1KHO 706: Held Hostage By the Food Industry | Dr. Robert Lustig, Metabolical

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen It's never gonna beat this view Oh, it's a beautiful world And I just wanna share it with, I just wanna share it with you It's a beautiful world Such a beautiful world Oh Welcome to the 1000 hours outside podcast My name is Ginni Rich and the founder of 1000 hours outside And I possibly have never been more excited to have a podcast guest today Dr. Robert Lustig welcome Thank you for having me Ginni Very pleased to be here I read your book, Fat Chance Back in 2015 And then have most recently read Metabolical and the Hacking of the American Mind Which at Metabolical I learned about in a book by Vani Hari called Food Lies And I remember when I saw the title I was like such a brilliant title like Metabolical That's what it makes me think about But these books are absolutely fantastic I think a must read for any family And you have got just such an extensive history I would love for you to talk about You know because we were just talking about how So many people and I would say myself included Like I just haven't really done all that much with my life And I read your you know your backstory And you like majored in nutritional biochemistry at MIT Then you went to Cornell And then you worked as a pediatric endocrinologist You got into the obesity field in 1995 Currently you're the co-founder of so many businesses You're helping with school lunches And I mean everything from school lunches to these New York Times bestselling books And it's just such an extensive thing So would you talk about And then you talked about how you're like Dissecting rep brains for however many years And I mean I'm really impressed And I think that even just reading it You're like gosh I should do a little bit more with my life But could you give us a little bit of your history You're growing up eating Salisbury steak TV dinners And you become this incredible voice about eating real food Well so first of all Thank you I'm not sure I'm a whole lot different from anybody else I just have I have some fish to fry And I mean that both figuratively and literally I'm trying to fix the world's food supply Now the question is how did I come to that specific directive And the answer is The data brung me The science brought me here I did not come out thinking I was going to be a firebrand Or you know a flame thrower Or a you know a public health advocate That was not how I started out I started out wanting to be a pediatrician taking care of kids And I very specifically wanted to be a pediatrician As opposed to an adult physician Because when you see an adult who's smoking What do you think They shouldn't they shouldn't smoke Well they shouldn't it's their fault Okay? Right Now we know a lot about addiction now But back in those days You know back in the 1970s You saw somebody smoking And you basically said you know it's their fault You can't do that to a kid You can't Ascribe blame to a child So from a moral standpoint It is much easier to take care of a child Than it is to take care of an adult Because every child deserves an equal shot And what I came to realize through my research And through all everybody else's research Is that kids today Don't get an equal shot In fact they don't get a shot at all And you know it You know Behooved me to try to help do something about that For the benefit of children And that's why I became a pediatrician And how I fell into the obesity field Is actually You know I majored in nutrition in college And then I went to medical school And they beat it out of me You know every time I asked a nutrition question I got hissed by the rest of the class You know like you know Oh there goes lustig again And you know the professors would say That's not how we take care of patients And you know I was paying good money And you know I should learn how to do it Quote right Unquote And so I basically deep-sixed my nutritional knowledge For over 20 years After you know during med school and residency and fellowship And then I started researching obesity And why I had learned about an area of the brain That controls hormones called hypothalamus And I learned that if you damaged the hypothalamus You become massively obese And no one understood why So this is form of obesity is called hypothalamus obesity And I started working at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital In Memphis, Tennessee, the pediatric cancer hospital And they had a stable cadre of 40 kids Who would survive their brain tumors Only to become massively obese And you can be very sure That because these kids were normal weight before the brain tumor And became massively obese After the brain tumor That it wasn't their fault That there had to be a biochemical reason for their weight gain And so I knew enough about how the brain worked And how it you know sent Nerves to the pancreas To release insulin And I said well let's try to stop the insulin Release on these kids And we gave them a drug that suppressed insulin release And guess what They started losing weight But more importantly they started exercising spontaneously And this told me Obesity is not behavioral, it's biochemical And I have since parlayed that concept Into not just a career But you know the ability to discern What kind of obesity anybody has Because there are many different Reasons for obesity, many different pathologies And each one requires a different therapy Uh-huh There are uh you know Public health implications And then of course The question is well what's driving it in the general population And it turned out the answers The food And so I have dedicated my retirement To trying to solve the world's food supply Yeah And that's how I got here Yeah And you talk about how you know for the kids I don't have tumors You're like I know this works because They would come in and then we would switch to real food