WEBVTT - Robert Lustig and Martin Horn 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.760 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:10.200 My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:14.400 hear their stories. What inspire their creations, what decisions change 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:19.400 their careers, what relationships influence their work. Dietary fructos is 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.840 completely irrelevant to life. People say, oh, you need sugar 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:26.479 to live garbage. I would advize drugs across the board. 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.760 We couldn't possibly do worse than we're doing now. My 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.640 guests today didn't set out to become outspoken critics of 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.120 powerful institutions. As experts in their fields. They found themselves 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.400 confronting two issues that have an impact on our everyday 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:46.760 lives and our futures, obesity and the criminal justice system, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.880 and they haven't been afraid to speak their minds. You'd 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.640 have the government dispensing cocaine and heroin, I would sell 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.760 it in the liquor stores. Martin Horned was head of 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.400 both the New York City Department of Corrections and Probation. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.000 New York City processes nearly one hundred thousand inmates every year, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.880 more than many state systems. But first, before we talk 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.399 about prisons, we consider another problem that has been getting 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:16.800 worse over the last decade. One of every three American 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.800 adults is obese. The epidemic is arguably the most important 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.679 health issue of our time. Children today may have a 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.399 shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.160 to obesity, which has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:37.160 and even cancer. My guest today, doctor Robert Lustig, makes 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.960 a strong case that our addiction to sugar is at 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:43.839 the root of the obesity epidemic. Americans consume an average 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.120 of one thirty pounds of sugar a year. Two years ago, 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.400 this issue became a personal one when my doctor told 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.200 me I was pre diabetic. So when I read about 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:58.040 Dr Lusting and his popular anti sugar lecture streaming online, 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:00.520 I paid attention. So why do I at the Coca 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:05.040 Cola conspiracy? And next I gave up sugar? What else 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.560 is in coke? We'll get to the sugar in a minute. 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:13.079 What else salt? Milligrams of sodium per can. It's like 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.440 drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:21.320 sodium and lose free water? You get thirstier? Right? So 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.080 why is there so much sugar and coke to hide 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:28.280 the salt except. Dr Lusting is a pediatric endochronologist and 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.760 you see San Francisco back in the nineties. He became 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.160 interested in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:39.639 Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Now a bit of biochemistry 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.040 to explain some of Lustig's research. Leptin is a protein 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.440 that works like a thermostat for your body's energy levels. 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.360 If leptin levels are low, your brain senses starvation and 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.560 you feel hungry. If levels are high, you feel full. 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.880 Lusting asserts there was an epidemic of people who have 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:02.080 developed leptin resistance, people whose brains can't register when they 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:05.360 are full. Lustig has studied leptin and its effect on 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.920 pediatric patients. In the nineteen nineties, he was treating children 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.760 recovering from brain tumor surgery. I had a stable of 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:17.280 kids who were enormously obese. And the thing was, they 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.480 were an obese before the tumor, but they started gaining 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.920 weight at thirty to forty pounds a year after per 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:29.480 two year, per year, with no cessation, NonStop, and they 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.680 were constantly hungry and worse yet, they were the world's 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:37.880 biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in every single thing 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.280 around them. They would sit in the couch, eat doritos, 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.080 and sleep. This was their life. And the parents would 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.920 come to me and say, this is double jeopardy. My 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:52.360 child has survived the tumor only to succumb to a 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.400 complication of the treatment. Why did they become couch potatoes? 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.360 What was the link there? Because when your brain sees lepton, 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.920 you want to burn energy. You want to exercise, you 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.600 want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:09.320 want to go do things. Leptin signals the body to exercise. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.000 Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.480 board to exercise. When your brain can't see it, your 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:21.000 brain thinks you're starting. My job was to figure out 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:23.560 a way to take care of these kids, so my 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:30.640 research and obosity started back. We said, okay, these kids brains, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.760 that area of the brain is dead. I can't bring 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:37.960 it back. I'm not a neurosurgeon. I can't transplant the hypothalamus. 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.799 What can I do? So I, after doing some research, 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.440 realized we could work down stream of the brain. The 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.480 brain was signaling the pancrease to make extra insulin. Insulin 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.440 makes you store energy. So these kids are known to 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.800 have enormously high insulin levels. So I said, all right, 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.440 let's give these kids a medicine that will block the 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:05.599 release of insulin. We did a study and Lo and Behold, 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:10.520 patients started losing weight, but more importantly, they started exercising. 