Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Truth About Sugar and Ultra-Processed Foods with Neuroscientist Dr Tommy Wood #526

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Today’s guest, like myself, is passionate about empowering individuals to take control of their health by simplifying the wealth of information that exists and giving people practical, realistic recommendations. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 404 of the podcast with Dr Tommy Wood. Tommy is Assistant Professor of Paediatrics and Neuroscience at the University of Washington, US. He holds a degree in biochemistry from Cambridge, a medical degree from Oxford, achieved his PhD in physiology and neuroscience in Oslo, and has published papers and lectured across the globe. It’s fair to say that when it comes to health and longevity, Tommy knows what he’s talking about. In this clip, we cut through some of the confusion on the hot topics of sugar and ultra-processed foods and try our best to give some nuanced, practical advice. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/404 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by AG1, one of the most nutrient dense whole food supplements that I've come across. And I myself have been drinking it regularly for over five years. It contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes, and so much more and can help with energy, focus, gut health, digestion, and support a healthy immune system. If you go to www.drinkag1.com forward slash live more, they are giving my listeners a very special offer, a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs

with your first order. See all details at www.drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Byte Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 404 of the podcast with Dr. Tommy Wood. Tommy, like myself, is passionate about empowering individuals to take control of their health by simplifying the wealth of information that exists and giving people practical, realistic recommendations. In this clip, we cut through some of the confusion on the hot topics of sugar and ultra processed

foods and try our best to give some nuanced practical advice. Where do we go wrong with sugar? Is sugar intrinsically problematic for us? Or is it more the volumes that we're consuming? Of course, I think it's the latter. It's both the quantity and the context of it. So basic sugar, sucrose, which is 50-50 glucose and fructose is a disaccharide, which just means two sugars bound together. And fructose has really come under the microscope recently because it can affect our uric acid levels, which is often used as a risk factor for gout, but it's often used as like a sort of marker of our metabolic health.

And fructose can affect cellular energy levels if it's, you know, in the way that it's metabolized and it can be quite intensive on the cell, particularly in the liver. What does that mean? Cellular energy levels? Yeah. So inside the cell, we have this energy currency called ATP. And in order to metabolize fructose, we end up using all of that within the cell. And you can get to this point where it's almost a stressor on the cell in order to metabolize it. And that's maybe one of

the reasons why fructose is an issue for some people. And it's certainly high amounts of fructose consumption and or sugar, which is 50% fructose, can increase the risk of things like fatty liver disease, which is increasingly common. Although the other side of that is that there are potentially other nutritional deficiencies that are affecting your risk of that as well, particularly choline, which is important for packaging fat out of the liver. And if you don't have enough of that, then the liver can accumulate fat with high amounts of sugar. But in reality, when I think about individual food components,

and there were several other things that we could talk about that are controversial in addition to sugar, but it's really the context of the sugar that we're currently consuming. And like you said, the quantities of it. I like to think that the majority of our diet should be minimally processed and nutrient dense foods so they support the function of our bodies. And other than just being a source of energy, there's nothing else in sugar that's really beneficial. So if you're consuming a large proportion of calories

from sugar, you're not consuming foods that have nutrients in that are then important for doing everything else. And that's really the same with all ultra-processed foods or highly processed packaged foods. They're generally nutrient poor, calorie dense, packaged foods, they're generally nutrient poor, calorie dense, they negatively affect our ability to understand our hunger and satiety signals, and we know that we over consume them because they're hyper palatable. We eat much more of them than we would have something else that's less processed, and people get into the issue of what processing actually is or what processing means. The definition of ultra-processed foods basically means that it's highly refined

and they've usually added additives, fillers and things like that in order to keep it shelf stable. So you can just like stick it in a packet and it can stay there for months or years on end. Yes, on end. Yeah. And so I don't particularly ever focus on sugar individually because it would be very easy to remove sugar, but you just replace it with some other highly processed food that is going to have

the same effects because it's out competing more nutritious foods. So in general, I would think about the entire dietary pattern because there's no evidence that some sugar is detrimental to our health really. What do you mean by that? Because some people are going to go, what do you mean? Wait a minute, I thought sugar was bad for me. So when you say there's no evidence that some sugar is detrimental, just expand on that a little bit. So in general, if you are eating within your caloric requirements and you're otherwise healthy, then consuming some sugar doesn't really seem to have a negative effect.