And it would solve so many of their problems I want to read just a bit of what you wrote Such a great writer This passage is from the hacking of the American mind He said I became a pediatrician in part To relive and help challenge the wonder and delight Involved in growth We were all children once Like you more chances than not My great my greatest moments of happiness During childhood have stuck with me Until this day Continue to bring a smile And sometimes even a tear Childhood is a time of mind expansion Not just in knowledge but in experimentation In inquisitiveness In trying out new concepts and strategies Childhood is supposed to be a time When the balloon of happiness sores high above the mundane The tools for the trade for most kids We're peanut butter sandwich, a bicycle And a bedtime story But our health is really declining And so what you write about helps families It helps children I would love to talk about this Language that you use which I think is so helpful Where you say A lot of what you say is like About the drugs that we take And you're like well there Those are just dealing with symptoms Drugs don't treat chronic disease They only treat symptoms And so you talk about how there are these eight sub Subcellular pathologies That are not drugable Oh this is great vocabulary for someone who Maybe doesn't understand all of the background But like this really helps you understand You can't fix it by drugs You can maybe deal with the symptoms It's not drugable But it is this is the way to use Foodable And now of the eight Five of them you could help with exercise But all of them You could help by switching to real food Only real food works is what you write So can you talk at a high level People can pick up metabolic to read in more detail But these intercellular processes that have gone awry So you know the question is What is causing all of this chronic disease Here's a way to look at it Each of us has been imbued By God Basically our birthright With a shiny new cherry red corvette And our job Over the course of our lifetime Is to keep that shiny cherry red corvette In perfect working order Less to become a gelopy That is the charge of life Keeping that corvette in perfect working order Bad thing is you have to do it Without a warranty and without an owner's manual So you have to understand What it takes to keep that shiny red corvette In perfect working order without an owner's manual And that's why I wrote the book Metabolical Is to explain the eight pathologies That basically turn that corvette into a gelopy That turn your body into You know breaks your health And when it all comes down to it I can sum it up in one word mitochondria Mitochondria, the energy burning factories inside yourselves But they are way more than that That's what you learn in you know 10th grade biology But it's much more than that But if you make your mitochondria work right The eight pathologies Pretty much all get better Now what are the eight pathologies I'll use the car analogy because I like You know because people know about cars They don't know about medicine Glacation would be like Carbon deposits on your intake manifolds Oxidated stress would be like rusting Both of the chassis and of the body mitochondrial dysfunction would be like having a defective transmission Insulin resistance would be like having Sticky carburetors So when you step on the pedal instead of going Room, room, you go put put Membrane integrity would be like having Rout of fuel lines Inflammation would be like having a fire under your hood Literally Methylation would be like having defective spark plugs So instead of driving a V6 you're driving a V2 And finally Autophagy would be like having oil sludge Yeah If you were the owner of this shiny red corvette You would pay attention To all of those things To keep it in perfect working order But you are the owner of a shiny red corvette And you're not paying attention to what's happening inside your body And so the question is how do you do that So the way you figure that out is you actually look at those eight pathologies And what drives them and it turns out they're all driven by problem food Right Whether it's carbohydrate, fructose, lack of fiber, lack of omega-3s gluten You know frequent feeding Etc There are host of different reasons why these different things happen But they're almost all Due to food And so if you fix the food You fix the Technologies that's why they're all Foodable now the question is They all end up at the mitochondria at some point all eight of these Are there any medicines that fix the mitochondria and the answers? No There are not Medicines don't get to the mitochondria actually as it turns out There is one and it's new And we're starting to experiment with it and this may end up being a very great boon To mankind and I'm excited about it and I will just leave it at that Okay, it was if it turns out to be true You know basically I'll be able to you know eat my words and take back everything I said on this podcast But right now today This is the way it is okay. Yeah, you know you can only fix it with food. There's no drug that fixes this Okay, now the question is what kind of food and the answer is real food real food gets to the mitochondria What about ultra-process food since that's what you know Americans are eating you know 62% of all the food sold in America's ultra-processed And 67% of the food that kids eat is ultra-processed Does ultra-process food get to the mitochondria? Well, unfortunately ultra-process food actually inhibits mitochondrial function Closer than mitochondria to not work well So if you're making mitochondria not work well then guess what those eight pathologies All manifest themselves and you are on your way to jolabi That's that's what I try to explain in Metabolical And it's so good because Well, you understand then that what's happening is the drugs are just there for symptoms And they're not ever