Dr Lustig said repeatedly that he does not believe in common sense but he believes in data. You could hear it in several of his lectures of which one was in this video, when he said it at 18:00 minute. The background behind this statement was the obvious conclusion we make that when people are less physically active, it is their responsibility while his alternative explanation was that it was their physiology that made them sloths and therefore not their fault as such.
Dr Lustig presented a common sense as a dogma which was in opposite to research, saying that that if we knew everything already we would not need to do the research. Is this really the common sense? What wikipedia says about this term?
I consider myself a scientist, too, but I believe in common sense and also in data - but only when they are presented in the whole context, not cherry-picking those that favor my agenda while leaving the rest out and muting the common sense so that one is not able to spot the flaws in the INTERPRETATION of the data. A common sense should be a sort of assessment whether the sense we make from the data actually fits the real world. And because I have been doing this all the time, I have decided to write this blog to debunk the selectively presented data of Dr Lustig after a careful judgement of the perceived and understood content of what he has been presenting to people over the past 5 years.
Dr Lustig has also earned the critiques elsewhere so I am not alone but I am probably the only one that tried to debunk his claims at such a wide scale as you could see in my blog. You could read my attempts to debunk his numerous claims in the previous 32 articles of this blog and on my very own website.
To cut this short I would like to relate this post back to the example outlined at the beginning: that it is the physiology that makes people sloths and gluttonous, not their initial actions - hence they are not responsible for how sick and unhappy they are. The data he has presented strongly suggest this mechanism, but me and my common sense reach further to the past and says this:
In the past, our ancestors were simply forced to expend the energy in search for food or earning the living. They also often went hungry, so they also experienced the lack of energy due to the physiology - but there was no other way to survive than to overcome this and go and seek the food. Today the technological advancements allow us to earn living and spend our free time without the need of expending extra energy. The technological advancement and food almost waiting for us at our doorstep actually encourages us to be physically passive. We are encouraged to focus on our mental stimuli and reward, forgetting about our bodies, which simply sit or lay down for hours each day. It is only when this continues for a long period of time that the metabolism is changed and the physiology is harmed by the excess calories in and almost no extra calories out except of what we need to burn to stay alive. Only then we can see how people develop insulin resistance and fail to read leptin which further exaggerates the problem. Only at this point I can join the argumentation of Dr Lustig that it is not the peoples fault and that their biochemistry is taking control over them.
But until then it was our own choices to sit and play a video game and to reach for fat and sugar laden processed food instead of going for a walk and biting into an apple or some other nutritiously superior food. When I go to the supermarket, in most of them I am welcomed by the fresh produce - in England, I do not know how it is in the U.S. I firstly start putting the fresh produce into my basket or trolley. There are isolated places at the entrance with the promotional products that offer the processed food stuff or laundry detergents or nappies, but in principle we are all welcomed in our supermarkets by the fruits, vegetables and salads based on various sorts of lettuce. We do not come to the entrance, grab the cake and leave, do we?
The same is on the streets in front of many local shops: there are boards and desks with a number of bowls full of fruits or vegetables for £1. You have to go inside the shop to get the chocolate, beer or a bag of crisps. Now tell me that most of us do not have a healthy choice?
I agree that there are food deserts and many people do not have a drinking water running from their tap, but these are the minority in the developed countries. I sympathize with the poorer countries in which the drink industry rather sales (and their governments allow this) the Coca-Cola instead of plain water. They are really not responsible for their choice. But for the most of us int he U.S. or the UK this is not the case.
Another such case of wrongly presented information (not just data) is the suggestive conclusion put into the mouth of the beverage industry that the industry has never actually said - that all calories are the same and therefore a calorie is a calorie - as Dr Lustig repeatedly said in other lectures when presenting this slide:
I have written a post about this already but I would like to bring it up again here for you to see that the common sense really matters in terms of the perception, understanding and judgement. The Coca Cola company admitted in their statement, that ALL OF US (including them) have to take an action to beat the obesity and that All calories count, regardless of their origin. There was said nothing about the quality of the calories and how they behave in the body. They simply admitted that the sugar calories in the drink also matter, as do the sugar or other calories from food, because people often ignored the calories in the drinks and only focused on the calories in their food. Coca Cola made it clear that their sugary drinks also contribute to the obesity and therefore they provided an alternative - artificially sweetened drinks.
Therefore, the claim of Dr Lustig that the food industry said that the calories are all equal from the perspective of metabolic pathways is unwarranted and wrong. The drink industry only admitted that their calories also count and that they play their part in the current trends of ill health of the nation. Nothing less and nothing more. Meanwhile, I am not sponsored by any food or drink company, just to dismiss possible worries of my readers. I also have NO disclosures. I just want to be objective and factual as much as I possibly can.
And this is the end of my discussion on the data and common sense. Any computer will read and evaluate the data, but only humans (for now) have the common sense to give it the actual meaning - or to distort it towards their own interests.
I will keep using the common sense when listening to the presentation of data by the biased presenters and so should you.
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