Dr. Robert Lustig
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Indeed. And that's what we showed in this mindfulness study. So it's called the Shine Study. It was run by Rick Hecht and Alyssa Epple, my colleague. Yeah, we've had her on the podcast before. She's great. Absolutely. She was the co-PI on this. And we showed that So mindfulness did not change weight.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
It changed health because it got rid of the cortisol, because it got rid of the insulin resistance, because it got rid of the visceral fat.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Right. What that would do is that would help reduce subcutaneous fat. Which of course is the fat that everyone sees. Right. But it's not the fat you can see that makes you sick. It's the fat you can't see that makes you sick. That's the nugget of truth that people don't want to own up to.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And number three. Liver fat. Liver fat. So how many pounds or kilos of liver fat do you have to accumulate before you get sick?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Half a kilo, one pound.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Now, can you measure one pound on the scale?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
No, you can't.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
No, you can't.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much weight fluctuation. It's in the realm of error.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Okay.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah. No, you can't measure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Exactly. But the fat in your liver is the primary driver of that chronic metabolic disease. And today, 45% of Americans have fatty liver disease. considering that no one had ever heard of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before 1980. And now 45% of Americans have it. That is the biggest epidemic in the history of the world, including COVID.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Exactly. But also our obesity epidemic? Well, if you become insulin resistant and your pancreas has to make more insulin and your insulin levels rise, and then that insulin works on your adipocyte, yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So 22 pounds of sub-Q fat equals five pounds of visceral fat equals one pound of liver fat. You tell me which one's worst. What is the worst?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And what do you make? What do you give to the goose to make the foie gras? Corn, I believe. Well, refined carbohydrate. But you know what makes it go faster?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Oh, well, I don't eat it. They don't serve it. They stuff it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
They shove it down.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah. Yeah. That makes it the fastest.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Right. And it's soft drinks that are the main lining of that sugar to create that fatty liver. That's right. So we have to fix that first. And when you fix the fatty liver, you'll fix the insulin resistance. When you fix the insulin resistance, you'll fix the insulin. When you fix the insulin, you'll fix the leptin. When you fix the leptin, you'll fix the weight.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So let's talk about how we can all fix this. In my book, Metabolical, I basically say that in order to turn metabolic disease around, you have to adhere to two precepts, protect the liver feed the gut. Six words. Protect the liver, feed the gut. Two clauses, six words. Now, the reason I did that, the reason I said that was because Michael Pollan in his book, Food Rules, said seven words.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Leptin resistance. The inability to see your leptin. The higher your sugar consumption, the more your insulin resistance. The more your insulin resistance, the less well your brain can see its leptin. The less well your brain can see its leptin, the more your brain thinks it's starving. And the more you'll eat those calories.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
He said, eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I had to come in under that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
No. No, you don't think that gets the full equation? Michael's a friend. I've had him to dinner at my house and his wife, Judith, and they're wonderful and delightful. I actually think that those three clauses are all incorrect. Eat food. Well, we just learned that processed food is not food. Not too much.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Understood.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
If you burn the olive oil, maybe not when you're making the French fries. Not too much. Well, you know what? If you fix the leptin resistance, you won't eat too much of your own volition. You don't have to worry about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Mechanism. And finally, mostly plants. Well, don't forget Coke, Oreos, and Doritos are all vegan. So I had to come in at fewer words than seven. So I said, protect the liver, feed the gut. I lied. There are three more words. Support the brain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And I thought about it and I thought about it. Do I want to put this in the book? Do I want to put this in the book? If I do this, it's going to increase the number of chapters by four and it's already 416 pages. Do I really need this? And I decided, you know what? Save it for the next book. But there's actually nine words. Protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
We call this now, this rubric of three principles, the metabolic matrix.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So you can get your calories down not by starving yourself, not by dieting and caloric restriction. You can get your calories down by getting rid of the insulin resistance, which means getting rid of the sugar because that's what caused the insulin resistance because it's the fat in your liver that led to the insulin resistance because your pancreas makes insulin to make the liver do its job.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And when you've got the fat in your liver that the sugar caused, now your liver doesn't do its job. Now your pancreas has to make extra insulin. Now you've got insulin resistance. Now you've got high insulin levels at the brain. Now your leptin doesn't work. So all those extra calories you're eating is because your brain doesn't see the leptin because of the sugar you ate.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