going to actually fix the problem and the exercise is only going to help five of these things respond Only real food works. So it's incredibly important to understand Because you talk about how the hidden business model of big pharma is to turn one drug in too many and that's what's happening There's all this money that's going into research a trillion dollars into stout ends all this money and Now we got gel p1's you know, it's uh, yeah, I mean bottom line is I'm not against drugs But if somehow you think Taking the drug is going to solve your problem You got another thing coming I got a bridge to sell you Yeah, yeah, you wrote modern medicine is a racket Yeah This is such a fun announcement to make wool bikes is officially the 2026 bike partner of 1000 hours outside and if you've been around here long enough, you know That's not a casual partnership We care deeply about the tools that help families reclaim childhood and womb is doing exactly that womb is founded by two dads and a Vienna garage who simply couldn't find a bike that actually fit their kids So they built one and what makes womb different is that they don't start with engineering they start with empathy Every part of the bike from the lightweight frame to the brakes size perfectly for small hands is designed to help kids feel capable and confident In a screen dominated world bikes are more than bikes. 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I go and talk about it nobody wants to talk about it Only only a small percentage of medical schools are even teaching nutrition So they don't spend any time on it But the sentence of seeing a doctor is actually the cause of these chronic diseases is a huge statement Well here's the problem 80% of medical education is underwritten by big pharma They do not want you to know this because if you knew this they wouldn't sell as many drugs And you wouldn't prescribe as many drugs you might actually prescribe prevention through food If you knew it, but no doctor knows it The only reason i know it is because i learned it in college before i went to medical school So if you didn't major in nutrition in college You know and you go through medical school What do you expect? And if you ask a doctor well, you know how do you use nutrition in your practice? And i'll say well, you don't i don't know how Because they never learned it The question is is that okay and the answer of course is no But that's the state of You know medicine today. We're trying to fix that Yeah medicine 1.0 was like leeches You know a copy and stuff like that medicine 2.0 was you know the advent of antibiotics and you know basically the drug revolution You know the started in the 1940s through you know present day But medicine 3.0 is basically preventative and where the patient has to do a lot of the work Because the doctor doesn't even understand it Yeah, and that's where we are today And so i'm trying to you know do my Uh, you know best to try to educate the public About what it is they need to understand and know about medicine To help fix their own problems And you explain it there's a lot of pressure here to go with the flow You wrote doctors are sheet mini doctors follow the herd of other doctors and there's good reason If you don't follow the medical guidelines you get a lousy evaluation on health grades Which is an online company that evaluates physicians and gives them a number score And the hospital medical board will then investigate you and can revoke your privileges and you give examples A people who went on trial they're gonna come with something different They're gonna come with something that goes against big pharma you're like big pharma is funding some of the schools So they don't want that and it's actually i mean to have to go on trial to Yeah, help to actually help people. I mean that's a really big deal It is absolutely crazy Yeah, the good news is that all three of the People that I talk about are still standing The ones that I reference in the book are still standing and you know They have beaten their the rap as it were And appropriately so because you know they have the data they they they showed That in fact the nutritional Education they were trying to give their patients in the lieu of you know medications actually was effective But why should they have to go through that in the first place and why is medicine And by the way diatetics so slow in adopting the idea That food is medicine now here's the problem with that statement Food can be medicine food can also be poison and the question is how do you figure out which is which Now I will tell you It's hard for the uninitiated to know which is which and the reason is because the food industry tells you that ultra-process food is food Question is is that true? Is ultra-process food food just because they say it Just because it's consumable Doesn't make food you call it poison Well, I do and for good reason because I have the data I have the data to show it So in order to answer that question you have to know what's the definition of food And if you look it up in the dictionary you can do it right now if you want I've done it and I've memorized it Okay, the definition of food is substrate that contributes to either the growth or burning of an organism It's exactly right Websters got it exactly right substrate that contributes to either growth or burning of an organism Okay, so let's take that apart Growth turns that ultra-process food actually inhibits growth Inhibits long bone growth and inhibits Trebecular bone growth and inhibits cortical bone growth inhibits canceless bone growth Basically if you subject to rat-tultra-process food They don't grow and now we have data on um third world countries where ultra-process food is given and it causes stunting of growth in those people as well so Inhibits growth What about burning so everybody says well their calories so calories get burned well do they They get burned when