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A windfall for the graduation thesis
As a college student majoring in food safety, I received a complete food safety education in school and had a deep understanding of hot issues in society at that time, such as food additives and pesticide residues. For example, at that time, I believed that as long as pesticide residues meet the safety standards formulated by the state according to the toxicological characteristics of the human body, and after a scientific and reasonable testing process, the value of pesticide residues obtained meets the standards, which means that agricultural products are safe.
Therefore, at that time, I was convinced that the production of our agricultural products and food products would not adversely affect human health. What the public needs is better science popularization, so that more people can understand that in the hot issues of pesticide residues and food additives, "not talking about dosage is playing hooligans". What the state needs to do is to enforce the law more strictly and to avoid unscrupulous elements, especially those who lack knowledge and culture, and small traders and peddlers who harm public health for their own selfish interests. As for the agricultural products and food produced by large enterprises, large farms, and large factories, they are sold in regular supermarkets, then it is safe and secure to eat.
However, after nearly 4 years of conviction, when I was about to graduate, I found that I was still too young. This feeling came from an unexpected gain from my graduation thesis.
Development of barley noodles
My graduation project was to develop a formula for barley noodles, the purpose of which is to take advantage of the high beta-dextran content in barley to increase the content of beta-dextran in noodles, thereby reducing the rate of blood glucose rise and blood sugar peaks after diabetics eat noodles, and play a role in alleviating diabetic symptoms.
Here we first carry out a little bit of science popularization. Diabetes mellitus is divided into type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is congenital and can be understood as a genetic defect, and patients with an absolute lack of insulin are relatively rare. The vast majority of diabetic patients suffer from type 2 diabetes, which is acquired, and the patient's insulin is only relatively lacking, mostly complicated with obesity and hypertension. The mechanism of its production can be roughly understood as a rapid increase in blood sugar after eating due to excessive diet and lack of exercise. At this time, islet B cells must quickly secrete a large amount of insulin, fix blood glucose into liver glycogen, myogrogen and other forms to lower blood sugar. This rapid and large number of recurrences with daily eating can lead to insulin resistance, i.e. insulin receptors are not sensitive to insulin. This, in turn, forces islet B cells to secrete more insulin, further worsening insulin resistance. But more importantly, forcing islet B cells to secrete more insulin faster causes islet B cells to function poorly.
We can roughly think that the cause of type 2 diabetes is due to the sudden and sharp increase in blood sugar triggered by excessive carbohydrate intake during meals; this suddenness and large amount force islet B cells to synthesize insulin suddenly and in large quantities. The sudden and large appearance of insulin can lead to the body's insensitivity to insulin, further forcing islet B cells to overflot. Loosely speaking, type 2 diabetes has some similarities with heart failure due to persistent tachycardia.
The most natural way to prevent type 2 diabetes is to reduce your carbohydrate intake and reduce the rate and spike in blood sugar rise after meals, thereby avoiding insulin resistance and strain on islet B cells.
The content of beta-dextran in barley is 50 times that of wheat, and because of its better viscosity, it can reduce the rate at which food is emptied from the stomach, reduce the rate at which the small intestine absorbs carbohydrates, and relatively reduce the glycemic index of food (that is, the ratio of a food's ability to raise blood sugar to glucose's ability to raise blood sugar); it can also improve the body's sensitivity to insulin and reduce the risk of insulin resistance. Therefore, adding beta-dextran to noodles can prevent and improve diabetes.
However, since the protein content in barley is lower than that of wheat, it is not easy to form noodles by directly using barley flour to make noodles, or using barley flour mixed with wheat flour to make noodles, and gluten needs to be added to the raw materials to increase the proportion of protein in the dough, so that the noodles are not easy to break when cooked.
My graduation project was to use orthogonal analysis to determine the proportion of barley flour, wheat flour and gluten powder added.
Source of gluten
Figure 1 Shaanxi cool skin, pay attention to the gluten on the top
Gluten is one of the main components of gluten, and the gluten on the Shaanxi liangpi that we usually eat is produced with gluten as raw material.
Barley flour and wheat flour are easy to buy, but where to buy gluten powder? In an era when not everything was available on the e-commerce platform, I had to find a reliable gluten powder manufacturer near the university to support the completion of my graduation thesis. After some exploration, I finally found a gluten powder production plant.
It's actually a flour mill.
In other words, gluten powder is extracted from flour.
Allow me to explain a little bit, I was shocked at the time.
The purpose of my dissertation was to improve the quality of life for people with type 2 diabetes and prevent the average person from developing a functional food. This is a beautiful ideal, and it also gives my graduation thesis a lofty social significance. Of course, the price of beta-dextran-rich barley noodles is higher than that of ordinary noodles, which can be interpreted as some of the costs people pay for their health, which seems to be understandable.
