If you landed on this site, you are looking for information about energy drinks. Or if coming here was an accident, stick around. Your life might get better.
We don’t want to waste your time, so here is the bottom line: Energy drinks exist to make money for the companies that sell them. You exist to buy their energy drinks. This is a zero sum transaction. They win; you lose.
The question is, “what is there in your life that makes you buy stuff that hurts you?” (More about this later.)
It’s not just energy drinks that hurt you. Some of the chemicals they put in energy drinks are found in almost EVERYTHING you eat.
There are ways to have energy and feel well if that is what you really want. All you need to do is learn how.
(It is also about reality but you will have to wait for that)
Human beings have known about poison for a long time. For thousands of years we have known that some things can kill us very quickly.
But who came up with the idea that everything is poison?
The famous Swiss doctor Paracelsus is called the father of toxicology because in 1538 he wrote, “Everything is poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose determines if something is not poison.” ( „Alle Dinge sind Gift, und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die dosis machts, daß ein Ding kein Gift sei.“)
He went on to say that even the food and drink we consume are poison. We now know he was right.
If everything is poison, and it all depends on the dose, how do we measure the dose? Enough to kill, or injure, or make us chronically ill, or destroy civilization?
LD50 is an abbreviation for “Lethal Dose, 50%.” It’s the median dose of a substance that kills 50% of the test population, usually helpless animals that never hurt a soul. It was an easy way to test poisons until hurting helpless animals fell out of favor. Nevertheless the LD50 is still used to give us an idea of how dangerous some things are.
Think of everything you eat in terms of “the dose.” and accept that everything is poison, or toxic, depending on the dose. We seldom eat enough of a single thing to kill us at one sitting. Nor do we usually eat enough to make us extremely ill, or vomit, or pass out.
No, actually some people do that occasionally.
The concept of “the dose” has dark sides:
Sweet and Dangerous: The Facts about the Sugar You Eat as a Cause of Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Other Killers Yudkin, John, M.D. Published by Peter H. Wyden, Publisher, New York (1972)
In 1972, Dr. John Yudkin wrote a small book called “Sweet and Dangerous” while he was a Professor of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College of London, . He reported his observations that excess consumption of sugar is responsible for an epidemic of heart disease as well as a multitude of other nutritionally related diseases. It was a warning that too few people noticed.
Because his work was not a double blind study that considered confounding factors, traditional researchers criticized him and food companies scoffed at his conclusions. Instead, other researchers focused on fat (without controlling for sugar) and came to the conclusion that saturated fat causes heart disease. So for 50 years countless people have been eating low fat, high sugar, industrialized food, which has resulted in an epidemic of what is now called metabolic syndrome. (note: the link is to the American Heart Association)
They were wrong and Yudkin was right. The tragedy is 50 years of getting it wrong. But that is how science works. Those who pay for the research usually get the results they are looking for.
The sugar connection is far more complex than Dr. Yudkin knew at the time. Now science is beginning to unravel the way we metabolize sugar. There are thousands of honest scientists quietly publishing their findings, expecting that further research may prove them wrong.
John Ioannidis wrote a widely available essay called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” It is worth reading to see how biassed research can be. The American Heart Association perpetuated the low fat hoax since the 1950s and now they are trying to walk it back without anyone noticing.
Is it possible to cut through the bias and propaganda to find the truth? Don’t expect the truth from the New York Times, most mass media, or even the U.S. Government for that matter. Diet advice has become like a religion where all that counts is belief. Most people cannot tell if a researcher’s data are fabricated. Even peer reviewed journals get fooled. HERE is an interesting on-line publication that keeps track of scientific studies that have to be retracted.
When bad health obviously hurts the economy, smart people from the banking community start to look at the facts in a different light. One is the giant Swiss financial company Credit Suisse. Here Credit Suisse adds its weight behind the growing revolution against food that makes us sick.
In 2013, Credit Suisse published this video. It accompanies their report entitled “Sugar Consumption at a Crossroads.”
(The PDF file opens in a new tab)
The wide-ranging report explores the ramifications for commodities, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries if sugar consumption is significantly curtailed.
(p.4 – “Sugar Consumption at a Crossroads.” )
Foods we eat are classified as macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients, based on the quantities required. Chemists classify the macro-nutrients based on their chemical structure. Carbohydrate is one of the three macro-nutrients we consume; the other two are fats and protein.
It is the chemical structure of a substance that determines how our body deals with it. Remember, everything is toxic depending on the dose. If we lack a way to digest or detoxify something, or if the quantity overwhelms our ability to cope, it is a mistake to stuff it in our mouths or snort it up our noses.
Sugar is a carbohydrate. Strings of sugars bonded together chemically form other carbohydrates like starch or cellulose. They are classified according to their length. Generally long chain carbohydrates have a smaller impact on our metabolism because they are digested more slowly and our friendly gut bacteria help.
When most people talk about “sugar,” they are referring to common table sugar, which is really two sugars hooked together. The two sugars, each a monosaccharide, are glucose and fructose. Glucose, also called dextrose, is a sugar that animals easily use to produce energy. Fructose is a sugar commonly found in fruit and is dubbed fruit sugar. Humans can’t absorb fructose and use it for energy like we do with glucose. Our livers have to convert it to substances we can easily use, primarily new glucose, but also lactic acid and fat. Then the body has to deal with the fat. It is not very efficient at doing that so some just stays in the liver. Some is made into triglycerides that circulate in the blood and potentially harm the heart and blood vessels. It harms us when the quantities we eat exceed our ability to eliminate the end products.
Sucrose Molecule: glucose and fructose joined by a glycosidic linkage. RedAndr / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
In addition to glucose and fructose, other common monosaccharides are galactose, mannose, ribose, and deoxyribose. Monosaccharides are the building blocks of disaccharides (such as sucrose and lactose), oligosaccharides (such as maltodextrins and raffinose) and polysaccharides (such as cellulose and starch).
