The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Robert Lustig: "Processed Food, Metabolism, and The Ills of Society"

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

In this episode, Dr. Robert Lustig joins Nate to dive into the metabolism of the micro level of human systems - the humans ourselves. Over the last century, accompanying the transformation of our energy systems, our food and consumption patterns have been massively transformed. One of the biggest areas of change is the dramatic increase in sugar consumption. But are our bodies adapted to eating such high sugar, processed foods? What are the health effects connected to this way of eating? And, writ large, how does our metabolic dysfunction as individuals contribute to the energy hungry global Superorganism? What are the systemic drivers that currently prevent a shift towards healthier food systems? Can changing how we eat make us healthier - and thus better equipped to face the complex challenges of the metacrisis? About Robert Lustig: Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L. is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, and Member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, with expertise in metabolism, obesity, and nutrition. He is one of the leaders of the current "anti-sugar" movement that is changing the food industry. He has dedicated his retirement from clinical medicine to help to fix the food supply any way he can, to reduce human suffering and to salvage the environment. Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He also received his Masters of Studies in Law (MSL) degree at University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 2013. He is the author of the popular books Fat Chance (2012), The Hacking of the American Mind (2017), and Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine (2021). For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/69-robert-lustig  To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/onVqjZOYlQs

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, in our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. Today's podcast was one of my favorite that I've ever done, possibly because it's on a topic I don't know a lot about, which is the metabolic health of humans as individuals and what our food system is doing to change our health relative to obesity, metabolic syndrome, et cetera. My guest is Dr. Robert Lustig, who is a professor emeritus of pediatrics, the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California and San Francisco. He specializes in neuroendocrinology with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. You'll see during this podcast there is a mapping or a parallel path of how our food system changes our individual.

behavior mapping on to the global energy hungry superorganism. This was a fantastic conversation. I look forward to hearing more about Rob's work and changing the food system. I hope you enjoy this. Hello, Rob. Nate, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is delightful.

Well, we have mutual friends and it seems the world is converging on multiple threats and risks to the human predicament. And I don't know a lot about your field, but I have read your book Metabolical. I love the title. And it's heavily marked up. You've put a lifetime of vertical and horizontal expertise and wisdom into this book. So my very first question is, what did you have for breakfast this morning? I'm curious. No one's allowed to ask what I eat. But I'll tell you that today, because it's Passover, I had white fish salad on matza and a black coffee. Mata, is there a lot of carbs in that or no? Oh, yeah.

But what else are you going to eat? Yeah. It's Passover. Okay. So can you, I'm sure you've done this often, can you give our listeners a two to four minute overview of the main thrust of your new book, A Metabolical, The Lure and Lies of Processed food, nutrition, and modern medicine. So I'll try to sum it up in, you know, a couple of simple, simple concepts.

We're getting sicker and sicker by the day, and health care is going to hell in a hand basket, and no one knows why. And everyone thinks that modern medicine should be able to solve all of these problems. Well, unfortunately, the chronic diseases that are chewing through all the health care costs, so they are, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian disease. This now accounts for 75% of health care costs, and none of them have a cure. And none of them actually even have a treatment. We only treat the symptoms of the problem. We don't treat the problem.

So for heart disease, we have high LDLs. We have statins. Well, it turns out the LDL is the symptom of the problem, not the problem. For high blood glucose, diabetes, we have insulin and oral hypoglycinics. Well, it turns out the glucose is not the problem. It is the symptom of the problem. For high blood pressure, we have anti-hypertensives. They are the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

The endothelial dysfunction that causes the hypertension is still going on. And that's why we're all, you know, 40 years old with two stumps on dialysis, you know, waiting for our next stroke. And that's where health care is gone. And that's why Social Security and Medicare will be broke by the years 2006, 2020s and 2009. The reason is because all of these are the diseases of mitochondria. Mitochondria, the little energy burning factories inside each of our cells. And when our mitochondria are working right, we'll be 110 playing tennis. And when our mitochondria are working wrong, we'll be dying a slow, miserable early death

and costing the health care system for 20 years while we're doing it. and we can't afford it. And it turns out it's all about the food. And when you understand the science of the food, you understand the science of nutrition, and you understand how those ultimately impact on this greater problem called metabolic health, then you realize the food's the problem.

