see if helps one of their health complaints, because...
Newsflash: WHEAT IS ADDICTIVE.
Its digestion produces peptides that pass the blood brain barrier and stimulate the same class of receptors that opiates do. Withdrawal is pretty hard, and the reward for eating again is quite the relief.
This is another reason the packaged food industry likes it, besides its being CHEAP, easily preserved, very flexible in its multiform uses, and .... failing to satiate. What marketing manager or CFO wants the consumer to buy just moderate amounts of their product line? What store wants its customers spending most of the day satiated? None. They put those addictive wheat charged snacks in your face coming and going. They make you hungry. They make you buy.
I'm sorry, but I am really getting sick of this ridiculous demonization of a basic cereal crop and fundamental human staple food for the last 10,000 years.
A lot of the condemnation of 'wheat' is really more properly directed at refined and processed wheat flour, i.e. white flour, which is indeed nutrionally lacking compared to the whole-grain product, and has been implicated in the spread of diabetes (although sugar, and especially sugary drinks, almost certainly play a far larger role). And for those with celiac disease (a sensitivity to gluten, the main protein in wheat), yes, wheat in whatever form is a food that should be totally avoided, by them. But for the large majority of the population, whole wheat is still a nutritious and sensible part of a balanced diet, and it is NOT the boogeyman.
If one is sensitive to wheat, then avoid it. But it is laughable, and historically and nutritionally ignorant, to try to claim that it is some kind of poison. I am myself allergic to horseradish and wasabi, but I don't therefore try to go on a crusade to convince everyone else that they should avoid those foods as well.
Trying to pass up a fresh bakery and the smell of warm bread baking is difficult. I grew up on fresh baked through my teens and early twenties and then the Wonderbread took over the habit. Now, in my 60's, I have an allergy to any type of gluten infused product (this includes beer, damn it); which brings about bowl disfunction of unordinary degree. And the only cure I find is avoiding those products. I'm okay with very small quantities between periods of several days, but otherwise have resolved my diet to rice and potatoes and products thereof. (Vodka is another favorite.)
As far as sugar is concerned, if any one who consumes white sugar has the ability to burn same through vigorous physical activity then they are the better for it. Many who consume sugar are unawares of what they are actually eating. Half of my time grocery shopping is reading the damn labels, and with all the information available on them in such small print I'd suggest a magifying glass so you don't miss anything.
The problem with food is not the food. The problem is not being informed enough about it. And not seeing or feeling the results of consumption.
But no one said we were going to live forever; they did say that everything in moderation is "probably" good for you physically and mentally.
You may want to look into your white flour premise again.
Recently I ran across a grower of wheat flour who does not use anything in the way of soil enhancement or any kind of spray. His wheat seeds are of old purified stock, and his white flour is guaranteed to not impact negatively the human body. Very nutritious and wholesome.
It appears that what is man-made, added to the growing medium and sprays, are real culprits in wheat and other grains grown commercially. And over generations of wheat crops the toxicity rises.
I'll look for the name of the wheatrfarmer if you like but you may able to google it.
In the previous 9,000 yrs the wheat was pure and therefore a vital source of many nutritional needs and not the poison it has become for so many.
use good wheat and make your own breads o there isnt anycrap in it
wheat bread used to bother my stomach before i started making my own
any bread you buy has added fructose
buy the book 'artisan bread in 5 minutes a day' ...it is so easy you will never need to buy bread again
I try to tell as many people as I can about wheat. It has changed my life. I lived with what I thought were digestion problems my whole life until two years ago when I came accross a book called "Wheat Belly". My skin has also cleared up.
When I tell people that one slice of wheat bread is the equivalent of two table spoons of white sugar, they never believe it.
Because it isn't true. Essential amino acids & fibre are in wheat and not in sugar.
I've eaten it my entire life with zero problems. If it hasn't bothered me by age 40 it won't bother me until I'm old enough to be losing teeth, heart & liver functionality and eyesight.
IMHO....horse pucky
Yeah, bread is the "Staff of life". It's in the Bible. Jesus ate it. Give us our daily bread. Panem et circenses! But...these quotes and notions are only a few thousand years old. Hominid evolution goes back a few million years, and so genetically speaking, we've haven't been eating grass seeds for very long. There has been adjustment of the gene pool of course since civilisation came about on the back of farming...a completely new technology on this planet BTW...because people who couldn't live off of the staple foods didn't pass their genes along. But one can function and pass one's genes along without living particularly well. All sorts of ailments can be lived with long enough to grow up, produce, mate, and bring one set of one's own kids to age as well. The high carb diet that resulted from "Fertile Crescent" type civilisational development...think Egypt and the Nile valley, produced lots of diabetic, heart disease, and tooth decay/death from tooth infections. Because of the diet high in carbs.
I suspect it's like carbs...some people...many people (myself included) are very carb sensitive....lost 60 pounds 12 years ago and kept it off....cut back on the carbs (of course wheat is a subset of that)...some people do not have my problem...so it depends...like all things on what the definition of is is.
My father now almost 80 did the same a few months ago and it got his diabetes under control too. Wheat is for bier...
It's fucking unbelievable man!
I've had weight problems all my life. I've NEVER felt this good!
Interesting video, Skin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
That's a good video, rtalcott. Corn syrup is liquid death. So many people are learning the truth about corn syrup that they are now trying to rebrand it.
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) = Corn Syrup = Corn Sugars
"The US Corn Refiners Association has petitioned the FDA for permission to change the name 'High Fructose Corn Syrup' to the much more innocuous-sounding 'Corn Sugars.' This comes as 58% of Americans say they are concerned about HFCS's impact on their health. HFCS is a heavily subsidized industrial byproduct of the corn industry, and is ubiquitous in American processed food -- everything from Rice Krispies to 'healthy' granola bars."
The old corn syrup like grandma used to use for baking etc is not the same as hfcs. All things in moderation except for poisons like hfcs and the rubbery stuff they were sneaking into the mutated bread.
Excess sugar consumption has been a catastrophe for this world:
400 million people have diabetes, more than 1.2 billion are prediabetic, and 1 person dies from diabetes every 6 seconds.
If you feel that you are at risk for diabetes, you may want to eliminate your diabetes risk at:
http://diabetesrisk.net/
I won't get too excited until the SGG can stay above the 50 week. It looks to be repeating it's past bounces off the resistance.
After the withdrawal, and financial hit, sugar and their substitutes falling off the planet would be a "good thing".