Disaccharides are compound sugars containing two monosaccharides with the elimination of a water molecule between them. Examples are lactose (milk sugar) which combines glucose and galactose, sucrose, which is glucose and fructose, and maltose, which is two units of glucose joined together. Maltose is often formed when seeds germinate.
Oligosaccharides are formed from chains containing three to ten monosaccharides. Examples are maltodextrins and raffinose.
Polysaccharides contain long chains of monosaccharides forming complex structures. Examples are amylose, amylopectin, cellulose, and starches. Starches combine the linear and helical amylose molecules with branched amylopectin molecules. They are a major part of the diets of herbivores and omnivores. The bonds joining the glucose molecules are easily broken so starches are a ready source of energy. Glycogen is a polysaccharide that animals produce to store energy in the liver and muscles. It is a more highly branched version of amylopectin.
There is no dietary requirement for carbohydrates in humans. While glucose is the basic molecule used for energy by almost every cell in the body, we can make glucose from fats and protein. The body has multiple pathways to maintain steady glucose levels in the blood. One in ten Americans has diabetes, which makes glucose control difficult.
Carbohydrate’s main advantages as a food are threefold: Two of them are (1) low cost and (2) as a carrier of vital essential micro-nutrients when they are not stripped away by processing. A third and perhaps the most important is (3) feeding the right type of carbohydrate to our intestinal microbiome – the bacteria inhabiting our colon.
We can also use substances derived from fat called ketones to provide energy. Acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and, acetone, are some common ketones. Heart muscle consumes acetoacetate in preference to glucose. Also the body can make glucose from protein or fat when carbohydrate is unavailable such as during starvation or a ketogenic diet. The body will cannibalize its own fat or muscle to keep blood sugar (glucose) near normal (70 to 130 milligrams per deciliter) for as long as possible.
While there is nothing essential about carbohydrate, the same is not true of protein. Amino acids are building blocks of proteins and we must get them from our diets. The nine essential amino acids are: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. Vegetarians struggle to get lysine and methionine from plant sources but the rest are abundant in plant protein.
There are also two components of fat that are essential in the human diet. The ones that can come from plants are: alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid). Unfortunately not everybody can convert omega-3 from plant sources to the forms our bodies really need. For them, and most of us, fish is our best source, or increasingly supplementation from fish oil preparations.
Unfortunately, omega-6 from plant sources is too widely available in cheap vegetable oils so it is easy to get too much, just like we do with sugar. Consciously limiting foods containing vegetable oils can help keep omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids in balance.
All of these substances are toxic to the body in some degree if consumed in excess. Too much omega-3 fatty acid can cause bleeding problems, but it is difficult to consume that much without abusing supplements. Too much omega-6 can crowd out omega-3 and upset the immune system resulting in increased inflammation.
When 24–64 grams per day of histidine, was given to humans, increases in urinary zinc, headache, weakness, drowsiness, nausea, anorexia, painful eyes, changed visual acuity, mental confusion, poor memory, and depression occurred. All were reversible when excess histidine was stopped. Single amino acids are occasionally tried as medicine. Histidine has been shown to be safe at doses of 4 grams per day for up to 12 weeks. It has not been shown to have a convincing therapeutic value for any condition. If you have a folic acid deficiency, taking histidine can cause formiminoglutamic acid (FIGLU) to build up in your body. A FIGLU urine test is used to identify deficiencies of vitamin B12 and folic acid. This fact is not particularly important. It just shows how everything is interrelated.
None of the essential fatty acids or amino acids is toxic when obtained from a normal diet or when taken as supplements in recommended amounts. Even the villainous carbohydrate fructose can have beneficial effects on blood glucose levels as measured by a test of glycated hemoglobin, abbreviated A1c. The beneficial amount of fructose is relatively small. A safe amount of fructose can easily be obtained from moderate consumption of whole fruit, but not fruit juice, which provides too much. And remember fructose and glucose naturally occur together and the 50-50 association appears to be safer than high concentrations of fructose consumed alone.
Plants make glucose, fructose, and sucrose, and switch back and forth between them so fast that scientists have a hard time measuring which one is produced first. Plants use them for energy and growth. They store them as simple sugars and also in more complex forms like starch. If the sugar in your diet comes only from plants, it will be more difficult to consume too muchsugar because plants contain bulk that tends to satisfy and curb your appetite.
Unfortunately the average American diet consists of industrialized food packed with enormous amounts of sugar and almost no fiber. Fruit juices, soft drinks, and so-called energy drinks are packed with sugar. Much of that sugar is the kind that contains fructose.
Table sugar (sucrose) is 50% fructose and 50% glucose; HFCS (High fructose corn syrup) is cheaper than regular sugar and is added to many prepared foods. HFCS-90 contains 90% fructose, 15% glucose, and 5% maltose; HFCS-42 contains 42% fructose, 53% glucose, and 5% maltose. These 2 types are blended to make HFCS-55, HFCS-65, and HFCS-70. HFCS-65 is used in the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine.
Manufacturers and advertisers use the term natural sugar to imply that its better than what? Fake sugar? Artificial sugar? Unnatural sugar?
Sugar is sugar. It all comes from plant sources, not nuclear reactors or sugar mines. Other names for sugar are also used to imply superiority or disguise it in lists of ingredients.
Some of the names for sugars include beet and cane sugars, cane juice, all types of corn syrup (including solids), malt syrup, maple syrup, pancake syrup, fructose sweetener, liquid fructose, fruit juice concentrate, honey, agave syrup, and molasses. Other than being a solid or in solution, or more or less refined, all sugar is the same, with only the ratio between glucose and fructose varying.