However, people develop type 2 diabetes because they consume too many carbohydrates, which leads to a rapid and dramatic rise in blood sugar after meals. So, foods with high carbohydrate content are the main culprits that people suffer from type 2 diabetes. For northerners who are accustomed to pasta1, "low gluten powder" with a higher carbohydrate ratio is more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than eating "high gluten powder" with lower carbohydrate content.
Flour mills extract the gluten from wheat, make gluten powder, and sell it at a high price to food industry customers such as cold skin production, which can improve their profit margins. However, this action increases the amount of carbohydrates in flour and also increases the probability of consumers developing type 2 diabetes.
If my barley noodles are successfully developed and sold to type 2 diabetics at a high price, the gluten powder extracted from the wheat from the flour mill will be returned to the consumer's body using my barley noodles as a carrier. For consumers, they may get higher dietary costs and type 2 diabetes.
Elongate the industrial chain
Let's change direction and re-sort out this industrial chain from front to back:
First of all, in order to obtain higher profits, flour mills put forward gluten in flour and sold them to food producers such as cold skin and barley noodles;
Secondly, this action reduces the gluten content in the flour and relatively increases the starch content in the flour. Consumers who consume such flour have a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes;
Third, consumers with type 2 diabetes have to buy slow-rise sugar foods, represented by barley noodles. And such barley noodles, high-priced gluten powder is added, and the cost is paid by the end consumer.
From a larger picture, we will find that flour mills seem to be working with barley noodle factories to extract gluten from flour mills, while barley noodle factories add high-priced gluten forms to first make consumers suffer from type 2 diabetes, and then provide them with high-priced, high-profit foods for diabetics.
It should be emphasized that I am not saying that there is someone who has specifically designed such an industrial structure that harms consumers. The formation of such an industrial structure is only naturally produced by each company in the industrial chain pursuing the maximization of capital profits.
If we question the flour mill, the flour mill will say, "Is there anything wrong with me producing gluten flour and selling it to a producer of cool skins to make more profit?"
If we question the barley noodle factory, the factory will say, "Is there anything wrong with me developing and producing food for diabetics that is good for their health?"
Every link is right, every link is noble, and the capital in each link has obtained higher profits.
But people are suffering from diabetes.
This is not a "conspiracy theory", it is a natural flaw in the capitalist mode of production. These facts are clearly placed there, and they are really carried out every day as we commute to work. There is no pair of "evil hands" that manipulate the whole thing, and there is no black-hearted mastermind behind the design of such a despicable evil world. It's just that the vast majority of ordinary people do not have the ability to deconstruct this system and see its hidden dark side. I am not here to promote some kind of "conspiracy theory", but to let people know that there is an objective gap between "chasing profits" and "being responsible for the health of consumers". This is the gray area between "capital's pursuit of profits" and "conscience discovery".
Please note that since the groups and individuals who hold capital (such as flour mill owners, management teams and workers) are also consumers of many products in the food circulation market, this pathological industrial chain is actually a cruel person. It is only capital that makes profits, not the groups or individuals that hold the capital.
I later spent a lot of time and energy studying political economy, only to learn that this phenomenon has long been theoretically described:
Capital lengthens the industrial chain in order to obtain higher profits.
If we take into account the cost of diabetics in the hospital, the conspiracy of all people to be injured is even more terrible. I have not yet left school and I have understood that the health harm of the modern capitalist food industry is not just a sentence of "passing the test" to prevaricate the masses.
100 years ago, the American Hormel company (Hormel) took the scrap of the pork processing plant - minced meat, heated it to cook, cut it into briquettes and then packaged it aseptically, inventing the "canned lunch meat". It was the launch of this cheap meat product that made the American working class afford to eat three meals a day. Previously, in all human civilizations, it was impossible for the lower working people to eat three meals a day.
In the ensuing World War II, canned lunch meat, along with Coca-Cola, went to the world as an important logistical material for American soldiers, making it clear to the world that the liberal capitalism represented by the United States could provide a high level of quality of life - ordinary workers in society and soldiers fighting on the front line could eat meat and drink sugar water, which was the unattainable life of countless people. Hömer has thus become a world-renowned food company, and we can still buy this brand of bacon slices in Chinese supermarkets today.
This is the highlight of the capitalist mode of production. Lunch meat and Coca-Cola together confirm the well-being that the modern food industry of capitalism has brought to the general public: food and health. However, after a century of running wildly on the road of chasing profits, the capitalist food industry has finally deviated from the vital interests of the people , health.
Despite this deviation, the food industry has struggled.
The paradox of sugar substitutes
Workers in the food industry are by no means without conscience, and they also see the harm that high-carbohydrate diets can do to consumers' health. The R&D personnel in the food industry are fully aware of the impact of their works on the human body, and they also hope to make people eat nutritious and safe food. Western societies, which entered the glut of goods earlier, introduced a series of "healthy foods" decades ago, such as reducing the sugar and salt content of various snacks, to reduce the risk of consumers developing type 2 diabetes and arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure. However, consumers don't seem to be buying it. The decline in sales has led these food giants to quickly enter a game environment in which "bad money drives out good money": whoeverse product contains more sugar can get more sales. The vigorous healthy snack industry inevitably failed.
