Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: One of every three American adults is obese. Some reacted
Speaker 1: to Mayor Bloomberg's recent proposal to limit the sale of
Speaker 1: plus size sodas as just another example of a supersize government,
Speaker 1: but the truth is stark. Children today are the first
Speaker 1: American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents,
Speaker 1: in large part due to obesity. As you probably already know,
Speaker 1: obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer,
Speaker 1: and is arguably becoming the most pressing public health issue
Speaker 1: of our time. Last year, this issue became a personal
Speaker 1: one when my doctor told me I was pre diabetic.
Speaker 1: So when I read about doctor Robert Lustig and his
Speaker 1: wildly popular anti sugar lecture posted online, I paid attention.
Speaker 1: Sixty ounces of Coca cola, a Snicker's bar, in a
Speaker 1: bag of Dorito's, all for nine nine cents, and next
Speaker 1: I gave up sugar. So what do I call it
Speaker 1: the Coca Cola Conspiracy? Well, what's in coke? Caffeine? Good? Good?
Speaker 1: So it's caffeine. It's a mild stimulant, right, It's also
Speaker 1: a diuretic, right, makes you pee free water? What else
Speaker 1: is in coke? We'll get to the sugar in a minute.
Speaker 1: What else salt? Milligrams of sodium per can. It's like
Speaker 1: drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on
Speaker 1: sodium and lose free water? You get thirstier? Right? So
Speaker 1: why is there so much sugar and coke to hide
Speaker 1: the salt? Dr Lusti is a pediatric endochronologist at you
Speaker 1: See San Francisco. Back in the eighties, he became interested
Speaker 1: in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude Children's
Speaker 1: Research Hospital in Memphis. He was treating kids recovering from
Speaker 1: brain tumor surgery. I had a stable of kids who
Speaker 1: were enormously obese, and the thing was, they were obese
Speaker 1: before the tumor, but they started gaining weight at thirty
Speaker 1: to forty pounds a year after per two year, per year,
Speaker 1: with no cessation, NonStop. These kids suffered from something called
Speaker 1: high both a lamic obesity and especially heinous form of
Speaker 1: obesity that doesn't respond to diet or exercise. When the
Speaker 1: hormone leptin was first discovered, it became very clear that
Speaker 1: these kids, because that area of the brain was dead.
Speaker 1: They couldn't see their leptin signal. Now, normally lepton would
Speaker 1: tell you you don't need to eat so much and
Speaker 1: you can burn energy properly. Literally, is the signal about appetite.
Speaker 1: And these kids were constantly hungry, and worse yet, they
Speaker 1: were the world's biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in
Speaker 1: every single thing around them. They would sit in the couch,
Speaker 1: eat doritos, and sleep. This was their life. And the
Speaker 1: parents would come to me and say, this is double jeopardy.
Speaker 1: My child has survived the tumor only to succumb to
Speaker 1: a complication of the treatment. Why did the couch and potatoes?
Speaker 1: What was the link there? Because when your brain sees lepton,
Speaker 1: you want to burn energy. You want to exercise, you
Speaker 1: want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you
Speaker 1: want to go do things. Leptin signals the body to exercise.