A vast majority of food consumed in the United States is manufactured. It is impossible for consumers to independently verify what is in the food they eat. Manufactures use the mandatory nutritional label to subtly promote their products as superior with labels like “no added sugar,” or as in this example “incl.0g of Added Sugars.”
Fruit juice is so heavily laden with sugar that adding sugar would be unnecessary for most types of fruit juice. Lemonade is an obvious example where sugar is added. Pear juice is often added to less sweet juices to boost the “natural” sugar.”
The United States Food and Drug Administration publishes “Guidance for Industry: Food Labeling Guide.” You might expect the guidelines to require disclosure of what is in food. But you would be wrong. 100% fruit juice does not mean that the flavor of the juice is the actual juice. The list of ingredients gives a hint of what is actually in a product since they must be listed in order of weight.
Filtered Water – This sounds nice, but what does it really mean? Who filtered it? The EPA sets legal limits on over 90 contaminants in drinking water. Municipal water supplies monitor and report on these contaminants. Yes, the city filtered it once but did the manufacturer filter it again?
It is more than likely that the manufacturer filtered it again. Commercial products maintain rigidly uniform taste control. Most municipal water tastes terrible and is often laden with chlorine of various types to kill bacteria. Bad tasting water would destroy the taste of this delicious “juice” so the manufacturer undoubtedly filters it through a carbon filter to remove the bad taste. They may even perform a reverse osmosis process to remove many other contaminants present in municipal water. Filtering the water certainly adds value to the product.
Sugar – (Sucrose: 50% fructose, 50% glucose) That is the bulk of the sugar, all added.
Apple Juice – Obviously apple juice is mostly water, up to 88%; the rest is sugar. Wait a minute, isn’t this supposed to be Cranberry-Raspberry juice?
Cranberry Juice, Raspberry Juice, Grape Juice (from Concentrates), Natural Flavor, Fumaric Acid, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Sodium Citrate, and Vegetable Concentrate – Concentrated juice is over 50% sugar. (See Brix degrees below.)
By calculating the amount of sugar in the concentrates, 3 grams, and comparing it to the amount of added sugar, 23 grams, you can arrive at a rough idea of how much fruit juice is added to the original water and sugar solution to give it the fruit flavor. The exact amounts are difficult to know because natural fruit juices have varying degrees of fruit flavor. The difference between the varying degree of fruit flavor is made up by the “Natural Flavor” that is added to maintain a recognizably consistent taste.
FROM CONCENTRATE – The apple juice, cranberry juice, raspberry, and grape juices are from reconstituted concentrates. Concentrates are rated by a BRIX number. Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx) is the sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of water and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by mass. Typical Brix degrees for apple, cranberry, raspberry, and grape concentrates are 70°, 50°, 65°, and 68° respectively.
The Cran-Raspberry flavored drink has apple, cranberry, raspberry, and grape concentrates that add 3 grams of sugar per 8 fluid ounces (240 ml) of drink. The rest of the 26 grams of total sugar comes from the 23 grams of added sucrose, and, as you know, that makes it half fructose. How does your liver handle all that fructose?
The concentrate is obviously highly diluted and so is the flavor from concentrate. The rest of the flavor is made up of plant extracts that are more like perfume than food. They are the aromas that are detected by our sense of smell, while our sense of taste is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, or umami. The added fumaric and citric acids give the drink the tangy sour taste we associate with fruits.
This is not something new. Americans should know about NAFLD. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, between 30 and 40 percent of adults in the United States have NAFLD. Experts warn that 20% of those who have NAFLD also have NASH!
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You were born into a postmodern world. That does not absolve you of your personal responsibility for making bad choices. It just explains why the world around you seems normal and makes your choices seem normal.
Normal is what everybody else is doing. Normal is what your parents did. Normal is eating mac and cheese out of a box. And drinking energy drinks. And yes, eating that icon of American ingenuity, the Twinkie, also available as a sugar laden breakfast cereal.
A hallmark of post-modernity is the philosophical rejection of personal responsibility as a relic of a conservative religious tradition. So now you can make bad food choices but it’s not your fault. The government tells us if it is safe to eat. Just read the label and you will know. Maybe.
We are really in the late modern era and a notion of post-modernity is mostly a philosophical aberration. There are still a lot of people who take self-responsibility seriously. And they believe in facts even if they don’t always follow the facts. Emotion is a strong reason to ignore the facts. If it feels good, go for it!
The facts are these. The Modern World gave us big governments that people depend on to keep us safe if we are lucky. In the United States we have the Food and Drug Administration to advise us if food and drugs are safe. These departments are heavily influenced by commercial interests, like manufactures and farmers. Sometimes their interests take precedence over ours.
Sometimes the government is slow to warn us of danger as they did when big tobacco lied to the public about cancer, emphysema, heart disease, respiratory diseases, renal failure, septicemia, eye disorders, periodontal disease, and stroke – to name a few.
We would like to think that they tell the truth. Maybe they are just slow to learn the truth, like they have been with dietary recommendations.
Another fact is that we live in a free country. We are free, except to the extent we believe the government or let our own emotion rule our choices. Seneca said, “Imperare sibi maximum imperium est.” To rule yourself is the ultimate power. Sometimes we are just too tired and hungry to avoid a tasty snack. Willpower just doesn’t cut it!
Being in a free country also means others are free – free to fool us. And they do. Beautiful packaging, enticing flavors, and addicting ingredients make it easier to eat stuff that hurts you. Often the pain is not immediate like a bad case of heartburn. A lifetime of bad choices starting in childhood can result in open heart surgery at age 50, diabetes at age 30, or dementia at age 60. Few of us have any idea how we got there.
