Dhru Purohit Show - Why Calories Aren’t the Full Story and How Fructose Drives Weight Gain with Dr. Robert Lustig

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and Vivobarefoot. A calorie is a calorie, right? Wrong. This myth that refuses to die keeps people from getting and staying healthy, as well as losing weight and keeping it off. The current thinking is as long as we burn more calories than we consume, we will lose weight. But thinking that losing weight is all about energy balance or calories in/calories out vastly oversimplifies the truth. To make matters worse, the food industry and government agencies perpetuate this lie and actually rely on you believing it to stay afloat.  On today’s mini-episode, Dhru sits down with Dr. Robert Lustig to talk about why calories aren’t the full story when it comes to weight loss, the real dangers of eating too much sugar, and how to take better care of our metabolic health. Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist with expertise in metabolism, obesity, and nutrition. He’s the Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. He is also one of the leaders of the current “anti-sugar” movement that is changing the food industry, in part through his game-changing books. His latest work is Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine.   In this episode we dive into:   -The calorie myth  -The connection between fructose and metabolic disease -The biggest sources of fructose in our diet  -The four substrates in our food supply that damage mitochondria  Listen to the full episode here. For more on Dr. Robert Lustig, follow him on Facebook @drrobertlustig, Twitter @robertlustigmd, YouTube @robertlustig, and through his website, robertlustig.com. Get his book, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine, here. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and Vivobarefoot. To get $200 off your Birch Living mattress plus 2 free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru. Vivobarefoot footwear is designed to be wide, thin, and flexible—as close to barefoot as possible. They promote your foot's natural strength and movement, allowing you to feel the ground beneath your feet. Vivobarefoot is offering 20% off your first order at vivobarefoot.com/DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Drew Prode here. On today's podcast, we're sharing some of the key moments, some of the top moments from our episode with Dr. Robert Lustig. Now, I know not everyone always has two hours. Some of our podcasts run really long. So in today's 20-minute episodes, you're going to hear from one of the top renowned experts and medical doctors and researchers in the topic and area of metabolic health and how to stay lean, healthy, and fit, Dr. Robert Lustig. And he's going to be to be. chatting about the calorie myth, all the myths that we have around calories as the primary driver of weight gain. He's going to be chatting about the connection between fructose and metabolic disease. He's also going to be talking about the top sources of fructose in our diet and how fructose in particular is a big driver of weight gain and poor metabolic health. And lastly, Dr. Lustig is going to break down the four substrates in our food supply that damage our mitochondria, our bodies, energy power plants. these things, these four things that are in our diet on a regular basis are damaging not only

our short-term health and making it harder for us to have energy and lose weight and do all those great things, but also our long-term health too. I hope you enjoy this mini episode. And as always, if you know someone who could benefit from it, share it with a friend. Give us some of the questions. You know, the subtitle of the book is the lore and the lies of processed food, nutrition, and modern medicine. Give us a few examples of the questions that either the processed food industry or that modern medicine was asking that led them down to different but parallel paths. So let's start with myth number one. Okay. And, this is the myth that has to be debunked. Until this one is debunked, nothing good will ever come.

This is the nugget of truth. We've got to start here. It's with this notion that a calorie is a calorie. Food industry says it's about calories. It's about energy balance. It's about calories in, calories out. Therefore, it's about two behaviors, Lutney and Sloth. Therefore, because it's about two behaviors, if you're fat, it's your fault. Therefore, diet and exercise. Therefore, any calorie can be part of a balanced diet. Therefore, don't pick on our calories. Go pick on somebody else's calories. All right. All of that comes from this notion that calories are fungible. That it doesn't matter what you eat, it matters how much you eat. That's basically what they say. And they say that that's personal responsibility. So what they've done in one fell swoop with one concept is put the onus on the

victim and dissuage their own culpability. Works for them. The question is, is it true? Is a calorie? And the answer is, we have so much data to show that this is the biggest lie in the history of medicine. in my in you know i'm i'm from new york i'm from brooklyn so i use a lot of um shall we say colorful language and this is the single piece of b s you can curse on our podcast that's fine it's a family podcast i got to be careful i can't i can't tell you how big a piece of you know this is this is bigger okay than randy marshes poop in south Park. That's how big it is. It is so wrong. It was wrong from the day it was conceived and it will be wrong till the day we finally trash it. And the problem is the food industry won't give it up.

