Using outdated figures to falsely claim a positive correlation between sugar intake and obesity for the past 14 years

In 2013 Dr Lusting delivered a less known lecture called Sugar Pandemic Policy vs. Politics vs. Law. 

I have written a lengthy article about the imprecise, or rather misleading, information shared by Dr Lustig about the trends of particular nutrients (sugar, non-sugar carbohydrates and fat) intake in the U.S. over the past few decades. I am not going to repeat it here. Instead I would like to focus on few points in his 2013 lecture and write my comments, split into several blog articles. Some content will be repeated though. 

At about 6:20 minute of the 2013 video time Dr Lustig said in 2013:

“We are eating more, no argument. 275 kcal more in teen boys over the past 20 years”  

Over the past 20 years? What do the years show under the diagram? Look better: 1989/91 and 1995/96.

Does this look like the past 20 years in 2013 or rather 20 years ago and more? 

At 6:34 he said that Americans were told to eat low-fat, so the fat consumption has not changed, but it was the sugar consumption that went up.  Dr Lustig precisely said:

"...we consume THE SAME AMOUNT OF FAT as before, showing only 5g increase, making it 45 kcal increase per day in children and adolescents"

That was meant to be of those 275 kcal increase among the same age group. 

The diagram following after that was of the secular trends of specific food intake from the same time period, but covering the whole U.S. population, originated from the study of Chanmugam et al. 2003 (therefore it again did not cover the past 20 years). 

Since 2000 the both sources: USDA and NHANES indicate, that sugar consumption went down, but the fat intake continued to rise. 

Moreover, if you had a chance to watch the 2009 video, you would hear Dr Lustig saying something different regarding the fat intake. That time he precisely said: 

"The fat is going down, sugar is going up and we are all getting sick."

This was in time when he already had access to the publicly available data of USDA indicating that the sugar intake per capita in grams went down, while fat intake went up. And this was not in relative ratio to the total energy intake as you will see later the attempt to use this tactics as well to mislead the audience. 

In 2011 the NHANES data analysis further proved that this trend was real. The sugar intake decreased while the fat has increased in grams per person. You can find the details of it on my own website with the corresponding references.

So how it was possible that although the consumption of sugar has been decreasing since 2000 the obesity and metabolic diseases kept rising? And why the doctor kept saying that sugar consumption was on the rise for the past 20  years when it was not? He was making sugar/fructose responsible as a sole factor for the constantly increasing metabolic diseases.

One more thing: The trends presented by Dr Lustig fall within about 5 years period 20 years ago. Would you consider this period of time as being representative of the long-term trends, up to the recent past, so that you would talk in the present continuous tense? I bet not.

I hope you have now realized the errors in the presented content of Dr Lustig and that these should be corrected. I do not need to have any vested interests to see and highlight this. These are the FACTS that should have been presented by him in the first place.