Speaker 1: Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on
Speaker 1: board to exercise. When your brain can't see it, your
Speaker 1: brain thinks you're starting. And my job was to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to take care of these kids. So
Speaker 1: my research and obosity started back. We said, okay, these
Speaker 1: kids brains, that area of the brain is dead. I
Speaker 1: can't bring it back. I'm not a neurosurgeon. I can't
Speaker 1: transplant the hypothalamus. What can I do? So I, after
Speaker 1: doing some research, realized that we could work down stream
Speaker 1: of the brain. The brain was signaling the pancrease to
Speaker 1: make extra insulin. Insulin makes you store energy, So these
Speaker 1: kids are known to have enormously high insulin levels. So
Speaker 1: I said, all right, let's give these kids a medicine
Speaker 1: that will block the release of insulin. We did a
Speaker 1: study and low and Behold patients started losing weight, but
Speaker 1: more importantly, they started exercising. One kid started competitive swimming,
Speaker 1: two kids started lifting weights at home. One kid became
Speaker 1: the manager of his high school basketball team, running around
Speaker 1: collecting all the basketballs. I mean, you know, parents were
Speaker 1: calling me up within a week saying I've got my
Speaker 1: kid back, right. But some people also link this. You
Speaker 1: talk about the activity of the lack of activity to
Speaker 1: political things and economic things like cuts and school budgets
Speaker 1: for activities and so where, and technology. The kids are
Speaker 1: much more interested in virtual games and not getting out
Speaker 1: there and playing a game. Do you see that with
Speaker 1: the kids you worked with as well? There's no question
Speaker 1: that all those things are true. The questions are those
Speaker 1: cause or effect? There are loads of correlations and a
Speaker 1: lot of them have nothing to do with anything. The
Speaker 1: point was this was caused because we were interfering with
Speaker 1: insulin release and these kids changed their behavior. And that
Speaker 1: was the first key to what I think is the
Speaker 1: entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic. And then
Speaker 1: what happened for you I wanted to do next. So
Speaker 1: then we said, maybe there are adults out there who
Speaker 1: have the same problem, they just don't have a brain tumor.
Speaker 1: Let's look for it. So we did a whole study
Speaker 1: pilot study with forty four obese adults, and we gave
Speaker 1: them the same drug to do the same thing, and
Speaker 1: loan behold, eight out of the forty four, not all
Speaker 1: of them by any means, but eight out of forty
Speaker 1: four lost a lot of weight a pound a week
Speaker 1: over twenty four weeks without doing anything. And what was
Speaker 1: even more amazing was their fat intake didn't change, their
Speaker 1: protein into didn't change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime.
Speaker 1: They went from nine hundred calories a day to calories
Speaker 1: a day, and carbohydrate they stopped snacking between meals and
Speaker 1: most important crackers bugles, you knows, absolutely. And these kids
Speaker 1: needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it.
Speaker 1: And these adults needed to get their insulin down, and
Speaker 1: the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: when we got there insulin down, guess what, they started exercising.
Speaker 1: So this all of a sudden became very clear. What's
Speaker 1: going on for these kids with the brain tumors. They
Speaker 1: couldn't see their leptin. Their insolence were sky high because
Speaker 1: their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving,
Speaker 1: they would eat everything under the sun and it still
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough because they could never see their leptin.
Speaker 1: And what we realized was this is adult obesity too.
Speaker 1: They can't see their leptin either. That's where sugar came in.
Speaker 1: So sugar was a but they also triggered other It
Speaker 1: enabled other bad eating exactly. And we've learned that the
Speaker 1: higher insulin goes, the hungrier you get. Hungry you are,
Speaker 1: So the sugar is an appetite stimulant in a sense, clerant,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call you can call it that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely we know that because David Ludwig, my opposite number.
Speaker 1: At Boston Children's he prepped a bunch of kids with
Speaker 1: a soda, a can of soda a hundred fifty calories,
Speaker 1: and then he let him loose at the fast food restaurant.
Speaker 1: So the question is did they eat more? Did they
Speaker 1: eat less? Do you think more ate more? Their insulind
Speaker 1: was high, and also there's high insulin makes you hungry.
Speaker 1: That's right, High insulind makes you hungry. And also there's
Speaker 1: a hormone in your stomach that signals hunger called grellin,
Speaker 1: And when grellan's high, you're hungry, and sugar doesn't knock
Speaker 1: it down. When I gave up sugar, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was like pushing a toboggan along a track to
Speaker 1: eventually get down the slope. The first couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: the first couple of months, that part in early May
Speaker 1: through June. By the time we get to July and August,
Speaker 1: we're going downhill and the weights just coming off. I
Speaker 1: cut out carbs, and I gave up pasta because that
Speaker 1: was the mega dose of carbohydrate. I mean, I would eat,
Speaker 1: you know, the fish tank sized bowl of pasta. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of pasta and it's easy to do.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think that the Italian diet is
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean diet. Not at all. There is no pasta
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean diet. We started the pasta craze because
Speaker 1: of all the immigrant Italians who couldn't afford to eat
Speaker 1: meat and vegetables here. That's what they fell back on,
Speaker 1: and it actually got exported from here back to Italy.