And the reason they won't give it up is it because it's their protection. It's their gravy train. They have convinced us all that it is true. And it is not. not true. It is the biggest lie there ever was. So we've got to start there. So how can I prove it's a lie? So the other day, I was with a doctor who specializes in environmental toxins, and they told me that the most toxic item in our home is actually our mattress. I'm sure many of you were shocked to hear that as I was. This is especially scary when the average person spends more than 26 years of their life sleeping. We spend so much time in bed, but it's crazy that we're more likely to splurge on an expensive car or clothes. Well, I'm advocating for a better mattress for you. Most mattresses

on the market, though, contain harmful chemicals and polyurethane foam, which emits things like volatile organic compounds or VOCs. They've been linked to respiratory issues, reproductive damage, and they can even damage your immunity. I spent a lot of of time. I mean a lot of time looking for the perfect organic mattress and I was so happy to find the birch matrix by Helix. The birch is made right here in the U.S. out of four, just four non-toxic natural materials, organic latex, organic cotton, New Zealand wool, and American Steel Springs. It feels so great to know that I'm sleeping on a mattress that uses zero zero zero zero zero polyurethane-based foams.

That means no off-gassing. Have you ever got a new mattress and you open it up and it smells like crap? That's called off-gassing. The birch mattress doesn't do that. So now I can sleep a lot better knowing that I'm not exposing myself to harmful chemicals day in and day out. And the best part is this mattress is crazy comfortable. You don't have to give up comfort when you choose the non-toxic option. I've honestly never slept better.

So if you're looking for a new mattress, I highly recommend checking out the Birch. Right now, they're giving my community $200 off all mattresses plus two eco-reset pillows. Just head over to birchliving.com slash Drew. Again, that's $200 off and two free eco-reset pillows at Birch, B-I-R-C-H-L-I-V-I-N-G-com, slash Drew spelled differently, D-H-R-U. If you're worried about trying a new mattress, by the way, they have a 25-year warranty, and you can try it risk-free for 100 nights. Birch also ships directly to your door for free with no contact required,

and they'll pick it up for free if you don't love it. Check out the Birch mattress today by Helix. How crazy is it that our dieted lifestyle are such a given when it comes our health and our focus, and yet we're still wearing the same antiquated shoes that damage our feet and our structural health and lead to lower back pain, joint pain, and sciatica problems. It's kind of nuts. I especially feel for the women that are out there whose shoes are often way too small and unnaturally shaped.

This happened to my wife for years in the role of investment banking. She wore her heels every single day, and it messed up her feet. She has bunions, and it messed up her knees and her knees. back. That's why I'm a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot and why the women on my team are too. When I asked them, the women on my team, that is, what they like most about Vivo Barefoot Shoots, they told me that, number one, their active footwear is extremely light and comfortable, which makes them great for traveling. And number two, their hiking boots provide a totally different hiking experience, which makes them feel way more connected to the earth and grounded

in nature, and we all need more of that. What I personally love about VVVVACs, I'm barefoot, besides the fact that everybody at my gym and everybody at my chiropractor's office loves them and rocks them is that their shoes are made from recycled materials and are designed to be wide, thin, and flexible for natural strength and freedom of movement. That's a huge win for our foot health and the planet's health too. I honestly cannot recommend these shoes enough. I have a pair of myself and within two weeks of wearing them, my chronic knee pain that had suffered from for years completely went away. It's not that I had chronic knee pain. My shoes, my old shoes were causing the knee pain.

How freaking crazy is that. Right now, Vivo Barefoot is offering my community 20% off their first order at V-O-Berfoot.com slash Drew. That's V-I-V-O-B-A-R-F-O-O-T-O-O-T-com slash D-H-R-U. Check it out today. That's Vivo Barefoot.com backslash Drew for 20-O-O-O-O-T-O-O-O-O-O-T-O-O-O-O-O-T-O-O-O-O-F-R-W. 20% off your first order. I'll prove it's a lie. Four ways. Four different food stuffs. Let's start with almonds.