But diabetes is a hot topic in the public after all, and the food industry has painstakingly developed one sugar substitute after another in order to reduce the content of carbohydrates in products, which are called "sugar substitutes".
The use of sugar directly as a sweetener in food is not expensive and works well, but it will be resisted by a group of consumers who are concerned about health (at least verbally). Wouldn't it be wonderful to add sugar substitutes to make the product sweet and satisfy consumers' appetite for sugar, but also not to generate calories and effectively prevent the occurrence of type 2 diabetes and obesity?
A total of 3 types of sugar substitutes have been developed, namely natural sweeteners, sugar alcohols and artificial sweeteners. The most familiar sugar substitutes are various sugar alcohols, which are low in cost and low in calories, and are widely used in the food industry and are the most popular sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners are the sweetest, such as saccharin, which can be tens of thousands of times sweeter than sucrose, and has 0 calories. As a result, artificial sweeteners represented by saccharin, acesulfame potassium, and aspartame are also commonly found in various beverages and snacks.
Figure 2 Classification of sugar substitutes
However, studies have shown that sugar substitutes are not only safe and worrying, but also the rationality of their existence is a paradox.
The role of sugar substitute is to use the sweet characteristics of sugar generation to deceive the human body's taste system, so that people no longer pursue sweet and sugar foods. At the same time, it also uses its low-calorie nature to avoid rapid and sharp increase in blood sugar, thereby avoiding the generation of insulin resistance.
Figure 3 Sugar substitute drinks on domestic fires
But we always feel that sugar-substitute drinks such as sugar-free cola are not as delicious as sugary drinks, aren't they?
This is because sugar substitutes can deceive the tongue but not the duodenum; sugar substitutes deceive the taste nerves, but they cannot deceive the brain and intestine axis. 2
Cerebrointestinal axis
There are many ways to communicate signals between the gut and the brain, such as signals that can be transmitted from the gut to the brain in the form of hormones. It has also been suggested that secretory cells in the intestine can pass through the vagus nerve through the nodal ganglia and transmit signals directly to the brain in the form of electrical signals. This is called the "brain-gut axis".
Approximately 20% of duodenal sensory neurons respond to glucose ingestion, and the most important glucose-related receptor is the sodium-glucose co-transporter 1 (SGLT1). The signals produced by the receptors are passed through the intestinal axis of the brain to the solitary caudal nucleus of the brain, producing excitement.
The use of sugar substitutes alone deceives the sense of taste, and it is not possible to fool the sugar receptors of the intestine. Therefore, eating sugar-free foods produces less pleasure than sugary foods.
Figure 4 The most common sugar-free cola
Sugar substitutes in sugar-free cola satisfy the tongue, but for the sugar receptors of the duodenum, sugar-free cola is no different from soda. Even though you drink sugar-free Coke, your gut will still express its desire for sugary Coke.
Instead of drinking a lot of higher-priced sugar-free coke, we'd love to drink less sugary cola — healthy and save money.
It's like choosing not to buy diabetes-friendly barley noodles and eating high-gluten whole wheat flour directly.
The sugar substitute paradox is already an IQ tax spell, not to mention that sugar substitute itself poses a risk to human health.
Sugar substitutes may not be as rosy as we often see in marketing campaigns
In September 2020, JAMA Intern Med published the largest study in history on soft drinks and the risk of death, showing a significant increase in all-cause mortality among people who regularly drank sugar-substituted beverages compared to those who drank sugar-sweetened beverages regularly. 3
An article published in cell metabolism cell metabolism in March 2021 also showed that while neither sweeteners (e.g., sucralose) nor carbohydrates alone caused insulin resistance; the combination of sweeteners and carbohydrates significantly triggered insulin resistance in subjects within 7 days. The study suggests that the combination of sugar substitutes and carbohydrates may send double the calorie signals to the brain, which, over time, alter the brain and body's response to sugar, which in turn affects health. 4
It can be seen that sugar substitutes also have harm to the body.
First of all, sugar substitutes cannot fool the sugar receptors of the intestine, which will induce the body to continue to look for sugary foods;
Second, the combination of sugar substitutes and sugars can induce insulin resistance.
tail
This is just one example of the modern food industry's implicit harm to our health, but believe me, similar examples are ubiquitous in the food industry. So, if the agricultural products are not processed and eaten directly, can we avoid the cruelty of capitalist production and way of life and sit back and relax?
After I stepped into the fruit industry, I have a new understanding of this issue, and I will continue to share it with you through future articles.
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