Asking Your Forgiveness – I’ve Been Helping You Die Early.
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I was mad last week.
I was only 1/3 through Dr. Robert Lustig’s book, “Metabolical”, at the time.
Now I’m 7/8 through.
I’m madder – with a permanent state of mad.
I’ve also discovered I owe you, dear reader, an apology.
I’ve misled you with some of my writing.
If you’ve tracked with me for a while, you’ve been subjected to a number of articles like this: What is the biggest failure in modern health? Maybe not what you think?
I’ve been pretty liberal in my use of some pretty ugly photos to draw emphasis to obesity. Like:
Well, the message with those pictures and my articles has been mostly wrong. The message has always inferred lack of personal responsibility and that obesity leads to sickness.
You can scratch that understanding if you bought into it.
Here’s the real truth, ala Dr. Lustig:
Obesity itself doesn’t make us sick. It’s what we eat that makes us sick, then we get obese, and from there we experience a cascading of diseases i.e. cancer, Type 2 diabetes, dementia, heart disease.
In Lustig’s words:
“The key to the kingdom is that it is not about obesity, it is about metabolic dysfunction and anyone can get it, and that’s what makes it a public health crisis, because obesity is a result of the problem, not the cause.
I never want to hear any of you talk about the obesity epidemic ever again, because that is the food industry’s mantra, that is what they use to obfuscate the truth, and you play right into it when you talk about it.”
I consider myself duly reprimanded. For having done that, I apologize.
I was thinking downstream when the problem is upstream.
Tobacco debacle Part Deux
Remember how big tobacco denied for years that smoking caused cancer and that nicotine wasn’t addictive although they knew otherwise. And how it took massive effort on the part of the government to unpack those lies and hold them accountable.
Even when cornered, big tobacco shifted the blame with a party line that said “nobody forces anybody to smoke. It’s a personal choice.”
Big food has borrowed the playbook.
The Centers for Health Statistics revealed that 42% of U.S. adults were obese in 2018.
Obesity was rare 40 years ago, as was Type 2 diabetes.
Our metabolic processes didn’t change in 40 years. But what we do to them has – dramatically!
It’s undeniable that it’s all about the twin evils of sugar and processed foods – and especially the sugar in processed food.
Big Food knows this and that they are killing us slowly. The facts are undeniable, the evidence overwhelming. Big Food’s scourge is equivalent to – perhaps worse than – Big Tobacco’s scourge. The party line is the same:
“It’s your fault – nobody forces you to visit Carl’s Junior. We just make what people want.”
It’s complicated.
The metabolical processes, that is.
Not the solutions.
Dr. Lusting goes into mind-boggling detail in “Metabolical” to explain the chemical processes that go on in our bodies and how they are affected by what we eat. More detail than we need and lots of hard-to-connect dots. But he brings it all together into a six-word solution for avoiding the metabolic dysfunctions that lead to obesity and other chronic conditions.
Protect the liver, feed the gut.
Tell me – how much were you taught or have you learned about the connection between the liver and what goes on in your gut (stomach and intestines)?
OK – I’ll settle for nothing. That’s where I was pre-Lustig.
Tell me – how many conversations have you had with your PCP about the connection between the liver and what goes on in your gut?
OK- zero, I get it. They never had a Lustig in medical school and aren’t motivated to take the time to learn what he knows.
“That’s upstream stuff. I’m a downstream specialist” says your PCP.
Can you imagine your PCP saying to you that your high blood pressure, or high LDL, or A1C is “foodable” rather than “druggable?”
Ain’t gonna happen.
You then begin to realize that-
-so much of this is not our fault.
We are living lab rats.
Julia Hubbell writes daily on Medium.com. She’s on this soapbox too and recently put this twist on the issue:
“You and I are living lab rats. Like it or not the world is full of people who are being fed poisonous toxins packaged as fun foods for the kids and adults alike. Every single one of us, when we choose chips over apples, sweetened cereals over plain oatmeal, Coca Cola over plain water is choosing death over life. We are poisoning our cells day by day, ingesting disease-inducing substances put into seductive packaging.”