Having a huge variety of easily accessible and relatively cheap food makes it easy to be lazy about one of the most important things we can do to have good health and energy: eat right. Easier said that done.
We are not making any claim that Crisco is a cheap bad food. Remember it’s all about the dose and price is relative.
When they separated cotton fibers from cotton seeds, they had a pile of left-over cottonseed. In the early days, nobody knew what to do with it so most of it was left to rot. They tried feeding it to cattle with little success until years later when processing methods made the protein more useful.
When the the seeds are pressed, the dark red oil has a very disagreeable odor and taste. Nevertheless, unscrupulous animal fat merchants would add a little cheap cottonseed oil to their tallow and lard to marginally increase the amount of shortening they could sell to unwary consumers. They couldn’t add too much without ruining the flavor.
In 1899 chemist David Wesson discovered a way to deodorize cottonseed oil. Wesson became a trademark of the Southern Oil Company. Their deodorized oil provided the feed-stock for a new generation of solid oils to compete with animal fat for shortening.
A German chemist, Wilhelm Normann, discovered “Fetthärtung ” (fat hardening, hydrogenation) in 1901. A British company (Crosfield & Sons) building on Normann’s work obtained additional patents and introduced their hydrogenation technology to the United States in 1907. The inventor, Edwin Kayser, and Crosfield & Sons assigned their patents to Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), Cincinnati, Ohio, who launched “Krispo,” then “Cryst,” and finally “Crisco” in 1911. Crisco is an acronym for crystallized cottonseed oil.
Berlin Mills Company in Berlin, New Hampshire also made a hard shortening product called Kream Krisp that appeared on the market in 1914. It was based on patents by Berlin Mill’s Chief Chemist Hugh Moore. A patent fight ensued between the plaintiff, Berlin Mills, and defendant P&G. It was eventually resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of the Berlin Mills in December of 1920. Around the same time P&G acquired the Kream Krisp brand.
Around the same time that P&G was cleverly selling hydrogenated cottonseed oil as shortening, Southern Oil Company started marketing their own hard shortening called Snowdrift. In 1913, they published a cookbook extolling the virtues of their “pure rich creamy vegetable fat.” It was cottonseed oil mixed with a hard animal fat called oleo stearine. Dr. David Wesson became famous for his work on edible vegetable oils including publications dealing with deodorization, hydrogenation, bleaching, and solvent extraction of edible oils. Snowdrift is gone but Wesson oil lives on.
The Century of
TrustDeceptionThe 20th Century in the U.S. started out with amazing advances in science, technology, and manufacturing, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Food and Drug Act into law in June 1906 to put an end to adulterated food like shortening cut with disgusting cottonseed oil. His distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an updated version in 1938 that replaced and expanded much of the 1906 law. The expanded Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was now better prepared to regulate more things that were killing people.
What could go wrong if the government could protect the people? On balance the 20th century in the U.S. saw unprecedented prosperity. People trusted each other. They trusted their institutions, the government, their doctors, the universities, and churches.
Amazing technological advances included automobiles, airplanes, telephones, radios, atomic reactors, to name just a few. Medical research gave us vitamins, antibiotics, vaccines, and x-rays, also to name just a few. Peer reviewed, placebo controlled, randomized, double blinded clinical trials would yield honest data that everyone could trust. More than trust. You could bet your life on it.
Would it surprise you to know that big commercial interests like farmers, manufacturers, and food processors also have great trust in the FDA and Congress to “balance” their interests with those of the consuming public? Sometimes they have to pay lobbyists, or finance university research, to help to make sure that their views are properly appreciated. Big Tobacco successfully did it for years. But Big Tobacco was not alone in their deception.
Deception
Deception is not just a way for bad people to take advantage of good people. Self-deception functions in many ways, often unconsciously as closely held biases that people call beliefs. Scientists have to be wary of this. It is so well known that there is a name for it: confirmation bias. In a study called Personal Fable: Optimistic Bias in Cigarette Smokers, the authors use terms like cognitive bias, optimistic bias, and personal fable. While describing behaviors in smokers, they reveal human beings in their true light, beings willing to deceive themselves to get what feels good.
While the 20th Century was a century of deception on an industrial scale, it was also a continuation of self-deception that made it easy for merchants to sell sugar laden products, bad edible oils, cigarettes, and bad medical advice.
If you have read everything so far, you are among only 3% of people who land on this site and stay long enough to get to this point. This suggests you are highly motivated and perhaps care a lot about your health.
Now is the time to look at a few things in food that are vastly more toxic than the chronic amounts of sugar and bad fats we consume.
Everything is poison. It all depends on the dose whether it hurts you. In addition to the dose, two other concepts are important: acute toxicity and chronic toxicity. Acute toxicity is arbitrarily defined as occurring within 14 days. A classic example of acute toxicity is cyanide poisoning taken by Nazis and spies to commit suicide. It was a small glass capsule containing concentrated potassium cyanide. It was a quick, ugly, and painful death.
But even with various types of cyanide poisoning, the dose is what determines acute or chronic toxicity. Very low levels of cyanide from food can result in liver and kidney damage. This kind of poisoning can be difficult to diagnose because doctors are not looking for it. Do you know what foods are capable of resulting in cyanide poisoning? ( bamboo shoots, cassava, taro, apple seeds, apricot pits, Lima beans). Fortunately cyanide and its precursors are easy to destroy. Unfortunately they do not always get destroyed.
Many plants and seeds contain poisons that prevent animals or bacterial from eating them long enough to allow them to reproduce. Humans have long ago learned how to defeat these toxins and make some poisonous plants safe to eat. But sometimes we get careless.