You know, it's a hypothesis.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Fix the sugar, you'll fix the calories too. But it doesn't work the other way around. So it's not about the calories. And I'll be happy to debate anybody who says it does.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So there is a phenomenon, which I think we talked about it the last time I was on the podcast. It's called TOFI, T-O-F-I. Thin on the outside, fat on the inside, real medical term, 1500 Medline citations coined by Dr. Jimmy Bell, neuroimager at University College London. You can be thin sick and you can be fat healthy. 20% of obese people are fat healthy. Now, 80% are fat sick, I agree.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
No argument. Obesity is a risk factor.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Obese. Obese. Obese.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
From the metabolic labs and for the diseases of metabolic syndrome, type two diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian disease, the diseases that are killing Americans. 75% of health care dollars are due to metabolic syndrome diseases. That's sugar drives.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So 20% of those people that are obese, they still could be healthy. Absolutely. Conversely, 60% of the normal weight population have the exact same diseases as do the obese. Normal weight people get type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Now they get it at a lower BMI. So it can't be the obesity because they're normal weight.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
They're below, their BMI is below 30. They're thin sick as opposed to fat healthy. So just because you're thin doesn't mean you're healthy. And just because you're fat doesn't mean you're sick. So there's this thing called TOFI. So my question to everyone listening to this podcast right now, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself the question, am I a TOFI?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Right? Well, it could be very little body fat percentage. Depends on where the body fat is. So you're talking about abdominal body fat. No, I'm talking about liver body fat. Liver body fat. Liver fat.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Usually, but not always.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Usually, but not always. Not always. That's usually, but not always. So here, there are three fat depots in the body. Three. Okay. And they contribute differentially to disease. This is very important.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
fat depot number one subcutaneous or big butt fat as in does this bathing suit make me look fat never answer that question total loser okay guaranteed okay now here's the question how many pounds of subcutaneous fat do you have to gain before you get sick oh I'd love to know. About 22 on average. 10 kilos.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Now, why so much? The answer is because subcutaneous fat does not drain into the liver. Subcutaneous fat drains into the heart. So when subcutaneous fat accumulates, The border of the fat vacuole in the fat cell starts to break down. The grease gets spilled. The macrophages come in to clean up the grease. They release the cytokines.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
The cytokines then circulate in the peripheral bloodstream, which is six liters. And so the concentration doesn't go up very high. And so the liver doesn't see a very high concentration of these cytokines. And it's the concentration of cytokines that the liver sees that determines whether or not the liver gets sick. So about 22 pounds. All right, fat depot number two, visceral fat, belly fat.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Yeah. The visceral fat. It's cool. How many pounds or kilos of visceral fat do you have to gain before you get sick? I would guess it's probably less than 22. Five. Five. Maybe six. Okay, 22 for sub-Q fat because it drained into the general circulation. Five or six for the visceral fat because it drains into the portal vein. The portal vein goes straight to the liver.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So if your visceral fat accumulates and you start breaking down that fat vacuole and the grease starts spilling and the macrophages start coming in, Those cytokines are going to be at much higher concentration because they only have to populate the portal system, the portal vein, from the gut to the liver. There are two portal systems in your body. What's a portal system?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Exactly. So that's right. What does it drain? So normally... The way blood goes in your body, it goes heart, aorta, artery, organ, vein, vena cava, heart. Okay. That's called a systemic circulation. A portal circulation goes like this, heart, aorta, Artery 1, organ 1, artery 2, organ 2, vena cava, heart. So the blood has to go through two organs to come back to the heart.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And there's information being carried from organ 1 to organ 2, which tells organ 2 what to do. So there are two portal systems in the body. One is the hypothalamus to pituitary. We know why that is because that runs all the different hormonal systems of the body. And the other one's pancreas to liver because the liver is the primary target of insulin action.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And so when the liver gets fat, the pancreas has to make more insulin to make the liver do its job. And because the liver gets fat and because it's at the end of that portal system, the Liver doesn't have to get very sick for the pancreas to start making extra insulin and causing problems. Now, the question is, where did the visceral fat come from? Did it come from the diet? No.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
People think that belly fat is from the diet. No. This is the big, you know, mistake. Yeah, where does it come from? Stress. And the reason we know that is because you can take people who are chronically depressed, who are suicidal, who basically have to be admitted to the hospital to keep themselves from killing themselves. And you put them in a scanner and they're not eating.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And so they're losing weight. Hallmark of depression, losing weight. and their subcutaneous fat is going down and their visceral fat is going up. They're losing weight and their visceral fat is going up because cortisol, the stress hormone, is the driver of that visceral fat.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
So we did the opposite at UCSF. We did a study where we took patients with exactly that situation and taught them mindfulness. So yeah, can you explain what that study was? What was the condition?