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.200 One kid started competitive swimming, two kids started lifting weights 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.000 at home. One kid became the manager of his high 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:18.760 school basketball team, running around collecting all the basketballs. I mean, 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.119 you know, parents were calling me up within a week saying, 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.800 I've got my kid back. Right. We were interfering with 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:31.359 insulin release, and these kids changed their behavior, and that 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.800 was the first key to what I think is the 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.320 entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic. And then 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.040 what happened for you wanted to do next? So then 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:43.120 we said, maybe there are adults out there who have 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:44.919 the same problem, they just don't have a brain tumor. 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.920 Let's look for it. So we did a whole study, 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.159 pilot study with forty four obese adults, and we gave 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:55.359 him the same drug to do the same thing, and 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.800 Lo and Behold, eight out of the forty four, not 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:00.320 all of them by any means, but it out of 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.799 four lost a lot of weight. A pound a week 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:09.120 over twenty four weeks without doing anything. And what was 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:13.360 even more amazing was their fat intake didn't change, their 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:18.560 protein intake didn't change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime. 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.960 They went from nine hundred calories at day to calories 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.599 a day and carbohydrate they stopped snacking between meals and 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:33.640 most important bugles. You know, absolutely, and these kids needed 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.200 to get their insulin down, and the medicine did it. 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.640 And these adults needed to get their insulin down, and 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.600 the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly, 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.960 when we got there insulinde down, guess what they started exercising. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.680 So this all of a sudden became very clear. What's 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.480 going on for these kids with the brain tumors. They 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.840 couldn't see their lepton. Their insolence were sky high because 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.960 their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving, 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:00.840 they would eat everything on of the sun and it 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.680 still wouldn't be enough because they could never see their leapton. 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.080 And what we realized was this is adult ob city too. 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:11.920 They can't see their LEPTONI that's where sugar came in. 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.360 So sugar was a culporate that also triggered other it 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.560 enabled other bad eating exactly. And we've learned that the 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.720 higher insulin goes, the hungrier you get, hunger you are. 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.280 So the sugar is an appetite stimulant in a sense, 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.920 whatever you want to call you can call it that. Absolutely. 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.280 We know that because David Ludwig, my opposite number at 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:36.000 Boston Children's, he prepped a bunch of kids with a soda, 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.360 a can of soda, a hundred fifty calories, and then 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.400 he let him loose at the fast food restaurant. So 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:42.680 the question is did they eat more? Did they eat less? 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.440 Do you think more? Ate more? Their insulind was high, 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.880 and also there's high insulin makes you hungry, that's right, 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:52.360 High insulam makes you hungry. And also there's a hormone 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.240 in your stomach that signals hunger called grellin, And when 0:07:56.240 --> 0:08:00.000 grellan's high, you're hungry, and sugar doesn't knock it down. 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:05.040 When I gave up sugar, it was amazing. It was 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:09.920 like pushing a toboggan along a track to eventually get 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.440 down the slope. The first couple of weeks, the first 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.040 couple of months, that part in early May through June 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.480 By the time we get to July and August, we're 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.800 going downhill and the weights just coming off. I cut 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.320 out carbs, and I gave up pasta because that was 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.880 the mega dose of carbohydrate, right. I mean, I would eat, 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.320 you know, the fish tank sized bowl of pasta, and 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.600 it's easy to do. A lot of people think that 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.760 the Italian diet is the Mediterranean diet. Not at all. 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:43.400 There is no pasta in the Mediterranean diet. We started 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:46.440 the pasta craze because of all the immigrant Italians who 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:50.240 couldn't afford to eat meat and vegetables here. That's what 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.199 they fell back on, and it actually got exported from 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:55.880 here back to Italy sam as Chop Suey did to China. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.160 You know, these are all American inventions. The Italian diet 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.080 is not the de deterranean diet, never was, never will be. 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.200 But I would say to people, I cut back on bread. 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:07.800 They say, okay, great. Then I'd say to them I 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.040 gave up pasta. They'd say, whoa that. I'd say, I 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.800 gave up sugar, and they go and they're insane, exactly right. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:15.480 It was as if I said to them, let's go 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.320 learn to play the classical piano. Now let's begin. Now, 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.440 how did sugar become They were consuming a hundred and 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.880 thirty pounds of sugar per person per year. Was it 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.520 always that way? No? No, this is very What do 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:32.640 you think change that? Money and marketing and you know, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:34.880 the food industry. So there are a couple of sort 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:41.199 of milestones in this story. The first is the nascent 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.480 candy and soft drink and sugar industry in America, which 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:48.520 dates back to the early nineteen hundreds, but that didn't 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.439 really get things started because sugar was still kind of expensive, 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.880 and sugar had been expensive all throughout history. In nifty nine, 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:01.200 we lost our sugar fix because Castro took over Cuba 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.120 and that actually started the Florida sugar industry because the 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:07.280 sugar had come from Cuba prior to that's a lot 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.400 of it. So that started the American sugar industry really 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.760 in top notch gear. Then high fuctose cornsyrup, camel high 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:17.760 fuctose corn syrup shows up and all of a sudden, 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.880 it's in everything. Why, well, it actually took It is sweeter, 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.240 but most important, it's cheaper. But do you find that also, 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.480 this is what's happening over the last I don't know 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:29.240 how many years. I mean, I'm not somebody who knows 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:31.480 the history of this, but certainly in my lifetime, which 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:34.079 is the goal is to make everything sweeter. The point 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.600 is that this is actually evolutionary. This isn't our DNA, 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.640 because there is no food stuff anywhere in the world 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.760 that is both sweet and acutely poisonous. So it was 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:46.280 a signal to us. It was a signal to us 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:48.959 that it was safe to eat, even Jamaican hockey fruit, 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.440 which has a substance in nicolled hypoglycin, which causes Jamaican 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.680 vomiting sickness and can kill you. It's only in the 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:57.680 immature fruit. As soon as the fruit falls from the 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.240 tree to the ground. Jamaican's no, it's a ky to 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.199 eat because it's now ripe and the toxin is gone. 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.000 We are programmed to like sweet, and what has happened 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.079 is the food industry figured it out and they hijacked 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:15.000 our taste buds for their own purposes. When you think 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.280 about this epidemic, and it is an epidemic because it's 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.840 a pandemic, I don't say this with any smugness or satisfaction. 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:26.000 I say this with a lot of sadness because I 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:29.360 had always been thin, and for somebody who didn't eat 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:31.760 meat and didn't eat I thought I thought I was 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.640 doing the right thing health wise. I'm a vegetarian, I'm 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:37.880 a pesketarian, if you will, And I'm beginning to really 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.319 really blow up here. You know, Listen, we've got vegan 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.400 type two's who are massively obese. And just because you're vegan, 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.439 doesn't that from what do you think they getting from soda? Vegan? 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:58.600 Especially South Asians Indians, they can't carry as much subcutaneous fat. 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.520 And once you basically fill your subcutains your love handle 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.200 fat stores, it starts building up in your liver and 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.800 when that happens, it's all downhill after that. But other 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:11.079 people have worked towards this prior to you. You're not 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:13.800 the first person sugar is bad. Look, this has been 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:17.959 going on since the seventies, this discussion. The chief anti 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:20.959 sugar campaigner was a guy by the name of John Yudkin, 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.680 and he was a British physiologist, nutritionist, and he wrote 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.720 a book back in seventy two called Pure White and Deadly. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.680 You read this book, it's just astounding. Everything came to 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.480 pass on the other side, we had this guy, ansel 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:41.120 Keys and he had done a sabbatical at the University 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.520 of Cambridge in nifty two and he saw what, you know, 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:48.120 the Brits were eating, and it was pretty horrible, and 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:53.080 he came to the conclusion that saturated fat had to 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.840 be the cause of heart disease. We didn't know at 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.400 that point what happened to sugar in the liver. We 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.040 didn't know that it got turned into fat. What we 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:06.439 knew was that saturated fat correlated with LDL levels in 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.520 l d L correlated with cardiovascular disease. So the thought was, 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.720 let's get rid of the saturated fat and cardiovascular disease 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:16.800 will disappear. The whole country went low fat back in 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.880 Here's the problem. When you go low fat, the food 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.480 tastes like cardboard. And the food industry knew it. What 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.440 were they gonna do? How are they gonna sell food? 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.600 And now we had high fructose corn syrup too, When 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.760 does that get introduced into the food market the early seventies, 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.840 seventy three, seventy five, actually I don't know. American corporations 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:44.720 in the second worst hurricane in American history, Hurricane Allen, 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:51.600 it wiped out the entire Caribbean sugar crop, and the 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.920 food industry, especially the beverage industry, ran scared. They said, 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.120 where are we going to get the sugar for all 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.160 the soft drinks? And that's when reliable market exactly, And 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.959 they started introducing it, and they started upping the dose, 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:11.080 and the transformation was complete. Is the process of getting 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.520 table sugar from cane sugar more labor intensive and more 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.360 expensive than the high fructose corncerp process by a lot. 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.760 High fructose corn syrup comes from corn, and the corn 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.680 market and the corn supply in this country is far 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.680 more plentiful and far more reliable than the cane sugar. 