In January 2008, the New South Wales Food Authority tested cassava chips made in Australia from Indonesian cassava pellets. The product had a dangerously high cyanide content(10mg/kg to 145mg/kg). Ironically the brand of the chips is named after the killer Amazon fish, the Piranha. The manufacturer voluntarily recalled the product and the incident is mostly forgotten. The manufacturer’s logo proudly teaches consumers how to properly pronounce Piranha. Be among the few Americans who can do it- HERE.
There are many foods that contain toxins but proper preparation renders them safe in the amounts people consume. Raw cashews (seeds) contain urushiol, which is a chemical that makes poison ivy so disagreeable. The “raw” cashews that you can buy have actually been steamed to reduce the concentration of urushiol . Mangoes and pistachios share a urushiol connection with cashews. People who have bad allergic reactions to poison ivy/oak/sumac should avoid contact with mango rinds.
Another source of poison in food is from the growers and manufacturers. We will take a short look at a few of them. Remember it’s the dose that makes them dangerous so just because they are there doesn’t mean you can’t eat an appropriate amount to get other nutrients you really need.
Ractopamine is a beta-agonist that acts in an opposite way that beta-blockers work in humans as a heart drug. It’s not safe for humans but is approved by the FDA for use in animals including turkeys, pigs, and cattle. Some US packers process only ractopamine-free pigs, particularly if they ship to foreign markets where it’s banned. Nevertheless the Michigan State University declares that it is safe for human consumption, “providing the product is used according to label directions.”
Here is a list of pesticide residues found in cherries in order of prevalence: Boscalid, Bifenthrin, Pyraclostrobin, Quinoxyfen, Myclobutanil, Tebuconazole, Spinosad, Carbaryl, Azinphos methyl, Imidacloprid, 1-Naphthol, Trifloxystrobin, Propiconazole, Triflumizole, Cyhalothrin, Lambda, Methoxyfenozide, Cyhalothrin (Cyhalothrin-L + R157836 epimer), Iprodione, o-Phenylphenol, Thiamethoxam, Fenarimol, Fenbuconazole, Piperonyl butoxide, Azoxystrobin, Malathion, Endosulfan sulfate, Thiabendazole, Fludioxonil, Permethrin trans, Permethrin cis, Carbendazim (MBC), Tetrahydrophthalimide (THPI), Dimethoate, Captan, Fenhexamid, Esfenvalerate, Clothianidin, Endosulfan II, Phosmet, Diazinon, Pyriproxyfen, and Omethoate.
Boscalid is a widely used fungicide that keeps fungus from eating the food before you get a chance to try it. Significant residues are found on Blueberries, Frozen Blueberries, Strawberries, Grapes, Cherries, Greens, Kale, Raisins, Sweet Bell Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Peaches, Lettuce, Apples, Collard Greens, and Carrots. Boscalid is practically nontoxic to terrestrial animals and is moderately toxic to aquatic animals on an acute exposure basis.
Now here is the trade-off. Boscalid is “practically” nontoxic to humans in the small amounts found on food. Fungi on the other hand produce mycotoxins, which are highly toxic to humans. Mycotoxins most commonly found in fruits and their processed products are aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, patulin and Alternaria toxins. Fungi can infect agricultural crops during crop growth, harvest, storage, or processing.
Bifenthrin is an insecticide that interferes with the nervous system of insects when they eat or touch it. It is used on a wide variety of crops. The biggest danger to humans is its almost indiscriminate use around the house as a pest control measure. So in addition to the small amount consumed from eating food, humans may get cumulative exposure to this and other insecticides that are used too casually and with little regard to chronic exposure. The U.S. EPA classified bifenthrin as a Category C, possible human carcinogen.
Yes, all coffee is contaminated with mycotoxins. Certain brands use this fact to scare you into thinking that their brand is mycotoxin free. It’s not.
South American coffee growers and the cooperatives that handle the harvest take great pains to cold wash the coffee, dry it, and store it in dry warehouses to minimize grown of mold. It’s shipped in burlap bags that have both advantages and disadvantages as far as mold is concerned. Its shipped in ocean going containers that are pretty well hermetically sealed to avoid ocean humidity. After it leaves the container, it’s stored in climate controlled warehouses at the major coffee ports.
Coffee inevitably grows mold on it to varying degrees. Processors and USDA approved laboratories spot test coffee for toxins. Is coffee discarded if high levels are found in a shipment of coffee? No, it’s simply blended with more coffee. Some processors my roast it more to try to decrease the levels but as lot survives. The scientists’ solution to pollution is dilution. It works. But coffee is not the biggest crop with a mycotoxin problem. Look at peanuts, almonds, and pistachios.
Cereal crops are the backbone of the American diet, and worldwide too. One big problem with cereal crops is how they are stored, especially at times of bumper harvest. It is not uncommon to see wheat stored on the ground in great piles. When it rains, the dry wheat increases in moisture from around 8% to 20% and the surface of the pile sprouts. Just below the surface, mold takes over. And molds make mycotoxins!
Considering the conditions under which grains are grown, harvested, and processed, it is surprising that the levels of these contaminants are not higher. It may be due to the shear volume of the crops. Contaminants are diluted. If farmers use the recommended amounts of herbicides and insecticides, residues remain low, so nobody reports on them. Nevertheless they are there. One that is discussed a lot currently is Roundup™.
A contaminant now found in cereal products is glyphosate, known by its Bayer (Monsanto) trade name Roundup. California claimed it causes cancer so the lawsuits started. Bayer settle the lawsuits for between 10-11 Billion Dollars. The cancer claim is difficult to prove. The acute oral toxicity for mammals is low but if the acute dose is high enough, it will kill. The LD50 of glyphosate is 5,600 mg/kg for rats, which is six times lower that the LD50 of sucrose for rats. The LD50 for rates cannot be extrapolated to other animals. Ingestion by a human of as little as 85 ml ( 2.87 fluid ounces) of a 41% solution resulted in death within a few hours. It’s all about the dose.
