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The Glucose Expert: The Only Proven Way To Lose Weight Fast! Calorie Counting Is A Load of BS!

Robert Lustig is a Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology and a public health expert on the impact of sugar on our health. He is the author of bestselling books such as, ‘Fat Chance’, ‘Metabolical’, and ‘The Hacking of the American Mind’. 00:00 Intro 01:58 Our Minds Have Been Hacked! 05:03 What Dopamine Does to Your Brain 07:53 Sugar Is A Big Problem In Today’s Society 10:28 Why Sugar Is Poison To Our Bodies 11:08 The Difference Between Sugar and Fructose 14:53 This Is How Sugar Is Damaging Your Body 18:29 Damaging Effects on the Brain from Sugar Consumption 22:20 How the Food Industry Is Making You Eat Crazy Amounts of Sugar 25:05 Health Side Effects 27:12 Diet Coke, Saviour or Villain? 35:17 Sugar and the Impact on Our Organs 40:08 How Important Are Calories as a Way to Lose Weight? 43:47 Sugar Addiction, Stress, and Other Triggers 46:03 The Only Foods That Don't Contain Sugar 48:31 Food Labels Are Sending Wrong and Inaccurate Messages 50:16 Babies Are Born Fatter Than Before 51:30 Research on Children's Obesity 54:20 Insulin Resistance 56:00 Can We Reverse Diabetes? 58:34 What Is Leptin & How It’s Involved In Weight Loss 01:02:23 What Are Obesogens & How They Impact Our Health 01:03:31 The 3 Different Types of Fat You Should Be Worried About 01:09:34 Fruit Consumption… Good or Bad? 01:11:45 Environmental Chemicals That Make Us Fat 01:14:16 What Is an Endocrine Disruptor & How Can We Deal with Them? 01:17:11 How To Identify Real Food 01:22:20 The Importance of Fibre in Food 01:27:02 Personal Responsibility 01:34:50 Should the Government Get Involved? 01:39:40 Are We Being Lied To? 01:42:09 The Four C's for Contentment 01:47:19 What Is the Cause of All Our Health Problems? 01:49:46 Last Question You can purchase Robert’s book, ‘Metabolical’ here: https://amzn.to/4b8pcg3 Follow Robert: Twitter - https://bit.ly/4brlsG9 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Sponsors: ZOE: http://joinzoe.com with an exclusive code CEO2024 for 10% off

Dr. Robert LustigguestSteven Bartletthost
May 16, 20241h 52mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:58

    Intro

    1. RL

      Let's be clear and honest about this. Calories are not the issue. This is all about... That's the problem. That's how you lose weight. Dr. Robert Lustig is an endocrinologist whose firsthand research has explored- ... the role sugar has on fueling the world's most destructive human conditions.

    2. SB

      And answers how we can regain control of our health.

    3. RL

      If you consume one sugared beverage per day, your risk for diabetes goes up by 29%, so this is a big problem. We also know that if you have high sugar consumption, it's got multiple detrimental effects, such as mental health problems, cognitive decline, early death. We also know that it's the primary driver of ADD, but the problem is, sugar's addictive. And 73% of all of the items in the grocery store are spiked with added sugar by the food industry 'cause they know when they add it, you buy more. You can't believe what they're telling you. If they say something is healthy, it's usually the opposite, and I'm part of numerous lawsuits suing the food industry because they knew that sugar was a problem, but they paid off scientists to say it wasn't. You've been hacked.

    4. SB

      But a lot of people don't have time to be doing a fine-tooth comb over every single thing that they're putting into their body.

    5. RL

      Correct.

    6. SB

      They're not a scientist.

    7. RL

      Agreed.

    8. SB

      So, what advice do we give that is simple and actionable?

    9. RL

      Food can be medicine. Food can also be poison, and the question is, how do you figure out which is which? So here's the secret.

    10. SB

      Congratulations, Diary of a CEO gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%, so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you, and enjoy this episode. Dr. Robert Lustig, on the front of your book, it says,

  2. 1:58 – 5:03

    Our Minds Have Been Hacked!

    1. SB

      "The Hacking of the Mind." Very strong words to use.

    2. RL

      Indeed.

    3. SB

      Whose mind has been hacked, and who is doing the hacking?

    4. RL

      Yours, mine, everyone's. Who's been doing it? Well, (laughs) pretty much anyone with a, a belief system that's not yours, and that's pretty much everybody. The bottom line is, uh, we have been sold a bill of goods. We as a society, we as individuals, have been sold a bill of goods, and the idea of the book, the reason I put the book together, is because it actually makes us miserable. It has stolen our birthright, and our birthright is to be happy, and we are not. If anything, we're the opposite of happy. We're extraordinarily unhappy. Just look at the incidents of depression around the world, not just in America, not just in the UK, but everywhere. The World Health Organization now says that 5% of all of the people on the planet are clinically depressed, and here in America, it's at 22%, so we're really unhappy. (laughs) So the question is, why is this if, you know, our goal is to be happy? It's in the Declaration of Independence, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Well, we're not. So, why? And the reason is because we have substituted pleasure for happiness. What's the difference between pleasure and happiness? Well, pleasure's short-lived, happiness is long-lived. Pleasure is visceral, you feel it in your body. Happiness is ethereal, you feel it above the neck. Pleasure is taking, like from a casino. Happiness is giving, like Habitats for Humanity. Pleasure is experienced alone. Happiness is usually experienced in social groups. Pleasure can be achieved with substances. Happiness cannot be achieved with substances. (laughs) The extremes of pleasure, whether they be substances or behaviors, so substances like cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or behaviors, uh, shopping, gambling, social media, internet gaming, pornography, in the extreme, all lead to addiction. There's an -aholic after every one of those, shopaholic, sexaholic, chocoholic, alcoholic, et cetera. But there's no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness. And lastly, number seven, the one that is the reason for the book, pleasure's dopamine, happiness is serotonin, and they are not the same. So, two different neurotransmitters, two different sets of receptors, two different areas of the brain, two different mechanisms of action, two different clearance mechanisms. Dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter.

  3. 5:03 – 7:53

    What Dopamine Does to Your Brain

    1. RL

    2. SB

      What does that mean?

    3. RL

      Means when dopamine is released in the area of the reward center, the nucleus accumbens, it's an actual anatomic structure in the brain which you can see on imaging. When dopamine is released there and it binds to its receptor, like so, you get the tr- you transduce the feelings of reward, okay? And reward is good. Reward is what gets you out of bed in the morning. If you don't have reward, you know, basically you shrivel up and die, okay? Reward is essential to the survival of the species. Orgasm is reward, okay? You know, y- you need it. (laughs)

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RL

      It's, it's part of daily life, but, okay, too much reward is a different story. And the reason is 'cause dopamine, because it's an excitatory neurotransmitter, it causes the next cell to fire. Well, if it causes the next cell to fire and fire and fire, that cell dies.Neurons want to be tickled, not bludgeoned. Chronic overstimulation of any neuron leads to neuronal cell death. So that postsynaptic neuron with a dopamine receptor, it's got a plan B. It's got a way of mitigating that negative response. It downregulates the receptor. So now more dopamine, less receptors, less chance that a molecule will find a receptor to bind to. Well, that means your, the gain, the amplitude on the reward is going down, more and more for less and less, the mor- law of diminishing returns.

    6. SB

      Like an addiction, like a-

    7. RL

      Tolerance.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. RL

      Tolerance is one half of addiction. And then when the neurons do start to die, that is addiction, exactly right. So dopamine drives addiction, and it doesn't matter what the cause of the dopamine release is. In the extreme, it will be addictive. Now serotonin does not dow- uh, does not downregulate its own receptor because it's not an excitatory neurotransmitter. It's an inhibitory one. So do you need to downregulate an inh- inhibitory response? No.

    10. SB

      And inhibitory means what?

    11. RL

      Well, it means puts the next neuron to rest.

    12. SB

      Okay.

    13. RL

      Instead of stimulating, instead of firing, it's actually calming.

    14. SB

      Okay.

    15. RL

      All right? So there's no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness because the receptors are still there, but there's one thing that downregulates serotonin and that's dopamine. So the more pleasure you seek, the more unhappy you get, and we've been told for the last 100 years that pleasure is happiness.

    16. SB

      Neurologically, the pathways are entirely different, as you say, in, uh,

  4. 7:53 – 10:28

    Sugar Is A Big Problem In Today’s Society

    1. SB

      b- between pleasure and happiness. One of the ways that we have been, hmm, hijacked neurologically and via our dopamine receptors is through what we eat. And your book Fat-

    2. RL

      Yes.

    3. SB

      ... Fat Chance covers this really profoundly, a New York Times bestseller. The first word in the subtitle there is the word sugar.

    4. RL

      Mm-hmm. Indeed.

