A New Svelte Dr. Robert Lustig
I get endless shit over being a friend of Jimmy Moore.
Let it stink.
I’m also a fan of Dr. Robert Lustig.
Go pound a pound of sugar.
Way back when, Dr. Bob (I hope he hates that) came on the scene with this, blogged in 2009: Dr. Robert Lustig on Fructose: “Alcohol without the buzz”. I can’t even account for how much shit he got from all those out there looking to get Attention By Picking Nits (“ABPN”). ABPN is an ancient disorder whereby, people seek to pretend to have created values greater than those created by the (typically prominent) subject value creator, by means of picking at nits.
OK, I just made that up.
But I like Lustig. I can’t help it, and it’s in spite of the fact that when I spoke with him face to face at AHS11, he looked so very condescendingly at me when I mentioned fasting as part of my own truc. Oh, well. Nobody’s perfect.
Anyway, if he’s following his own advice, it appears to be working.
Lustig
There’s a PBS program premiering tonight, Oct 18: SWEET REVENGE: TURNING THE TABLES ON PROCESSED FOOD. You can find out about it here.
Beyond that, I learned of this new film, Fed Up. Believe I’ll rent and watch that tonight.
11 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
1k
118k
40
45
8k
780
I do not like dr.Lustig.
In a way he makes think of a softer and
sugary(ha!) version of nazi/fanatic medecin.
In another, i abhor men(women) who preach
unproved, unattested and untasted in long terms
diets, abstention of major source of calories that has been with humanity for a while.
<A bit of personal history, i will not use mine as it comes it is a way shorter then the three i got at hand.
At he age of 40, at list 10 days ago i use to have 3
living grand parents. All of them living in a country with mediocre health system. One of my grandfathers died a week ago. Stomach cancer.
Out of the blue. Or not.
Years ago he was misdiagnosed for gout and he went wholeheartedly for the diet, sort of a self punishment as i see it as he just had lost my grand ma. From rich on veggies, grain, meat, fat, pickles,
he suddenly went to bland, sad and unappetizing
meals. He wasn't eating enough due to the boring food, losing energy, taking more pills and damn.
My other grandfather on other hand. 85, broke a hip a year ago, climbing a tree. He eats his heart of.
And he eats suger. To be honest , older he gets , more
sugar he eats. Ice cream and cakes. And his energy
puts me to shame.
So, yeah.. all these gurus, all these greedy illuminated idiots who in few years will change songs and forget to even excuse their self for the insane harm they have done to million of people,
why don't you shut the fuck up?
As for you Richard, your ranting is a state of art and artists are above the law, always curious to read you plus your nutritional ideas and advices are
pretty much the best around the block.
I don’t quite dislike Lustig, but I do roll my eyes at his purist proselytizing.
Is there too much refined, micronutrient-bereft sugar in the average modern western diet? Of course there is. So just say that, for Christ’s sake. Don’t call it “poison”…that’s a stupid exaggeration, and one that insults everyone else’s intelligence.
Another noteworthy lesser point was when I heard him tell Jimmy Moore on a podcast interview that “government has to fix this problem [of obesity, bad diet, and so on].” Guess what, Bobby. Government won’t fix it. Government created it. You’ll fit in better throwing a big state pep rally over in Europe.
“abstention of major source of calories that has been with humanity for a while.” If you are referring to sugar, that would be the stupidest thing I have read on the intertubes today.
*svelte
What kind of person gives you shit for being Jimmy Moore’s friend?
In Denise’s talk, she mentioned people on the Rice Diet eating upwards of 400 grams of table sugar. How would Lustig explain the positive results of eating sugar excessive amounts of sucrose? I’m not advocating eating that much table sugar, but if sugar (or specifically fructose) is poison, 400grams should have caused significant problems.
Don’t know what Lustig would say but my own guess is that it indicates that high fat along with high sugar is more harmful than either one being high with the others being very low. I doubt either is a good idea long term.
I wonder if this is the same diet I was on for a few months a couple years ago (it sucked mad dick… can I say that here?). From what I remember of it, the diet plan allowed only up to 3 servings of fruit a day.
I think it is 100g of sugar 400 calories, though it sounds like some added a lot more.
Hi Richard. It seems that the more I follow the paleo/primal thing, and the microbiome, the more I think that it’s easy to confuse the cause for the symptoms, and that the true answer is more about taking the right perspective. Part of me feels like modern diet health problems really may just hinge on nutrients, fiber, probiotics, and healthy fats. While gluten seemed to be a great boogeyman, and now perhaps some macronutrient combination of sugar/fat, it still seems empty to me to focus too much on the type of food as the cause rather than symptom. While what we choose to eat acts as the mechanism to bring us back to good health, more and more I feel like it’s really the wrong thing to focus the blame on which a lot of people like Dr Lustig, Dr. McDougall, Jimmy Moore, and the like are doing.
Watching an old AHS video from Chris Masterjohn really hit me in that he kept saying something to the effect that whatever is causing us to overeat is creating an imbalance of energy in our cells, and the *symptoms* of that imbalance are insulin resistance and higher triglycerides in our blood. But what keeps going over in my head is when he said “whatever it is that is causing us to overeat..”. It seems easy to blame the macronutrient for the energy imbalance, or an offending plant protein for causing the disease, but something about that just feels wrong to me now.
What seems to make more sense to me these days is that the digestable nature of processed foods may have the greatest negative effect than the macronutrient content. Maybe the processing does reduce the micronutrients somewhat, but maybe the nutrients being absorbed directly by our bodies is the real problem. In other words, it’s not the combination of sugar and fat, but simply just not enough vegetable (and animal) fiber. Maybe the inability to receive nutrients processed by our microbiota is really what causes us to overeat. Kind of a like a giant systemic Catch-22. We simply create the environment by eating highly digestible food, starving our microbiota that causes them to signal to us to then crave more food that we overeat. It’s the process of the microbes pushing for us to get whatever the hell they can get a hold of, which isn’t much because our bodies are getting the bulk of the kill. Maybe the problem with sugar/fat and gluten is just that they happen to be there in front of us.
By tying the macronutrient composition to the cause of modern degenerative disease, are we really just pissing into the wind? Are we really blaming the horse for leaving our shitty barn?
PS. I can’t tell if that whole rambling rant was me just stating the obvious or not. Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. I realize it’s not the entire answer, but it’s the perspective of blaming the food we eat versus treating it as a symptom of the imbalance. In other words, yes quality counts, but maybe we just need to focus more on what to add rather than what to take away.
I just watched the program earlier today. Quite liked it. Basic message: real food.