It's a source of energy. There's no real reason to assume that a large part of our metabolism runs on glucose. When we metabolize fructose, which is the other half of sugar, it gets turned into glucose. It gets used as an energy source. So if you're in otherwise good health and you're consuming enough of the nutrients in general from your diet, there's no reason why sugar should be detrimental. It's when it then becomes the major source of energy and you're not getting all these other things that we might need from our diets. So when, usually when people cut out sugar, what they've done is they've dramatically improved

the quality of their diet because they're eating other things now. So I'm not exonerating sugar in itself, but I think that focusing purely on that doesn't really tell us the greater story of what's the overall quality of your diet and what's the overall quality of your diet and what's the overall sort of balance of nutrients you're taking in and fiber and other things.

Again, it's that point of context and what else is going on in your life kind of influences whether sugar is a problem for you or not. And it's interesting, you know, Mark Sisson there, for people who don't know Mark, I think he's just gone 70 years old. He's in fantastic shape. Fantastic shape, eats a very primal, ancestral way of eating for a number of years. He's been talking about it, promoting it.

But if he ever tweets about the fact that he will, I think he enjoys sugar in his coffee each morning, like one spoon of sugar. Oh my God, people go nuts on it. And I would imagine that that really speaks exactly what you're saying, that 90% of his diet is really good. Whole foods, nutrient dense. He's fit and active. He moves his body every day.

He looks after himself. In that context, one small spoon of sugar in a coffee each day is probably not an issue, right? In that context, someone else who, let's say, has a highly processed food diet, eating to excess, not because they're lazy or gluttonous, because they struggle. We all struggle, right? In that context, they may find that sugar or the amount of sugar in the diet is problematic. Is that another way we can look at this? Yeah, I think so. And some of it can also be, you know, there's a big debate in the

scientific world as to whether sugar is addictive or not. And you'll have people who have some evidence on both sides and... Sounds like most things. Right, like most things. Right. Like most things. And I would say that I'm, I'm not really sure. I can, in some people who consistently overeat, they do, you know, get a large activation

of reward centers in the brain when they eat sweet things. Whether that's the same as addiction is very difficult to really pass out. Although some people certainly have very problematic eating behaviors and that's its own psychological disorder that requires specialist intervention. But you're right that when we think about how we respond to certain foods, part of the problem with the processing is that, and so when you're taking refined sugar, you've extracted it from sugar cane or sugar beet. You know, we're, as a species, we've very regularly have consumed sugar, either from honey or from fruit, right? And nobody would tell you that eating an apple is going to be bad for you, even though, you know, there's a few grams of

sugar in there. Well, some people would these days actually, but generally. That I think we can say is, I'm confident saying that's not correct. But when you process foods with industrial modern methods, you divest the calories from their context. And so... Divest is a big word, so I mean, sorry, what's another word for that? You separate them out. So say we're historically, evolutionarily, if you did eat some fruit, you eat some sugar and it comes in this context of water and fiber and all these other things.

And there's the body expects some context for that sugar in terms of, and then how it affects your physiology and your hunger signals and stuff like that afterwards. When we process those foods and strip them out, the response that you get physiologically is no longer the same from the same amount of that food. So they've done this with various grains, right? If you take a whole grain, you could cook and eat a handful of pearl barley, say. It's minimally processed. That's how it looked on the stem. It's still got all the fiber, all the context.