    5. SB

      I've heard a lot about sugar.

    6. RL

      (laughs) Yep.

    7. SB

      Um, I see it in adverts. I, I, I turn over the back of anything I eat and it says this word added sugar. Is sugar really a problem in society? Has it really hijacked us?

    8. RL

      Yes. The short answer is not only is it a problem, I personally think it's the biggest problem. It's not the only problem, but I think it is the biggest one. Now why do I say that? From a systemic health issue, the biggest problem was trans fats.

    9. SB

      W- What's a trans fat?

    10. RL

      Trans fat is a fat that is, uh, has a double bond in it that is flipped. So normal unsaturated fats like olive oil, like canola oil, like grapeseed oil, like sesame oil, like peanut oil, okay, et cetera, they all have a double bond in them, but the double bond is in one direction. A trans fat has the double bond in the opposite direction. One way to make a trans fat is to heat it. You put enough heat across the double bond and it will flip by itself. So if you heat olive oil too high, you can actually make trans fats at home.

    11. SB

      Hm.

    12. RL

      But the food industry used trans fats for food stabilization, for, to increase shelf life. They've been using it in baked goods since the 1920s. The scientist who first figured out that trans fats were dangerous, Fred Kummerow, figured this out in 1957, but it wasn't until 1988 that anybody took him seriously. And then we started doing research on it and realized, oh my God, this stuff is killing animals and killing people. And finally, in 2013, so over 60 years after the initial, uh, science, the FDA finally banned trans fats in our food. Without question, trans fats are the devil incarnate. Seriously, you know, consumable poison, no ifs, ands, or buts.

    13. SB

      Is sugar poison?

    14. RL

      Sugar

  5. 10:28 – 11:08

    Why Sugar Is Poison To Our Bodies

    1. RL

      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, 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, and the reason is because fructose and alcohol are metabolized virtually identically.

    2. SB

      What's the difference between sugar and fructose?

    3. RL

      So

  6. 11:08 – 14:53

    The Difference Between Sugar and Fructose

    1. RL

      sugar, dietary sugar, the sweet stuff, the crystals, the s- uh, stuff you put in your coffee-

    2. SB

      The stuff I've got over here?

    3. RL

      Yeah, like that stuff. (laughs) Yeah, that stuff. The 10, the five-pound bag right there, that's called sucrose.

    4. SB

      Okay, this is sucrose.

    5. RL

      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 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, uh, 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. 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.

    6. SB

      Inuits are the people that live in the, uh, North Poles and stuff.

    7. RL

      That's right. Yeah. They, formerly known as Eskimos.

    8. SB

      Right.

    9. RL

      Mm-hmm. But th- they, 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, you know, your brain runs on glucose. My brain runs on glucose. And you need glucose because certain, um, hormones and certain proteins in the body require glycosylation in order to be effective. An example, LH and FSH. When you don't have glycosilation of LH and FSH, the hormones that tell your testicle and your ovary to work, you're 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.

    10. SB

      Right.

    11. RL

      It will make it out of amino acids. It will make it out of fat. 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-

    12. SB

      Which is sort of one of the two parts of the, the, the, the grain of sugar that I see. One-

    13. RL

      That's right.

    14. SB

      ... one part of it is fructose.

    15. RL

      That's right. It's the other half.

    16. SB

      Right.

    17. RL

      It's the, the evil twin, if you will.

    18. SB

      What are the two halves again?

    19. RL

      Glucose.

    20. SB

      Yeah.

    21. RL

      Fructose.

    22. SB

      Cool. Fine.

    23. RL

      Bound together.

    24. SB

      I need glucose to live. My body will figure that out. Fructose, do I need this?

    25. RL

      You d- you, 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, in the same way it can ma- manage about 12 grams of alcohol per day without showing any signs of any, um, metabolic derangement. But if you go above that, now you get problems.

    26. SB

      Are we above that?

    27. RL

      Oh, (laughs) 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.

    28. SB

      And, and also, just because grams are quite hard to wrap the head around, right?

  7. 14:53 – 18:29

    This Is How Sugar Is Damaging Your Body

    1. SB

    2. RL

      Okay.

    3. SB

      So if I was to get a tablespoon-

    4. RL

      Well, do teaspoons.

    5. SB

      A teaspoon.

    6. RL

      Teaspoons.

    7. SB

      H- how many teaspoons of sugar would I have to consume to get to that level of fructose? 'Cause I say this in part because most of us don't realize that we're consuming sugar.

    8. RL

      That's right, 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, ah, that is not true. Okay? Because it is hidden in plain sight in virtually every processed food in the entire grocery store. 73% 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, 'cause they know when they add it you buy more.

    9. SB

      And how much does that look like in teaspoons then?

    10. RL

      The upper limit is about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. So-

    11. SB

      The, the allowance, the recommended allowance, yeah.

    12. RL

      ... the allowance, the reco- the, the, the upper limit.

    13. SB

      Okay.

    14. RL

      The recommended allowance is lower than that.

    15. SB

      Yeah.

    16. RL

      Okay? But the upper limit is about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. So in alcohol terms, that'd be like one drink.

    17. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    18. RL

      So if you have a drink a day, you're staying below your threshold and all is fine. What if you have two drinks per day? Well, it depends on how well your liver works, maybe how much exercise you have, how much total body mass you have, et cetera. What about if you have three drinks a day? You're gonna get pretty tipsy. Maybe you shouldn't be driving a car, right? What if you have four drinks per day? You know, they might have to, you know, uh, scrape you off the floor of the bar with a spatula. And what if you have five drinks per day? You're a friggin' alcoholic is what you are, all right? (laughs) The point is the dose determines the poison. Well, the same is true with sugar. 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. But when you think about, for instance, a kid in America, wh- 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. They got 41 grams, and it's just breakfast. What do you think that's gonna do? Now, if a calorie were a calorie, and if glucose and fructose were the same, then you say, "Well, you get, you gotta get your calories 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 and it has metabolic complications, uh, systemic health complications, it has mental health complications, and ultimately, it has societal complications.

    19. SB

      Do you think it has neurological c- consequences?

    20. RL

      Without question. It's the,

  8. 18:29 – 22:20

    Damaging Effects on the Brain from Sugar Consumption

    1. RL

      it's the primary driver of ADD. It's not the only driver, but it's one of them.

    2. SB

      How do we know that?

    3. RL

      It's the primary driver of depression-

    4. SB

      How do you-

    5. RL

      ... because we have the data.

    6. SB

      Uh, as it relates to ADD and ADHD and-

    7. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    8. SB

      ... all those kinds of things, how do we know?

    9. RL

      We have functional MRI, we have performance, uh, data showing that when you take the sugar out, pe- kids' scores get better. Okay? We did this ourselves at UCSF. We did a study where we took 43 children with obesity and metabolic syndrome, all high sugar consumers, all low socioeconomic status children, A- Latino and African American, all high sugar consumers. And what we do is we figured out what they were eating on their home diet. We studied them on their home diet. And then for the next nine days, we catered their meals. No added sugar. We took the added sugar from 28 teas- or 28, uh, uh, teaspoons of added sugar per day down to 10. Okay? So huge reduction. We gave them fruit. That was the only place they had sugar in their diet. Otherwise, we cut the sugar out. Now, if you do that, you're gonna lose 350 to 400 calories per day out of your diet. All right? So the goal was to keep their weight stable because if they lost weight, the critics would say, "Well, of course they got better, they lost weight." So we needed to maintain their weight, so we had to put something back in that was equicaloric. We gave them extra starch. So in the vernacular, we took the pastries out, we put the bagels in. We took the sweetened yogurt out, we put the baked potato chips in. We took the chicken teriyaki out, we put the turkey hot dogs in. So we didn't give them good food, we gave them crappy food. We gave them Safeway food, you know, just CPG, you know, uh, uh, consumer packaged goods food, you know-

    10. SB

      Okay, so you didn't give them-

    11. RL

      ... all junk.

    12. SB

      ... vegetables, just-

    13. RL

      No, we didn't give them any vegetables. (laughs)

    14. SB

      Okay.

    15. RL

      But it was no added sugar food. Okay? And it wasn't funky food, it was just food we bought at Safeway, but it was chosen to not be, um, sugar containing. Okay? And we gave them a scale and every day, we'd call them up on the phone, "What'd you weigh?" And if they were losing weight, "Eat more!" in order to maintain their weight for the whole 10 days of the study. And then we studied them on day 10. Every aspect of their metabolic health improved. Blood pressure went down, blood glucose went down, insulin went down, their pancreases started working right again. They had a serum lactate level. You're not supposed to have a lactate level. That means your mitochondria are dysfunctional if you have a lactate level. Okay? Their lactate cleared. Everything got better. Most importantly, for the first five days of that 10-day window, the kids were obnoxious. The parents would complain to us, "My kid is a disaster." And the reason was because of withdrawal. They're withdrawing off the sugar, th- withdrawing off fructose. And then, like, you know, Moses, the sky cleared (laughs) and the kids started concentrating better, they started doing better in school. The parents noticed they were less irritable. The teachers noticed they weren't nuisances or trouble in the school anymore. The kids noticed, they said, "It's the first time my head hasn't been in the clouds." Five days. Five days. And in 10 days, we could see all of the metabolic benefits even though they maintained their weight, even though they maintained their calories.