And it turns out the foods a problem for the climate too, because of carbon dioxide production, because of methane production, because of soil erosion. Bottom line is the environmental crisis is the food crisis. So I would argue that food has to be part and parcel of any conversation around fixing the big problem. And that's why I'm very happy to be here. So you mentioned mitochondria. I certainly remember that from biology class.

but how does mitochondria relate to the human physiology and food in our health? So mitochondria are where the chemical energy comes from the powers your cell. mitochondria make this compound in your cells called ATP, adenosine triphosphate. And each of the phosphates, and there are three of them, each store energy. And that energy gets liberated, and that's what powers the cell. If you don't make enough ATP, your cell's starving. And if you're cell starving, it does things you don't want it to do. And it turns out that's what's wrong in chronic metabolic disease.

Mitochondrial dysfunction. So the question is why? If we're eating enough, we're eating loads. Why is our cellular powerhouse going down the tubes? And for that, you have to understand the biochemistry of food. food. You have to understand what's actually happening. You have to understand how specific compounds in the food are actually interfering with mitochondrial function. The main one being this sweet molecule and sugar fructose. Now, fructose wasn't always the bad guy. Fructose was a good guy before

ultra-processed food. Fructose actually helped our species survive winters because we would eat all the fruit during harvest and we would lay down all this fat and we would live on it through the winter. Camels do it in their hump. Polar bears do it. Okay. This is actually what allows various species to be able to go prolonged periods of famine was fructose.

But when we started going. The camel hump is like a Tesla battery. It's when, you know, you run out, you have a little storage there. You have storage, exactly right. So these were actually adaptive processes. And Fructose was a driver of this adaptive process for, you know, billions of years of our existence. I shouldn't say billions, millions of years of our existence. We weren't around for billions.

But only in the last 50 years or so with the advent of ultra-processed foods, and the addition of sugar to those ultra-processed foods to make them palatable. Because if the sugar wasn't in the ultra-processed food, you wouldn't eat it. It would taste like dog poop. I mean, it would just be awful. And so food industry knew they had to do something

to make their food palatable. What did they do? They added the sugar. And then they learned, hey, the more sugar we add, the more they buy. So they added more and more. And so now we are consuming 25 times the amount of sugar that our ancestors did 200 years ago.

That has to have metabolic consequences. Well, it does. It is affecting our mitochondria. It is causing them to, instead of burning that fat, it's causing them to store fat, especially in organs like the liver, which are then causing the liver to be dysfunctional, which is then causing the pancreas to make extra insulin,

which is then causing problems all over the body, including the brain. So ultra-processed food is responsible for all of those diseases. I mentioned at the outset of the program, it is responsible for all of the health care costs going through the roof, and it is responsible for our early decline. If you've noticed, a lifespan in America has been declining for the last. five years in a row. And it could be all traced back to mitochondrial dysfunction. So if there are two people, person A doesn't eat any sugar and person B eats the same diet as person A but has a lot of processed foods that have added fructose and corn syrup and other things. How does the mitochondria differ in those two people? Like what mechanically happens?