What about the chronic effects of glyphosate? It works by inhibiting the Shikimate metabolic pathway used by plants as well as bacteria and a few other small creatures like fungi to produce certain essential amino acids. It’s basically an antibiotic. This means it also works on your intestinal bacteria, and since they are essential to your well-being, you should consider taking good care of them.
In reality you have no easy way to know how much glyphosate or other contaminants are in your food. Can you trust the government to warn you?
When you think about the surface of your body, you naturally think about the “outside,” the part you can see. But do you realize that the surfaces of your body that you cannot see, your “insides” are also on the surface? Every inch your digestive tract and lungs is just a continuation of the outside. In fact the skin on your lips and anus is the same.
The real “inside” of your body is what is on the other side of your skin, lips, mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, and anus. In fact a type of cells called epithelial cells cover everything on the surface of your body, both the outside surface and the inside surface. There are bacteria and other small creatures living on all of these surfaces to varying degrees and you would be smart to take care of them.
The inside of your body is a mysterious place ruled by blood vessels and the immune system. Except for surgical intervention, or an occasional shot in the arm or bullet wound, the real inside is a carefully guarded place. The epithelial cells have rules about what they allow inside. Germs are not allowed, even the so-called good ones in your gut. Most of the time when something gets in that is not allowed, it is your fault. You were careless, or stupid, got in a fight, ate bad stuff, or sucked bad stuff down into your lungs. Yes, your lungs are also covered with specialized epithelial cells and they need a lot of help from you to keep from hurting them.
Just a quick note about stuff that gets into your lungs: The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 gets into your lungs from droplets and even smaller particles called aerosols that are exhaled by persons infected with the virus. You can argue about whose fault it is if it gets there. You can certainly avoid getting it, so if you do get it, it’s hard to argue that it was not your fault. Think about how to avoid something you cannot see or smell.
Stay far enough away from people that the amount of virus lingering in the air is negligible. Learn to properly use barriers such as an adequate face mask that is properly fitted. After that, you have to rely on your own immune system to handle the intruder.
When SARS-CoV-2 gets on the surface of your epithelial cells in your nasal cavity or lungs, it binds to a molecular site (receptor) on the surface of your cells called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. Once it gets that far, it’s just a step away from getting inside and reproducing.
But your immune system can potentially handle the virus in an appropriate way. You may get sick but you won’t die.
Research has shown that persons with good vitamin D levels fare far better than those who do not.
It would be a valuable exercise in self-preservation to research a mechanism for regulation of immunity in viral infections by Vitamin D. Here is a start in that direction.
Akkermansia muciniphila
M Derrien, EE Vaughan, CM Plugge & WM de Vos (2004) Akkermansia muciniphila gen. nov., sp. nov., a hunman intestinal mucin-degrading bacterium. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 54: 1469-76
Many things kill bacteria. They are small so it takes only a small dose of toxic substances to kill them, like antibiotics, or small amounts of toxins you eat. Such doses aren’t enough to kill you, but they wreak havoc on your bacteria. Some of your bacteria are beneficial; others are not but are held in check by the good ones. We don’t know if Roundup kills your good bacteria but it kills bacteria in the soil so we suspect it kills some of yours too.
Gut bacteria play an integral role in a healthy immune system. They also play a part in the nervous system and mental health, including things like depression. A healthy immune system protects you from infections, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. With the huge increase in heart disease and cancer since the mid 1900s, can you imagine what may have been hurting the beneficial bacteria for the last 75 years?
Akkermansia is one of your most important bacteria. You need to worry about keeping it healthy because it can save your life.
They live on top of the mucous layer that covers the epithelial layer of your large intestine. This lining is called the mucosa because it secretes mucous to protect your gut from invasion by billions of bacteria and noxious substances. The mucosa is only one cell thick so it needs the additional barrier the mucous and its inhabitants provides.
Akkermansia is different from most other bacteria. You don’t need to directly feed it. It consumes the mucin from the lining of your gut and in the process helps your gut produce even more mucous. This metabolic activity produces short the chain fatty acids (SCFA), propionate and acetate, which in turn nourish the cells of your gut and immune system.
Another important resident of the gut is Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Its a member of a group of bacteria called Firmicutes that produce butyrate, another short chain fatty acid that bacteria can make. It has beneficial effects on intestinal homeostasis and energy metabolism. All together the SCFAs produced by gut bacteria provide 60–70% of the energy required by the colon’s epithelial cells and 5–15% of the the body’s total energy requirements.
An amazing study from Italy is showing that the COVID-19 virus decimates Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and may actually reside within it for a long time after the initial COVID-19 infection. “Long COVID” is a real thing. Check back periodically and we will try to update this information when multiple studies are confirmed.
Both Akkermansia muciniphila and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii are classed as Extremely Oxygen Sensitive (EOS) Bacteria. They are difficult to study because oxygen kills them. For this reason, little has been known about them until fairly recently. A. muciniphila was discovered in 2004.
A. muciniphila and F. prausnitzii are fastidious microorganisms. Not only can’t they stand oxygen, they are pretty picky eaters. That’s good. They won’t eat you. But it also means you have to feed them properly. They are abundant in people with healthy intestinal microbiota but their numbers are greatly reduced in people with inflammatory diseases and metabolic disorders, like obesity, diabetes, and cancers.
Don’t expect to buy a bottle of either of these organisms. They will be virtually impossible to manufacture, ship, and store in a world full of oxygen. Besides, you already have them; feed them.
Coca-Cola may have been America’s first great energy drink, although it was never called that. Instead, it may have been invented as a non-alcoholic answer to early the temperance movement in Georgia. An 1885 Georgia statute granted counties to right to impose alcohol prohibition and it appears that this had happened in the counties around Atlanta when Dr. John Pemberton, a local pharmacist, produced the first syrup for Coca-Cola to be sold at drug store soda fountains.