your mitochondria work But what if you what if the food actually makes you mitochondria not work We have data now to show that ultra-process food in specifically the molecule fructose which I've focused on You know it's kind of my hobby horse because you know we got the data Proctor's turns out to actually be a dose dependent mitochondrial toxin it makes mitochondria work less well So it generates less of the energy that your cell needs to power itself that energy the chemical energy that The mitochondria make is called ATP Adenazine triphosphate which you also learned in test grade biology and then promptly forgot about But you know ATP is the currency of the cell and the currency of the human Okay, and if you don't make ATP get sick just that simple Well, if you're eating stuff that poisons mitochondria so you make less ATP. Guess what you get sick It's that simple. It really is that simple So the goal is to eat stuff That goes to mitochondria makes you mitochondria work better not worse Yeah, and the what does that real food Real food goes back to real food process food you write uniquely feeds cancer growth And then in the hacking of the American mind process food is no different from any other substance of abuse and hacking over the American mind You talk about how we've traded Pleasure for happiness and that pleasure got cheap And so a lot of these substances of abuse used to be scarce and now they're everywhere and a few of us know how to attain Contentment it's like you really run the gamut of Fixing your health, but also how do I live a good life like how do I live a life that I really want to have and not be taken in By these different addictions So back to the medicine too. I think it's something to be aware of is that there's now drug-resistant bacteria You are current crop of antibiotics is coming close to being useless add to that the fact that viral diseases are now even more dangerous and harder to control Than bacteria ever were so it's a lot to be aware of as a parent this stuff matters for the health of your child So I would love to talk about the big sugar. Okay. This is super interesting. I didn't know this at all I would have thought and I've read some of the things like there's a book called propaganda Where they started to sell all this processed food, but before you think Before that was the cigarettes So you wrote one might assume that big sugar learned its tricks from big tobacco. Here's what you write Actually, it's the other way around indeed. Can you explain that? We have the data. It started in 1943 Okay, you know in the fifties tobacco started basically denying That it was bad for you because the Richard doll a Physician in Britain first put Tobacco with lung cancer together back in the fifties actually turns out probably Are the Argentinian doctors knew this back in the 1930s? But it didn't kind of get into English speaking countries for a while So doll wrote this very famous paper that appeared in 1950 about cigarette smoking and cancer Now turned out that in fact there were executives from the sugar industry who actually went to the tobacco industry And said here's how you deal with this problem Wow one guy's name was Robert Hawket and you know to my great dismay he was a professor at MIT You know, this is you know I love MIT, but you know I went to school there. I give money But this was not their shining moments now they've had a few other not not shining moments lately to like the Epstein business but um, you know the fact is The the sugar industry actually had to suppress you know negative publicity about their product and they used that you know how they did that to actually help the tobacco industry Oh my goodness, and this has been going on for so long you wrote the food industry knows what it's doing It's creating a market to profit off the misery of others And then you had there was a section and I have so many notes on this book But you went through with like all the different industries and it was like there's the food industry and there's the chemical industry And then I mean you throw the government how do they make money? Well, they make money off all the tariffs from all of the Process foods that are sold outside of the country and you're like Everyone is in on it and the answer here is real food you in the book you talk about the calories and calories out myths That calories are the industry shield. That's how they hide from culpability And that helps you also understand the zero calorie myths Which I learned from this woman named Dr. Kate Chanahan It was like well anytime your body tastes something sweet. It releases insulin And I didn't know that you know, you think of zero calories. It's like nothing And that's not true Not true In fact Diet sweeteners have not resulted in weight loss Otherwise everybody be on them Um that they do not result in weight loss In that now it is true. They don't have fructose, you know my you know, those dependent mitochondria toxin That's true They don't have calories. That's also true. I don't disagree with that But the fact of matter is they do other stuff instead So what the diet sweeteners do they do two things that you know That are relevant one is they tell the brain sugars coming Even though sugar's not coming, but they through the tongue the tongue doesn't can't discern The difference it knows something sweet's there And so it sends a message to the brain sugars coming Get ready to release the insulin and then the brain sends the information to the pancreas like You know those kids with the hypothalamic obesity we started with okay. That's the pathway From the brain to the pancreas release the insulin and so you end up releasing the insulin anyway Even though it wasn't calories even though it wasn't fructose even though it wasn't sugar Okay, and the insulin drives energy into fat anyway So it drives obesity irrespective of its calories The second thing it does is Those diet