So there are two enzymes in the mitochondria that can up their up its game. It can actually cause mitochondrial efficiency. It can cause mitochondria to burn better. And that compound is called glucose. Glucose is in carbohydrate. Glucose is in his half of sugar. Glucose will stimulate two enzymes. One is called AMP kinase, which is the fuel gauge.

on the liver cell. So when AMP kinase is stimulated, the liver will make more mitochondria. Muscles will make more mitochondria. We think the brain will make more mitochondrial, though we're not as sure of that yet. But in any case, AMP kinase is a stimulator of mitochondrial function. Also, there's an enzyme called HADH, hydroxia acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, which helps burn fat so that you basically can utilize the fat that you've stored to generate energy. So these are good things. Glucose is, for lack of a better word, good. On the other hand, fructose, this other molecule and sugar,

the sweet molecule and sugar, the addictive molecule and sugar, the molecule we seek, because glucose is not very interesting. You don't see people going around chugging Cairo syrup, do you? That's glucose. Okay? They're chugging soda. What's in Gatorade? Is that glucose or fructose?

Well, which Gatorade are you talking about? We're talking about the original Gatorade from 1965. So Dr. Robert Cade, okay, physician at University of Florida sports program, invented this oral rehydration solution back in 1965 and it was a combination of water, sodium, and glucose. It's the same oral rehydration solution we give to cholera victims in India today. And in 1972, the Florida Gators went on to win the sugar bowl against the Auburn Tigers, and Gatorade made a big splash. And now everybody was interested in Gatorade because national championship. Okay. If you ever tasted the original Gatorade, it was purchased by Stokely's from the University of Florida, Stokely's Gatorade.

It tasted like tiger piss. It was awful. Because can you imagine, I mean, glucose and sodium, water. It didn't have, I mean, it was horrible. You couldn't get anybody to drink that, except maybe a dehydrated athlete. So let me guess the modern formula of Gatorade is more tasty and less healthy. Exactly right. So in 1992, Pepsi buys Gatorade, and they say, how are we going to market this swill? So what they do? Two things. Michael Jordan and high fructose corn syrup. There's high fructose corn syrup in Gatorade?

Of course. Absolutely. I'd never looked. Well, go look. So there's so many parallels here to what you're saying and my work. First of all, yet again, the trying to optimize for dollars first and foremost over health, over the environment, over other things, wins in the short run. So the health care system, well, not only that, but. I think something like 25% of our GDP is the healthcare system. So as people get sicker, it's good for the economy in a, in a bizarro sort of way.

And then the other implication that I'm getting from you is, you know, my work is about we're alive during the carbon pulse where humans are drawing down fossil hydrocarbons, which are energy, 10 million times faster than they were sequestered. and we've created this ginormous cultural metabolism, and we can't process it. I mean, energy is healthy, but too much energy messes up our institutions and our expectations and everything else. But you're saying that the fructose is doing the exact same thing to us as individual humans.

Indeed. I mean, so energy is healthy in the sense that it powers things, but unfortunately, we haven't yet, figured out a way to establish an energy source that doesn't have a downside. Now, maybe fusion will, maybe, you know, but that's 20 years off minimum and possibly longer. But the fact matter is that burning of any energy on this planet generates carbon dioxide and generates other toxic byproducts that are ultimately harming the planet and actually interfering with our ability to actually burn that energy.

So you mentioned earlier that 200 years ago, our ancestors had 1.25th of the sugar or fructose in their diets. What was the rest of their diet? Five pounds a year. It was about five pounds of sugar per year. And it was all from fruits and vegetables and honey. Now, right now we have 100 pounds per year. Yeah.

The average United States has- It was as high as 125. It's come down because of the obesity epidemic. So now it's 100 pounds. That's two pounds a week. Yeah. Per person. So is there any other than sugar and other than processed foods,

is there any evidence that our diets are substantially different than those 200 years ago as far as meat and protein and carbs? and vegetables and other things. I mean, it's got to be somewhat different, right? Yeah, sure. So trans fats, you know, trans fats are the devil incarnate. So trans fats were first invented in 1902. The first trans fat, Criscoe, was patented in 1911.

