WEBVTT - Robert Lustig 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.520 I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:09.560 One of every three American adults is obese. Some reacted 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:13.040 to Mayor Bloomberg's recent proposal to limit the sale of 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:17.280 plus size sodas as just another example of a supersize government, 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.520 but the truth is stark. Children today are the first 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.520 American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:30.120 in large part due to obesity. As you probably already know, 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:34.920 obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer, 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:39.479 and is arguably becoming the most pressing public health issue 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.519 of our time. Last year, this issue became a personal 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.280 one when my doctor told me I was pre diabetic. 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.680 So when I read about doctor Robert Lustig and his 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:55.840 wildly popular anti sugar lecture posted online, I paid attention. 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.560 Sixty ounces of Coca cola, a Snicker's bar, in a 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.400 bag of Dorito's, all for nine nine cents, and next 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:03.800 I gave up sugar. So what do I call it 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:10.119 the Coca Cola Conspiracy? Well, what's in coke? Caffeine? Good? Good? 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:13.399 So it's caffeine. It's a mild stimulant, right, It's also 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.480 a diuretic, right, makes you pee free water? What else 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:18.959 is in coke? We'll get to the sugar in a minute. 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:24.520 What else salt? Milligrams of sodium per can. It's like 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.840 drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:32.760 sodium and lose free water? You get thirstier? Right? So 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.520 why is there so much sugar and coke to hide 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:40.120 the salt? Dr Lusti is a pediatric endochronologist at you 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.160 See San Francisco. Back in the eighties, he became interested 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.960 in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude Children's 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.040 Research Hospital in Memphis. He was treating kids recovering from 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.040 brain tumor surgery. I had a stable of kids who 0:01:56.040 --> 0:02:00.400 were enormously obese, and the thing was, they were obese 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.040 before the tumor, but they started gaining weight at thirty 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.520 to forty pounds a year after per two year, per year, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:13.200 with no cessation, NonStop. These kids suffered from something called 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:17.400 high both a lamic obesity and especially heinous form of 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:23.000 obesity that doesn't respond to diet or exercise. When the 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:28.000 hormone leptin was first discovered, it became very clear that 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.840 these kids, because that area of the brain was dead. 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:37.040 They couldn't see their leptin signal. Now, normally lepton would 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:38.960 tell you you don't need to eat so much and 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.639 you can burn energy properly. Literally, is the signal about appetite. 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.200 And these kids were constantly hungry, and worse yet, they 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.720 were the world's biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.680 every single thing around them. They would sit in the couch, 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.640 eat doritos, and sleep. This was their life. And the 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.840 parents would come to me and say, this is double jeopardy. 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.160 My child has survived the tumor only to succumb to 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.680 a complication of the treatment. Why did the couch and potatoes? 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.639 What was the link there? Because when your brain sees lepton, 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.200 you want to burn energy. You want to exercise, you 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.840 want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.560 want to go do things. Leptin signals the body to exercise. 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.280 Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.760 board to exercise. When your brain can't see it, your 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:36.080 brain thinks you're starting. And my job was to figure 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.600 out a way to take care of these kids. So 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:44.640 my research and obosity started back. We said, okay, these 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.320 kids brains, that area of the brain is dead. I 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.640 can't bring it back. I'm not a neurosurgeon. I can't 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:56.120 transplant the hypothalamus. What can I do? So I, after 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:01.119 doing some research, realized that we could work down stream 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.040 of the brain. The brain was signaling the pancrease to 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:09.000 make extra insulin. Insulin makes you store energy, So these 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.760 kids are known to have enormously high insulin levels. So 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.520 I said, all right, let's give these kids a medicine 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.920 that will block the release of insulin. We did a 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.680 study and low and Behold patients started losing weight, but 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.840 more importantly, they started exercising. One kid started competitive swimming, 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.200 two kids started lifting weights at home. One kid became 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.400 the manager of his high school basketball team, running around 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:35.600 collecting all the basketballs. I mean, you know, parents were 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.120 calling me up within a week saying I've got my 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:43.400 kid back, right. But some people also link this. You 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:45.720 talk about the activity of the lack of activity to 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.919 political things and economic things like cuts and school budgets 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.440 for activities and so where, and technology. The kids are 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.480 much more interested in virtual games and not getting out 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:57.320 there and playing a game. Do you see that with 0:04:57.440 --> 0:04:59.760 the kids you worked with as well? There's no question 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.360 that all those things are true. The questions are those 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.599 cause or effect? There are loads of correlations and a 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.400 lot of them have nothing to do with anything. The 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.720 point was this was caused because we were interfering with 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:17.320 insulin release and these kids changed their behavior. And that 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.760 was the first key to what I think is the 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.240 entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic. And then 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:25.720 what happened for you I wanted to do next. So 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:28.920 then we said, maybe there are adults out there who 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:30.880 have the same problem, they just don't have a brain tumor. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.840 Let's look for it. So we did a whole study 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:39.080 pilot study with forty four obese adults, and we gave 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.320 them the same drug to do the same thing, and 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.320 loan behold, eight out of the forty four, not all 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:46.520 of them by any means, but eight out of forty 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.720 four lost a lot of weight a pound a week 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:55.080 over twenty four weeks without doing anything. And what was 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.279 even more amazing was their fat intake didn't change, their 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:04.479 protein into didn't change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime. 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:07.880 They went from nine hundred calories a day to calories 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:10.560 a day, and carbohydrate they stopped snacking between meals and 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:19.360 most important crackers bugles, you knows, absolutely. And these kids 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.159 needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it. 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:24.599 And these adults needed to get their insulin down, and 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.520 the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly, 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.920 when we got there insulin down, guess what, they started exercising. 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.640 So this all of a sudden became very clear. What's 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.600 going on for these kids with the brain tumors. They 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.960 couldn't see their leptin. Their insolence were sky high because 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.080 their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving, 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.240 they would eat everything under the sun and it still 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.800 wouldn't be enough because they could never see their leptin. 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.200 And what we realized was this is adult obesity too. 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:58.040 They can't see their leptin either. That's where sugar came in. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.480 So sugar was a but they also triggered other It 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:04.640 enabled other bad eating exactly. And we've learned that the 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.800 higher insulin goes, the hungrier you get. Hungry you are, 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.080 So the sugar is an appetite stimulant in a sense, clerant, 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:13.840 whatever you want to call you can call it that. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.280 Absolutely we know that because David Ludwig, my opposite number. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.520 At Boston Children's he prepped a bunch of kids with 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.200 a soda, a can of soda a hundred fifty calories, 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:26.240 and then he let him loose at the fast food restaurant. 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.320 So the question is did they eat more? Did they 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.120 eat less? Do you think more ate more? Their insulind 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.360 was high, and also there's high insulin makes you hungry. 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.000 That's right, High insulind makes you hungry. And also there's 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.120 a hormone in your stomach that signals hunger called grellin, 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.720 And when grellan's high, you're hungry, and sugar doesn't knock 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:50.560 it down. When I gave up sugar, it was amazing. 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.240 It was like pushing a toboggan along a track to 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.040 eventually get down the slope. The first couple of weeks, 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.160 the first couple of months, that part in early May 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.120 through June. By the time we get to July and August, 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:07.400 we're going downhill and the weights just coming off. I 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.040 cut out carbs, and I gave up pasta because that 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.800 was the mega dose of carbohydrate. I mean, I would eat, 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.120 you know, the fish tank sized bowl of pasta. You know, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.080 I had a lot of pasta and it's easy to do. 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:22.600 A lot of people think that the Italian diet is 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:27.400 the Mediterranean diet. Not at all. There is no pasta 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:31.800 in the Mediterranean diet. We started the pasta craze because 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.079 of all the immigrant Italians who couldn't afford to eat 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.040 meat and vegetables here. That's what they fell back on, 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.079 and it actually got exported from here back to Italy. 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.240 Sam As Chop Suey did it to China. You know, 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.160 these are all American inventions. So the fact is that 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.280 the Italian diet is not the Mediterranean diet, never was, 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.360 never will be. But I would say to people I 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.079 cut back on bread. They say, okay, great. Then I'd 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.199 say to them I gave up pasta. They'd say, WHOA 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.120 really wow that I'd say, I gave up sugar, and 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.199 they go and they're insane. Exactly. It was as if 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.040 I said to them, let's go learn to play the 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:10.120 classical piano. Now, let's begin now. It's just as undoable 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:12.080 to them. The looks I got from people about giving 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:16.680 up sugar. How did sugar become We're consuming a hundred 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.080 and thirty pounds of sugar per person per year. Was 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.680 it always that way, No, No, this is very what 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.920 do you think change that? Money and marketing and you know, 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.160 the food industry. So there are a couple of sort 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:34.520 of milestones in this story. The first is the nascent 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.800 candy and soft drink and sugar industry in America, which 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.800 dates back to the early nineteen hundreds, but that didn't 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.720 really get things started because sugar was still kind of expensive, 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:49.439 and sugar had been expensive all throughout history. In nineteen 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:53.920 fifty nine, we lost our sugar fix because Castro took 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.040 over Cuba, and that actually started the Florida sugar industry 0:09:57.080 --> 0:09:59.400 because the sugar had come from Cuba prior to that. 