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:32.000 Correct of all of the corn grown in America today 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.640 ends up as high fructose corn syrup. So we have 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.160 boatloads of it, and it's cheap. And because it's cheap, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.720 it started finding its way into things that never had 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:48.640 sugar before, like hamburger buns, hamburger meat, barbecue, sauce, catchup, salad, dressing, 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.840 I mean pretty much everything you can imagine in the store. Indeed, 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.040 Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina has just 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.160 done a study that shows that eight of the food 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.360 items there are six thousand food items in America them 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.960 are laced with sugar. Add a sugar. Do you think 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.880 that they understood back then that sweetening the bond was 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.640 just about taste. They knew that when they put it in, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.880 we bought more that they knew when this was in there, 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:20.600 people ate more of it. Palatability equals sales. It did then, 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:25.320 it does now, and we love sugar, and that's why 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:29.120 the entire food supply of America is now sweeter than 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.920 you can imagine. Here's the problem. There's an area of 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.560 your brain called the reward center. Everybody's heard of it 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:42.560 because you know drug addiction. You know that cocaine, morphine, heroin, nicotine, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.640 They all work in the same place. And the neurotransmitter 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:50.440 that signals pleasures called dopamine. You probably heard of it. 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:55.160 Of course, when you get a dopamine rush, you get pleasure, 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.160 and sugar does it the same way as all of 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.920 those drugs of abuse. The problem is, when you get 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:08.000 that pleasure, you downregulate the little proteins that catch the dopamine, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.640 called dopamine receptors, and the more you downregulate them, the 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.640 more dopamine you need to get the same effect, and 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.600 that's called tolerance. And then when you take the stuff away, 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:21.600 then there's no dopamine to interact with these few proteins left, 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.960 and that's called withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal that's called addiction. 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.080 So we know how that works for all of these 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:31.560 other drugs of abuse. Turns out sugar does the same thing. 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.040 It's the same as cocaine. The difference is that for 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.280 cocaine you gotta go find it, whereas for sugar we 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:42.040 have what we call system saturation. It's everywhere, you can't 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:48.080 escape it. Coming up more with Dr Robert Lustig, who 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.520 says that cutting out sugar is not the single most 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.080 important thing you can do for your quality of life. 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.760 You're going to want to sit down for this, or 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.120 actually you won't want to sit The single best thing 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:01.760 you can do for yourself quality of life wise exercise, 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.320 by far and away. Nothing else comes close. I'm Alec 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.959 Baldwin and here's the thing. Take a listen to our 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:13.960 archive more unexpected conversations with artists, policymakers and performers like 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:18.760 the amazing Dick Kevin. Amazing. We all are saying amazing 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.800 all the time. Now, I got five amazings and watching 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:27.160 morning television amazing guests we have. It's an amazing script. 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.160 It's just amazing. I was amazed. But your career amazesn't 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:39.560 there Go to Here's the Thing, Dot Org. I'm Alec 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:44.040 Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. America's obesity 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:49.520 epidemic is complicated by issues of education, poverty, and personal freedom. 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.880 In July two thousand thirteen, an appeals court struck down 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.960 in New York City ban on the sale of supersized 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:00.520 sugary drinks. Mayor Bloomberg was disappointed, but maybe not so prized. 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.240 Two years earlier, as my guest Dr Robert Lustig recalls, 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.320 the mayor had tried to change things on the federal level. 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.000 Bloomberg petition the U. S d A to take soft 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:12.879 drinks off food stamps, and the U. S d A 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:14.679 rebuffed it. Why do you think they did? Why do 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.320 you think that other than the straight up political influence 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.119 of the soda indus, isn't that enough? How does the U. 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:22.560 S d A do that? No one's saying that the 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.560 people who are on food stamps you can't have soda. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:26.600 I doesn't want the government to pay for it. The 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.879 U s d a's job is to sell food. That 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:32.199 means sell whoever is going to buy it. So it's 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.320 about commerce, it's about absolutely and who controls the U 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:36.880 s d A. The U s d A is basically 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.080 the governmental arm of the food industry and the job 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:41.200 of the us D. You don't have a lot of 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.240 faith in the us D not a whole lot. Now, 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:44.960 the job of the U s d A is to 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.520 protect the food supply, and that includes protecting from people 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:52.160 like me in terms of threats to public health. Would 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.720 you equate other products and other substances that are commonly 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.719 used as being equally threatening as sugar, Maybe not, not 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:00.520 not equally, maybe not as much. But I think there's 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.440 a caffeine epidemic in this country. There is a caffeine epidemic. 