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. 

Sugar before a meal - why people eat more afterwards?

At 31:20 minute of the video Dr Lustig repeats his usual 'soda before meal' scenario. Note it is not a 'fructose before meal' scenario. It is sugar on virtually empty stomach and then the child eats more than if it received nothing or just water. How is that possible? 

You hear him saying that the brain did not notice those 150 kcal of energy. Why is that? 

You could hear before that glucose stimulates satiety receptors in the brain while fructose does not and that was the reason why people consumed more food. Let me just remind you that the sugar is consisting of: 50% fructose and 50% glucose.  

Now, try to answer my question: why the brain did not notice the 75 kcal of glucose energy that drove insulin levels up? Not mentioning that about half of fructose is also converted to glucose in the liver, especially when not in a fed state, which was exactly this scenario. Another reminder: in a fasted state, a large portion of consumed carbohydrate, especially glucose, is converted to glycogen since its stores are depleted after overnight fast. If there was only several hours gap between the meals, this is not the case. So, depending on the length of time between two meals, the insulin response to carbohydrate will be different. But let's say, the hours were only few and after consumption of soda drink there was an adequate insulin response in the body.

What do we have the insulin for? The body synthesizes the insulin to enable glucose entering the insulin mediated transport proteins and metabolic pathways so that the glucose concentration in the blood can be maintained at narrowly regulated levels. Higher levels cause the damage of various tissues while low levels cause fatigue or even a diabetic coma, sometimes leading to death. 

Now let's put all these things together: at least 75 kcal of glucose triggered early release of insulin because from the sweetened drinks we get the sugars into the blood quite quickly. The insulin cleared up the glucose from the blood stream, reducing the blood glucose to probably even a lower level than it was before drinking the beverage. Are you surprised that the child felt hungrier when it entered the fast food outlet and got the food in front of it? This is exactly the mechanism and the reason why the carbohydrate rich diet based on processed carbs (with a high glycaemic index) makes people fail at weight loss - their spikes in blood glucose followed by spikes of insulin make them like on a metabolic roller-coaster with repeated hunger pangs during the day. And this applies not only on sugar but also on starch. 

IT IS THE GLUCOSE then, not fructose.

The blame to be put on fructose is only in that it makes food sweeter and more appealing on our taste buds, especially when it is accompanied with fat and salt on top of it as are the notoriously known high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) foods. The studies have demonstrated that people consume significantly more food when containing these three substances in the right amounts then if the food was less processed. Food industry, for the sake of profits, has put a huge effort in designing such desirable food products that make people eating too much of it and to buy it again. 

Yes, Dr Lustig also mentioned the hormone ghrelin, saying that glucose brings this hunger hormone down whereas fructose does not. Did he forget what he said a minute ago - what the drink was sweetened with? SUGAR, not fructose or glucose only. Why the at least 75 kcal of sugar did not suppress the ghrelin? I think he mismatched two different kinds of studies of which some examined the effect of pure fructose on further food food intake and compared to pure glucose, and when listening further he actually referred to these studies. In that case yes, the data show this effect: fructose does not suppress a hunger hormone ghrelin. But the drinks were sweetened with SUGAR - half fructose and half glucose. Why the glucose did not suppress the hunger? 

Maybe it did for a while, until the insulin did its job, making the hunger even worse afterwards. Did they measure that? I do not think so. 

Hence this is just another example of manipulating the minds of people who do not have a sufficient knowledge to question such claims. Wake up!

Fast food nation = fat nation

After I showed an example of how people easily lose weight when ditching takeaways, arguing that it is more rich in fat than sugar, I experienced a deja-vu when found this image online: 

I remember seeing this in the Metro papers several years ago and kept it in mind every time when I faced the situation of having takeaway. Can you see sugar anywhere? And if there is some - how much? 

If you could not read the text, those glasses which look like wine represent amount of FAT in each of those selected takeaways. 

Moreover, this kind of food is not only rich in fat, it is also rich in starch (glucose) calories, whether from the fries, pizza dough, rice or fat laden breading of the fried cod. Little or no vegetables other than potatoes. You can find only minor amount of sugar/fructose in there, if any. And when it comes to soda, many people, especially obese ones, reach for a diet version. Yet they do not seem to get slimmer and I do not wonder why.