Speaker 1: Sam As Chop Suey did it to China. You know,
Speaker 1: these are all American inventions. So the fact is that
Speaker 1: the Italian diet is not the Mediterranean diet, never was,
Speaker 1: never will be. But I would say to people I
Speaker 1: cut back on bread. They say, okay, great. Then I'd
Speaker 1: say to them I gave up pasta. They'd say, WHOA
Speaker 1: really wow that I'd say, I gave up sugar, and
Speaker 1: they go and they're insane. Exactly. It was as if
Speaker 1: I said to them, let's go learn to play the
Speaker 1: classical piano. Now, let's begin now. It's just as undoable
Speaker 1: to them. The looks I got from people about giving
Speaker 1: up sugar. How did sugar become We're consuming a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty pounds of sugar per person per year. Was
Speaker 1: it always that way, No, No, this is very what
Speaker 1: do you think change that? Money and marketing and you know,
Speaker 1: the food industry. So there are a couple of sort
Speaker 1: of milestones in this story. The first is the nascent
Speaker 1: candy and soft drink and sugar industry in America, which
Speaker 1: dates back to the early nineteen hundreds, but that didn't
Speaker 1: really get things started because sugar was still kind of expensive,
Speaker 1: and sugar had been expensive all throughout history. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, we lost our sugar fix because Castro took
Speaker 1: over Cuba, and that actually started the Florida sugar industry
Speaker 1: because the sugar had come from Cuba prior to that.
Speaker 1: That's right of it, a lot of it. So that
Speaker 1: started the American sugar industry really in top notch gear.
Speaker 1: It had been in Louisiana, it had been in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Then high fuctose cornserrup kimel, high fuctose corn syrup shows up,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it's in everything. Why well,
Speaker 1: it actually it's sweeter. It is sweeter, but most important,
Speaker 1: it's cheaper. But do you find that also, this is
Speaker 1: what's happening over the last I don't know how many years.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not somebody who knows the history of this,
Speaker 1: but certainly in my lifetime, which is the goal is
Speaker 1: to make everything sweeter. The point is that this is
Speaker 1: actually evolutionary. This isn't her DNA, because there is no
Speaker 1: food stuff anywhere in the world that is both sweet
Speaker 1: and acutely poisonous. So it was a signal to us.
Speaker 1: It was a signal to us that it was safe
Speaker 1: to eat, even Jamaican cky fruit, which has a substance
Speaker 1: in nicolled hypoglycin, which causes Jamaican vomiting sickness and can
Speaker 1: kill you. It's only in the immature fruit. As soon
Speaker 1: as the fruit falls from the tree to the ground.
Speaker 1: Jamaican's no, it's okay to eat because it's now ripe
Speaker 1: and the toxin is gone. So we are programmed to
Speaker 1: like sweet. And what has happened is the food industry
Speaker 1: figured it out and they hijacked our taste buds for
Speaker 1: their own purposes. When you think about this epidemic, and
Speaker 1: it is an epidemic because it's a pandemic, I don't
Speaker 1: say this with any smugness or satisfaction. I say this
Speaker 1: with a lot of sadness because I had always been
Speaker 1: thin I thought I was doing the right thing health wise.
Speaker 1: I'm a vegetarian, I'm a pesketarian, if you will, And
Speaker 1: I'm beginning to really really blow up here. You know, Listen,
Speaker 1: we've got vegan type two's who are massively obese. And
Speaker 1: just because you're vegan doesn't getting that from what? What
Speaker 1: do you think they getting from? Sodas her vegan especially
Speaker 1: South Asians Indians, they can't carry as much subcutaneous fat.
Speaker 1: And once you basically fill up your subcutines, your love
Speaker 1: handle fat stores, it starts building up in your liver.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, it's all done and hell after that.