    16. SB

      Sounds like a bit of a scandal. When I hear that these

  9. 22:20 – 25:05

    How the Food Industry Is Making You Eat Crazy Amounts of Sugar

    1. SB

      kids are getting 30, almost 30% of kids are getting, you know, almost, you know, th- three to four times their recommended daily allowance of sugar from school and that it's having these sort of really adverse consequences on us and the studies are there to prove that the consequences are very real.

    2. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      It sounds like a scandal in the sense that nobody's doing something about it.

    4. RL

      Ah, well, yes. (laughs) In that way, it is. The point is that the food industry is very powerful and they have, you know, um, 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, and we are doing research on corporate interference in health.

    5. SB

      What do those documents show?

    6. RL

      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 Stare, and his associate Mark Hegsted, who became the head of the USDA, uh, five years later, 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.

    7. SB

      And they did it.

    8. RL

      And they did it. That's just one thing they did. They also infiltrated the National Institute of Dental Research, NIDR, their study sections and their, uh, uh, executive, uh, committee to take money away...... from nutrition research for dental health and put, put it toward a caries vaccine.

    9. SB

      A what? Uh-

    10. RL

      A dental caries, uh, cavities vaccine.

    11. SB

      Ah.

    12. RL

      Okay. Now, how's that cavities vaccine working for you?

    13. SB

      Hmm.

    14. RL

      Okay. 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 i- this is hardcore fact and we've published this. And we now have a, um, a, a center at UCSF devoted to understanding the, uh, uh, corporate determinants of health.

    15. SB

      And when we look across society at the consequences of this sort of corporate interference,

  10. 25:05 – 27:12

    Health Side Effects

    1. SB

      some of the crazy stats in your book, Fat Chance, that I really s- sort of highlighted were that by 2050, obesity will become the norm, not the exception.

    2. RL

      Correct.

    3. SB

      Well, the World Health Organization said that the percentage of obese people globally has doubled in the last 28 years.

    4. RL

      Indeed.

    5. SB

      And in the UK, 28% of adults are obese and 36% of them are overweight. That's not from your book, but that's from some research we did on the UK numbers as well.

    6. RL

      Well, you know, the UK is the fat man of Europe.

    7. SB

      Yes, that's true. (laughs) Having metabolic syndrome is equal to losing 15 to 20 years of life. That was in your book?

    8. RL

      That's correct.

    9. SB

      Um, which is startling. Um, and worldwide sugar consumption has tripled in just the last f- 50 years.

    10. RL

      Correct. All true.

    11. SB

      (laughs)

    12. RL

      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, um, uh, clinical interventional, uh, uh, uh, efforts. We have it in societal efforts. Um, there's a method for determining proof that doesn't need randomized control trials. It's called econometric analysis. 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, gets you thrown in jail, but we still know that tobacco causes lung cancer. We know that football trauma causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Okay? 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. 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.

    13. SB

      In your book, Fat- Fat Chance, um, on a hun-

  11. 27:12 – 35:17

    Diet Coke, Saviour or Villain?

    1. SB

      on page 120, there was something particularly curious because I think this is a... Um, yeah, here we go. It says, "The bottom line is sugar consumption is a problem. 33% of sugar consumption comes from beverages."

    2. RL

      Yes.

    3. SB

      "And the biggest abusers are the poor and underserved."

    4. RL

      Indeed.

    5. SB

      So let's talk about beverages to start with, then.

    6. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SB

      Diet beverages.

    8. RL

      (laughs) Okay.

    9. SB

      Are they fine? And how bad are the sort of fizzy pop beverages that most of us consume every day?

    10. RL

      So, let's do the, um, sugared soft drinks first.

    11. SB

      Okay.

    12. RL

      Okay? They are really bad. (laughs) If you consume one sugared beverage per day, your risk for diabetes goes up by 29%.

    13. SB

      Wow.

    14. RL

      Okay? That's-

    15. SB

      And, and diabetes-

    16. RL

      And that, and that's if you have one. If you have two, 58%.

    17. SB

      And diabetes is now the main cause of death in 40% of death certificates.

    18. RL

      Exactly right. So this is a big problem. So, uh, 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, you know, as soon as you go above that dose, it's a problem. And we have the data for it. Okay? And all of these are factored in. These are all econometric analyses. We've shown that sugar is a proximate cause of diabetes. 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 neg- you know, uh, reduce three years later. 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.

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. RL

      Now, that's for the sugared beverages. You asked me about diet beverages.

    21. SB

      I've got one here.

    22. RL

      Let's, let's, uh, look at it. All right. (laughs)

    23. SB

      I've covered up the logos 'cause I don't wanna call anyone into-

    24. RL

      Oh, I've never seen this before. I wonder what that is.

    25. SB

      (laughs)

    26. RL

      (laughs) Um, the, the data now show... I mean, for... It w- 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.

    27. SB

      Okay.

    28. RL

      Now, half as bad does not mean good. Half as bad means half as bad.

    29. SB

      Well, it says, "Zero sugar," here, so how can it be bad?

    30. RL

      Well, so it... Because it's bad for a different reason. So the... Yes. Zero fructose, zero calories, I agree, but that doesn't make it good. Makes it better than the sugared alternative, but it doesn't make it good. 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."

  12. 35:17 – 40:08

    Sugar and the Impact on Our Organs

    1. RL

      as I mentioned, we have an innate capacity to metabolize a limited amount.

    2. SB

      Yeah.

    3. RL

      Everyone says, "Oh, sugar is energy." Well, yeah, but not really. Not really. So let, let's dissect that. The food industry says glucose is four calories per gram. The food industry says fructose is four calories per gram. Therefore, they're equal-

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RL

      ... because they're four calories per gram. And if calories were the issue, then they would be right, but calories are not the issue. Okay? The whole pfft issue of calories has to go down the tubes. Okay? Th- as far as I'm concerned, that's the problem, and I am here to hashtag kill the calorie as a unit of measure. It has no place in our, uh, in, in our dialogue. It has no place in medicine. Calories suck. Now, why do I say that?If you take a mole of glucose and you throw it into a bomb calorimeter, you will get four calories per gramme. That's true. If you take fructose and you throw it in a bomb calorimeter, you will get four calories per gramme. That's true. We are not bomb calorimeters. Okay?

    6. SB

      What's a bomb cal-

    7. RL

      We do-

    8. SB

      ... calorimeter?

    9. RL

      It's a contraption that explodes the, whatever you put in it, and measures the heat that's, uh, given off from it.

    10. SB

      So it measures it, the amount of calories in something, effectively-

    11. RL

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      ... using some explosive combustion.

    13. RL

      'Cause that's what calories are, is the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade.

    14. SB

      Okay.

    15. RL

      So it's a measure of heat-

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. RL

      ... is what it is. That's what calories are. Now, we do our burning in these little organelles inside each of our cells called mitochondria. This is all about mitochondria. And when your mitochondria work efficiently and well, you can burn energy e-, uh, um, you know, to completion and you can capture that energy in the form of chemical energy in your cell called ATP, adenosine triphosphate, and that's what your cell uses to power all of the functions that the cell needs. The little molecular motors and making stuff and, you know, basically, eh, you know, and, and also cleaning house, you know, and recycling junk, okay, in order to keep your cells thrive, thriving and alive. Okay? So mitochondria are essential. Now, glucose stimulates mitochondria to work better. Glucose is actually good. It i- it stimulates two enzymes necessary for mitochondria to work. It stimulates an enzyme called AMP kinase, which is a, the enzyme that actually makes more mitochondria, and it's the fuel gauge on the liver cell, so it tells the liver, "Make more," and it also stimulates an enzyme called HADH, hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase, which is necessary to cleave two carbon fragments and, uh, burn them, oxidize them for energy too. So glucose we can call good because it helps mitochondria. Fructose, on the other hand, this sweet molecule in sugar, in sucrose, it inhibits three enzymes in the mitochondria. It inhibits that AMP kinase. It inhibits an enzyme called ACADL, acyl-CoA dehydrogenase long chain. It inhibits CPT1, carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1. That's the enzyme that, uh, regenerates carnitine which is the shuttle by which fatty acids can get into the mitochondria to be burned. So the net effect of fructose is to inhibit mitochondrial function. So, does fructose constitute energy if fructose is actually keeping you from making chemical energy in your cell? This is the conundrum. What do you mean by energy? If we're talking heat, then fructose is energy. If you're talking ATP, fructose inhibits ATP. And that's what we're talking about because that's what leads to systemic health problems, not the heat. So all of these people, e- as far as I'm concerned, anyone who ever uses the word calorie, fire them because they don't get it. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

    18. SB

      Many people will say that sort of counting calories has helped

  13. 40:08 – 43:47

    How Important Are Calories as a Way to Lose Weight?