And trans fats started being added to baked goods in around 1920. And, you know, it went up from there. And at, you know, one point back in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 80s, we were eating trans fats nonstop. In fact, we were told to eat trans fats because trans fats were margarine and margarine didn't raise your LDL. Remember, we thought LDL was the problem. And so margarine was trans fats and it lowered your LDL. Yeah, it caused heart disease even worse. The reason we put trans fats in all the food was because the bacteria could not dejecture. the trans fats. The bacteria are what make food go rancid. Well, if the bacteria can't adjust the

trans fats, the food won't go rancid vis-a-vis the 10-year-old Twinkie. Well, it turns out those bacteria are our mitochondria. Our mitochondria are refurbished bacteria. We made a deal with the plant kingdom back in the, you know, in the Pleistocene period, you know, where we basically agreed to house them. Animal cells agreed to house bacteria in exchange for the bacteria generating the energy that we needed to power ourselves. So it's a symbiotic relationship. Our mitochondria are refurbished bacteria. Bacteria can't digest trans fats. They don't have the enzyme to break the trans double bond. Well, neither do we. So are you talking about the mitochondria in the microbiome in our gut?

Anywhere. Anywhere. Anywhere. There are no mitochondria on the planet that can digest trans fats, not in our gut, not in our skin, not in our liver, not anywhere. What happens to the trans fats if they're not? And so if you eat trans fats for five years and 10 years and 20 years, a larger percentage of your weight is just trans fat that you've eaten in the past?

Yeah. And also it will precipitate in your liver. and now you've got fatty liver disease. It will precipitate in your arteries. Now you have atherosclerosis, and you have metabolic syndrome. So we learned this. The first paper that reared the ugly head of trans fat

was published in 1957 by a guy named Fred Kumero. And he was completely laughed at and forgotten. And then in 1988, people rediscovered the work. And Kumro himself helped do this. And over the course of the next 25 years from 1988 to 2013, we learned more about trans fats and how they were the primary driver of chronic metabolic disease to the point finally where the FDA in 2013 agreed that trans fats were

poisoned and that they banned them. So there's no trans fats. in foods anymore? Pretty much. It's pretty much gone, except the trans fats you make in your own kitchen because you can take olive oil and heat it past its smoking point

and you will take the cyst double bond of the mono-unsaturated fat and you will flip it and now you have a trans-unsaturated fat. Oh, man. You have made a trans fat in your own skillet. So if you're using olive oil and you'd lose paying attention or it's too hot and it starts to smoke,

you, that's not healthy. Throw it away. Throw it away. All of it was meant to be consumed at room temperature. Yeah. You know, there's a, there's an odd thing happening here, Rob, which is I have a lot of guests on talking about climate and ocean and dolphin and fish risks to our environment and it's tragic and depressing.

I'm going to have on Robert Lusto, you can just talk about health and metabolic system, no big deal. This is hard hitting for me. because I just, I mean, I have read your book, but it's, this is a big freaking deal. I mean, this is like we're all going through our life. We go to the grocery stores and this is culturally accepted how we eat. And it's affecting everything. And it's probably affecting our judgment and our decisions and our health and to be able

to be our best selves and everything. No question. No question. And, you know, to some extent, it's our own ignorance. And to some extent, it's actually corporate. agreed. You know, an example of that. PFS, polyfluoral alkalated substances, Teflon. Okay. We were told Teflon was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Okay. And everyone used Teflon pans to, you know, prevent sticking. For how long, for how many decades? Well, it turns out Teflon is one of the worst

obesigens. It's one of the worst mitochondrial toxins. And it's a forever compound. It ain't. going away. So Teflon's gone, but PFS are in our system right now doing damage. I had a Martin Scheringer did an episode with me on PFS in the water supply. You actually were recently at a conference in Racine, Wisconsin on Obisogens. And you met some of my colleagues there. What is an obesity gen? And why are you researching that and why is that so important? So an obesity is a compound that generates weight beyond its calories.

That's an obesity. So there are plenty of things in our food that are calories, but they will generate a certain amount of weight based on those calories. If they generate more than that... So there's some emergent property that has happened within the body.