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
We took postmenopausal women and we basically taught them how to meditate. So you weren't controlling their food or anything like that? We didn't touch their food. We only taught them to meditate, but we studied them before and six months and 18 months later. And when you say studied, what were you looking at? We were looking at their fat depots. And cortisol as well.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
And cortisol and also insulin and insulin resistance. Exactly. And what we found was that weight didn't change that much. But in the mindfulness group, their belly fat went way down and their insulin levels went way down.
Dhru Purohit Show
Why Excess Added Sugar is Driving Modern Diseases and How to Take Back Our Metabolic Health and Overcome a Sedentary Lifestyle
Exactly. And that correlated with improvement in their metabolic health unrelated to weight. Another reason why this is not about calories.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Is sugar poison? Sugar is like alcohol. So is alcohol poison? Depends on the dose. Right? The dose determines the poison. Paracelsus 1537. We have an innate capacity to metabolize alcohol. And if we stay below that, it doesn't do too much damage. If we go above it, different story. Same thing with sugar. Same thing with this molecule, the sweet molecule, fructose.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
But insulin is also a problem because what insulin does is it causes cell growth. Insulin is a growth factor and it causes vascular smooth muscle growth like in your coronary arteries and it causes glandular growth. So it is one of the primary drivers of heart disease and cancer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So you can be a diabetic, a type 2 diabetic, and have your hemoglobin A1C, a measure of your glucose control, down near normal range because you're on insulin or oral hypoglycemics or even GLP-1 analogs for that matter, okay? And you will die just the same because you will die of a heart attack or of a cancer because diabetics have a much higher incidence of cancer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
They also have a higher incidence of dementia as well. And the reason is because of insulin because insulin is a bad guy in this story. Glucose causes microvascular disease. The insulin causes macrovascular disease. They're both bad. You need to control both of them. And this controls the glucose. It doesn't control the insulin.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So the other thing that we've learned about non-nutritive sweeteners across the board is that they alter the microbiome. Now, the microbiome is the bacteria that live in your gut. Now, you have to feed your microbiome. You have to feed your bacteria. Because if you don't feed your bacteria, your bacteria will feed on you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
It will strip the mucin layer, a protective physical barrier, right off the surface of your intestinal epithelial cells. And when it does that, it denudes them and allows for other bacteria, toxic bacteria, to take up residence and cause irritable bacteria. bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and the junctions between the cells become dysfunctional as well.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And so the cells become permeable. And so stuff in your intestine, the junk in your intestine, the SH, you know what? can actually make it through into the bloodstream. You can measure the endotoxins and the whole bacteria, the lipopolysaccharides in the bloodstream when the intestine is damaged even from diet soda. And what that does is that ultimately leads to systemic inflammation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
That's right. Yeah. They're formerly known as Eskimos. Right. But they didn't have any carbohydrate. They ran off fat. but they still had a serum glucose level because your brain runs on glucose. It can also run on ketones too, but your brain runs on glucose. My brain runs on glucose. And you need glucose because certain hormones and certain proteins in the body require glycosylation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And that systemic inflammation also leads to metabolic disease, mental health problems, cognitive decline, early death.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
sort of tooth comb over every single thing that they're putting into their body they're not a scientist agreed it's a it's a problem because the food industry has made the grocery store a minefield and it's really easy to set off an explosion if you walk in you've basically lost that's how bad it is understood so the the simple rule is eat real food So what's real food?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Well, food that came out of the ground or animals that ate food that came out of the ground. The problem is we all lead busy lives and we're looking for labor-saving devices because people don't even have time to cook. Most people, 33% of Americans don't even know how to cook anymore. So, like, what are they going to do? So we understand this. I mean, it's a problem. Agreed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