Pemberton’s secret formula was made with an extract of coca leaves, which contain cocaine alkaloids, and kola nut extract, which contains caffeine. Hence the name: Coca-Cola. Cocaine was commonly available in those days but it appears that the coco leaf extract may have been more for the flavor than for the small amount of cocaine in the extract. The leaf extract used now doesn’t contain cocaine. In any event Coca-Cola attempted to remove all the cocaine in 1903 well before Teddy Roosevelt’s new Food and Drug Regulators started complaining about the high amount of caffeine in the drink.
In 1911 the Federal Government accused Coca-Cola of selling a misbranded product that was adulterated with caffeine. The case worked its way to the Supreme Court. In United States v. Forty Barrels & Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola (1916), the Supreme Court heard the government’s contention that Coca-Cola was misbranded because it “contained no coca and little if any cola.” In addition the Food and Drugs folks claimed the 78.4 mg of caffeine per 8oz serving of Coke might hurt people. The justices decided that in the light of conflicting testimony, it should be up to a jury to decide whether caffeine was dangerous or not. They sent it back to a lower court.
It never went back to trial in a lower court. The Food and Drug Regulators got rid of their caffeine hating chemist, and Coca-Cola volunteered to cut the caffeine in half. Even today, Coca-Cola has only 32 mg of caffeine in a 12 ounce bottle, which is equivalent to 21 mg per 8 oz. serving.
But now you can have a new Coca-Cola with 114 mg of caffeine in a 12 ounce can. It’s called Coca-Cola Energy, “the great taste of Coca-Cola with the energy you want to power you through your everyday life.” It may be America’s last great energy drink. (Ooops – no más)
Some people call caffeine a drug. If it’s a drug, is there a correct dose for the desired therapeutic effect?
If it is not a drug, what is it? It’s certainly not a nutrient. It interferes on a very basic level with some of our most important metabolic processes.
Caffeine is clearly our favorite legal psychoactive substance and we self-dose to give us the desired effect. We get it in coffee. Some get it in energy drinks. Confections like beef jerky infused with guaraná and non-cola soft drinks can contain caffeine. It’s hard to know the dose you are getting eating some of these things, despite what the label says.
The purine alkaloid caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine) represents about 1%-2% of the dry weight of coffee beans. It has been shown to inhibit insects that would otherwise feed on the coffee beans. That makes caffeine an insecticide. Numerous insect pests become uncoordinated or stop feeding when exposed to caffeine.
An exception is the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) responsible decreasing coffee crop yields by up to 80% in some areas. Scientists discovered that this pest was able to resist the toxic effects of caffeine because of the activity of its gut bacteria. They discovered that a species of bacteria called Pseudomonas fulva has a gene that produces an enzyme (caffeine demethylase) that enables the bacteria break down caffeine and to subsist on it as a sole source of carbon and nitrogen.
The answer to the question, ‘What does caffeine do to you” is not as straightforward as you may think. It depends on your genes, your age, and other factors such as general nutrition and medications you may be taking.
Your individual genetic heritage determines how efficiently you metabolize caffeine. The science of how genes affect your reaction to caffeine is in its infancy. It’s too early to run a genetic test to see exactly how you handle caffeine and all other substances you run through your body. You can do a CYP450 Isoenzyme test and gain a little insight into how you handle certain drugs and other substances, including caffeine, but it is just a glimpse into everything that’s happening. So far 57 different CYP genes have been identified in humans. Undoubtedly more will be identified. And there are other genes that affect how the CYP family of genes respond.
You are truly unique. Your response to everything you consume including drugs like caffeine is different from other people. It changes slowly throughout your life. Generally your body chemistry is more robust when you are young and less efficient in old age. As a rule, both young people and old people should be careful with caffeine. There is evidence that caffeine in young people hinders the formation of connections between brain cells. That may be due to disrupting sleep that young people need. It is well known that sleepy children perform well below their grade level.
Don’t be misled by claims that people who drink coffee live longer, are more healthy, have less cancer, and it will make you smarter. While some of these claims may have validity, coffee is not the same as caffeine. Are the purported benefits due to caffeine, flavinoids in the coffee, or both? Be skeptical about nutrition claims.
One CYP450 gene called CYP1A2 produces a liver enzyme that metabolizes about 95 percent of caffeine you consume. It converts caffeine into closely related compounds, paraxanthine (1,7-dimethylxanthine), theobromine, and theophylline, each of which has its own physiological effects on the body. These substances are classified chemically as methylxanthines.
Theophylline (1,3-dimethylxanthine) is a bronchodilator used in medicine to treat symptoms of asthma and other breathing problems. Theobromine (3,7-dimethylxanthine) was used in the past for its physiological effects but is not currently a prescribed medicine. Present in chocolate, it’s the reason chocolate can be fatal for dogs.
Of the three, paraxanthine is the least toxic while being a bit more psychoactive than caffeine.
There is no nutritional need for caffeine. When you consume it, your body has to detoxify it and excrete it.
All you know when you eat something that contains caffeine is how you feel afterward. Most of us don’t worry about how chronic consumption of caffeine may alter our chemistry – and maybe even change the change of our brains (reversibly). We know we may have a headache when the caffeine wears off and it miraculously disappears after another jolt of caffeine. Caffeine makes us feel jittery but more alert. The trade-off seems worth the risk for a majority of the world’s population.
The reason the methylxanthines have profound physiological effects is their structural similarity to to one of our most important molecules, adenosine.
The role of adenosine in the body is more than just attaching to the brain to make us sleepy. It’s related to a class of compounds called purines that form the very basis of our existence – our DNA and RNA. The two purines, adenine and guanine, combined with the complementary pyrimidines, thymine and cytosine, are the base pairs that form our genetic code.