Like if you consume 500 calories in obesity, and you put on 700 calories, calories worth of weight, something happened to make that happen. Exactly. Exactly right. And the reason is because of mitochondrial dysfunction. Okay. Because your mitochondria not working well.

There was a paper that came out, oh, about 10 years ago now, I think, that tracked body temperature from the Civil War to today. And all of us, everyone, at every age, throughout the entire United States, that, you know, States is burning, it has a body temperature that is 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit lower than we used to. Now, that cannot be explained by any change in our environment or air conditioning or physical activity or anything else. Why are all of us burning less energy to create less heat to have a lower body temperature. It's because we have mitochondrial dysfunction.

Okay. So again, I don't want to make this podcast about me. We're going to take this offline, but I've come to know over the last decade that my normal temperature is 96.7, like a two degrees lower than 98.6. So if I have 98.6, I have a fever. And I've never understood why that was. This is why. Holy crap.

Okay. So are there tests that are, okay, so there are various diets out there. One of them is called Whole 30, which the premise of that is don't eat any processed foods at all. You can eat carbs, you can eat potatoes, you can eat Larabars, just no processed stuff. Well, Larabars are processed. They are? But there's no other ingredients in there.

There's just like dates and peanuts or something. Yeah, no, I know. But they're still processed. You can't, I mean, they had a macerated to get it into the larabar. So it's not none. Okay, so there is a definitional thing between processed. When I think of process, I mean that there's chemicals added in things. You actually mean that it was formed into a product.

It's not a whole food per se. Exactly right. So there is a classification system that was developed by my colleague, Dr. Carlos Monterey, who is a professor of public health at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. And it is called the Nova system, NOVA. It doesn't stand for anything, just the new system. And the easiest way to explain it would be with an example. So there are four classes in Nova.

Let's take an apple. So Nova Class 1 would be an apple picked off a tree. Class 2 would be apple slices, de-stemmed, de-seated, maybe deskinned. Class three would be apple sauce, like cooked, macerated, possibly sugar added, and maybe some preservative. Class four would be a McDonald's apple pie.

Okay? Turns out, when you look at the consumption across the world of various foods, only that class four category contributes to metabolic disease. But that's where the action is. And that happens to be 63% of all the foods sold in America and 67% of the sugar that we consume. What? 63% of the food sold is in that class four category.

What is that like globally in other countries less? So it's about 56% in the UK. It's about 60% in France. 63% here. What about in Africa? I don't know. I don't know about Africa. That's a good question.

Probably less. Yeah. They don't have enough money and importing issues and stuff. So I don't know about Africa. In the Middle East, in the Middle East, it's about 90%. 90% is that category four? Yeah. And that's why they have 18%

diabetes and 80% obesity. In the Middle East? I didn't know that. Kuwait and Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Well, there's some irony there with the carbon pulse as well. I didn't know that. So people that do diets that are highly in the category one and category two or a whole food sort of diet.

I did a whole foods diet for a month. It was really hard for me, but I lost 25 pounds. And then I gained it back, of course. Because, you know why it's hard for you? Because the things that you eat don't taste as good as the things that you gave up. Well, indeed, because they were applied with extra sugar. Okay. Well, they were implied with extra sugar.

So our taste buds have been desensitized. There's a neurophysiologist, scientist, neuroscientist at University of Michigan, Monica Deuce. very, very smart lady, who has basically demonstrated the molecular mechanisms of tongue desensitization. She showed it in fruit flies. The point is, you can actually get that back, but you have to reduce the substrate. So our food has been so sweetened on purpose that we have desensitized our taste buds. And so food that is whole, as it were, natural that came out of the ground doesn't taste very good. more because we have desensitized those taste buds to not be able to appreciate it. If you go off