And then you look at how that affects your blood sugar. It probably has quite a small effect on your blood sugar. If you then take that same thing and you cook it and you grind it, or you grind it and you cook it and you turn it into a paste, or you turn it into you turn it into a paste or you turn it into bread, it has a much bigger effect on your blood sugar. It's exactly the same thing. But what you've done is you've changed the context of the food and then that affects how your body responds

to it, so you're no longer getting macronutrients like things like carbs and fats or protein in the context that our bodies are used to getting them. And so that's where it starts to become problematic. So when you create processed foods, you might add sugar to something that doesn't normally have sugar in it. And then that makes you want to eat more of it because you've started to create, and that's the idea of creating high-palatable foods. So even savory foods have some sugar in because you start to activate different receptors,

you start to then drive a greater likelihood of overeating them. So that's where it starts to become problematic. So let's say the population we were looking at was all healthy. Everyone was of a, you know, healthy weight in inverted commas. They were metabolically healthy. Then in that context, of course, which isn't the context we're living in today, certainly not in most countries around the world these days. If that was the situation, then sugar here or there in our tea or coffee or whatever, a sweet treat if

you want. And I'm not convinced I love the word treat, but I think people know what we mean when we say that, you know, maybe once a week or once a fortnight or whatever you choose to do may be okay. How does that though sit in the context of what we have today? So we know in the US, for example, is it 90% of US adults may have some degree of metabolic dysfunction? And actually the UK and Europe and most of the world are catching up. So we can't even single out the US anymore. So if we're saying the bulk of the adult population, and it's not just adults, I know, but the

bulk of the population, unfortunately these days have a degree of metabolic dysfunction. So the way they're processing energy in the body is not as efficient as it could be. And that's leading to an increased risk of all kinds of diseases. In that context, is sugar now becoming even more problematic? It's absolutely contributing due to the way that we're using it. But again, I think it comes down to the entire context of the diet. Because you could certainly get to a point where, say we dramatically reduce sugar in foods, if that then comes with like a parallel decrease in overall caloric intake, say, there will absolutely be benefit. But when other people are in charge of creating these foods, you know, these ultra processed

foods, those sugar calories are just going to be replaced by something else. And you're going to overeat it just as much and it's not really going to change anything. So I think that if by reducing your sugar intake, you decrease your overall caloric intake and you improve the overall quality of your diet, that's absolutely going to be beneficial. But if that doesn't happen, and this often happens with the way that we engineer foods nowadays, is just it'll be replaced by something else and it may not make the same difference. So I think it really depends on how that gets enacted.

So if you say that I want to reduce my, you know, I'm going to focus on sugar, and you focus on reducing sugar intake, and then with that comes, you're not eating cakes or biscuits. And with that, you've dramatically both decreased your overall energy intake and improved your diet quality. That's going to come with health benefits. But if you then say, well, I'm not going to have cake, but I'm going to have an extra serving of fries instead, there's no sugar in that.

But I'm not convinced. You you're not gonna get any healthier. So it really depends on how those changes then, what the knock-on effect is. I had what some people might have considered disordered eating a long time ago and being very hyper-focused about the quality of the food that I ate and what I ate. And so it's taken me a long time

to work on some of those things. And in reality, I've gotten to a point where, if I have decided to do it, then I lean into enjoying it. So if I'm gonna eat this cake, I'm gonna enjoy this cake. Like this is, you know, all, and all the reasons why I'm eating it, just like, if I'm gonna have a nice cocktail, I'm gonna make sure it's a nice cocktail. I'm really gonna enjoy it. I'm with my friends, I'm eating it, just like if I'm going to have a nice cocktail, I'm going to make sure it's a nice cocktail.

I'm really going to enjoy it. I'm with my friends, I'm having a nice dinner. So I really lean into the enjoyment factor because the alternative is spending hours then worrying about the thing that I ate or the thing that I drank and how that's going to affect my health. And that worrying is probably worse

than the eating and drinking itself. So I embrace the positive sides of it because it's usually a social aspect or some other thing. I think that's how I approach it. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. If you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five and each week I share things that I do not share on

social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of ByteScience next Friday.