    1. SB

      them with their weight loss goals.

    2. RL

      You tell me. Virtually everybody who counts calories loses a little bit of weight and then they plateau and then they get b- um, you know, tired of their diet and the weight comes rushing back. Okay? 90% of people who try to diet through caloric restriction regain and sometimes yo-yo back even higher. So-

    3. SB

      Are there studies-

    4. RL

      ... I don't accept that.

    5. SB

      Are there studies that support this idea that sort of k- k- uh, uh, the, the yo-yo dieting is a byproduct of calorific restriction?

    6. RL

      Not because of cal- caloric, caloric restriction. It's a problem of insulin resistance. It's a problem of when you gain the weight back, did you gain it in the liver, as liver fat? Because now you've got higher insulin and insulin blocks this hormone that goes to the brain called leptin that is par- um, uh, in charge of that set point. So the higher your insulin goes, the less well your brain can see leptin, and so the less well you can regulate. And so that's what d- drives your weight up even higher. So you don't regain the weight by eating, you know, fish and vegetables. You regain the weight because you, you know, went for the bread and the rice and the pasta and the potatoes and the sugar.

    7. SB

      What's a better plan then? If I'm trying to cut a couple of pounds, what's a, a better approach to take, eh, versus sort of calorie counting or these kind of things?

    8. RL

      Get the insulin down. There is no weight gain without insulin. Insulin is the energy storage hormone. 20 years ago, from doing the research on kids with hypothalamic tumors who released enormous amounts of insulin, we gave them a drug that suppressed insulin release. They lost weight and they started exercising spontaneously because we got their insulin down. We showed that the lower we got the insulin, the more weight they lost and the better they felt. Insulin is the bad guy in this story. So numerous investigators, you know, the world over have now demonstrated that insulin is a primary driver of both obesity and diabetes and metabolic syndrome. You gotta get the insulin down. Okay.How do you get insulin down? Best way, don't let it go up. What makes it go up? Refined carbohydrate and sugar, all the stuff you have over there in that corner.

    9. SB

      Just to be clear-

    10. RL

      (laughs)

    11. SB

      (laughs) He's not pointing at my lunch.

    12. RL

      No. (laughs)

    13. SB

      Um, we have a pile of different sugar products that we brought for the interview over in the corn- corner, including various things that you find on a shelf, everything from apple juice to some popular snacks to, um, some, like, some, some other things that just-

    14. RL

      Don't forget the peanut butter cups. (laughs)

    15. SB

      The peanut butter cups, yeah. And even this, this is just sort of sug- um, it looks like water, but it's flavored water-

    16. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SB

      ... where they've added sugar to it.

    18. RL

      Right.

    19. SB

      Um, so yeah, all of that stuff over there.

    20. RL

      All of that stuff.

    21. SB

      So, um-

    22. RL

      So get the insulin down. All right? So cut the refined carbohydrate, cut the sugar, the dietary sugar. That is the single best way to mitigate this process by re- improving insulin resistance, by getting the insulin down. And we have done this time and time again. Basically, I turned my obesity clinic into an insulin reduction clinic for this reason.

    23. SB

      A lot of people at a sort of a prefrontal cortex logical level understand this. They understand that they shouldn't be having sugar, but it's-

    24. RL

      Well, they think it's about calories.

    25. SB

      They do. Uh, some people do think it's about calories,

  14. 43:47 – 46:03

    Sugar Addiction, Stress, and Other Triggers

    1. SB

      for sure. But even the ones that know that sugar is not something they should be having still struggle.

    2. RL

      They do.

    3. SB

      It's easier said than done.

    4. RL

      Because sugar's addictive.

    5. SB

      Right. Yeah.

    6. RL

      They struggle because sugar is addictive. We know because fructose stimulates that nucleus accumbens.

    7. SB

      Yeah. And when we get stressed-

    8. RL

      By the way, glucose does not.

    9. SB

      When we get stressed, which is a, a facet of daily life now-

    10. RL

      Right. That's right.

    11. SB

      ... we're much more likely to, to grab a sugary snack.

    12. RL

      Indeed. And there's a reason for that, too, because when you're stressed, that actually puts a greater, uh, uh, burden on your amygdala, and your amygdala requires more energy. Hippocampus, too, by the way.

    13. SB

      The amygdala's the emotional center of the brain.

    14. RL

      The, the, the fear center of the brain.

    15. SB

      Okay.

    16. RL

      Okay? And so you're trying to calm it. And so you have to increase the energy available, so because you need more ATP. And even though fructose inhibits ATP generation, you still reach for that because you're trying to mitigate the metabolic consequences acutely.

    17. SB

      When I'm tired, I think I have a high propensity to grabbing sugar as well.

    18. RL

      Indeed.

    19. SB

      Why is that?

    20. RL

      Because you're tired, you're stressed, and your amygdala is dysfunctional. And so it basically tells you, "Hell with it."

    21. SB

      I, I don't have any sugar cravings in the morning, I've come to, come to learn. I don't feel the need for sugar in the morning. It's sometimes when we get later into the evening-

    22. RL

      Right.

    23. SB

      ... after a long day-

    24. RL

      Exactly.

    25. SB

      ... is when I'm, my, my cravings-

    26. RL

      And you and everyone else, and me too, by the way. It's not like I'm, uh, immune to this. I, I, you know, am on record, uh, I gained a lot of weight while I was a, uh, faculty member at UCSF, and every day at 4:00 PM, I just ran out of gas. And so I ran across the street to get a, you know, large chocolate chip cookie. Okay? And that (laughs) was, without question, the primary driver of my weight gain. Okay? It wasn't until I actually started doing the research on this and seeing that the kids felt better when we took the sugar out of their diet that I actually put two and two together for myself. So now I don't do that, and my energy level stays constant throughout the day.

    27. SB

      What i- w- so what advice do we give that is simple and actionable

  15. 46:03 – 48:31

    The Only Foods That Don't Contain Sugar

    1. SB

      for Jennifer or Judith or Dave who's listening to this now? They are, you know, 40 years old potentially. They have a nine-to-five job. They're very busy. Maybe they have some kids to feed at the same time.

    2. RL

      Right.

    3. SB

      They, they don't have time to be like, you know, looking at, f- doing a fine sort of tooth comb over every single thing that they're putting into their body. They're not-

    4. RL

      Correct.

    5. SB

      ... a scientist.

    6. RL

      Agreed. It's a p- 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? 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 'cause people don't even have time to cook. Most people, uh, uh, 33% of Americans don't even know how to cook anymore. So, like, what are they gonna do? So we understand this. I mean, it's a problem. Agreed. We need food that is metabolically healthy for us, not metabolically detrimental. And the problem is that as soon as you put the 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." So I'm here to tell you, toxin A plus antidote B still equals death. Okay? 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. Okay? If they say something is healthy, it's usually the opposite. Whatever it says on the package, believe the opposite, 'cause they have an incentive to put wrong stuff on the package. And I'll be honest with you, I'm part of, you know, uh, 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.

    7. SB

      In what way?

    8. RL

      They say things that are not true.

    9. SB

      Give me some examples.

  16. 48:31 – 50:16

    Food Labels Are Sending Wrong and Inaccurate Messages

    1. SB

    2. RL

      Well, first of all, any t- think, time they use the word "healthy"-... okay? Um, they say, "No added sugar." Okay? But in fact, they put in apple puree or raspberry puree or evaporated cane juice, you know? It, it, they, they, there are 262 names for sugar, and the food industry uses all of 'em. And so they will say that something's no added sugar but that, in fact, is actually not the case. Okay? There's, there's a whole, you know, whole host of this. 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?

    3. SB

      I've never seen it.

    4. RL

      Well, I mean, raisins are purple.

    5. SB

      Yeah.

    6. RL

      You know, purple-brown?

    7. SB

      Yeah, yeah.

    8. RL

      Yeah?

    9. SB

      Yeah. Normally.

    10. RL

      Well, the, the raisins in Raisin Bran are white. Why?

    11. SB

      Hmm. (laughs)

    12. RL

      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? So Post has been sued, General Mills, uh, theirs, theirs was, uh, uh, dismissed. Um, uh, Mondelez, a whole host of, uh, uh, of companies are actually under the gun now to change their practices.