Speaker 1: But when I go out there in the world now,
Speaker 1: and I have a tremendous awareness to this obesity issue
Speaker 1: that other people are dealing with, and I have a
Speaker 1: tremendous empathy for them, I must say, everywhere I go,
Speaker 1: I see it. You want to walk up to that guy,
Speaker 1: or you want to walk with this women, you gotta
Speaker 1: go give up something, you know, the frat puccinos, or
Speaker 1: the candy or the or the bread, because you really
Speaker 1: see that people are suffering. And that's why this is
Speaker 1: so important. But other people have worked towards this prior
Speaker 1: to you. You're You're not the first person sugar is bad. Look,
Speaker 1: this has been going on since the seventies, this discussion.
Speaker 1: The chief anti sugar campaigner was a guy by the
Speaker 1: name of John Yudkin, and he was a British physiologist, nutritionist,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book back in seventy two called
Speaker 1: Pure White and Deadly. You read this book, it's just astounding.
Speaker 1: Everything came to pass. On the other side, we had
Speaker 1: this guy, Ansel Keys, and he had done a sabbatical
Speaker 1: at the University of Cambridge in nineteen fifty two and
Speaker 1: he saw what, you know, the Brits were eating, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty horrible. And he came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that saturated fat had to be the cause of heart disease.
Speaker 1: And he did many studies all over the world and
Speaker 1: he published a five tome called the Seven Countries Study
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seven. That was the question was that
Speaker 1: the fatter was at the sugar. We didn't know at
Speaker 1: that point what happened to sugar in the liver. We
Speaker 1: didn't know that it got turned into fat. What we
Speaker 1: knew was that saturated fat correlated with l d L
Speaker 1: levels in l d L correlated with cardiovascular disease. So
Speaker 1: the thought was, let's get rid of the saturated fat
Speaker 1: and cardiovascular disease will disappear. The whole country went low
Speaker 1: fat back in nineteen eighty. Here's the problem. When you
Speaker 1: go low fat, the food tastes like cardboard. And the
Speaker 1: food industry knew it. What were they gonna do? How
Speaker 1: are they gonna sell food? And now we had high
Speaker 1: fructose corn syrup too, When does that get introduced into
Speaker 1: the food market. The early seventies, seventy three seventy five
Speaker 1: American corporations in the second worst hurricane in American history,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Allen. It wiped out the entire Caribbean sugar cup
Speaker 1: and the food industry, especially the beverage industry, ran scared.
Speaker 1: They said, where are we going to get the sugar
Speaker 1: for all the soft drinks? And that's when reliable market exactly,
Speaker 1: And they started introducing it, and they started upping the dose,
Speaker 1: and by the transformation was complete. Is the process of
Speaker 1: getting table sugar from cane sugar more labor intensive and
Speaker 1: more expensive than the high fructose CORNCERRP process by a lot.
Speaker 1: High fructose corn syrup comes from corn and the corn
Speaker 1: market and the corn supply in this country is far
Speaker 1: more plentiful and far more liable then the cane sugar.
Speaker 1: Correct of all of the corn grown in America today
Speaker 1: ends up as high fructose corn syrup. So we have
Speaker 1: boatloads of it, and it's cheap. And because it's cheap,
Speaker 1: it started finding its way into things that never had
Speaker 1: sugar before, like hamburger buns, hamburger meat, barbecue sauce, catchup,
Speaker 1: salad dressing, I mean pretty much everything you can imagine
Speaker 1: in the store. Indeed, Barry Popkin at the University of
Speaker 1: North Carolina has just done a study that shows that
Speaker 1: eight of the food items there are six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: food items in America them are laced with sugar added sugar.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they understood back then that sweetening
Speaker 1: the bond would just about taste They knew that when
Speaker 1: they put it in, we bought more that they knew.