sweeteners at least several of them not all of them, but several of them alter the microbiome alter the bacteria in the intestine and create this phenomenon which we now call leaky gut Where the gut supposed to be a barrier against the stuff in it so it doesn't get into your bloodstream There's all that stuff will be inflammatory But when you have leaky gut now that stuff is inflammatory and it gets in and causes First gut inflammation then systemic inflammation and systemic inflammation is one of the drivers of chronic metabolic disease So even though These diet sweeteners don't have calories don't have fructose They're dangerous all by themselves Because it's not about calories in calories in about Yeah Calories are the industry shield. It's how they hide from culpability You're you have this mantra in here protect the liver feed the gut and you wrote that if you don't feed your microbiome Or you're doing things like this like with the the diet products You wrote your microbiome will feed on you it will literally chew up the layer that protects your intestinal And I don't even know how to pronounce the words, but these intestinal epithelial cells Yeah, it will feed on you So you have to feed your gut and processed food Stards it and then you wrote this is it you're gonna learn so much read both books a happy gut Means a happy you and that's what we want we want to have happy kids We want to have happy gut you talk about how real food is good for the planet you talk about the cost here That even just like short-term and long-term costs that all of this matters But I would love to talk about the children because this is what you what you worked with children for so many years and a lot of parents listen in So here's what you say Public schools are the biggest Food franchise operation in the world Indeed and they have no official limit for sugar they beat the pants off McDonald's Wendy's burger king all put together Wow There are more public schools and there are fast food restaurants in America And you know what are they selling or what are they providing fighting ultra-process food that's because that's what's cheap and storeable Yeah, and the fact is you know our kids are suffering because of it Everybody wants to know why you know kids grades are going down. This is why everyone wants to know why kids are getting obese This is why everybody wants to know why kids are getting type 2 diabetes. This is why fatty liver diseases. This is why so How do you fix that? Well, here's the problem In 1971 the Department of Health Health Education and Welfare H.E.W Precursor to the Department of Education passed a resolution called resolution 242 and what this said was that cafeteria's inside public schools have to make book They have to basically cover their costs They cannot be a loss leader for the school. They can their losses cannot be folded into the general cafeteria in general school budget Okay, they had to basically fend for themselves. There's what this thing said now What was the reason for this? Money yeah, just It's only about it's all going back to money always I always goes back to money That's always the reason for everything money Okay, so this was a way to try to you know keep the money from flowing out Well this sent of Food Service directors around the country you know scurrying you know to try to figure out how they're going to solve this And in walks our mark and in walks Guggenheim and in walks Cisco and in walks McDonald's and in walks pizza hot Etc. Or et cetera, and they go to the you know food service director. Hey look, you know What was the most expensive thing about running your operation Persona The lunch ladies, okay, they cost the most okay, so What if we supply you with a quote nutritious Unquote because you know who's to say what's nutritious nutritious hot meal every single day and You can fire all the lunch ladies better yet better yet You can take the food preparation facilities in your school where you would make the food and you could Turn those into new classrooms, which you're gonna need wow Which was really their goal always in the first place because as soon as you get rid of the food preparation facilities Now you're hostage to the food industry for the rest of your life You have no choice You sure are so basically that supplied them with 50 years worth of you know big bucks To you know quote feed our children except they're not feeding them food. They're feeding them poison So the question is how can you fix that? How do you undo that? So that's why we started a our nonprofit called eat reel And you can find it online at eatreal.org And what we do is We develop business models For different school districts around the country because every school district has their own challenges And so every school district needs something a little bit different And we basically help train the people in that district on how to procure Serve market real food in schools K to 12 Okay, and it turns out when you actually know what you're doing and how to do it It ends up being cheaper than buying it from Guggenheim in Ironmark and McDonald's a pizza and you don't have to hire all the lunch ladies Although you do have to have a food preparation facility So you may have to Either buy an abandoned warehouse or you know some other You know edifice you know and convert it and you know into a food preparation facility You know that would then serve that entire district And that's how we got started and we are now Serving servicing one million students all right States are in 20 states All right, Dr. Lustig All right, that's incredible eat reel.org. I'll make sure I'll put the link in the show notes you are the co-founder and chief medical officer What I want to talk about your other businesses in just a moment as well But it reminds me of there's this farmer. He's my favorite farmer. His name is Joel Saladin And he was born in the mid-1950s, which I know