The base pairs make up large spiral molecules (macromolecule) called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are nucleic acids. Nucleic acids, along with proteins, complex carbohydrates, and lipids (fats) are the four macromolecules common to all forms of life.
Energy in every cell of our bodies is produced by a molecule containing adenosine. When that molecule is spent and adenosine from inside the cells is released into the bloodstream, it acts as a signaling molecule to organs and cells in the entire body. It’s short lived in the blood stream but quickly attaches to cells that need to perform necessary tasks. When it attaches to the brain, one effect is we get sleepy. That’s natures way to tell use to rest, and maybe even sleep.
Doctors take advantage of adenosine’s signaling ability to inject adenosine to stop a dangerous runaway heartbeat called supraventricular tachycardia. It lasts only a ten seconds in the blood stream. Repeated doses are given until the rapid heartbeat calms down.
Adenosine signals most other types of tissues and cells from the cells lining blood vessels, immune cells, liver cells, and brain cells. Signaling by adenosine targets four known adenosine receptor sub-types (A 1, A 2A, A 2B, and A 3) and the methylxanthines act as antagonists at these same receptors. Unless some pathological condition requires antagonism, it seems like there is little reason to go overboard on caffeine.
There is a lot more to the adenosine story, like the part about adenosine combining with three phosphorus molecules (phosphate) to make ATP (adenosine triphosphate) that supplies every cell in the body with the energy that people are looking for when they drink energy drinks!
ATP gives up its energy inside each cell by splitting off one phosphorus to yield ADP (adenosine diphosphate). It adds that extra phosphorus back onto adenosine in a reaction that requires energy sources already inside the cell. That energy usually comes from glucose. Glucose and fats carry a lot more energy than ATP does. (If you want to dig into the complexities of cellular energy, look up a current explanation of the TCA Cycle. (It’s far more complex that it was in medical school 50 years ago)
It’s not a straightforward comparison between the energy of the glucose inside cells and the amount of ATP produced.
Metabolizable Energy (ME) is a term used to describe how much of glucose’s 4 calories per gram of energy can actually be used to make ATP. One study found that each unit of ME of glucose, based on a concept of coupling ratios, produced a variable amount of ATP ranging from 9.0 to 14.7 cytoplasmic equivalents (inside the cytoplasm of the cell). Fats and proteins produced similar amounts of ATP in spite of the well known higher caloric value of fats. So calories in-calories out is clearly not true.
The disodium salt of ATP is being manufactured and sold as an energy enhancer.
The first thing that happens to these products when taken in a dry powder or capsule form, the ATP goes into aqueous solution in the esophagus and stomach.
Sigma Aldrich is a manufacturer of the disodium salt of ATP. They advise storing ATP solutions frozen at -15 °C. At body temperatures it rapidly breaks down to ADP and then further degrades to AMP, giving up a tiny bit of energy in the process. In the slightly alkaline conditions of the small intestine, AMP rapidly decomposes to inorganic pyrophosphate and adenosine 5′-phosphate. Taking the sodium salt of ATP conveys no energy to the cells because it is broken down to smaller units in the gut before we can absorb it into the blood stream.
The body’s own requirement for ATP inside cells comes mainly from recycling existing ADP and ATP. They remain fairly constant and require only minute replacement from eating foods that contain purine. We then initially synthesize the purine into a derivative called inosine monophosphate (IMP). From there we synthesize all the replacement ADP and ATP that we require to keep our intracellular energy production going.
Eating ATP is a waste of money, even if you can find a product that is not made in PRC (China).
There is a way to get the energy that everybody craves , but it is not from energy drinks, coffee, mega doses of vitamins, or sugar. They all can have the opposite effect depending on the dose. And the dose is an elusive thing. You can’t depend on your senses to know when you have had enough or even too much.
If you have accompanied this page from the beginning and have understood it, congratulations. The material is not written on a sixth grade level. It gets poor marks for readability.
Here is a brief summary of what we want you to think about, whether you agree or disagree. We welcome your suggestions and criticism:
Each of us has a maximum potential to expend energy, including mental energy, depending on our degree of physical fitness. Our degree of fitness depends on the health of all the cells that make up our bodies, including the bacteria we carry around with us.
We are the sum total of all our individual human cells (approximately 30 trillion of them) plus approximately 39 trillion bacterial cells. They outnumber us by a factor of 1.3, more or less. The often cited 10:1 ratio is wrong. Their cells are tiny compared to our much large cells.
Inside of all of our human cells (except red blood cells and platelets), are small bacteria sized structures called mitochondria. That’s where our cells get their energy to do what they are specialized to do. Muscles contract. Heart muscle contracts continuously. Lungs transport oxygen. Liver cells, kidney, gut, skin… All use energy to carry out their specialized functions.
Nerve cells are the ones that get us into trouble because they talk to us. They tells us when we are hungry, sleepy, sad, happy, afraid, or in pain. Then we act on what the brain tells us, and we don’t always make good choices.
We are used to immediately acting on what our nervous system tells us. Sometimes if we are really stoic we can resist pulling away from pain, but who can resist chocolate? One little piece cannot hurt!
Yet there are things our nervous system triggers that are beyond our conscious control. The abnormal release of the stress hormone cortisol is an example how we hurt ourselves by worrying about threats that are not based in physical reality. If a boyfriend dumps you and your life is a mess, the brain makes it worse by releasing powerful hormones even though you are not being chased by a large hungry carnivore. What a miserable reality we have created for ourselves! We wake up in the middle of the night to check the sound our cell phone just made, force our eyes to focus on the tiny blue screen, and discover that our closest friend cannot sleep. Now that makes two of us.
What is there about human nature that requires immediate gratification?