What causes obesity? Finally - he said it.

I was pleased to hear, when watching another of the repeated lectures of Dr Lustig in the video at 38:07, that sugar does contribute to the obesity but it is not THE cause of obesity. 

What it was then?

As I kept saying: french fries and potato chips are the most obesogenic food stuffs. In other words: glucose based carbohydrates accompanied with a load of fat/oil, usually cheap processed oil. 

Added sugar is just one part of the whole problem and if people have stopped eating sugar and kept eating other processed food, which is also palatable enough, they would keep gaining weight. Depletion of beneficial nutrients and consuming excess of wrong nutrients (such as omega-6) would further contribute to the metabolic issues, even without the sugar present. These metabolic issues probably would not be as prevalent as they are now but we would hardly see their complete disappearance when sugar would disappear from the diet of these people. 

However, Dr Lustig only said that sugar is not the main cause of obesity and continued with his focus on the metabolic diseases as separate issues from obesity. According his and other scientists' views, if 20% of obese people do not suffer metabolic diseases right now, obesity is not a problem, because 40% of 'normal weight' people also suffer the same metabolic issues. And you could read in another of my articles that nothing was said about the proportion of overweight within the 'normal weight' group and the the prevalence of these metabolic issues among the overweight and the truly of normal weight (up to the BMI 25). But we know today that about half of those of 'normal weight' group are actually overweight.

To keep this post short and the topic intact, I will talk more about the obesity and its consequences in the next article. But before that you may want to refer to my older article where Dr Lustig tried to dismiss the fact the obesity has been pronounced as a disease on its own by the American Medical Association. 

The difference between morbidity and mortality

I have already explained the flawed separation of the population to the obese and non-obese, wrongly claimed as NORMAL.

Here I would like to make sure that you understand this flawed claim in the whole context.

I still keep watching related videos to metabolic syndrome, where Dr Lustig participated. This time it was the video The Complete Skinny on Obesity.  At around 10:26 minute you could again hear, how 20% of obese people have normal cellular metabolism and live to a normal age.

Firstly, let me repeat: those people are metabolically normal at a given time. That does not mean they will not develop a sort of metabolic disease later.

Secondly, I accept that the BMI is not an indicator of body fat distribution and even people of normal BMI can have extra fat deposits in their abdomen - increasing the risk for metabolic diseases.

But thirdly: even people with cardiovascular disease can live to a normal age. The statistics say it all: the cardiovascular mortality in the U.S. has decreased over the decades, but it was not the case for the morbidity. The nation is sicker than ever before, it is just the pharmacological and medical advancements that were able to manage the diseases and keep people alive with various conditions. Does that mean people are healthier? Not at all.

I agree that obesity goes with gaining these metabolic diseases and appears as a marker. However, we should not get mislead by saying that obesity does not matter. It makes it worse for 80% of the population suffering clinical obesity, affecting their health by other means than only the metabolism: they suffer sleep apnea, ache in ankles or knees, breathlessness and other physiological consequences of excess body fat. ON top of that, extra adipose tissue of any kind is prevalent among more than half of those with a 'NORMAL' weight, they are just not (yet) obese. Interestingly, almost half of these also suffers metabolic disturbances.