    13. SB

      Why do you care so much?

    14. RL

      I

  17. 50:16 – 51:30

    Babies Are Born Fatter Than Before

    1. RL

      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. 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. We have 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 why I care.

    2. SB

      Can you t- just give me a little bit of brief overview of everything you're

  18. 51:30 – 54:20

    Research on Children's Obesity

    1. SB

      talking about, the, um, studies you, you've referenced, all of that. What is the academic experience, background, research that you've done that's built all of the foundations of your knowledge?

    2. RL

      I spent the first 20 years of my medical practice, you know, in academia, basically, you know, doing what they told me to do. You know, the way I learned it. And I thought calories were the same, and I thought that, you know, it didn't matter, and this is not what you do, and this is not how you take care of patients. You, you know, do prescriptions, and you pro- do procedures, and that's how you do it. And then I started doing research, because I was at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital taking care of these massively obese kids who had brain tumors that were treated by surgery or radiation, and they became massively obese because of it, because their hypothalamus was damaged, because they couldn't see that leptin signal that we talked about earlier.

    3. SB

      Which is the hunger-

    4. RL

      Which, it, it's part of hunger-

    5. SB

      ... ..........................? Right.

    6. RL

      It's not the only hunger.

    7. SB

      Is ghrelin related?

    8. RL

      It's more of a energy sufficiency signal.

    9. SB

      Okay. Right.

    10. RL

      It's the energy sufficiency signal. Anyway, when we suppressed their insulin release with that drug I mentioned before, they lost weight, and they started exercising spontaneously. So we did that with adults, and guess what? Same thing happened. And we measured their energy expenditure, and it, instead of it going down, as you'd expect when you lose weight, normally your energy expenditure goes down, their expenergy, energy expenditure went up. So what this told me was that insulin is blocking leptin, and as long as your leptin's being blocked, you feel like crap! And you're hungry, and you don't wanna get off the couch. And as soon as your insulin goes down, now your brain can see the leptin, and you're not hungry, and you can start exercising. What this showed me was that the behaviors that we associate with obesity, the gluttony and the sloth, are actually secondary to this biochemical phenomenon of insulin blocking leptin. And so this put me on the path of understanding insulin as the problem rather than insulin as the result. Fix the insulin, fix the problem. And so I've been doing that for the last 25 years.

    11. SB

      And that's what brought you to the subject of sugar?

    12. RL

      Correct.

    13. SB

      Um, because sugar increases insulin levels.

    14. RL

      Well, sugar causes insulin resistance.

    15. SB

      Okay.

    16. RL

      So there are two phenomena in, with insulin. Insulin release-

    17. SB

      Yeah.

    18. RL

      ... which is a, an acute phenomenon.

    19. SB

      So that's when I eat something, there'll be some insulin released, which means my s- I have an insulin spike.

    20. RL

      Right.

    21. SB

      And then it comes back down nicely. If

  19. 54:20 – 56:00

    Insulin Resistance

    1. SB

      I've eaten.

    2. RL

      Or not.

    3. SB

      Or not.

    4. RL

      Or not.

    5. SB

      Depending on how much and how consistently I've been eating sugar.

    6. RL

      Exactly right. So if your liver has fat in it, and 45% of, um, American adults now have fat in their liver, and 25% of kids now have fat in their liver, and they never did before-I mean, before 1980, if you saw fat in the liver, that was alcohol. But if 25% of kids who don't drink alcohol have fat in their liver, how'd the fat get there? Sugar. 'Cause sugar gets turned into fat in the liver. That's th- that's the driver of this. What that does is that causes a phenomenon called insulin resistance. Your liver doesn't work right, so your pancreas has to make more insulin to make your liver work right. You know, like, you have to put more people on the assembly line when, you know, people are, you know, goofing off or, you know, not- not getting their job done. Right? Same idea. So you have to basically goose the liver to do its job. Well, that raises insulin levels all over the body and once that happens, now you're taking energy from your bloodstream and putting it in fat cells for storage. So, by getting the insulin down, so if it's insulin resistance, fixing the insulin resistance by getting rid of the fat in the liver, or if it's the insulin release at the beginning, by lowering your refined carbohydrate because that's the primary stimulus of that first spike. Either way, it's refined carbohydrate and sugar. Get the insulin down.

    7. SB

      And diabetes is when?

    8. RL

      Your pancreas can't keep

  20. 56:00 – 58:34

    Can We Reverse Diabetes?

    1. RL

      up.

    2. SB

      Okay, so it's really so much insulin, it goes, "Forget this. I'm done."

    3. RL

      Right. It's the end result of both of these, um, phenomena.

    4. SB

      Which we've now realized is reversible. I think there was a school of thought once upon a time that diabetes couldn't be reversed, but-

    5. RL

      That's right. That's right.

    6. SB

      ... it is reversible.

    7. RL

      It is very reversible, for a while. So let's be h- let's be clear and honest about this. There is absolutely no doubt that what doctors learn in medical school is wrong. We are told, and I know 'cause I was told, that diabetes is a chronic, progressive, unrelenting disease that never gets better and that you will need medication, whether it be insulin or oral hypoglycemics or whatever, for the rest of your life. Garbage. Total complete trash. Now, Virta Health, numerous other, uh, studies of various diets show that you can absolutely reverse type 2 diabetes. In order to do so, you have to get the pancreas to make insulin properly, and the only way to do that is to get the liver to respond to insulin properly. One way is to not challenge the liver, give the liver a rest. Well, it's metabolizing all that refined carbohydrate and sugar. Drop the refined carbohydrate and sugar and make your liver work better.

    8. SB

      A little keto?

    9. RL

      So, a ketogenic diet's the extreme version of this. It's not the only way, but it is a way. Paleo diet is another version.

    10. SB

      Fasting?

    11. RL

      Intermittent fasting will give your liver a chance to burn off the fat that's accumulated over the last 16 hours. There are many ways to skin this cat.

    12. SB

      Calorie counting?

    13. RL

      Almost never.

    14. SB

      Calorie restriction?

    15. RL

      Yes, calorie restriction, but it's gotta be consistent and long-term. And we've shown, numerous studies have shown, that as you restrict calories, that leptin resistance does not get better quickly. It takes years for that leptin resistance to finally go away, like five years before you change the set point.

    16. SB

      Let's take a step back. So what does leptin do again? It's about energy?

    17. RL

      So,

  21. 58:34 – 1:02:23

    What Is Leptin & How It’s Involved In Weight Loss

    1. RL

      leptin is made in your fat cells.

    2. SB

      Yeah.

    3. RL

      In response to driving energy into fat, the cell will make leptin, the leptin will circulate in the bloodstream, will go to your brain, go to your hypothalamus, and say, "Hey, I've got enough energy onboard-"

    4. SB

      Ah, okay.

    5. RL

      "... to engage in expensive metabolic processes."

    6. SB

      So we don't need any more?

    7. RL

      "I don't need to eat more. I can engage in puberty, I can engage in pregnancy."

    8. SB

      Okay.

    9. RL

      'Kay? Both of which are high metabolic, uh, uh, processes.

    10. SB

      Okay.

    11. RL

      'Kay? So it is like the servomechanism, uh, like the thermostat on your house, 'kay? You have a- a floor but no ceiling, so when you're- when it's cold in your house, the heat kicks in but if you don't have air conditioning, it can go higher, right? Same idea with leptin. Floor, no ceiling. So, when your leptin goes below a certain threshold, your brain will see that as starvation.

    12. SB

      Ah, you get really hungry.

    13. RL

      And so you will get both hungry and you will also sit on the couch.

    14. SB

      Okay. Ah. Okay. Ah. So that's the way the activity component comes in, 'cause your brain is saying, "Listen, don't waste this energy."

    15. RL

      Exactly. Conserve-

    16. SB

      Okay.

    17. RL

      ... because we're in trouble here.

    18. SB

      Right.

    19. RL

      We're- we're in trouble down here, 'kay? So, eat more and don't move. That's the biochemistry that drives the behavior.

    20. SB

      Why don't they have leptin injections?

    21. RL

      Well, they do.

    22. SB

      Oh, really?

    23. RL

      But it turns out it doesn't work in leptin resistance because the problem is not that you're missing leptin. The problem is you have too much leptin.

    24. SB

      Okay. So-

    25. RL

      It's just not working. So adding more leptin is like throwing kerosene on the fire. Now-

    26. SB

      The receptor sites have stopped.

    27. RL

      Receptor sites are not there.

    28. SB

      Okay.

    29. RL

      Either they've been down-regulated or they're being blocked.

    30. SB

      Okay.

  22. 1:02:23 – 1:03:31

    What Are Obesogens & How They Impact Our Health

    1. SB

      that term before. What does it mean?