We need food that is metabolically healthy for us, not metabolically detrimental. And the problem is that as soon as you put added sugar in the food, you have made it metabolically detrimental. Now, the food industry will say, well, there are all these other good things in there, like vitamins and minerals. We fortify it, et cetera.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So I'm here to tell you, toxin A plus antidote B still equals death. Just because they put some vitamins in there or you take a dietary supplement, if it's not solving your mitochondrial dysfunction, what's the point? So you can't believe what the food industry is telling you. If they say something is healthy, it's usually the opposite. Whatever it says on the package, believe the opposite.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Because they have an incentive to put... Wrong stuff on the package. And I'll be honest with you, I'm part of, you know, numerous lawsuits suing the food industry for deceptive advertising, misbranding, mislabeling. 70% of all of the items in the American grocery store are misbranded or mislabeled. In what way? They say things that are not true. Give me some examples.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Well, first of all, any time they use the word healthy... They say no added sugar, but in fact they put in apple puree or raspberry puree or evaporated cane juice. There are 262 names for sugar, and the food industry uses all of them. And so they will say that something's no added sugar, but that in fact is actually not the case. Okay, there's a whole host of this.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Kellogg's has been sued for raisin bran. Okay, everyone thinks raisin bran. Well, it's just raisins and bran. What color are the raisins in raisin bran? I've never seen it. Well, I mean, raisins are purple.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
You know, purple brown.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Yeah, normally. Well, the raisins in Raisin Bran are white. Why? If you take the raisins in Raisin Bran, that's supposed to be 11 grams of sugar, but on the side of the package, it says that one serving is 18 grams of sugar. Where'd the other seven come from? It's the white. Because they've all been dipped in a sugar solution to make them sweeter. As an example. Okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So, Post has been sued, General Mills, theirs was dismissed. Mondelez, a whole host of companies are actually under the gun now to change their practices. Why do you care so much? I am a pediatrician. My job is to take care of children. Children are vulnerable in the same way minorities are vulnerable, in the same way prisoners are vulnerable, okay? They need a voice.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
My job is to give every kid a shot. Well, we now have neonatal obesity. We have babies being born Israel, South Africa, Russia, United States, four separate studies showing that over the past 25 years, birth weight has gone up 200 grams, half a pound, in all four countries. And when you do DEXA scanning to look at body composition on those newborns, those 200 grams are all fat.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
in order to be effective. An example, LH and FSH. When you don't have glycosylation of LH and FSH, the hormones that tell your testicle and your ovary to work, you are infertile. It's that simple. So survival of the species says you need some glucose, but if you're not consuming it, you'll still get it because your body will make it. It will make it out of amino acids. It will make it out of fat.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
We have a neonatal obesity. These kids did not get obese by dieting and exercising, by gluttony and sloth. They came out of the womb behind the eight ball. It's my job as a pediatrician to fix the problem. That's what I care.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Gluconeogenesis, it's called. So glucose is essential. It's just not essential to eat. Fructose, on the other hand, the sweet molecule in that bag.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Not only do you not need it... But in high dose, it's toxic. Now, your liver has the innate ability to metabolize a small amount, on the order of about six to nine teaspoons per day. Of dietary sugar, so half of that being fructose. So about 12 grams. Your liver can manage about 12 grams of fructose a day.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
In the same way it can manage about 12 grams of alcohol per day without showing any signs of any metabolic derangement. But if you go above that, now you get problems.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
We are so above that. We are at 50 grams of fructose per day, 100 grams of sugar per day. We're supposed to be at 25. We are at 100. We are quadruple our limit.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Because it's hidden in all of the food. That's exactly right. We don't even know. We say, oh, I never even add sugar to my coffee. Therefore, my sugar consumption is zero. Wrong. That is not true. Okay. Because it is hidden in plain sight in virtually every processed food in the entire grocery store. 72%.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