Speaker 1: They knew that when this was in there, people ate
Speaker 1: more of it. Palatability equals sales. It did then it
Speaker 1: does now, and we love sugar, and that's why the
Speaker 1: entire food supply of America is now sweeter than you
Speaker 1: can imagine. You walk into a drug store and there
Speaker 1: is an expanse of sugary items, candy, gum mints. And
Speaker 1: I have friends of mine who are grown people, men
Speaker 1: and women. They see a candy and you see them
Speaker 1: change behaviorally before your eyes. They'll come in and they're
Speaker 1: having a very serious conversation with you or the person
Speaker 1: you know, and all of a sudden they turn they go, oh,
Speaker 1: jelly beans. It's like kryptonite, and they just can't stop
Speaker 1: eating that stuff. Here's the problem. There's an area of
Speaker 1: your brain called the reward center. Everybody's heard of it
Speaker 1: because you know drug addiction. You know that addiction. Cocaine, morphine, heroin, nicotine,
Speaker 1: they all work in the same place. And the neurotransmitter
Speaker 1: that signals pleasure is called dopamine. You've probably heard of it.
Speaker 1: Of course, when you get a dopamine rush, you get
Speaker 1: pleasure and sugar as it the same way as all
Speaker 1: of those drugs of abuse. The problem is, when you
Speaker 1: get that pleasure, you downregulate the little proteins that catch
Speaker 1: the dopamine, called dopamine receptors, and the more you downregulate them,
Speaker 1: the more dopamine you need to get the same effect,
Speaker 1: and that's called tolerance. And then when you take the
Speaker 1: stuff away, then there's no dopamine to interact with these
Speaker 1: few proteins left, and that's called withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal
Speaker 1: that's called addiction. So we know how that works for
Speaker 1: all of these other drugs of abuse. Turns out sugar
Speaker 1: does the same same thing. It's the same as cocaine.
Speaker 1: The difference is that for cocaine you gotta go find it,
Speaker 1: whereas for sugar we have what we call system saturation.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, you can't escape it. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing more in a moment. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm talking with Dr Robert Lustig. We talk about regulation
Speaker 1: of like alcohol and tobacco, and I want to say
Speaker 1: that that's something that people have tried in public policy
Speaker 1: with sugar. They tried to stop food stamps being used
Speaker 1: to purchase soft drinks, and I believe they lost that
Speaker 1: that right Bloomberg petition the U s d A to
Speaker 1: take soft drinks off food stamps, and the U s
Speaker 1: d A rebuffed. Why do you think they did? Why
Speaker 1: do you think that rather than the straight up political
Speaker 1: influence of the soda ind isn't that enough? How does
Speaker 1: the U s d A do that? No one's saying
Speaker 1: that the people who are on food stamps you can't
Speaker 1: have soda. I doesn't want the government to pay for it.
Speaker 1: The U s d a's job is to sell food.
Speaker 1: That means sell whoever is going to buy it. So
Speaker 1: it's about commerce, it's about absolutely and who controls the
Speaker 1: us d A. The U s d A is basically
Speaker 1: the governmental arm of the food industry and the job
Speaker 1: of the usd You don't have a lot of faith
Speaker 1: in the us d not a whole lot. Now, the
Speaker 1: job of the USDA is to protect the food supply,
Speaker 1: and that includes protecting it from people like me. In
Speaker 1: terms of threats to public health, would you equate other
Speaker 1: products and other substances that are commonly used as being
Speaker 1: equally threatening as sugar. Du there's a caffeine epidemic in
Speaker 1: this country. There is a caffeine epidemic, and it's being
Speaker 1: stoked by all the coffee companies. But it's of less
Speaker 1: concern to you than sugar, oh way, because there's no
Speaker 1: toxic downside with sugar, type two diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, gastric
Speaker 1: bypasses a hundred and forty seven billion dollars a year
Speaker 1: down a rat hole for taking care of chronic diseases
Speaker 1: which don't need to be We could balance the budget
Speaker 1: on that. We wouldn't need healthcare reform if we had
Speaker 1: obesity reform. And we can't have OBEs reform until we
Speaker 1: have some sort of sugar policy. You mentioned pretty regularly
Speaker 1: the food industry, this, the food industry that, and you know,
Speaker 1: most Americans I think who are smart realize that we
Speaker 1: have more than enough food to feed three quote unquote
Speaker 1: square meals a day to everybody in this country and
Speaker 1: those that aren't getting it. It's because of the distribution
Speaker 1: of food in our society. However, we have to cut
Speaker 1: a lot of corners to get there. In the way
Speaker 1: we produce beef, and the way we produce livestock, and
Speaker 1: the way we produced past sides, fungicides, herbicides, all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. We need a new food model. We need
Speaker 1: a new food growing model. By we're gonna need four
Speaker 1: California Central valleys in order to feed our population. We
Speaker 1: won't even have one because of the runoff in the
Speaker 1: sierra that changes in soil erosion. We won't even have one.
