Dr. Robert Lustig and Sugar - How to achieve sustainable food production for increased profit and well-being

Sugar is now the most ubiquitous foodstuff worldwide, and has been added to virtually every processed food, limiting consumer choice and the ability to avoid it. Approximately 80 percent of the 6,000,000 consumer packaged foods in the United States have added caloric sweeteners.
Robert Lustig, MD, MSLFat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

Robert Lustig

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertLustig/

Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.

is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology, with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. His research and clinical practice has focused on childhood obesity and diabetes. Dr. Lustig holds a Bachelor’s in Science from MIT, a Doctorate in Medicine from Cornell University. Medical College, and a Master’s of Studies in Law from U.C. Hastings College of the Law.

Dr. Lustig has fostered a global discussion of metabolic health and nutrition, exposing some of the leading myths that underlie the current pandemic of diet-related disease. He believes the food business, by pushing processed food loaded with sugar, has hacked our bodies and minds to pursue pleasure instead of happiness; fostering today’s epidemics of addiction and depression. Yet by focusing on real food, we can beat the odds against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease.

Real Food

What is real food anyway?

Real food is whole food with a minimum of ingredients and no “food-like” additives.

It is mostly unprocessed, free of non-food substances, and rich in nutrients and fiber. Real food is not burdened with food additives, like many of those listed in this government database.

Human beings have been eating real food for thousands of years.

Since processed foods became popular in the 20th century, the Western diet has been transformed into one that destroys health and is now the leading cause of chronic disease.

While most of us probably know what real food is, the sophisticated marketing engine of the processed food industry loves to manipulate the idea to justify selling you more crap. This page is dedicated to reinforcing what real food really is.

What is processed food? Ninety percent of the food produced in the United States is sold to you by a total of ten conglomerates—Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Dole, General Mills, Hormel, Kraft, Nestle, Pepsico, Proctor and Gamble, and Unilever.

If it has a label, consider it a warning label. Because real food doesn’t need a label. Want more clarification? We dedicate a whole page to defining processed food here: https://robertlustig.com/processed-food.

Real foods are not mass produced, not consistent from one purchase to another purchase, separate out, and rot in a relatively short time. Most whole foods would meet this criteria; many processed foods would not.

Videos

Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Recorded on 05/26/2009.

Dr. Lustig assesses the health dangers of sugar and its link to Type-2 diabetes and the global obesity epidemic. He is the author of several books and many articles on childhood obesity, including the recent “Obesity Before Birth.”

Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L. is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He specialises in the field of neuroendocrinology, with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. His research and clinical practice has focused on childhood obesity and diabetes.

Dr. Lustig holds a Bachelor’s in Science from MIT, a Doctorate in Medicine from Cornell University. Medical College, and a Master’s of Studies in Law from U.C. Hastings College of the Law. Dr. Lustig has fostered a global discussion of metabolic health and nutrition, exposing some of the leading myths that underlie the current pandemic of diet-related disease. He believes the food business, by pushing processed food loaded with sugar, has hacked our bodies and minds to pursue pleasure instead of happiness; fostering today’s epidemics of addiction and depression. Yet by focusing on real food, we can beat the odds against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease.

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Other

We’ve heard for years about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt. But there have never been recommended limits for sugar on Canadian food labels, despite emerging research that suggests the sweet stuff may be making more of us fat and sick. In the fifth estate’s season premiere, Gillian Findlay digs into the surprising science — and the reaction from the food industry — to reveal The Secrets of Sugar. Has the sugar industry been hiding an unsavoury truth from consumers?

A small but influential group of medical researchers is stirring up the health debate, linking sugar not just to rising obesity rates but also to a host of diseases including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
We put a family of four on a healthy diet to try to beat their sugar habit and track the surprising results. We talk to leading scientists – and their critics. And we ask the food industry why those ingredient labels are far from clear when it comes to how much sugar is really on your plate.

Books

“Our health, resistance to disease, and ability to function on a day-to-day basis have essentially been hijacked, all in the name of corporate profits. Dr. Lustig explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts to motivate our food choices in a way that directly undermines our ability to survive. But more importantly, *The Hacking of the American Mind* eloquently reveals how we can disengage from this influence and re-establish ourselves on a path to wellness.”
—David Perlmutter, MD, author of the #1 *New York Times* bestseller, *Grain Brain* and *Brain Maker*

With busy lives and little time left for cooking we find ourselves relying on a diet of processed food. But this is what’s responsible for our chronically expanding waistlines, soaring levels of diabetes and a catalogue of diseases.

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UCSF Department of Pediatrics Profile:

Professor
Robert.Lustig@ucsf.edu
+1 415 502-8672
+1 415 476-8214

Biography

Robert H. Lustig, M.D. is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.

Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, with basic and clinical training relative to hypothalamic development, anatomy, and function. Prior to coming to San Francisco in 2001, he worked at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. There, he was charged with the endocrine care of many children whose hypothalami had been damaged by brain tumors, or subsequent surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. Many patients who survived became massively obese. Dr. Lustig theorized that hypothalamic damage led to the inability to sense the hormone leptin, which in turn, led to the starvation response. Since repairing the hypothalamus was not an option, he looked downstream, and noted that these patients had increased activity of the vagus nerve (a manifestation of starvation) which increased insulin secretion. By administering the insulin suppressive agent octreotide, he was able to get them to lose weight; but more remarkably, they started to exercise spontaneously. He then demonstrated the same phenomenon in obese adults without CNS lesions. The universality of these findings has enabled Dr. Lustig to weave these threads together into a novel unifying hypothesis regarding the etiology, prevention, and treatment of the current obesity epidemic. This has led him to explore the specific role of fructose (half of sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup) as a specific mediator of both chronic disease, and continued caloric consumption. His now notorious YouTube video, “Sugar – the bitter truth” continues its popularity with the lay public.

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Dr. Lustig went to Stuyvesant H.S. in Manhattan, graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He completed his pediatric residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1983, and his clinical fellowship at UCSF in 1984. From there, he spent six years as a post-doctoral fellow and research associate in neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University. He has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Tennessee, Memphis. Dr. Lustig has authored 85 peer-reviewed articles and 30 reviews. He has mentored 20 pediatric endocrine fellows, and trained numerous other allied health professionals. He provides endocrinologic support to several protocols of the Children’s Oncology Group. He is the former Chairman of the Ad hoc Obesity Task Force of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, a member of the Pediatric Obesity Practice Guidelines Subcommittee of The Endocrine Society, a member of the Obesity Task Force of the Endocrine Society, a member of the Pediatric Obesity Devices Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Endocrine Alliance to Combat Obesity. He also consults for several childhood obesity advocacy groups.

Dr. Lustig lives in San Francisco with his wife and two daughters (ages 10 and 4). Spare time (what little there is) is spent cooking, theater-going, and traveling.