because he's the same age as my dad So he would have been going to school you know in the 1960s and he told me this story about how He's a farmer and he grew up on a farm and you know he's trying to make money. He's like a real good entrepreneur even as a kid And he sold the school district that he went to his eggs His eggs and he would bring his eggs in from his farm and the lunch lady would make them for lunch That was in the 60s and so so interesting This resolution 242 in 1971 changes everything now public schools are the biggest Food franchise operation in the world you all talk about hospitals look at the quality of food and hospitals Can we talk about even younger than school age? Well, I want to read this more and more young people are developing metabolic syndrome earlier Adolescents with metabolic syndrome demonstrate cognitive decline and greater impulsivity. So this really matters for our school-age kids You're talking about how these diseases that were only for adults are showing up for kids and in large numbers But then before school age and you also talk about in you to row And breastfeeding Galactose never talked about galactose. That's a great word Can you talk about what parents need to know if they're thinking about having children if they're currently pregnant? How does the process food affect those early early years? Right So people think that the percenta is a barrier between the mother and the kid And that the kid because of the percenta at whatever the mother is exposed to the kids not garbage Yeah, garbage now the percenta is a barrier. I'm not gonna argue that that is true But it lets all sorts of stuff in and so what mother is exposed to And it can be through her food or can be through her skin can be you know other stuff, you know watching breathe Okay, ultimately gets to the fetus as well and can affect mitochondrial function in the fetus And so the question is wow. How do we basically get mothers? Healthier so that they can deliver healthier babies And so that's what metabolical is about because as soon as you do that from pregnant mothers you've done it for everybody Because a lot of mothers don't know their pregnant till much later anyway So ultimately we have to fix the environment We have no choice but to fix the environment and that's really what metabolical is about Now what happens to be to fetuses? Well turns out fructose this sweet molecule and sugar the molecule That's addictive the molecule that we seek it is a dose dependent mitochondrial toxin like I talked about before It was always assumed that fructose does not cross the placenta Oh, yes, it does The reason why we thought that it didn't cross the placenta is because the glued five transporter which is a specific protein and it's found in the liver in you know in humans Hey is not in the placenta and the glued five transporter is specific for proctor's so therefore If the glued five transporter is absent from the placenta then fructose doesn't get across the placenta that was the assumption wrong Turns out the placenta has the glued seven nine and eleven transporters which transport fructose just fine Okay, and so the fetus is a wash in whatever the mother consumed And that's causing mitochondrial dysfunction in the fetus and that is leading to fatty liver in the fetus in the fetus Babies born with fatty liver. They're also born with obesity Okay, how can a baby be born with obesity? They don't die or exercise And the answer is because baby is exposed To all sorts of things that drive out opacity What we call them environmental obisogens chemicals that induce fat cell differentiation or growth having nothing to do with calories exclusive of their caloric equivalent Things like BPA things like PFAS ionizing radiation microplastics Okay, all things you know that you know sort of baked into the cake now Okay, but food is you know the biggest Obisogen and fructose is the biggest of the of the biggest and that's the one that we could fix tomorrow if we had the political will to do so Cut out the processed foods And well the best way to get rid of the fructose is cut out the processed foods Yeah, so You know that's you know that that that's kind of how how this old goes Then there's the question of all right. What do you feed the baby once the baby's out? Yeah, right? And the answer there is well mother's milk accept People said oh if mom drinks a coke the sugar doesn't get into the breast milk. Oh, yes, it does Is sure does we enjoy my HPLC the fructose peak in the mother's milk after mom mom drank a coke All right, so mom has to actually be careful about what she consumes even You know after the baby's born Mm-hmm. So and then of course toddlerhood, you know, it is just replete with sugar everywhere and the national school breakfast program You know, which you know 29% of all children in America are consuming. I mean, what's the standard national school breakfast program breakfast? It's a bowl of fruit loops in a glass of orange juice. That's 71 sorry. That's 41 grams of sugar American Heart Association says maximum 12 grams of sugar for the whole day That's 41 grams of sugar and it's just breakfast Yeah, it's dessert. That's what you're calling it. Well, it's dessert. I mean basically You know Yeah, and we're we're consuming dessert at every meal That's right That's right fructose affects taste receptors in utero the current generation is still paying for the previous generation spaghettios That coke wasn't just the real thing for you, but for your unborn kids too This is incredibly important for parents to read what you eat when pregnant plays a large part in determining your child's future And many talk about the baby food by the time they hit six months of age 60% of US infants consume some daily added sugars after six months that number jumps to 98% It's almost every single child and then you connect it with jaw growth and sleep apnea Which we've talked actually quite a bit