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:01.440 That's right of it, a lot of it. So that 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.200 started the American sugar industry really in top notch gear. 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:08.160 It had been in Louisiana, it had been in Hawaii. 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:13.200 Then high fuctose cornserrup kimel, high fuctose corn syrup shows up, 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.400 and all of a sudden, it's in everything. Why well, 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:19.280 it actually it's sweeter. It is sweeter, but most important, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.720 it's cheaper. But do you find that also, this is 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.120 what's happening over the last I don't know how many years. 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:25.920 I mean, I'm not somebody who knows the history of this, 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.160 but certainly in my lifetime, which is the goal is 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.880 to make everything sweeter. The point is that this is 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.040 actually evolutionary. This isn't her DNA, because there is no 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:38.480 food stuff anywhere in the world that is both sweet 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.560 and acutely poisonous. So it was a signal to us. 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:43.079 It was a signal to us that it was safe 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.400 to eat, even Jamaican cky fruit, which has a substance 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.000 in nicolled hypoglycin, which causes Jamaican vomiting sickness and can 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.720 kill you. It's only in the immature fruit. As soon 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.000 as the fruit falls from the tree to the ground. 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.920 Jamaican's no, it's okay to eat because it's now ripe 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:02.640 and the toxin is gone. So we are programmed to 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.880 like sweet. And what has happened is the food industry 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:09.000 figured it out and they hijacked our taste buds for 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:15.040 their own purposes. When you think about this epidemic, and 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.760 it is an epidemic because it's a pandemic, I don't 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.480 say this with any smugness or satisfaction. I say this 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.280 with a lot of sadness because I had always been 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.160 thin I thought I was doing the right thing health wise. 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.720 I'm a vegetarian, I'm a pesketarian, if you will, And 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:34.520 I'm beginning to really really blow up here. You know, Listen, 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:38.440 we've got vegan type two's who are massively obese. And 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.720 just because you're vegan doesn't getting that from what? What 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:46.880 do you think they getting from? Sodas her vegan especially 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:52.760 South Asians Indians, they can't carry as much subcutaneous fat. 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.400 And once you basically fill up your subcutines, your love 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:57.960 handle fat stores, it starts building up in your liver. 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.599 And when that happens, it's all done and hell after that. 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.560 But when I go out there in the world now, 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:09.959 and I have a tremendous awareness to this obesity issue 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:11.800 that other people are dealing with, and I have a 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:15.560 tremendous empathy for them, I must say, everywhere I go, 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.000 I see it. You want to walk up to that guy, 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:19.400 or you want to walk with this women, you gotta 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.200 go give up something, you know, the frat puccinos, or 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.200 the candy or the or the bread, because you really 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:27.880 see that people are suffering. And that's why this is 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.480 so important. But other people have worked towards this prior 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.920 to you. You're You're not the first person sugar is bad. Look, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.719 this has been going on since the seventies, this discussion. 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.400 The chief anti sugar campaigner was a guy by the 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.040 name of John Yudkin, and he was a British physiologist, nutritionist, 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.320 and he wrote a book back in seventy two called 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:53.200 Pure White and Deadly. You read this book, it's just astounding. 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:57.160 Everything came to pass. On the other side, we had 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:01.360 this guy, Ansel Keys, and he had done a sabbatical 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.760 at the University of Cambridge in nineteen fifty two and 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.280 he saw what, you know, the Brits were eating, and 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:12.119 it was pretty horrible. And he came to the conclusion 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:16.199 that saturated fat had to be the cause of heart disease. 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:20.320 And he did many studies all over the world and 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.120 he published a five tome called the Seven Countries Study 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.240 back in nineteen seven. That was the question was that 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.559 the fatter was at the sugar. We didn't know at 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.080 that point what happened to sugar in the liver. We 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:35.719 didn't know that it got turned into fat. What we 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.520 knew was that saturated fat correlated with l d L 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.480 levels in l d L correlated with cardiovascular disease. So 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:46.760 the thought was, let's get rid of the saturated fat 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.960 and cardiovascular disease will disappear. The whole country went low 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.760 fat back in nineteen eighty. Here's the problem. When you 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.320 go low fat, the food tastes like cardboard. And the 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.160 food industry knew it. What were they gonna do? How 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.400 are they gonna sell food? And now we had high 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:06.760 fructose corn syrup too, When does that get introduced into 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.760 the food market. The early seventies, seventy three seventy five 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:18.080 American corporations in the second worst hurricane in American history, 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:24.160 Hurricane Allen. It wiped out the entire Caribbean sugar cup 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:29.400 and the food industry, especially the beverage industry, ran scared. 