Drew, you like almonds? Love them. Love them. Ammons are great. Okay? But almonds are relatively high density, you know, in terms of calories, aren't they? They are. So you eat 160 calories in almonds.

Okay? Handful of almonds. 160 calories in almonds. How many of those calories do absorb? Good question. Turns out the answer is 130. You ate 160, you absorbed 130. Where'd the other 30 go? The metabolic processes of... No, no. No. The fiber in the almonds, and there are two kinds of fiber. And this becomes very important because remember, I've talked high sugar, low fiber, low sugar, high fiber, right? The fiber and the almonds, and there's two kinds. soluble and insoluble. So soluble fiber is like pectins and inulin, like what holds jelly together, hydrogels. In soluble fiber is the stringy, is like cellulose, the stringy stuff in celery.

Okay. Almonds have both. The stringy stuff sets up a lattice work on the inside of the duodenum, like a fishnet. And the soluble fiber are globular and they plug the holes in the fish. net and together they form an impenetrable barrier. You can actually see it on electron microscopy, a whitish secondary barrier that inhibits the absorption of simple sugars, glucose, fructose, sucrose, simple starches in the duodenum so that they do not go via the portal vein to reach the liver and then overwhelm the liver so that the liver stays healthy. You are protecting the liver with the fiber in the almonds. So the liver doesn't get the excess, in which case then it would turn the excess into fat through this process called de novo lipogenesis, new fat making,

which is what fructose does in particular. And you don't generate an insulin response because you didn't generate a serum glucose response. Okay, this all has to be. This all has to to do with the concept of glycemic load to keep the insulin down. Okay? And that keeps you metabolically healthy because insulin's the bad guy in the story. Insulin drives chronic metabolic disease because insulin drives growth, abnormal growth. It drives vascular smooth muscle growth. That's why you get coronary artery disease. It drives prostate and breast growth. That's why you get breast and prostate cancer because of the insulin. Well, okay, so you didn't generate as big an insulin response because you didn't absorb those

calories. So where did those 30 calories go? They went further down the intestine to the next part called the jujunum. Okay, and the dejunum, that's where the bacteria are. That's where the microbiome is. So those bacteria, they want those 30 calories. And so they chew it up for their own purposes. So you have 10 trillion cells in your body.

You have 100 trillion bacteria in your intestine. They outnumber you 10 to 1. You were just a big bag of bacteria with legs. Okay, those bacteria have to eat something to stay alive. Well, what do they eat? Well, they eat what you eat? The question is, how much did you get versus how much did they get? And when you consume those almonds, you consumed it with fiber,

and that fiber meant that those 30 calories weren't for you. They were for your microbiome. So even though you ate them, even though they passed your lips, even though they registered as a calorie eaten, they were not a calorie absorbed. So who cares how many calories you ate? You care about how many calories you absorb. Well, is that measured in a calories a calorie? No. So a calorie is not a calorie because if it came with fiber, that calorie wasn't for you. number two, protein. Okay. So protein is made up of amino acids. There are 20 amino acids, right? Some of them are essential amino acids. You have to consume them. Some of them your body can make from those essential amino acids. But there are 20 amino acids. Now, if you are building muscle,

you need those amino acids because muscle is primarily protein. Actin, my mind. medicine, et cetera. All right. So bodybuilders who are building muscle, they take scoops of protein powder and put it in their Vitamix to make their smoothies, right? Okay. And they're building muscle and so they need those amino acids because they're essential. They have to consume it. But what if you're not a bodybuilder? What if you're a mere mortal like me? And what if you consume excess protein, excess amino acids. What if you ended up going to, you know, the steakhouse and you ordered that porterhouse for two and you ate the whole thing yourself? Okay. Now what? Where is the protein gone and go? Is there a storehouse for protein? And the answer is, yeah,

