TGIF: Nutrition & Health News

The good?

A start-up company called BioLumen has developed a fiber-based drink mix called “Monch Monch” that swells up in the stomach like a sponge and absorbs any recently ingested sugar. “Have your Cake and Eat it?” was the headline of an enthusiastic article this week in the Guardian on the “new world of sugar elimination.” Naively, we thought sugar elimination already existed, as a world where people simply stopped eating and drinking sugar. But high-tech has other ideas. The sponge drink costs $150 a month (for two packets a day) and has already achieved “GRAS” (Generally Recognized As Safe) status. However, its ability to lower blood-sugar spikes and reduce the amount of sugar the body digests remain unproven, says longtime anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig, a former UCSF professor of pediatrics and now, BioLumen’s co-founder.

The Guardian covers two other start-up companies, including Zye, in the UK,