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.080 I believe there is, and and it's being stoked by 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.080 all the coffee companies. But it's a less concern to 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:14.080 you than sugar, oh way, because there's no toxic downside 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:20.119 with sugar. Type two diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, gastric bypasses a 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.480 hundred and forty seven billion dollars a year down a 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:27.480 rat hole for taking care of chronic diseases which don't 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.119 need to be We wouldn't need healthcare reform if we 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.800 had obesity reform, and we can't have OBEs reform until 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.639 we have some sort of sugar policy. You you mentioned 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.520 pretty regularly the food industry, this, the food industry that. 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.760 And you know, most Americans I think who are smart, 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.679 realize that we have more than enough food to feed 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:53.800 three quote unquote square meals a day to everybody in 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:55.880 this country and those that aren't getting it. It's because 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.840 of the distribution of food in our society. However, we 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.240 have to cut a lot of corners to get there. 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:05.840 In the way we produce beef, and the way we 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:10.120 produce livestock, and the way we produce pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:12.959 all of this stuff, we need a new food model. 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:17.520 We need a new food growing model. By we're gonna 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:21.600 need four California Central Valleys in order to feed our population. 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.280 We won't even have one because of the runoff in 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:28.000 the sierra that changes in soil erosion. So you know what, 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:30.640 the obesity epidemic might even take care of itself because 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:36.920 we'll have a famine because we are misusing our food system. 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.160 And until we fix it, we will continue to be sick. 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.159 We will continue to die of things like diabetes and 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:48.080 heart disease. Medicare will be broke by because there won't 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:49.520 be any money to pay for it. You won't be 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.120 able to see a doctor because they will be too 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.280 busy taking care of all the other fat people in 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:56.959 the emergency room we're having their heart attacks, and there 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.520 won't be enough food. Anyway, as I'm listening to you, 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:01.199 I'm getting really depressed and I want to go have 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.320 ice cream. Now you're really bumber me. I want to know. 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:07.240 I'm enjoy bar really badly. The bottom line is, there's 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:09.120 a lot of reason to be positive. And I'll tell 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.560 you why. Give me an example. People are getting it. 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:16.200 People are starting to recognize that there's an obesity epidemic, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:23.440 not just obesity, noncommunical disease epidemic, diabetes, yeah, exactly. Breast 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.560 cancer in particular is famous for having insulin receptors and 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:32.199 growing in response to insulin. Prostate insulin receptors. Yes, they do. 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.879 So there's a lot of reason to be concerned, and 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:37.960 there's a lot of reason to keep your insulin down. 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.119 Number one, it doesn't fuel any tumors. Number two, it 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.600 lets your left and work. Number three, it doesn't increase 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.760 the smooth muscle of your coronary arteries so that you 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.480 might end up getting a heart attack. There's a whole 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:53.560 bunch of reasons to keep your insulin down and the 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.359 thing that makes your insulin go up most sure. You 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:00.000 know people, a lot of people are terrified when they 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.399 it down in the restaurant. A lot of people that 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:04.600 are trying to stay fit and trying to stay healthy. 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:06.199 They can go through periods. So I've been through this 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.120 myself where I have like a mild panic attack when 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:11.359 I sit down at the restaurant because I say to myself, 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:14.240 there's an enemy lurking in everything. Here. There's a mercury 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:16.040 and the fish, and there's hormones in the chicken. I 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:18.719 don't eat beef and poultry, and there's too much sodium here, 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:20.639 there's too much fat here I don't need. It's true. 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:23.280 The single best thing you can do for yourself quality 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.680 of life wise, exercise by far and away. Nothing else 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.520 comes close. The next thing that's most important is when 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.040 you're eating, make sure you have some fiber. When people 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:35.280 want to go eat fiber that you recommend they eat. 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:39.200 Now where do they go? Very simple? Brown food, brown 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:42.240 and green. Okay, if it's brown and green, it's got fiber, 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.119 because fiber is brown. Wheat comes out of the ground. 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:47.119 What color is it. It's brown, You send it to 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:48.679 the mill, you make bread out of it. Now, what 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.360 color is it? It's white? Where'd the brown go? Got 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:57.760 milled off? God made carbohydrate with inherent fiber. So we 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:03.120 have brown rice, whole grains, beans, we have nuts. They're 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.679 all just great. But as soon as you remove the fiber, 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.879 which is called processing, now you've got a problem because 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:12.800 now when you eat it, the sugar gets absorbed so 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:17.040 fast that your liver gets overloaded, your mitochondria basically get sick, 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:19.600 and now you've got insulin resistance, and now you've got 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:23.160 all the diseases going downstream from People need to have 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:27.760 an elevated level of consciousness and discipline about eating pasta, 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:30.160 rice and potatoes as well at the moment they do. 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:32.679 I'm hoping that the food industry will pick up on 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:36.600