Speaker 1: So you know what, the obesity epidemic might even take
Speaker 1: care of itself because we'll have a famine because we
Speaker 1: are misusing our food system. Michael Pollen writes about this routinely.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is by chemically, our current food environment
Speaker 1: does not work for us, and until we fix it,
Speaker 1: will continue to pour money down a rat hole. We
Speaker 1: will continue to be sick, We will continue to die
Speaker 1: of things like diabetes and heart disease. Medicare will be
Speaker 1: broke by because there won't be any money to pay
Speaker 1: for it. You won't be able to see a doctor
Speaker 1: because they will be too busy taking care of all
Speaker 1: the other fat people in the emergency room we're having
Speaker 1: their heart attacks, and there won't be enough food anyway.
Speaker 1: As I'm listening to I'm getting really depressed and I
Speaker 1: want to go have ice cream now you really me?
Speaker 1: I want to know him enjoy bar really badly. The
Speaker 1: bottom line is there's a lot of reason to be positive.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why, give me an example. People
Speaker 1: are getting it. This is the tipping point. We're here now.
Speaker 1: People are starting to recognize that there's an obesity epidemic,
Speaker 1: not just obesity noncommunical disease. The epidemics diabetes exactly. That's
Speaker 1: what sucks out all the money from the entire meta
Speaker 1: establish In the sixty minutes program that you were on. Recently,
Speaker 1: they got into the cancer link. Breast cancer in particular
Speaker 1: is famous for having insulin receptors and growing in response
Speaker 1: to insulin. Prostate prost insulin receptors. Yes, they do, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reason to be concerned, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reason to keep your insulin down for
Speaker 1: all sorts of reasons. Number one, it doesn't fuel any tumors.
Speaker 1: Number two, it lets your left in work. Number three,
Speaker 1: it doesn't increase the smooth muscle of your coronary arteries
Speaker 1: so that you might end up getting a heart attack.
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of reasons to keep your insulin down.
Speaker 1: And the thing that makes your insulin go up most Sure,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are terrified when they sit down
Speaker 1: in a restaurant. A lot of people that are trying
Speaker 1: to stay fit and trying to stay healthy, they can
Speaker 1: go through periods. I've been through this myself where I
Speaker 1: have like a mild panic attack when I sit down
Speaker 1: at the restaurant because they say to myself, there's an
Speaker 1: enemy lurking in everything. Here. There's mercury and the fish,
Speaker 1: and there's hormones in the chicken. I don't need be
Speaker 1: even paltry. And there's too much sodium here, there's too
Speaker 1: much fat here, I don't need. It's true, it really
Speaker 1: is true. And ultimately we're all going to die of
Speaker 1: something with some very small number of exceptions. Isn't an
Speaker 1: argument being made that everything we're eating is gonna kill us? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And I know that and you know it too. The
Speaker 1: question is how and when and with what misery that
Speaker 1: comes with down And the answer is yes, you can.
Speaker 1: The single best thing you can do for yourself quality
Speaker 1: of life wise, exercise by far and away. Nothing else
Speaker 1: comes close. The next thing that's most important is when
Speaker 1: you're eating, make sure you have some fiber. When people
Speaker 1: want to go eat fiber that you recommend they eat. Now,
Speaker 1: where do they go? Very simple? Brown food, brown and green. Okay,
Speaker 1: if it's brown and green, it's got fiber, because fiber
Speaker 1: is brown. Wheat comes out of the ground, What color
Speaker 1: is it? It's brown, You send it to the mill,
Speaker 1: you make bread out of it, and that what color
Speaker 1: is it? It's white. Where'd the brown go got milled off?