your muscle. But if you're not building muscle, then that's not your storehouse. So what happens to the excess? What happened to the other half of the porterhouse? Well, it went to the liver. The amino acids went to the liver. The liver has to turn it into energy. So the liver has to take the amino group off the amino acid, a deamination. Now, once that happens, that amino acid now becomes an organic acid. That organic acid can now enter the Krebs cycle, which is the cycle that makes the ATP. And so you can generate energy from that amino acid once it's deamidated. Turns out that process of deamination, taking that amino group off, costs energy. Okay? It costs energy. And it costs twice as much energy as what your liver has to do

to prepare a carbohydrate for burning. So there's a net deficit for protein versus carbohydrate when you are turning it into ATP. So even though protein and carbohydrate are both four calories per gram, when you're burning protein, you actually generate fewer ATP than when you're burning carbohydrate. Therefore, calories not a calorie. Because you started with the same number of calories in bomb calarimeter, but you ended up with different level numbers of ATPs. Number three, fats. So over here on this side, we have omega-3 fatty acids.

Heart healthy, anti-inflammatory, anti-alzheimer's, save your life, anti-depression. Okay, single best thing you can put in your body, without question, omega-3s. Over here, we have trans fats. the devil incarnate, consumable poison, made in the lab. The reason that we put the trans fats in the food was because the bacteria couldn't break the trans double bond because it didn't have the enzyme, the desaturates, to do it. So the bacteria couldn't grow on it. That's why we had the 10-year-old Twinkie.

All right. Point is, our mitochondria in our cells are refurbished bacteria. even have their own bacterial DNA. Well, guess what? Armiticondri can't break that bond either. So when you consume trans fats, you are basically laying down poison in your liver and in your arteries because you can't break it all the way down to carbon dioxide and ATP because of that trans double bond. So you do not want those transduble bonds in your diet. But the food industry put them there. Again, another reason why processed food is poison. The point is, over here we got omega-3s. Over here we got trans fats. They're both nine calories per gram. One will save your life. One will

kill you. Because a calorie is not a calorie. Because different foodstuffs have different functions. And then lastly, my favorite, one we started with fructose and glucose. glucose is the energy of life and fructose is poison it's a chronic dose-dependent mitochondrial toxin they're both four calories per gram so it's not how much you eat it's specifically what your body does with what you eat that matters and that just blows the whole concept of calories right out of the water. So we got to start with that. That's where the food industry got on,

and that's where we have to get off. Problem is food industry is still hitting it as hard as they possibly can because this is the concept that keeps them out of court. Because as soon as a calorie is not a calorie, guess what? They are going to get their asses. is sued off and it's already started.

Going back to where we started off, as a perfect example of this, you were chatting about fructose. Now, I think it's worthwhile. We've done a couple episodes where we've touched on this a little bit, but just in case if folks haven't heard that episode, bring those two things in connection. What you just covered, calories, not a calorie, and how fructose, What are, I'll set up the question. What are the biggest contributors to fructose, which we know does all sorts of damage to the body,

which you just covered? What are the biggest sources, the top ones that people are consuming in their diet today that have a direct tie-in to these eight, quote-unquote, diseases that we covered earlier? First thing you have to understand is that fructose consumption has gone up 25, fold, not 25%, 25 fold in the last 200 years. Our ancestors getting fruits and vegetables and occasional honey, you know, out of the ground or out of trees, you know, consumed about four to five pounds of sugar per year. We now consume 94 pounds of sugar per year. So that's almost 25fold. And a few years ago, before the obesity epidemic, you know, hit, you know, the grand stage, you know, around 2010 to 2012,

we were consuming up to 120 pounds of sugar per year. We've actually cut back to some extent, you know, with diet sweeteners and, you know, recognizing the problem and as soda consumption has, you know, started to fall. All right. So it's still a 25-fold increase. And the question is, can your liver handle that? Only your liver can metabolize fructose because only your liver has the glute five transporter, which is the fructose-specific transporter. So when you consume glucose, it goes to every cell in your body. When you consume fructose, it only goes to your liver. And the question is, what does your liver do with it?

And the answer is, well, if you're consuming only a little bit, like an apple, you have the capacity, you have the capability of being able to metabolize that fructose load into ATP and not get yourself into trouble. Because you won't have consumed so much that you're generating that liver fat. Okay, so an apple's okay. But now take that apple and turn it into a glass of apple juice. First of all, it's not one apple that makes a glass of apple juice. It's four. So you're getting the juice of four apples in that glass.