sugar for three weeks, a blueberry will taste like a balm in your mouth. I mean, it will just explode with flavor. So sugar is a supernormal stimuli to our evolved brains the same way that pornography or gambling or, you know, video games are. There are chemical addictions. They're behavioral addictions. You know, we have both. So anything that stimulates the nucleus accumbens, anything that stimulates the reward center in the extreme is addictive. So we have chemical, it's like heroin, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar. We also have behaviors. We have shopping, gambling, internet gaming, social media, pornography. All of these stimulate the same reward center in the brain. every one of those has an o'holic,

after it, shopaholic, chocoholic, sexaholic, alcoholic, you pick it. The point is, we have a reward system, and it is under fire every day by not just the food industry, but by virtually any corporate entity, because that's how they get you to buy. I knew we were going to be like this on this call, because I talked to you a couple weeks ago and we started to get going.

I'm like, no, no, no, Rob, hold it off for the podcast because I have so many questions. So is sugar then a possible contributing factor to polyaddiction in our culture? Let's say no one is using cocaine or pornography or gambling or shopping, but they become addicted to sugar because of processed foods in this category four you said before. Is there a carryover effect that over time they will have a higher compulsion for those other behaviors that I mentioned? Absolutely. In fact, sugar is a gateway drug. I mean, that's the way to put it.

And I'm not even the one who said that. You know who said that? No. Eric Clapton. Huh. Wow. He was interviewed on 60 Minutes back in the late 70s by Ed Bradley. I actually have the clip.

And I can send it to you. you can edit it in if you like. And Ed Bradley said, so, you know, how did all this start? To start with heroin? And Eric Clapton says, no, it started with sugar when I was five, six years old, putting sugar on bread and butter, pouring sugar down my throat. I consumed sugar because it changed the way I felt. Wow.

So there are certain things that don't directly have sugar. but they get processed in the body into sugar like wine or something like that. Is that the same effect or not? Well, so it turns out that fructose, the sweet molecule and sugar and alcohol, are metabolized in the mitochondria the exact same way and do the exact same things and generate that same liver fat. And this is why children today get the diseases of alcohol without alcohol. Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease used to be the diseases of alcohol, now the diseases of sugar

for just the same reason, because our mitochondria handle them virtually identically. And this was my big aha moment back in 2006. I was asked to give a talk at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. They were celebrating their 100th anniversary. And so it was a two-day symposium. and the first day was going to be on successes. So lead poisoning, pollution and asthma. The second day was going to be on new challenges.

The morning was going to be on obesity, metabolic syndrome, and the afternoon was going to be on ADD and autism. And so they asked me to come to this symposium and say what I thought was the biggest environmental driver of obesity and metabolic syndrome. And they thought I was going to talk about PFS or BPA or phallates or, you know, some chemical in the environment that would be, you know, easily removable. And I said, you know, let me, let me think about this. And I sat there.

I said, all right, look, children are always the canary in the coal mine. They're always the most vulnerable. I'm a pediatrician. I'm a pediatric endocrinologist. I'm taking care of these kids. what are the two diseases that kids get today that they didn't get 40 years ago when I started practicing type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease? I said yeah well I looked it up and fatty those two diseases were the diseases of alcoholics. I said hmm kids are getting diseases that

alcoholics get so I opened up my biochemistry text from 1974 from college college and I turned to the alcohol page. And then I turned the page and there was fructose. And I traced the pathways and I went, holy shit, these are the same. They do the same thing. The mitochondria handled these the same way. And so I started pulling papers to try to figure out. So I went to this meeting at NIH and said, I think that fructose is the primary driver.

And I gave my talk and then was the bathroom break. And nobody came back. They were all milling around outside. And I had to use the bathroom. So I went outside. They tackled me in the friggin' bathroom screaming at me. This is a bunch of toxicologists saying, oh, my God, oh, my God. That's right.