3% of all of the items in the American grocery store and in the British grocery store are spiked with added sugar by the food industry for its purposes, not for yours. Because they know when they add it, you buy more. And how much does that look like in teaspoons then? The upper limit is about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. The allowance, the recommended allowance. The upper limit. Okay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
The recommended allowance is lower than that. Yeah. Okay, but the upper limit is about 16 spoons of added sugar per day. So we have an innate capacity to metabolize about 12 grams of fructose per day. By the way, that's for adults. For children, it's one third of that, four grams of fructose per day. Okay, four to six. So we're talking very little, talking very little.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And the reason is because fructose and alcohol are metabolized virtually identically. What's the difference between sugar and fructose? So, sugar, dietary sugar, the sweet stuff, the crystals, the stuff you put in your coffee.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
But when you think about, for instance, kid in America, you know, 29% of kids in America consume the National School Breakfast Program breakfast in school. Okay, 29%. So what is... the National School Breakfast Program breakfast. It's a bowl of Froot Loops and a glass of orange juice. That is 41 grams of sugar. The upper limit for children in terms of their metabolism is 12 grams per day.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
They got 41 grams and it's just breakfast. What do you think that's going to do? Now, if a calorie were a calorie, and if glucose and fructose were the same, then you say, well, you got to get your calorie somewhere. But because fructose is not glucose, because fructose is more like alcohol, because fructose's toxicity has nothing to do with its calories, That is a huge overdose.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And it has metabolic complications, it has systemic health complications, it has mental health complications.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Ah, well, yes, that way it is. The point is that the food industry is very powerful, and they have swept virtually every aspect of this under the rug for 40 to 50 years. They knew back in the 1960s that sugar was a problem. But they paid off scientists to say it wasn't. And we actually have the documents from the food industry. They live at the UCSF Food Industry Documents Library.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Yeah, like that stuff. Yeah, that stuff. The five-pound bag right there. That's called sucrose. Okay, this is sucrose. This is sucrose. Now, sucrose is two molecules bound together. One molecule called glucose, one molecule called fructose. They are not the same. Now, the food industry will tell you they are the same. They are not the same.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And we are doing research on corporate interference in health. What do those documents show? They show that in 1965, the sugar industry came to two Harvard School of Public Health scientists, the head of the Department of Nutrition, Fred Steyer, and his associate, Mark Hegstead, who became the head of the USDA five years later.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And paid them $50,000 in today's money to produce two articles for the New England Journal saying saturated fat was the bad guy and that sugar was exonerated. And they did it. And they did it. That's just one thing they did.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
They also infiltrated the National Institute of Dental Research, NIDR, their study sections and their executive committee to take money away from nutrition research for dental health and put it toward a caries vaccine. A what? A dental cavities vaccine. How's that cavities vaccine working for you?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
We have all of the data in their own words to demonstrate that they knew exactly what they were doing. This is not a hallucination. This is hardcore fact, and we've published this. And we now have a center at UCSF devoted to understanding the corporate determinants of health.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Correct. All true. Now, you could say that's correlation, not causation, but we actually have the causation. We have the data. We have it in mechanistic terms. We have it in clinical interventional efforts. We have it in societal efforts. There's a method for determining proof. That doesn't need randomized control trials. It's called econometric analysis.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
This is what we have for, for instance, climate change. There's no control group for climate change, but we still know it's true. This is what we have for tobacco and lung cancer. You know, you don't have naive people start smoking. That would be illegal, immoral, get you thrown in jail. But we still know that tobacco causes lung cancer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
We know that football trauma causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy. None of these have control groups, but we know it's true through econometric analysis. This is a method of using natural history data over time to be able to determine proximate cause.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