So all of a sudden you went from one apple to four apples. You're not getting any of the fiber in order to reduce the rate of absorption and also to increase satiety because the fiber moves the food through the intestine faster to get the satiety signals sooner. So now you have now you've got four apples in an eight ounce glass of juice and you are flooding your liver. And your liver is going to take all that fructose and it's going to turn it into fat. And now that fat is going to either be packaged as triglycerides, which are potentially, you know, drivers of obesity or cardiovascular disease. Or the fat droplet won't make it out of the liver. It will precipitate in the liver.

And now you've got fatty liver disease, which generates the insulin resistance, which then puts you at risk for type 2 diabetes hyperact. and Alzheimer's. All right? So basically heart disease and obesity on this side, fatty liver disease and Alzheimer's over here, all depending on what your liver will do with the fat it made from the sugar.

So a little sugar is okay because you have the innate capacity to metabolize a small amount. And that's the liver's job. liver has enzymes in it that detoxify all sorts of things that you're exposed to. That's why Paracelsus famously said in 1537, the dose determines the poison, and nothing is without poison. It all depends on how much. Well, so we have, you know, shall we say, you know, toxins that will make you keel over and die at parts per billion, like cyanide, ricin-serin vx gas, right? And then we have chronic toxins that are, you know, where we have a

higher capacity like arsenic, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, tobacco smoke, where, you know, one, you know, dose won't necessarily kill you, but, you know, 10,000 might. All right. Well, Fructose fits that same model. One sugar-laden meal is, you know, a treat. It's a delight. It's a feast. Ten thousand sugar-laden meals is death. But that's what we're eating. Because every meal is now a sugar-laden meal. Because there's sugar in everything. 74% of all the items in the American grocery store have been spiked with added sugar. Buy the food industry on purpose because they know when they add it, you buy more. Because fructose, for lack of a better word, is addictive.

This is their gravy train. This is their hook. Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in the process. You used to have alcohol in the recipe. And of course, it always had sugar and caffeine. FDA said, well, if you're going to sell it interstate, you got to get rid of the cocaine and you got to get rid of the alcohol. Well, it turned out the sugar and the caffeine was good enough to maintain the addiction. Well, that's what the rest of the food industry figured out too.

So there we are. And that's why our food has been contaminated, our entire. food supply has been contaminated by the food industry specifically for profit. You know, this all fits in this larger phrase that you have, which is protect the liver and feed the gut, right? Just to connect the dots for the folks who are listening, I'll expand you to deepen on the topic of gut because you started in that direction earlier in the podcast, but I'd love to hear more about it, is here you're talking about really protecting our liver for that onslaught of sugar, that fructose in particular,

in particular, that fructose that is causing in concentrated and frequent dosages is causing all sorts of downstream effects that are happening. That's right. So let me make it very clear to your audience, Drew. Okay. I am not fructocentric. Some people think that's all I worry about. In fact, what I'm worried, what I am is mitochondrialcentric.

That's my concern. Anything that causes mitochondrial dysfunction will lead to chronic metabolic disease. And it turns out there are four substrates in our food supply, all of which damage the mitochondria, all of which generate chronic metabolic disease. So there's fructose, which is the cheap one and the one we give babies and fetuses for that matter. But there are the other three also. Branch chain amino acids, lucene, isolucine, and valine, which are essential amino acids. They're 20% of muscle. But again, if you overwhelm your liver, your liver turns those into fat and generate fatty liver

and insulin resistance in mitochondrial dysfunction, too. Trans fats, which we already talked about, and they cause mitochondrial dysfunction. And finally, alcohol. So what do these four substrates have in common? One, there's no insulin rise. They don't generate an insulin response. Number two, They all are metabolized by the liver and not anywhere else. And therefore, they overwhelm the liver. And number three, they poison mitochondria. So of those four, sugar is the cheap one. Sugar is the addictive one, although alcohol is too.

But sugar is the one we give to children and call it love. So I'm most worried about that one. But that doesn't mean that that's the only problem. As you can see, processed food is a problem all by itself because it is a mitochondrial toxin.