Course No. 7
All sugars, starches, & fibers must be reduced to glucose.

If It's Not Protein or Fat, It's Sugar.

Overview
Regarding nutrition, it is the secondary molecules resulting from hydrolysis that differentiate sugar, starch, and fiber. The more complex the compound of glucose molecules is, the more carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules it has, the more secondary molecules are created by hydrolysis. Some of these secondary molecules are helpful, and some are harmful, and there are a vast number of them. The combinations and permutations of secondary molecules are almost incalculable.
The first thing to learn about all sugars is that they are threshold toxins. Sugar is safe and beneficial up to a threshold. After that threshold, sugar is toxic. These thresholds differ by sugar type and quantity, but they apply to all forms of sugar, including pure glucose.
In the twenty years between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, the rates of metabolic syndrome, obesity, and metabolic disease did not rise significantly, even though factory food consumption did rise significantly. However, between the mid-1970s and now, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and metabolic disease have skyrocketed with no significant change in eating patterns.
What has changed? Factory food has changed. There were many changes, many of them bad. But the elephant in the room was that factory food changed the type of sweetener they added to food. Until the mid-1970s, the primary sweetener in factory food was dextrose, which is basically powdered glucose. After the mid-1970s, the primary sweetener became fructose and sucrose, which is half fructose.
Actionable Knowledge
  • All carbohydrates, whether called sugar, starch, or fiber, are composed of glucose and must be broken down into glucose before they become nutritious to human cells.
  • Generally, carbohydrates exist on a continuum of increasingly complex combinations, counts, and configurations of glucose, collectively called compounds. At various points on this continuum, these compounds are called sugars, starches, and fibers. Sugars are relatively simple compounds of glucose, starches are more complex compounds of glucose, and fibers are very complex compounds of glucose. Notice a trend here? That's right, it's all glucose.
  • Any food that is not protein, vitamins, and fats and is a non-glucose carbohydrate undergoes hydrolysis and is potentially harmful and toxic above a threshold typically routinely exceeded in the American diet. But this is NOT to say a Keto, Low-Carb, or Paleo diet is good. It's to say that too much sugar, starches, and fiber is bad (yes, fiber, too!).
  • When you start to understand the bioreactor, microbiome ecosystem, and hydrolysis, it seems very reasonable to eliminate other complex sugars, additives, thickeners, and emulsifiers, which are often very similar to very complex sugars and starches.
If It's Not Protein or Fat, It's Sugar.
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Related Article
If It's Not Protein or Fat, It's Sugar.
Article 7

When not talking protein or fat, we use terms like sugar, starch, and fiber, but cells can only use glucose.

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Your Cells Don't Have a Mouth. About Course
Your Cells Don't Have a Mouth.
Course 6
All cell nutrition must pass through the cell wall.
All food must be reduced to a few select molecules that can pass through cell membranes to nourish the cell. No matter what you eat, it must be reduced to a few amino acids, micronutrients, oils, and glucose. Reducing the complex molecules of food to these few simple molecules is the job of the microbes in your gut.

Next Course

You Breed What You Feed. About Course
You Breed What You Feed.
Course 8
Life thrives where it gets lots of its favorite foods.
The success of populations of digestive system microbes is determined mainly by what you feed them. You can support healthy microbes, and crowd out unhealthy microbes by the right food choices. But a lifetime of food choices creates a population of microbes unique to each individual.