Ray Peat on dietary sucrose:
Paleo advocates recommend lower carb diets. Sisson recommends 150 grams (or less) of carbohydrates a day, while others recommend ketogenic levels (50g or less). This is the greatest departure Ray Peat makes from the typical paleo diet.
He states that sugar (sucrose, fructose) is not an issue when polyunsaturated fats are not in the diet.
"When glucose can't be oxidized, for any reason, there is a stress reaction, that mobiles free fatty acids. Drugs that oppose the hormones (such as adrenalin or growth hormone) that liberate free fatty acids have been used to treat diabetes, because lowering free fatty acids can restore glucose oxidation.
Brief exposures to polyunsaturated fatty acids can damage the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas, and the mitochondria in which oxidative energy production takes place.
Prolonged exposure causes progressive damage. Acutely, the free polyunsaturated fatty acids cause capillary permeability to increase, and this can be detected at the beginning of “insulin resistance” or “diabetes.”
After chronic exposure, the leakiness increases and albumin occurs in the urine, as proteins leak out of the blood vessels. The retina and brain and other organs are damaged by the leaking capillaries."
On sugar vs. starch:
"Starch and glucose efficiently stimulate insulin secretion, and that accelerates the disposition of glucose, activating its conversion to glycogen and fat, as well as its oxidation. Fructose inhibits the stimulation of insulin by glucose, so this means that eating ordinary sugar, sucrose (a disaccharide, consisting of glucose and fructose), in place of starch, will reduce the tendency to store fat."
"The name, “glycation,” indicates the addition of sugar groups to proteins, such as occurs in diabetes and old age, but when tested in a controlled experiment, lipid peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids produces the protein damage about 23 times faster than the simple sugars do."
