News
Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding will be
returning to her old stomping grounds in Portland for
a free performance at 4:30 p.m. on wednesday
Feb. 23 at City hall, 1221 S.w. Fourth Ave.
Spalding has been named the official artistic and
community ambassador for the Portland Jazz
Festival. She will be participating in the festival’s
education event, “The Incredible Journey of Jazz” –
a week-long middle-school program celebrating
Black history month curated by her former professor
at Portland State university, darrell Grant.
Additionally, Spalding will perform on Feb. 25 for a
performance at the Newmark Theatre as part of the
Jazz Festival, which kicks off its series of shows and
events on Feb. 18.
PHOTO COurTeSY JOHaNN SauTY
Esperanza
Sugar
continued from page 1
cose. When you consume white sugar, for example, your
body then breaks down the sucrose (sugar) into its two parts
– fructose and glucose.
The research found that fructose and glucose – despite
being very similar on a molecular level — affect areas of
the brain in different ways. Using a “functional MRI,”
which measures brain activity in real time, researchers
found that neither fructose nor glucose affected the area of
the brain that regulates food intake.
In test subjects injected with pure glucose, the areas of the
brain that control responses to food taste, smells and pic-
tures, were activated. Fructose, on the other hand, inhibited
these same areas of the brain.
Lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Purnell says the research
partially answers why two similar sugars affect the brain in
different ways.
“There’s plenty of animal data and now human data that
suggests fructose, which is a different compound from glu-
cose from a simple carbohydrate standpoint,” he said. “has
markedly different metabolic effects on food intake and
body weight. What this supports is that in the brains of
humans … that the brain responds differently to these two
compounds, in the opposite manner.”
In other words, your body does one thing with glucose,
but another with fructose.
A 2009 study by researchers at University of California-
Davis demonstrated that consuming fructose-sweetened
beverages will cause unnatural fat distribution. The report,
published in the May 2009 Journal of Clinical
Investigation, found that test subjects who consumed fruc-
tose beverages, along with a diet of their choice, gained sig-
nificantly more abdominal weight when compared to glu-
cose-beverage drinkers. Both groups gained the same
amount of fat during the study period.
Robert Lustig M.D., a neuroendocrinologist at the
University of California-SF, considers fructose to be a poi-
son.
That’s right. All those sugar-packed drinks, “teas” and
candies young and old alike love to consume? Lustig says
they’re slowly killing us. In particular, Lustig says soda has
helped fuel the increase in about a dozen illnesses.
“It’s like drinking a pizza,” he says, adding that soft drink
companies have to add high amounts of sugar to disguise
the high amounts of salt contained in the beverages.
Fructose also may play a role in suppressing a hormone
called Leptin, which plays a key role in regulating our
appetites, he says.
“If you feed a kid a can of soda and unleash him on a
meal, does he eat less or does he eat more? He’s just con-
sumed 150 calories, yet he eats more,” Lustig said.
Lustig also says that chronic Fructose consumption can
cause eight of the 12 diseases commonly associated with
alcoholism, and there is evidence that it can also lead to
Chronic Metabolic Syndrome – which is characterized by
central obesity (the location of fat around the waist), hyper-
tension, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, lipid problems
and elevated triglycerides (which can increase risk of heart
disease and stroke).
Purnell says the OHSU study should cause consumers to
pay more attention to the ingredients in their food.
february 16, 2011 The Portland Skanner Page 7