That's right. Fructose is a toxin. You have to tell the world. I never saw a bunch of toxicologists get so worried. worked up. That's an amazing story. My initial reaction is how could all the smart doctors in the world missed that until 2007? I truly don't understand it myself. I don't know. So do you currently, are you retired? Do you currently see patients, children, you're a pediatrician? I retired clinically in 2017. So I'm not doing any more patient care. I did my

my 40 years, you know, they made it very unpleasant, you know, between RVUs, you know, relative value units and, you know, basically, you know, counting every minute you spent and figuring out whether or not you were actually justifying your salary. And then when the electronic medical records showed up, that was like the death knell. That was like, I'm out of here. I can imagine, I can imagine. But. Yeah. So I'm doing a lot of stuff, but it's not patient. Oh, yeah, I know you are. But the reason I ask is, you know, in the last few years of your practice, did you seed, was there a demographic of children that either because of personal physiology or because of their parents or because of their school environment didn't have the typical cultural access to sugar? And did you notice different things about them? So what I would say is I only saw the kids who had the problem, not the kids who didn't have the problem.

Because I was the head of the obesity program. So, you know, they conglomerated in my clinic. Yeah. But having said that, what we learned was that sugar was not the cause of obesity in all of them. It was the cause of obesity in about three quarters of them. The other quarter had other things going on. Could be hypotonia so that their mitochondria were not working right from scratch because of some neurologic problem. Could be because their pancreases were over-releasing insulin in response to a glucose load,

what we called insulin hypersecretion, and that required a very different treatment paradigm. It could be from genetics, there were genetic disorders. called like Melanacourtin-4 receptor deficiency in the most obese kids. So what we learned was that obesity was a syndrome of multiple pathologies and that in order to fix any given kid, you had to diagnose the proper pathology. Now, when we did that, kids got better. but the overwhelming majority, it was because of their food. It was because of their ultra-processed food diet.

So how can mitochondria get better for a kid? And can the same healing occur in an older adult, perhaps someone listening to this show? Absolutely. That's what it's all about. So the question is, how do you make new, fresher, better mitochondria? So is it just like cells in your body that are constantly regenerating? We get new mitochondria all the time? Well, yes.

So you have to recycle your mitochondria. So there is a recycling program in your cells. And it is called autophagy, self-eating, auto phagy. All of your cells make junk. Okay, they make toxic byproducts. And those toxic byproducts can affect proteins. So you get protein aggregation. And now those proteins don't work right.

You can get lipid peroxidation. So that those lipids basically become inflammatory. These are all things that have to be cleared. They have to be gotten rid of. So there is a recycling program. It's called ubiquitin. Ubiquidin is a string of amino acids that get put on a protein or a lipid and then get sent to basically the recycling plant of each cell called the proteosome. And it gets cut up into any bitty pieces and either get recycled into new proteins or get excreted out of the cell entirely.

So basically, there is a constant replenishing of the cellular. machinery of each of your cells every single day. And it is this process called autophagy. You need autophagy. Autophagy is good. You want that. And in the autophagy of mitochondria that were dysfunctional because of sugar and all the problems you've been talking about, when they're chopped up and regenerated, does the dysfunction carry on into their new constituents? Or does it come out fresh. No, it'll come out fresh. And so the new mitochondria will be good, will work well until, of course, they go sour also. So in theory, you just change what you eat and you could change how your mitochondria function and reduce or completely eliminate metabolic syndrome.

I think completely eliminate. So there are a few things that we know will improve autophagy. One is change your diet. Number two, exercise. Exercise, one of the primary ways it helps is by contributing to autophagy. A third way that Volter Longo at USC showed is intermittent fasting. And so intermittent fasting is a great promoter of autophagy. Number four is reduced stress. Now, good luck with that one.

You know, we have a stress-filled world and it ain't getting any better. A fifth one is a compound that we are studying called spermidine. And spermidine is a component of food. It's also made in your cells. And it helps contribute to autophagy. And we're studying a supplement right now to see whether or not it will actually promote autophagy. So autophagy happens on its own, right? Like we don't have to do anything.