about on this show that like the way that you wean kids that the pacifiers the plastic nipples And you say wisdom teeth wisdom teeth are a biomarker and If you have them taken out your jaw is gonna get smaller That's gonna collapse your airway. So these are incredible books for parents to read I need three of these books all the time Because like you said this is almost I mean this is a majority of the food supply So it's like I need that reminder all the time You know and and then you connect it to the brain So insulin resistance okay not only dementia which you talked about earlier that like or it got brought up earlier about how this is affecting kids schooling Like how well are their brains working that these diseases that people used to have at really old age and We're uncommon you talked about this was a relatively rare occurrence when you were in medical school dementia and diabetes Yeah, it's a trickling lower But beyond that to be on the dementia also depression insulin resistance has been shown to be a primary cause of clinical depression Does affecting everything? Walter because depression you know we think of it as a serotonin deficiency because SSRIs are used for Uh depression right yeah, but the fact matter is only 35% of people will go on SSRIs are actually helped by them Yeah So if the if depression is serotonin deficiency, why is it that 65% of people are not helped Because it's not drugable. It's foodable. Well because there are two depressions not one Oh Just though The one is called MDD or major depressive disorder and that is for lack of a better word serotonin deficiency and the SSRIs are essential for that Class of depression and I don't argue that if you have MDD you need Persec or you know, it's all off or whatever and you know, that's that's a that's a you know Uh truth if you will But the other people who have been diagnosed with depression They don't have major depressive disorder They have something else they have something called atypical depression Now what's the difference between major depressive disorder and atypical depression Major depressive disorder is depression Atypical depression is anxiety Oh Major depressive disorder is about the past A Typical depression is about the future Anxiety is about the future Okay, they're not the same Okay They need an anxiety agent is what they need and it turns out that every state that has legalized marijuana Has seen a decline in SSRI use as the marijuana has gone up basically They've substituted one anti-anxiety agent that doesn't work for one that does And they're voting with their feet because you know the marijuana is now a legal and available to them Okay, so Anxiety is a very different disorder than depression What is anxiety turns out anxiety is about not enough energy inside brain cells Not enough ATP What caused the ATP to go down? The ultra-process food and my colleagues at sapien labs in Washington DC did a Epidemiologic study of I think 700,000 people and showed that the more ultra-process food they ate the worse their depression because it's not major depressive disorder. It's a typical depression IE anxiety IE neuro energetics not neuro transmitters Yeah, so different disorder needs a different treatment and the best treatment for a typical depression Real food real food goes back to real food always comes back to real it always comes back to real food Every single time yes you wrote real food is good for the wallet some people think real food is snobbish But you're changing you're changing this here. You're helping to change the books are phenomenal If you do not fix your foodie, right? You continue to court chronic disease and death and then You talk about how this can change quick every aspect So this was a study this one's in the hacking of the American mind where you talk about the If these people they switched to eating lower sugar meals and it says every aspect of their metabolic health improved significantly after just 10 days But so hopeful like you can change things around Absolutely, you know everyone thinks well I'm too far gone. That's absolutely not true You can reverse this the problems you can't medicate this Right the only way to fix this is by fixing the food. There are no other options Yeah, yeah, and you talked about the labels and Joel Salton that I brought up before he's got a book called Beyond Labels It's so great and he talks about how you know, well, yeah, it's gonna tell you this many calories Also, it's probably gonna be off because it doesn't have to be super accurate He's like what it doesn't tell you was was that chicken-bade then chlorine? You know like and that's what you talk about the the food processing is not listed on the label And what you really need to know is what has been done to the food you wrote what the food industry doesn't want you to know Is that all food is inherently good? It's what it's been done to the food that's bad medical metabolically talk about glyphosate Achrozyne flavor enhancers so many other things we have ain't even gotten to and so I just cannot recommend it more highly Metabolical the lure in lies of processed food nutrition and modern medicine the hacking of the American mind the science behind the corporate takeover Of our bodies and brains you talk about your wife's grandma she lived on a farm in rural Minnesota She was 101 grew her own food and she guarded and she eliminated her TV She didn't see the doctor talked about Jane Seymour You're like she's like I'm look I look so good because I've never had processed food So the amount of things that this affects is so many and the book is tremendous the books They're tremendous and there's a one called that chance So as we're wrapping it up can you tell the listeners the other You're like the chief medical officer and co-founder of several companies So can you tell them the other ones and I'll make sure I'll put it in the show notes Well, I'm the co-founder and