    2. RL

      So obesogens are chemicals in the environment that actually drive weight gain. They cause the differentiation of fat cells or they cause the growth of fat cells. Now, fat cells are complex, okay? You have a certain number, but you can increase that number, especially early on in life. There's a critical period before age two where you can actually increase the fat cell number. And once a fat cell is developed, it wants to stay filled.

    3. SB

      I mean, we've gotta pause here just for a second, 'cause, uh, I think most people think that when we eat food, we increase the number of fat cells we have.

    4. RL

      No. We increase the size of the fat cells we have.

    5. SB

      This was a really, uh... I learned this a couple of, a couple of years ago and it r- kind of changed the way I think about a lot of things, including liposuction.

    6. RL

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      Because w- with liposuction you kind of think that you're taking away fat cells that you've added to your body through diet, but actually the fat cells stay the same, they just grow and shrink.

    8. RL

      Well, there's also a problem with liposuction as well. Um,

  23. 1:03:31 – 1:09:34

    The 3 Different Types of Fat You Should Be Worried About

    1. RL

      there are three fat depots, okay? And they're not the same. On the scale they're the same because you weigh a certain amount, but from a metabolic standpoint, they are not the same. So let's take each of the fat depots separately so that your audience will understand what it is that they're actually concerned about. So the first fat depot is the obvious, what we call subcutaneous or big butt fat.

    2. SB

      Belly fat as well?

    3. RL

      No, that comes later.

    4. SB

      Oh.

    5. RL

      That's the second one.

    6. SB

      Okay. Subcutaneous. Big b-

    7. RL

      Subcutaneous, big butt fat, or, "Does this bathing suit make me look fat?" fat.

    8. SB

      So are you saying that's good or bad?

    9. RL

      It's actually good.

    10. SB

      I agree.

    11. RL

      It's protective. The more of it, the less likely that you will have metabolic disease. It is the place where your body wants to put excess energy because it's safe. Now, most of us have a certain ability to grow that fat to a certain level before it starts becoming a problem. Eventually, you can overload that subcutaneous fat where you will actually make the fat vacuole, the little pocket of, of fat within the fat cell, s- grow so much that it will actually cause the, uh, border of the vacuole to de-compensate, and now you've spilled the grease into the cell. That will kill the cell and that will cause, um, uh, inflammatory cells to congregate to try to clean up the grease, and then they secrete, um, proteins called cytokines which end up causing the metabolic dysfunction. In any case, you can overload your subcutaneous fat, but it... You have to work at it. So about how much fat does your subcutaneous fat have to grow before you become metabolically ill? On average, about 10 kilos, 22 pounds, some more, some less. Okay? Now let's take the second fat depot, belly fat, visceral fat. This fat here.

    12. SB

      Everyone's worst type of fat.

    13. RL

      Th- well... Yes, but not because of cosmetics, because of metabolism. In any case, the, the visceral fat, the belly fat, is that due to calories? Is that due to weight gain? That is actually due to cortisol. That's due to stress. And the reason we know that is because you can take patients who are... have endogenous clinical depression, okay? They are anhedonic. They don't eat because they generate no reward from life, they generate no reward from eating. They are losing weight. They have to be admitted to the hospital to keep them from killing themselves. So these are with people with suicidal ideation who have to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals. You put them in a scanner and it turns out they're losing subcutaneous fat because they're not eating. They're gaining visceral fat.... because the cortisol from the stress that goes along with the depression is actually laying down more fat in their belly.

    14. SB

      Why?

    15. RL

      It's what cortisol does, because when you're stressed, you need an, uh, a readily available and metabolically active source of energy in case you're being chased by the lion. So that metabolic fat, that visceral fat, is eminently retrievable rapidly.

    16. SB

      Oh, okay. Interesting.

    17. RL

      Okay? Now, how many pounds or kilos of visceral fat do you have to gain before you become metabolically ill?

    18. SB

      I'm gonna guess it's, it's not a lot based on-

    19. RL

      That's right, not a lot.

    20. SB

      So subcutaneous was 10 kilograms.

    21. RL

      That's right. Now we're talking about two kilograms.

    22. SB

      Okay, so two kind of bags of sugar?

    23. RL

      Yeah, pretty much. Okay? Now, finally, the third fat depot, liver fat. Now, how many kilos of liver fat can you accrue before you become metabolically ill?

    24. SB

      My liver's really small. I have no idea.

    25. RL

      Okay. One-quarter of a kilo, 1/2 a pound.

    26. SB

      And when you become metabolically ill, then all of the dysfunction we talked about previously happens?

    27. RL

      That's right. So you can become metabolically ill and be thin because your subcutaneous fat's okay, even your visceral fat's okay. But if you've got liver fat, can you measure a quarter of a kilo on the scale? No. So-

    28. SB

      Have you heard the phrase skinny fat?

    29. RL

      That's, this is skinny fat. This-

    30. SB

      What is it?

  24. 1:09:34 – 1:11:45

    Fruit Consumption… Good or Bad?

    1. SB

    2. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      ... 40 per- in big letters, "40% less sugar than 100% apple juice."

    4. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SB

      It says, "With added vitamins A, C, and E," they've added all three vitamins in there. That must be apple juice.

    6. RL

      So that's not apple juice. That's an apple drink, to be, to be clear.

    7. SB

      It says, "apple juice beverage" here on the front.

    8. RL

      Beverage. Ah, they called it a juice beverage, not juice. There's a, that, that's technically correct, but there's a, you know, reason they have to declare that from the FDA.

    9. SB

      Why?

    10. RL

      Because they can't call it juice if it's not juice if they've done something to it.

    11. SB

      I mean, how would I know? It says, "apple juice beverage."

    12. RL

      I, well, that, (laughs) that's part of the subterfuge. That's one of the reasons for all of these, uh, lawsuits. They have to call it a juice beverage because they've done something to it.

    13. SB

      Okay, so I've got this apple in my pocket.

    14. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    15. SB

      This apple here.

    16. RL

      Right.

    17. SB

      Y- this is healthy.

    18. RL

      That is healthy.

    19. SB

      But if I blend this down, it looks like this, no?

    20. RL

      Well, the question is what was lost in the process of blending it down? You took away the good part.

    21. SB

      The fiber.

    22. RL

      The fiber. By the way, you don't know if that apple is as healthy as it could be and the reason is 'cause you don't know if it was sprayed with pesticides. Was it an organic apple or was it just a standard commercial apple? If it was a standard commercial apple, you might have to wash it first.

    23. SB

      Why?

    24. RL

      Because the pesticides can be environmental obesogens, many pesticides, such as... I mean, the, the famous one was DDT. Now it's been gone since 1972. Rachel Carson, you know, Silent Spring, you know, it was all about how DDT was, uh, uh, you know, environmentally affecting, you know, the entire world. Okay? We s- banned DDT in 1972, but you can measure the metabolite of DDT called DDE in pregnant women's urine today, 50 years later, and that level of DDE in that pregnant woman is predicting obesity in her offspring 11 years later.

    25. SB

      So let's go over these two subjects then. We've got environmental obesogens.

  25. 1:11:45 – 1:14:16

    Environmental Chemicals That Make Us Fat

    1. SB

    2. RL

      Right.

    3. SB

      I think I've pronounced that correctly. Um, let's finish off on that, and then I wanna get into fiber. So, env- environmental obesogens, which might be on this apple, what, what are they and where, w- where are they?

    4. RL

      So, uh, an obesogen is a chemical that causes weight gain not because of its calories. Okay? Now, you say, "How can something cause weight gain if it doesn't have calories?" And the answer is, if it causes the differentiation or growth of fat cells, it will cause weight gain unrelated to calories. So we have chemicals in our environment that are unescapable. You can't escape air pollution. You can't escape forever chemicals, like, for instance, PFAS.

    5. SB

      What's that?

    6. RL

      Polyfluoroalkylated substances, Teflon.

    7. SB

      What's that?

    8. RL

      Remember Teflon?

    9. SB

      Yeah, yeah, the material.

    10. RL

      The material that n- non-stick pans were coated with?

    11. SB

      Yeah.

    12. RL

      That's PFAS. That was perfluorooctanoic acid. Turns out that causes obesity by itself.It causes the differentiation and growth of fat cells. Tributyltin. This is what you paint on the bottoms of boats to keep barnacles from attaching to the hull. It's in all of our food supply, in all of our water supply, all over the world. That causes fat cells to grow before you're born. Exposures to all sorts of things, um, BPA, bisphenol A, okay? When you get your receipt, your paper receipt from Target, that's bisphenol A. Phthalates are plasticizers. You stick a binky in a baby's mouth, a pacifier, that's a plasticizer. That's got phthalates in it. That causes obesity. Parabens in cosmetics will cause obesity. Vinyl flooring, um, flame retardants in children's clothing and in mattresses, all of these things will drive different receptors in the body and act as what we call endocrine disruptors. And those endocrine disruptors will change the, um, uh, differentiation and the growth of fat cells to increase adiposity.

