No one wants to hear more bad news about sugar, especially just a few days after Halloween. As a dad of three little girls, though, I found a recent study about sugar somewhat encouraging.
All of the children dramatically reduced their risk of diabetes,
all calories are not created equal.
Because our bodies use glucose as the preferred energy source, it is easily metabolized and used just about everywhere and the extra is stored in our muscles or liver as glycogen.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with fructose, which is metabolized in only one place -- the liver. And, because the liver can only handle so much fructose at a time, the extra gets converted into fat. Your liver starts to accumulate fat, which is wildly unhealthy. Even worse, the excess fat spills out into your blood stream, increasing your risk of heart disease and strokes.
However you cut back, you now know your body will thank you for it in as little as 10 days.
A study showed dramatic improvements' in kids' health by cutting back sugar for 10 days
It shows that "all calories are not created equal," Dr. Sanjay Gupta writes
(CNN)No one wants to hear more bad news about sugar, especially just a few days after Halloween. As a dad of three little girls, though, I found a recent study about sugar somewhat encouraging.
We typically think diets take months, or even longer, to make a positive dent. For 43 children, however, Dr. Robert Lustig and his team at University of California, San Francisco, decreased triglyceride levels by 33 points on average. The LDL -- bad -- cholesterol dropped 5 points, as did diastolic blood pressure, the lower number.
All of the children dramatically reduced their risk of diabetes, as their blood sugar and insulin levels normalized. Again, just 10 days. And while the study was done in children, there's no reason to believe the benefits wouldn't extend to adults, as well.
It speaks to what was once an unspeakable idea -- in fact, all calories are not created equal.
As much as we love the simple accounting principles of calorie counting, there are some calories that are simply worse than others, and for most people, sugar is at the top of the list. The table sugar most people know is sucrose, made up of equal parts glucose and fructose. But it is the fructose that is such a bad actor, Lustig told me. The reason why is really fascinating.
Because our bodies use glucose as the preferred energy source, it is easily metabolized and used just about everywhere and the extra is stored in our muscles or liver as glycogen.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with fructose, which is metabolized in only one place -- the liver. And, because the liver can only handle so much fructose at a time, the extra gets converted into fat. Your liver starts to accumulate fat, which is wildly unhealthy. Even worse, the excess fat spills out into your blood stream, increasing your risk of heart disease and strokes.
In ancient times, before sugar and high fructose corn syrup (which are basically the same) became so cheap to refine and produce, we only got our fructose in small amounts, when fruit fell from the trees.
Nowadays, however, we consume 130 pounds a year -- or roughly 1/3 of a pound every day. Our livers, however, have not evolved to keep pace with the staggering increase. As a result, a sugary drink hits your liver like a tsunami wave, according to Lustig.
There is something else peculiar about fructose: Unlike other sources of calories, it doesn't suppress the hunger hormone, known as ghrelin. So, despite eating lots of it, you don't really feel full.
The result: you keep eating. In addition, fructose targets my favorite area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, also known as the reward center. Turns out fructose gives the nucleus accumbens a little nudge, resulting in someone feeling rewarded, good, even euphoric, and -- you guessed it -- wanting to eat even more.
Lustig and his team wanted to make something very clear in this study.
While many diet studies derive most of their benefit from people simply eating less, it wasn't the case here. While study participants reduced their dietary sugar from 28% to 10%, it was replaced with other complex carbohydrates. Think bagels instead of pastries. The goal was not to lose weight but to isolate the impact of sugar on the body.
So, hide the extra Halloween candy from your kids and yourself. At our home, the Switch Witch will pay a visit within a week after Halloween. She takes the candy and leaves something special in its place. (We still haven't decided what she's leaving this year.)
However you cut back, you now know your body will thank you for it in as little as 10 days.
Here's a mini-quiz for foodists who pride themselves on their knowledge of obscure consumables: what are diastatic malt, dextran, ethyl maltol, panocha and sorghum syrup? They are all names used on food labels for added sugar. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist who works on childhood obesity, is angry with the food industry and the regulatory capture of western governments by its lobbyists. Added sugar is all around us, disguised under deliberately unfamiliar names, and its sweet molecule – fructose – is, according to Lustig, the prime cause of our ballooning "obesity pandemic".
Lustig explains the biochemistry of metabolism, and the vicious cycle of obesity, with patient clarity and some alarmingly vivid imagery. (You know the way sugar helps to brown meat while cooking? It's browning your insides the same way.) He is sceptical about one-shot solutions (miracle diet pills, antioxidants), since there is a complex interdependence between the actions of hormones and food intake. For example: there is fructose in fruit, so why isn't eating fruit bad? Because the fibre in fruit counteracts the noxious effects of the sugar, which is why it's better to eat your fruit than to drink it. (A glass of orange juice contains more sugar than the equivalent volume of Coke.) The bitter pill of Lustig's philosophy is sweetened by an agreeably cute humour: "Naturally occurring fructose comes from sugarcane, fruits, some vegetables, and honey. The first three have way more fibre than fructose, and the last is protected by bees."