chief medical officer of a fiber company Because fiber is the food for your bacteria And as I said if you do not feed your bacteria your bacteria will feed on you Okay, the question is Ultra-process food is fiberless food But ultra-process food's not going away as much as I hate it. It's not going away. It's got a reduced depreciation. It's got a reduced increased shelf life So reduced wastage There are a lot of advantages to ultra-process food easier easier to package, you know Doesn't go it doesn't go rancid as quickly There are a lot of reasons why ultra-process foods going to hang around whether I like it or not So we have to make our peace with it. We have to figure out Can we make ultra-process food healthy? And the answer is You can if you attend to three things Protect the liver feed the gut support the brain Those three things protect the liver feed the gut support the brain Well, there's one ingredient That does all three of those at the same time and it's called fiber So My colleagues and I have Launched a company called biolumine The product is called munch munch M-o-n-c-h Not much munch, but munch munch Yeah, and you can find it online at munch munch.shop And it is a proprietary fiber. It is a combination soluble insoluble fiber. You need both That's what real food has is both So it is a seven micron microcellular sponge You swallow it goes into your stomach Expand 70 fold over its original size because it's a sponge goes like so And when it does that you get a little feeling of fullness, but more importantly the nooks and the crannies in the sponge become obvious And then pregnant in the nooks and the crannies are a set of proprietary hydrogels soluble fiber that are chosen specifically to soak up absorbs sequester glucose fructose sucrose simple starches rendering them unavailable for early absorption Thus as they go through the intestine they don't get absorbed So that keeps your glucose response low keeps your insulin response low protects your liver so it doesn't turn the fructose into fat Which keeps your insulin sensitivity improved And because you didn't absorb it early it was further down the intestine where to the jajunum the second part of the intestine where the microbiome is And then the microbiome will chew up all that carbohydrate for its own purposes So even though you consumed it even though past your lips you actually didn't get it your microbiome did And it turned the short-chain fatty acids go up which are anti-inflammatory anti Alzheimer's And the cellulose acts like little scrubbies on the inside of the colon to get rid of colon cancer cells In other words What this fiber does is it recapitulates the effects of fiber on the food that the food industry took out fiber replacement therapy We're turning Apple juice back into apples in the intestine Okay, this is important and we have double blind placebo control data to show that this is a good thing and No side effects Okay, we did two clinical trials one in Australia one in India 125 patients Not one discontinued not one and not one complained of any side effects in fact if they had diarrhea On monchmonech they didn't if they had bloating on monchmonech they didn't if they had pain on monchmonech they didn't if they had constipation on monchmonech They didn't We actually regressed all their GI problems to the mean because We're giving the intestine what it wants fiber replacement therapy How cool is that it's so cool dr. Lestic wow that's only another one. There's eat real. There's biolumine There's one for Alzheimer's Yes, we have to start an Alzheimer's prevention company called snap recall and Basically we are trying and succeeding in Diagnosing Alzheimer's before any cognitive decline three years before any changing cognitive function and then being able to Figure out what to do to turn it around before people suffer Wow, wow and there's food procurement Yeah, and that's called perfect and you can find that online at perfect.co And what that does is that goes to your grocery store and basically filters out all of the food that's bad for you Wow Are you just so impressed with yourself? No, you should be no because I haven't fixed any problems yet. Oh, I think so working on it But I haven't I haven't fixed anything yet if you look at the obesity rates If you look at the diabetes rates if you look at the you know heart disease rates if you look at the cancer rates and the dementia rates in this country Okay, they continue to go up Yeah, I'm working on it, but until I see changes. I'm not I'm not declaring victory Yeah, but there are individuals that you are helping tremendously the books are phenomenal. I appreciate that Stacter elastic what in honor we always end our show circling very back to the beginning about childhood What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside? Oh boy Favorite memory from my childhood, huh? Gotta think about that Um, I guess going with my parents To Jones Beach in Long Island and Swimming in the in the ocean Um, and I remember my mother saying You can't go in the water because you just take that ice cream And as it turns out that was a crock of hui And I always knew it was a crock of hui, but um, you know, I was a kid That's so amazing that you said that because that's like such a thing people say all the time So you ended it with an incredible piece of information to dr. Lestic. Thank you for saying yes Thank you for these incredible books all the extra work that you're doing It's an honor of a lifetime to get this chance to talk with you. My pleasure. Thanks very much for having me Jenny Get outside open your eyes feel that sunshine kissing your skin. Oh your worries out to the wind Climbs some trees skin your knees feel that grass on your feet again Get out there and take you to Oh Feel Ain't nothing on the screen. It's ever gonna be this you Oh And I just want to share with I just want to share with you It's beautiful Such a beautiful world