    13. SB

      So what's an endocrine disruptor?

    14. RL

      So our

  26. 1:14:16 – 1:17:11

    What Is an Endocrine Disruptor & How Can We Deal with Them?

    1. RL

      cells have receptors. That way communication from one area of the body to another can occur, like hormones bind to receptors. Well, sometimes they're not hormones. Sometimes they're other chemicals that cause differentiation of different, uh, uh, areas of the body to form different organs, for instance. This is one of the things that goes wrong in congenital, uh, defects like congenital heart disease, okay? Receptor alterations. So we have receptors on all of our cells for different processes, for different chemicals. There are things in our environment that basically mimic endogenous signals-

    2. SB

      Okay.

    3. RL

      ... to our body and basically tell different tissues to do different things than they oughta be doing because those things are present. And one of them is obesity.

    4. SB

      In my head, I think of it like a... Remember those toys you used to play with when you were a kid, and it shows like a triangle shape and a circle shape and a square shape, and you've gotta pick up the corresponding piece-

    5. RL

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ... and slot it in the hole?

    7. RL

      Right.

    8. SB

      I, I see it as things in our environment are pretending to be those shapes.

    9. RL

      Exactly.

    10. SB

      And so they're sort of impacting with our receptor site-

    11. RL

      That's right.

    12. SB

      ... which is the hole, and causing us to do things that are dysfunctional.

    13. RL

      That's right.

    14. SB

      Okay.

    15. RL

      And this is well-known, has been known for years. We, um, you know, it's one of the reasons for the decrease in fertility, the changes in reproductive capacity. It's one of the reasons the alligator population in the Everglades is disappearing, is endocrine disruptors. Well, it also has effects on neurocognition and brain development, and potentially, I don't wanna, you know, get too far afield, but potentially might play a role in autism. We haven't proven that yet, I wanna make that clear. But without question, some of these chemicals can cause fat cells to differentiate and grow.

    16. SB

      So if they're everywhere, what do I do about it? 'Cause it's-

    17. RL

      Uh, it's-

    18. SB

      ... it feels like I can't touch the floor. I can't, I can't go to a, I can't lay on a bed. I'm like... (sighs)

    19. RL

      Well, you can't do much about air pollution. I mean, except as a society we can do something. We can't do much about, uh, the Teflon in the, in the water or the TBT in the water, except to try to pass regulations to control those things. But, you know, (laughs) get, get Congress or Parliament to do that, you know, that's a, that's a real trick.

    20. SB

      Is there better water that I can drink? Sorry, just on that point.

    21. RL

      Uh, well, you can try. Uh, certainly, uh, tap water is gonna be a problem, but the fact is, some of the bottled waters still have obesogens. And to be honest with you, if they're, if it's bottled, the obesogen might be in the bottle. Canned foods. If you look at the inside of the can, what color is it? Is it-

    22. SB

      Silver, isn't it?

    23. RL

      ... silver or is it white?

    24. SB

      Hmm.

  27. 1:17:11 – 1:22:20

    How To Identify Real Food

    1. SB

    2. RL

      If it's white, that's BPA. So canned foods have high BPA levels. BPA is an estrogen, okay? And it doesn't take much to be an estrogen. 22 angstroms, two hydroxyl groups, you're an estrogen. Okay? There are a lot of chemicals in our environment that masquerade as estrogens, and BPA is one of them. And estrogen causes fat deposition. Just look at the curves of a woman. That's estrogen causing fat deposition. Well, BPA can do that too. So as an example. But there are also things in our food that we think are food. And one example is fructose. Now, fructose has calories, true, but fructose has all these effects on mitochondria that have nothing to do with its calories, in the same way that alcohol has calories, but alcohol has toxic effects that have nothing to do with its calories. So just because something has calories doesn't make it a food. What's the definition of food, Steven? I will tell you. (laughs)

    3. SB

      I was gonna say, don't ask me.

    4. RL

      Substrate that contributes to either growth or burning of an organism. So here's the question: Does ultra-processed food contribute to growth? My colleague, Dr. Efrat Manzanigo-Arnan, who is the chairman of nutrition at Hebrew University Jerusalem, has looked at this question. In fact, ultra-processed food inhibits growth. Populations that are exposed to high ultra-processed food consumption have lower final heights than populations that are not. So if it's inhibiting growth-Not a food. Okay, now let's take burning. I've already told you that there are three enzymes that fructose, which is in 73% of the items in the American grocery store, inhibits burning because it inhibits mitochondrial function. So if you don't stimulate growth and you don't stimulate burning, is that a food?

    5. SB

      No.

    6. RL

      So if it's not a food, what is it?

    7. SB

      Poison.

    8. RL

      So, food can be medicine. Food can also be poison and the question is how do you figure out which is which? When you walk into the grocery store, it all looks the same, but in fact there are things in there that will contribute to growth and burning and there are things that will inhibit it, and we need some method for being able to distinguish those. We have it. We made it. It exists on your computer. It will ultimately, soon exist on your phone, and you will actually be able to order your food to be metabolically healthy without ever having to walk into that minefield of a grocery store ever again. How would that be? And just buy the stuff that's good for you instead of chancing the stuff that's bad for you. It's called Perfect and what it does is it will filter out all of the stuff in the grocery store that's metabolically unhealthy for you. Not for the next guy, for you. You can apply specific filters that will, if you're gluten-free, will take out all the things that have gluten so you don't have to look at the label. If you are- are, uh, if you have metabolic syndrome, it will take all the refined carbohydrate and all the sugar things out so you don't even have to look at 'em. If you specifically wanna avoid the ultra-processed food, it will take those out. By the way, that will cut the items that you can see in the grocery store by 80%.

    9. SB

      How many of you started thinking about your long-term health when you hit 30? For me, this was a wake-up moment of me thinking to myself, "Okay, I probably need to start paying a little bit more attention now." I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my metabolism, my energy levels, so this year is no different. ZOE, which is a company I've invested in, but also a company that are a sponsor of this podcast, helps me to make smarter food choices all based on their world-leading science and my own test results. If I'm ordering food, I know how to make my takeaways so much smarter by adding things like a side of vegetables to eat first or choosing the option with the most fiber. ZOE helps me to make that choice. It guides me and coaches me. It's my personalized nutrition coach that I have on me 24/7, and to help you start your ZOE journey and start making smarter food choices, I'm giving you guys 10% off when you join ZOE now. All you've gotta do is use code CEO10 at the checkout when you sign up. Enjoy, and let me know how you get on. Let's talk then about fiber. We- we talked about it briefly, but I wanna just really close off on the point of fiber 'cause you said that when we take an apple here, like the apple in my hand, and we turn it into this thing in my hand, this apple juice-

    10. RL

      Right.

    11. SB

      ... the harm is that they're removing the fiber. Why does that matter?

    12. RL

      So everyone thinks the fiber is the stuff you throw in the garbage

  28. 1:22:20 – 1:27:02

    The Importance of Fibre in Food

    1. RL

      after you've juiced the fruit. We were told forever that the, uh, uh, the juice had the essential vitamins and minerals like the vitamin C or the lycopene if you're a tomato. And that's true, they do, but turns out the fiber is essential. It's just not essential for you. It's essential for your bacteria. It's essential for your microbiome. That's what your bacteria want to eat. You have to feed your microbiome. You know how always, we always say when women are pregnant, "You're eating for two"? Well, we're always eating for 100 trillion, okay? The 100 trillion are in our intestine and what you feed them matters because if you feed them well, you will have what we call bacterial diversity and you will not have o- any one species, uh, overwhelming any other species and that will actually contribute to metabolic health. It will allow for the barriers in the intestine to work properly, the mucin layer, the tight junctions, the, um, immunologic barrier called the Th17 cells. Your intestine will present the appropriate barrier so that bad stuff in your intestine won't get into your bloodstream to cause systemic inflammation. So, feeding your gut is job one, and what does your gut like to eat? It likes to eat fiber. Now, we humans don't have the enzymes to digest fiber. You need specialized enzymes. The bacteria have 'em, so the f- fiber is the food for the bacteria. When you take the fiber out of the food, you're starving the bacteria. Now, how many grams of fiber are we supposed to eat every day? Our ancestors ate between 50 and 100 grams of fiber a day. The USDA says we're supposed to consume 25 grams of fiber per day. How many grams do we actually consume here in America? And by the way, UK is the same, mean 12. So we're getting half the amount the USDA says and one-quarter the amount our ancestors did. And the question is, does it matter? And the answer is, oh, yeah, it matters big because what happens is when you feed...... fiber to the bacteria, you get multiple species instead of one that basically crowd out all the others, okay? And you get this metabolic biodiversity and it basically improves your metabolic health. In addition, the f- uh, bacteria will chew that soluble fiber up into a, a compound called short-chain fatty acids, acetate, propionate, butyrate, valerate. Butyrate is particularly helpful. It is an immune suppressant. It keeps your immune system in check. It's one of the reasons that COVID was worse for people who were obese and who had preexisting conditions like metabolic syndrome and also, of course, minority, uh, populations because of ultra-processed food consumption and lack of fiber, lack of short-chain fatty acids, therefore lack of ability to fend off foreign invaders because their immune systems were not tamped down.