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:31.600 They said, where are we going to get the sugar 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.840 for all the soft drinks? And that's when reliable market exactly, 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.800 And they started introducing it, and they started upping the dose, 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:45.280 and by the transformation was complete. Is the process of 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.120 getting table sugar from cane sugar more labor intensive and 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.160 more expensive than the high fructose CORNCERRP process by a lot. 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.600 High fructose corn syrup comes from corn and the corn 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.520 market and the corn supply in this country is far 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.840 more plentiful and far more liable then the cane sugar. 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.760 Correct of all of the corn grown in America today 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.440 ends up as high fructose corn syrup. So we have 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.000 boatloads of it, and it's cheap. And because it's cheap, 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.560 it started finding its way into things that never had 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:22.480 sugar before, like hamburger buns, hamburger meat, barbecue sauce, catchup, 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.600 salad dressing, I mean pretty much everything you can imagine 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.600 in the store. Indeed, Barry Popkin at the University of 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.120 North Carolina has just done a study that shows that 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.560 eight of the food items there are six hundred thousand 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:39.720 food items in America them are laced with sugar added sugar. 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.200 Do you think that they understood back then that sweetening 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.800 the bond would just about taste They knew that when 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:49.440 they put it in, we bought more that they knew. 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.440 They knew that when this was in there, people ate 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.720 more of it. Palatability equals sales. It did then it 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:01.600 does now, and we love sugar, and that's why the 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.160 entire food supply of America is now sweeter than you 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:09.600 can imagine. You walk into a drug store and there 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:16.560 is an expanse of sugary items, candy, gum mints. And 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:18.320 I have friends of mine who are grown people, men 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.160 and women. They see a candy and you see them 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.400 change behaviorally before your eyes. They'll come in and they're 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.200 having a very serious conversation with you or the person 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.360 you know, and all of a sudden they turn they go, oh, 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.920 jelly beans. It's like kryptonite, and they just can't stop 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.400 eating that stuff. Here's the problem. There's an area of 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.960 your brain called the reward center. Everybody's heard of it 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:46.000 because you know drug addiction. You know that addiction. Cocaine, morphine, heroin, nicotine, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.080 they all work in the same place. And the neurotransmitter 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.840 that signals pleasure is called dopamine. You've probably heard of it. 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:58.080 Of course, when you get a dopamine rush, you get 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.520 pleasure and sugar as it the same way as all 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.760 of those drugs of abuse. The problem is, when you 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:10.720 get that pleasure, you downregulate the little proteins that catch 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.919 the dopamine, called dopamine receptors, and the more you downregulate them, 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.800 the more dopamine you need to get the same effect, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.359 and that's called tolerance. And then when you take the 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.960 stuff away, then there's no dopamine to interact with these 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.280 few proteins left, and that's called withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.960 that's called addiction. So we know how that works for 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:33.800 all of these other drugs of abuse. Turns out sugar 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:36.440 does the same same thing. It's the same as cocaine. 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.320 The difference is that for cocaine you gotta go find it, 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.480 whereas for sugar we have what we call system saturation. 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:58.520 It's everywhere, you can't escape it. This is Alec Baldwin 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:08.320 and you're listening to here's the thing more in a moment. Today, 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:12.520 I'm talking with Dr Robert Lustig. We talk about regulation 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:15.960 of like alcohol and tobacco, and I want to say 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.840 that that's something that people have tried in public policy 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.000 with sugar. They tried to stop food stamps being used 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.879 to purchase soft drinks, and I believe they lost that 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.760 that right Bloomberg petition the U s d A to 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.320 take soft drinks off food stamps, and the U s 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:32.280 d A rebuffed. Why do you think they did? Why 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:34.560 do you think that rather than the straight up political 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.400 influence of the soda ind isn't that enough? How does 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.080 the U s d A do that? No one's saying 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:41.880 that the people who are on food stamps you can't 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:43.840 have soda. I doesn't want the government to pay for it. 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:46.560 The U s d a's job is to sell food. 