Monday, March 1, 2010

One for the doctors



It's long, but I think it's really worth watching.
Posted by kamapuaa
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5 comments:

Fugu said...

I'd be a whole lot more receptive to this if he didn't sound like he was auditioning for a spot on Oprah. But I think he's spot on for a lot of it. If you don't want to sit through the whole thing though, I'll try to sum up.

0. We are currently much fatter than we should be; it's just true. It's not genetics, and it's not healthy. It leads to ugly ways of dying, and right now there's kids getting diabetes type 2 and gastric-bypass surgeries around the world, which is not a good start to life. According to Lustig, here's what happened:

1. Fat and cholesterol were targeted as the main cause of cardiovascular disease and diabetes around 30 years ago, based off of bad research.

2. For the past 30 years we've made food taste good by replacing fat with high fructose corn syrup and carbohydrates, and reducing fiber.

3. Fructose, as sucrose or HFCS, is fucking horrible. HFCS is in everything. It makes you eat more, and it does terrible things to your body via the liver, (problems that we don't have with straight-up glucose). Fructose is bad enough that it should be considered toxic, like alcohol (similar metabolism, btw).

4. Ultimately, it's the fructose that is now the leading cause of: obesity, heart attacks, atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc. NOT fat, except that fructose is easily turned into fat, so a low-fat, high-fructose diet is actually crazy-high in fat.


How Lustig says to start combatting this:

1. Get rid of all sugared liquids—only water and milk.

2. Eat carbohydrates with fiber (fiber is important. We should basically eat trees to make up for all the fiber we haven't been eating.

3. Wait 20 minutes for second portions.

4. Buy your screen time minute-for-minute with physical activity.

Of all those, #1 gives the most health benefits. Getting rid of fructose in all it's forms is most important.



It's tough to just believe something like this at face value, but the biochemistry made sense (from bits I could remember from med school), and he did put up a bunch of good p-values in the research he sited, so who knows… When it comes down to it, I think there's more potential health benefit from believing him than risk, so until there's a consensus, why not.

March 1, 2010 at 11:43 PM
kamapuaa said...

I probably should have mentioned, the UndergroundWellness guy, Sean, does a cliff notes version for those not patient enough for the 1.5 hour lecture:

It's less fun since he doesn't blame Nixon though. Also, I thought it would carry more impact coming from an MD instead of a personal trainer.

March 2, 2010 at 7:38 AM
Mr. Pony said...

I'll be completely honest about this: I'm not patient enough for the 1.5 hour lecture. Thanks for posting the short version.

Who knew we were turning ourselves into human bombs!?!

March 2, 2010 at 8:21 PM
Lungclops said...

Guy says "mkay" like that South Park principal.

March 2, 2010 at 8:28 PM
odori said...

Thanks for the summary! Makes sense.

Drinking tea - without sugar - is also good. I wonder if he mentioned that. Straight green tea.

It annoys me greatly that American purveyors of canned green tea (Arizona etc) put SUGAR in the tea.

I'm always glad of all the U.S. states I live in Hawaii where I can buy proper cans of green tea, sans sugar, almost anywhere. Thank you Itoen of Japan.

March 2, 2010 at 10:19 PM

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