And we have that for sugar and diabetes, and we have it for sugar and heart disease, and we have it for sugar and fatty liver disease, and of course we have it for sugar and tooth decay. We're working on sugar and cancer and sugar and dementia. We're not there yet.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
The reason they tell you they are the same is because that's the way they assuage their own culpability for what they've done to the food. But they are not the same. They will say a sugar is a sugar, a calorie is a calorie, a glucose and fructose both have four calories per gram. Why should you care? Oh, you care a lot. You care a whole lot. Now, glucose is the energy of life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So let's do the sugared soft drinks first.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
They are really bad. If you consume one sugared beverage per day, your risk for diabetes goes up by 29%. Wow. Okay. And that's if you have one. If you have two, 58%.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So this is a big problem. So, you know, that's demonstrating its toxicity at, you know, shall we say medium dose. You know, at low dose, you can handle it. But as soon as you go above that dose, it's a problem. And we have the data for it. And all of these are factored in. These are all econometric analyses. We've shown that sugar is a proximate cause of diabetes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Whenever sugar availability changes in any country, diabetes prevalence changes three years later. And we've also done what's known as advanced Markov modeling where we go into the future and show that when sugar consumption goes down in any country, diabetes levels change and reduce three years later.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So it's a three-year window between the change in the diet and the change in the metabolic health consequences. We have those data. And the fact that they work both on the way up and on the way down is like, you know, take it to the bank. Now, that's for the sugared beverages. You asked me about diet beverages. I've got one here. Let's look at it. All right. I've covered up the logos.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Oh, I've never seen this before. I wonder what that is. The data now show, I mean, it took a while for these data to come in, but the data now show that the toxicity of one sugared soda equals the toxicity of two diet sodas. Half as bad. Half as bad does not mean good. Half as bad means half as bad. Well, it says zero sugar here, so how can it be bad? Well, because it's bad for a different reason.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
So, yes, zero fructose, zero calories. I agree. But that doesn't make it good. It makes it better than the sugared alternative, but it doesn't make it good. Why? Why? Number one, you put something sweet on the tongue. Message goes, tongue to brain, sugar's coming. Message goes, brain to pancreas, sugar's coming, release the insulin. So I still get an insulin release?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
You still get an insulin response. And the more other food you ate, the bigger the insulin response. So you will have an accentuated insulin response because you're exposed to the diet sweetener. This is work from Yanina Pepino, 2013 at Wash U St. Louis. And it's been corroborated multiple times since.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Because insulin's a bad guy. So we always talk about glucose being a bad guy in terms of diabetes, and it is, of course. But insulin's a bad guy too. Glucose causes small vessels... to be dysfunctional, causes endothelial cell dysfunction. It causes high blood pressure because it causes those small vessels to constrict.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
It interferes with nitric oxide, which is one of the things that relaxes the blood vessel. and it will basically reduce blood flow to specific organs. So high glucose is not good for you, and it's bad for small vessel disease. And that's why diabetics get retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy, kidney disease, nerve damage, and eye disease.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 212: The Dangerous Truth Behind “Sugar Free”!
Every cell on the planet burns glucose for energy. Glucose is so important that if you don't consume it, your body makes it. Okay. The Inuit had no carbohydrate. They had ice. They had whale blubber. They still had a serum glucose level.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I can't tell though. It might just be a blanket, but it's the only cell that's locked.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yes, there is a 16% weight loss. What is that weight? Turns out it's equal amounts of fat and muscle. Using as much muscle as fat is not a good thing. These two drugs, semaglutide and also the third one, terzepatide, lead to nausea, vomiting, pancreatitis, and now there's a warning label on Ozempic for gastroparesis. which means stomach not moving, stomach paralyzed. Stomach turns to stone.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And guess what? It lasts way beyond the discontinuation of the drug. In fact, that's why the drugs work is because you can't eat. because it delays gastric emptying. It delays your stomach from being able to move the food along. You think that's a great way to lose weight? In fact, if you can't eat, that's starvation. Well, the fat in the muscle shows that's how it works.