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:49.719 That means sell whoever is going to buy it. So 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.879 it's about commerce, it's about absolutely and who controls the 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:54.600 us d A. The U s d A is basically 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:57.800 the governmental arm of the food industry and the job 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.120 of the usd You don't have a lot of faith 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.520 in the us d not a whole lot. Now, the 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:03.600 job of the USDA is to protect the food supply, 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.840 and that includes protecting it from people like me. In 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.800 terms of threats to public health, would you equate other 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.560 products and other substances that are commonly used as being 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.439 equally threatening as sugar. Du there's a caffeine epidemic in 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.960 this country. There is a caffeine epidemic, and it's being 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.520 stoked by all the coffee companies. But it's of less 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.320 concern to you than sugar, oh way, because there's no 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:35.120 toxic downside with sugar, type two diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, gastric 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.720 bypasses a hundred and forty seven billion dollars a year 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.760 down a rat hole for taking care of chronic diseases 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.560 which don't need to be We could balance the budget 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.240 on that. We wouldn't need healthcare reform if we had 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.760 obesity reform. And we can't have OBEs reform until we 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:56.800 have some sort of sugar policy. You mentioned pretty regularly 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:02.040 the food industry, this, the food industry that, and you know, 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.800 most Americans I think who are smart realize that we 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:09.280 have more than enough food to feed three quote unquote 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.560 square meals a day to everybody in this country and 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:15.520 those that aren't getting it. It's because of the distribution 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:18.600 of food in our society. However, we have to cut 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.400 a lot of corners to get there. In the way 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.800 we produce beef, and the way we produce livestock, and 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:28.560 the way we produced past sides, fungicides, herbicides, all of 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.439 this stuff. We need a new food model. We need 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:36.840 a new food growing model. By we're gonna need four 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:40.199 California Central valleys in order to feed our population. We 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.879 won't even have one because of the runoff in the 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:46.760 sierra that changes in soil erosion. We won't even have one. 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:49.360 So you know what, the obesity epidemic might even take 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.280 care of itself because we'll have a famine because we 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:58.240 are misusing our food system. Michael Pollen writes about this routinely. 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:02.800 The bottom line is by chemically, our current food environment 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:08.000 does not work for us, and until we fix it, 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.760 will continue to pour money down a rat hole. We 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:13.760 will continue to be sick, We will continue to die 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.119 of things like diabetes and heart disease. Medicare will be 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:19.800 broke by because there won't be any money to pay 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:21.680 for it. You won't be able to see a doctor 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.080 because they will be too busy taking care of all 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.520 the other fat people in the emergency room we're having 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.560 their heart attacks, and there won't be enough food anyway. 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:31.760 As I'm listening to I'm getting really depressed and I 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.960 want to go have ice cream now you really me? 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:37.320 I want to know him enjoy bar really badly. The 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:39.680 bottom line is there's a lot of reason to be positive. 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:41.840 And I'll tell you why, give me an example. People 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:45.640 are getting it. This is the tipping point. We're here now. 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:50.200 People are starting to recognize that there's an obesity epidemic, 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:57.200 not just obesity noncommunical disease. The epidemics diabetes exactly. That's 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.960 what sucks out all the money from the entire meta 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:02.840 establish In the sixty minutes program that you were on. Recently, 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:06.159 they got into the cancer link. Breast cancer in particular 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.120 is famous for having insulin receptors and growing in response 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:14.760 to insulin. Prostate prost insulin receptors. Yes, they do, so 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:17.800 there's a lot of reason to be concerned, and there's 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.439 a lot of reason to keep your insulin down for 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.400 all sorts of reasons. Number one, it doesn't fuel any tumors. 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.440 Number two, it lets your left in work. Number three, 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:31.680 it doesn't increase the smooth muscle of your coronary arteries 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:33.479 so that you might end up getting a heart attack. 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.520 There's a whole bunch of reasons to keep your insulin down. 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:39.840 And the thing that makes your insulin go up most Sure, 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:43.760 a lot of people are terrified when they sit down 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:46.240 in a restaurant. A lot of people that are trying 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:48.359 to stay fit and trying to stay healthy, they can 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:50.879 go through periods. I've been through this myself where I 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:53.040 have like a mild panic attack when I sit down 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:55.199 at the restaurant because they say to myself, there's an 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.160 enemy lurking in everything. Here. There's mercury and the fish, 0:22:58.200 --> 0:22:59.920 and there's hormones in the chicken. I don't need be 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.520 even paltry. And there's too much sodium here, there's too 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:05.080 much fat here, I don't need. It's true, it really 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:07.200 is true. And ultimately we're all going to die of 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:12.520 something with some very small number of exceptions. Isn't an 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:16.240 argument being made that everything we're eating is gonna kill us? Absolutely? 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:17.639 And I know that and you know it too. The 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.399 question is how and when and with what misery that 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:24.480 comes with down And the answer is yes, you can. 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.240 The single best thing you can do for yourself quality 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:30.680