“And all the while, we blame fat people for getting fat because they are lazy, not because specialized food scientists are paid massive sums to get us addicted, keep us addicted and utterly unable to say no to their products. We are being manipulated by Big Food to hate people for getting sick as a result of eating foods that ads convince us are harmless, even as we do terrible harm to ourselves by eating them.”
Until we get “upstream” from the problem by understanding how we inflict ourselves with metabolic dysfunction and then vote with our food purchase dollars, this destruction will continue unabated.
It’s not about the calories. It’s not about the obesity.
It’s all about the processed food – and the money that spins off of its consumption.
Dr. Lustig let’s us know just how big that is:
“The entire food industry (grocery and restaurant) grosses $1.46 trillion per year with a profit of $657 billion. Yet U.S. medical costs total $3.5 trillion per year, of which 75 percent are food-related chronic disease. Conversely, the pharma industry generates $771 billion in gross revenue annually, of which 21 percent is gross profit. One company made $19 billion in annual profit from diabetes drugs alone.
You do the math: between food and pharma, you’ve got $2.1 trillion per year going down a rathole – into shareholder pockets – while the public gets sicker and healthcare is collapsing. We lose triple what the food industry makes cleaning up their mess.
This is unsustainable. “
Let’s all get mad.
A REAL FOOD diet is more available and less expensive than we realize. We need to get “upstream” and stop being lab rats.
We’ll take a look at REAL FOOD in subsequent posts.
Chime in here. Are you able to sustain a real food diet? What is it? How do you do it? Share your thoughts. We’re all in this together.
An, endocrinologist, Lustig is plugged into our hormonal drivers behind our emotional choices. He pulls back the curtain, revealing the great and powerful OZ. Great article Gary!, And well worth lighting a fire with this fuel.
Thanks, Scott. I appreciated the conversation on this topic last week and your support of my writing. I look forward to your feedback down the road.
I’ve been trying to eat real food for a number of years now. It’s quite challenging. I hope a REAL FOOD movement begins with tips & tricks for surviving a trip to the grocery store. TYVM, Gary. I’ve requested Metabolical at my public library and am on the list to read it (for free).
Glad you are going to read the book. It’s a challenging and inspiring read. I relate to what you are saying about trying to eat real food. My wife and I struggle with it even with our above-average awareness. I’m planning to get better at it and hopefully have some things to share in this area. Thanks for commenting and for supporting the quest.
Your research for us humble readers is gratifying. Your anger for normal human beings is justifiable. And your conclusion for those of us still with a brain in our heads is clear. There is going to be a quiet revolution against Big Food, just as there was against Big Tobacco. But here’s the rub: we won’t be around to enjoy it. Therefore, the only pragmatic answer, requiring a certain amount of discipline, is to hold our noses as we walk past the processed-food and sugary-desserts sections of the store and stock up with robust assuredness at the fresh-produce sections (and fish, or whatever). There is no other way. We are here to save OUR lives, not the planet.
keep up the good work, Jeffrey
Spot-on, Jeffrey. Lustig makes the point in one of his podcasts just as you said. This will become the next tobacco but it will take 20-30 years to turn this ship. Yes, in the meantime we can cast our votes by hanging out in produce and the grocery store perimeter – and spreading the word. Thanks for your comment and insight – and for being a reader. I look forward to your feedback going forward.
You caught my interest with your article last week and I am picking up my copy at the local library tomorrow. This weeks article just has me more interested, thank you Gary!
Hey, Kim. Just a heads up – this book is heavy-duty. Lustig will overwhelm you twith metabolical detail but somehow brings it all together in an understandable fashion. I took me 3 weeks to get through it – and at least 4 yellow markers. Glad you are reading it. I look forward to your thoughts as you progress through it. Thanks for your support.
Happy new year 🎊🥳 Feliz año nuevo Gary thank you for the strong 2022 start making it a non-processed food year with your favorite fruits and vegetables combined with my 30 minutes or more of walking a lean mean 60s machine. I look forward to reading your rants and comments in 2022.
Happy New Year to you also, Phil. Thanks for chiming in. Hoping 2022 keeps you a lean, mean machine. Eat your vegetables!!