There is no shortage of fad food books blaming one or other "toxin" for all our fleshly dolours. Yet to dismiss every such tract as populist scaremongering would be just as irrational as to believe them all. (The "experts" – whom it is fashionable in some quarters always to dismiss wholesale as a compromised class – did not, after all, turn out to be wrong about the harmful effects of cigarettes.) Recent reports elsewhere, indeed, indicate that there is a growing consensus behind the idea that the fructose factor helps to explain what otherwise looks like a puzzle: why do different diets – Atkins, the Paleo diet, the traditional Japanese or Mediterranean diets – all have notable health benefits? Because, or so this thinking runs, they are all low-sugar and high-fibre regimes. Fat Chance is a persuasively indignant public-policy manifesto, but it's also a self-help book; curiously, each strain flatly contradicts the other. The crux is whether people can actually change their behaviour. Of course they can, you might retort, citing friends who have successfully slimmed; but Lustig spends most of the book denying that this is even possible, the better to justify government regulation. (He suggests agricultural subsidies for green vegetables instead of for corn and soy, and taxing foods that have added sugar. This latter would be a regressive tax, he admits, but the benefits would also accrue mostly to those on low incomes.)
Lustig denies personal autonomy for laudably humane reasons – because he wants to deconstruct the prejudice that obese people have merely given in to "gluttony and sloth". But his insistence on the complete irrelevance of "personal responsibility" leads him to rely on some ropey metaphysics and oversimplified science. "Biochemistry and hormones drive our behaviour," he writes reductively, assuring us that we are merely slaves to the antic nanoreactions of our neurobiology. And because obesity changes our hormonal balance, "weight loss is next to impossible".
the expression "Children are not something to be molded. They are people to be unfolded."
The author was an interesting person who was in advertising but became involved in education.
There is the interesting rhyme of MOLDED and UNFOLDED. I can imaging how he created or discovered this connection / contrast. It's the difference between the INDUSTRIAL factory style of education and the personalized approach that you are creating.
I learned more about Jess Lair by googling his biography.
I recommend reading these pages because Jess Lair was an expert in self-help (which is a cornerstone of alternative education, since we want students to be initiators and to take charge of their learning.).
Mr. Williams at Sun Ed High has uploaded a guide to a simulation called KERBAL Space
You have a challenge. Can you help the Kerbals (a species of human-like creatures) get into space? Can you teach them to orbit their planet?
The video has a section about building a rocket starting around minute 5. The rocket gets launched around 18 minutes into the video. Mr. Williams has a theory: perhaps the developers of the program want future space engineers to find out that they love engineering by using this simulation. The cost of the simulation is around $40.
Mr. McAllister had his first day at Fire Cadets. He went to a fire station near his house and the instructor shared us. We sat down and got shirts. We learned what we were going to do. We saw a slide show. We looked at the ladder truck and the regular engine. They showed us hoses they showed us oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus and they showed us more equipment like the jaws of life.
Jaws of Life
We are going to McFatter to watch the Fire Academy next week.
How to use a latrine (toilet) in India. don't wipe with your hand. Use water... Pour. It's very clean!
I have lived in Kenya, where there are holes in the ground, and I never got a good idea about how to use the water. The narrator in this video is fully clothed... but the process is well explained.
A student at my school asked for lessons in "how to be a gentleman." He told me, "Some of the students around here could use some guidance." He also admitted that he would like to be taught about what to expect when he is "out there in the real world." What tips do we have when we meet people from other countries? The BIG tip is POUR THE NUTS onto a napkin or plate. DON'T reach into the bowl.
I've learned about the McKinney-Vento program... a person over 21 can earn a high school diploma without the GED "stigma." It's accredited and you can find out more at 754 321 1566
FAMILIES IN TRANSITION
Parents who answer “yes” to the Student Residency Questionnaire (SRQ) on the student enrollment form must complete a Homeless Education Program (HEP) registration. This form shall be faxed to the Homeless Education Liaison by school staff. If the family qualifies for services, the student shall be enrolled under the McKinney-Vento Act and will be eligible for immediate services, such as free meals. Eligibility for services will be effective from July 1 through June 30 of any school year. Students registered under the McKinney-Vento Act shall re-enroll each school year. http://plantationhigh.browardschools.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9211&Itemid=14972&activeMenu=14972
One of the pleasures of being a teacher is running into a student who "gets it." I've been walking around with a bag of almonds. There are two lessons: 1. Eat for your brain, not your tongue. Teenagers have many more taste buds than adults. I get it. Their tongues want to be stimulated, and manufacturers of food deliver Fritos and chips and the combination of "sugar, fat, salt" (described by Michael Moss). 2. Receive the nuts the way an Asian person gets nuts... POUR the nuts, don't reach into the bowl. Freddy "got it." He spoke with enthusiasm about the value of almonds for the brain and we recorded a short video that we plan to post and send to the Diamond Almonds company. That was a delightful day.