    2. SB

      Where did the fiber go?

    3. RL

      They took it out.

    4. SB

      Why?

    5. RL

      The r- because you can't freeze fiber. So that apple, okay?

    6. SB

      Yeah.

    7. RL

      Okay? Your homework assignment for tonight-

    8. SB

      Yep.

    9. RL

      ... take that apple and put it in your freezer overnight. Take it out in the morning, put it on the kitchen countertop, let it thaw, try to eat it, see what you get.

    10. SB

      Wh- what am I gonna get?

    11. RL

      Mush.

    12. SB

      Oh, really?

    13. RL

      Now why does that turn it into mush? The ice crystals that form will macerate the cell wall and let all the water rush in.

    14. SB

      Oh, okay.

    15. RL

      They turn it into mush. Food industry knows that. So what do they do? Squeeze it and freeze it, now it lasts forever. Now you've got apple juice or frozen concentrated orange juice. You have taken a fruit, which is food,

  29. 1:27:02 – 1:34:50

    Personal Responsibility

    1. RL

      and you have turned it into a commodity, storable food, which you can sell on the commodities exchange because it won't go bad. So it has a price, and that price will fluctuate and you can then-

    2. SB

      Yeah.

    3. RL

      ... bet on the commodities exchange. But you can't sell fruit like that because it'll go rancid by the time you've sold it anywhere.

    4. SB

      So all these people are doing this to us. Um, what responsibility do I have on a personal level? Because, you know, if these com- the, the big companies with all this money, trillions of dollars, they're all manipulating me, bastardizing my fo- food.

    5. RL

      Indeed.

    6. SB

      They're, you know, they're hacking my brain-

    7. RL

      (laughs)

    8. SB

      ... giving me these adverts.

    9. RL

      Yep.

    10. SB

      I am... It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Listen, I'm a victim here."

    11. RL

      Well, you are, because you've been hacked, as we started this, you know, the, the, the podcast. Okay? You've been told one thing, and the real world is actually something else. Okay? You've been hacked. You've specifically been hacked with the notion that processed food is food. Everyone thinks that because they called it processed food. Maybe they shouldn't call it processed food. Maybe they should call it processed nutrients, because the stuff that's in it are nutrients, but it's not food, because it doesn't do what food does, which is contribute to growth or burning. So, the question is what's your responsibility and what's society's responsibility? So this is a very important question, and it's a question, you know, that comes up all the time. Personal responsibility, does it exist? Well, in order to exercise personal responsibility, first you have to exercise free will. That's a prerequisite. So we can get into this, and we probably would need about six hours.

    12. SB

      (laughs)

    13. RL

      Okay? And we're- we don't have it. But do we have free will, yes or no?

    14. SB

      Well-

    15. RL

      Complicated question.

    16. SB

      It's a complicated question, and it's one I've actually been researching this week, funnily enough, for a different project that I'm working on.

    17. RL

      Okay.

    18. SB

      And I was trying to find, get to a point, um, where I had a solid answer. Now, there's a couple of schools of thoughts here. One school of thought when we look at the neurological, um, processes might suggest, and there's some early studies that suggest, that we have much less free will than we assume because things happen in our brain before we make a decision.

    19. RL

      Indeed.

    20. SB

      There's some studies that-

    21. RL

      Indeed.

    22. SB

      Um, but do we have free will to make our own decisions? I think we have a lot less free will than we think.

    23. RL

      We have very little free will-

    24. SB

      Yeah.

    25. RL

      ... if at all. Here's the best way to think of it. Arthur Schopenhauer, famous German philosopher, famously said, "You are allowed to do what you want, but you're not allowed to want what you want." Those things are actually predetermined. So you have choice in whether you want the candy bar or the ice cream, but you don't have choice about the fact that your nucleus accumbens is raging saying, "Give me sugar." That's the choice. The choice is how you satisfy the biochemical drive, but the biochemical drive hasn't... you know, is, is way beyond free will. So the question is if you don't have free will, how can you exercise personal responsibility? Because that's a prerequisite in order to be able to do that. Because personal responsibility says take the risks, suffer the consequences. But if you can't control the risks or the consequences, how can you exercise personal responsibility? I have just shown you that the behaviors associated with obesity, the gluttony and the sloth, are actually secondary to the biochemistry, which you have absolutely no control over. In fact, we have no...... ability to be able to mitigate that and that's why we have this obesity pandemic. And, you know, diet and exercise hasn't solved it for just that reason.

    26. SB

      So who do we need to point the finger at? Who needs to resolve the issue?

    27. RL

      Well, it has to be resolved at several, uh, levels. It has to be resolved for the public. That's why you and I are doing this podcast now, because they have to understand what's really at issue. Okay? Blaming the victim has never worked. When did it work? Did it work for HIV? Did it work for tobacco? It never worked. Okay? Every personal responsibility issue becomes a public health crisis, because personal responsibility hasn't solved any of them. It's lo- a loser. It's a loser in terms of its mechanism and it's a loser in terms of its, uh, efficacy. Doesn't work.

    28. SB

      Can I throw a, a thought into there as well? Because, in some areas of our lives where we do have discipline, we tend to have a bias towards assuming everyone else doesn't have discipline and that's what they're missing.

    29. RL

      Right.

    30. SB

      If that makes sense. So-

  30. 1:34:50 – 1:39:40

    Should the Government Get Involved?

    1. SB

    2. RL

      I think that the industry has to be told what to do. They haven't yet. Now, the question is would it work? And the answer is, yeah, it would. And actually, who found out that it would work? The UK. You did it. You did it back in the 2000s. So in 2003, the Blair government brought all of the, uh, UK, uh, food manufacturers to the table in secret, so Waitrose and Tesco and M&S and ev- you know, every other CPG, uh, purveyor in, in, uh, the UK, and had a secret meeting and were told, and told them, "Look, hypertension is running rampant and stroke is breaking the NHS bank and it's because of the sodium. We have to get the sodium levels in ultra-processed foods down. So every one of you is going to play by the same rules so that there's no competitive disadvantage and you're all going to reduce the amount of sodium in each of your items by 10% per year over a three-year period so that there will be 30% less sodium three years from now," in 2006 or 2007, I think, at the time, and they all did and they didn't tell the public. And in 2011, famous paper in British Medical Journal showed a 40% reduction in hypertension and stroke due to this public health intervention that the Blair government did without telling the public. It works.

    3. SB

      Should have told the public.

    4. RL

      No. Don't tell the public. So, would this work for sugar? So I am working with a company in the Middle East right now. Okay? I don't take money. Okay? It's a, um... you know, I do this 'cause it's the right thing to do. Uh, it's called Kuwaiti Danish Dairy, KDD. It's like the Nestle of the Middle East and they make all sorts of junk. They make flavored milks, they make ice cream, they make frozen yogurt, they make biscuits, they make confectionary, they make tomato sauce. Okay? Like all bad stuff.... right? They came to me in 2020 and said, "We wanna be a metabolically healthy company. We want to do the right thing because right now Kuwait has an 18% diabetes rate n- and an 80% obesity rate, and we don't wanna be the cause of it. Can you help us re-engineer our product portfolio to be metabolically healthy?" And so we convene- convened a scientific advisory team, and we've worked for the past three years to develop a set of guidelines, a set of principles, and we have developed what we call the metabolic matrix, three principles, three precepts, to turn food metabolically healthy. And here they are. Protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain. Any food that does all three of those is healthy, whether it's ultra-processed or not. Any food that does none of the three is poison, whether it's ultra-processed or not. Now why those three organs? Because if you- the data show in literature, if you fix those three organs, all the downstream organs also get fixed. Whereas if you fix other organs, those three organs don't get fixed. So those three organs are primary. And all the data shows that if you fix those three, you can actually improve both, um, uh, morbidity and mortality. So that's the- the goal. That's the rubric. Protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain. So could we apply that principle to the food supply? Can any individual apply it to their own grocery purchases? (...) perfect. You'll get it. Can the government do it? Yeah. They did it in the UK. They can do it again. It's not crazy. It can be done. The fact is we're all carrying a belief system around. Okay? And now where'd that belief system come from? The belief system is that ultra-processed food is food.

Episode duration: 1:52:26

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