Speaker 1: God made carbohydrate with inherent fiber. So we have brown rice,
Speaker 1: whole grains, beans, we have lentils, we have other legumes,
Speaker 1: we have nuts. They're all just great. But as soon
Speaker 1: as you remove the fiber, which is called processing, now
Speaker 1: you've got a problem because now when you eat it,
Speaker 1: the sugar gets absorbed so fast that your liver gets overloaded,
Speaker 1: your mitochondria basically get sick, and now you've got insulin resistance,
Speaker 1: and now you've got all the diseases going downstream from
Speaker 1: People need to have an elevated level of consciousness and
Speaker 1: discipline about eating pasta, rice and potatoes as well at
Speaker 1: the moment they do. Um. Ultimately, I'm hoping that with sugar,
Speaker 1: it's that it's that that one to punch for sure. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that the food industry will pick up on
Speaker 1: this and do the right thing. But the right well,
Speaker 1: the right thing would be to actually sell real food
Speaker 1: so that we can eat real not process if you
Speaker 1: they can do it now, you know, years ago we
Speaker 1: couldn't because we didn't have the distribution system to be
Speaker 1: able to do it. We have it now we could
Speaker 1: do it. We have the technological capability to serve and
Speaker 1: eat real food, but the food industry is making money
Speaker 1: hand over fist. If you could pick one or two
Speaker 1: things that you would change in public policy, if it
Speaker 1: was like getting the soda machines out of schools, it
Speaker 1: would be like no food stamps for soda. What would
Speaker 1: be a change in public policy? You would make one thing?
Speaker 1: What is it? The FDA currently has fructose, the sweet
Speaker 1: part of sugar, on what it's called the grass list
Speaker 1: g R A s generally regarded as safe, also has
Speaker 1: transfats on it at the moment as well. It needs
Speaker 1: to be reevaluated. It needs to be revised. The last
Speaker 1: time this was looked at, and this was before the
Speaker 1: hind fructose corn syrup blood this was before the excess
Speaker 1: sugar quarter of a century ago exactly, and they have
Speaker 1: no plans on doing so. If I could do one
Speaker 1: thing in this entire thing, it would be that what
Speaker 1: would be one more um? I would think very strongly
Speaker 1: about limiting access of sugar beverages to infants and children
Speaker 1: like zero. There's no reason for it. Something your listeners
Speaker 1: need to understand. There's not one biochemical reaction in your body,
Speaker 1: not one that requires dietary fructos, not one that requires sugar.
Speaker 1: Dietary fructos is completely irrelevant to life. People say, oh,
Speaker 1: you need sugar to live garbage. Dr Robert Lustig is
Speaker 1: writing a book about the dangers of sugar called Fat Chance,
Speaker 1: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed food, Obesity, and Disease.
Speaker 1: It will be out in December. Knowing what you know?
Speaker 1: What are things you don't eat? What's your diet becomes
Speaker 1: since you've been doing this work. I carry a few
Speaker 1: extra pounds and I'm not happy about it. I don't
Speaker 1: eat sugar. You don't know. I have dessert twice a year.
Speaker 1: When I'm in New York, I have a piece of
Speaker 1: Junior's cheesecake. And when I'm in New Orleans, I have bread, pudding,
Speaker 1: whiskey sauce. Those are my too, uh, twice a year
Speaker 1: other than that, No, I really don't, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, it's not because I did this work. It's
Speaker 1: because it usually just doesn't appeal to me. What are
Speaker 1: you eating that you think you should be eating? Well,
Speaker 1: I have a half a bagel in the morning with cheese.
Speaker 1: That's sort of my standard. Breakfast and my wife gets
Speaker 1: on me for that. For lunch, Unfortunately, because I'm running
Speaker 1: between you know, patients, it often ends up being something
Speaker 1: very processed, and it's a real problem for dinner though
Speaker 1: it's a very standard dinner and I don't snack between meals,
Speaker 1: and I still can't lose it. So I understand. I'm there.
Speaker 1: I'm part of the sept probably not. I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing who don't make
Speaker 1: the f right