Autophagy is constantly happening. It's constantly happening, but you can speed it up or slow it down. Okay. And how does intermittent fasting help mitochondria, autophagy, and metabolic syndrome? What are the mechanics there? So intermittent fasting means less food coming into the cell, which means that your ATP is going to be broken up into its components. AMP, which is, you know, and those phosphates, that's liberating the energy to power the cell.

Well, when your AMP goes up, that means your ATP went down. and this enzyme I mentioned earlier called AMP kinase senses the increase in AEMP, it knows that that means that energy levels are low. And so it then exhibits the, it then stimulates the program for increased mitochondrial synthesis. So you make more mitochondria and they're now fresh. And they're coexisting with unhealthy mitochondria, but the population percentage has changed. Right. Yeah. So this seems to be, at least in theory, a pretty fixable problem.

Why have doctors not caught on to this and taken it into practice? And how much nutrition education of what you're telling me today do doctors receive? So the reason that doctors don't know about it is, number one, there's no pill for that. Number two, there's no ICD 9 or 11 code for that. What's that? So when doctors sit down with their patients and evaluate them, they have to generate a billing slip in order to get paid. Okay? And the way you do it is with codes for what was wrong with the patient.

Those are called ICD11 codes. and then codes for what you did, which are called CPT codes. And it is the combination of the ICD-11 code and the CPT code that determines how much Medicare or Medicaid or the insurance company will reimburse the doctor for his or her work. And sugar is not a box that you can check. No. And autophagy is not a box you can check.

What if it were? What if it were? We would like that to be. Yes, what if it were? Well, working on that. I mean, like I said earlier, healthcare is the biggest industry in the United States. So is there a point that the refined food industry and maybe the medical industry will recognize there's potentially more money in healthy living than sickly living or not? So that's a really good question, Nate, and I'm going to tell you.

I don't know the answer to that. Let me tell you why. I don't know the answer. In 1929, in Texas, Blue Cross was the first insurance that developed. And they appropriately said, you know, nobody should go bankrupt, you know, dealing with health care. And so they developed this thing called insurance. And then a lot of other companies came into the space because they saw that there was money to be made. And what they did was they developed the casino model. Pay to play, set the rates. Okay, the same way the casinos make money.

They hand money to you, okay, but they still make money because, you know, pay to play, set the rates. And that is the model that the insurance industry has used right up to 2013. And the reason that it changed is because, because of Obamacare. Now, you can think whatever you want about Obamacare, and I don't care if you like it or you don't like it, irrelevant to me. There's one thing Obamacare did do.

It capped profit at 15%. No insurance company could make more than 15% of its subscriptions, which meant that if they were charging more than that, they had to give the money back to the patient. So now the only way for the insurance company to make money is to keep you healthy. Before they wanted you sick because paid a place at the rates, the casino model. Well, now it's not the casino model. Now they've got a cap.

And so now they've got to figure out how to get, right, they've got to figure out how to make people healthy. They don't know how. But we've still gotten sicker since 2013, I would argue, as a nation. Indeed. Indeed. And that's because the food hasn't changed. So is one sugar intake listening to this program? Is it an issue of personal responsibility as a lot of the diet industry has framed some of these health issues?

Or is it really a much larger public health crisis impacted by the growth? mentality dictated in all of our economy. Okay. So I'm actually going to be giving a talk at a workshop on exactly this topic. Personal responsibility or public health. That's the title of my talk. So I'm very up on this, as it were. I'm going to shoot personal responsibility in the foot with one concept.

We have an epidemic of obese newborns. all over the world. U.S., South Africa, Israel, Israel, transfers from mother to to baby in utero? It does. Wow.

So we have obese newborns. Now, did they diet and exercise? Wow. No. Okay. Can they be implicated for personal responsibility? Well, that's your answer.

So there is a paper that I love, and you should become familiar and acquainted with this paper. It's from P&AS 2008. The author is Anthony Cashmore. He's the head of biology at the University of Pennsylvania. And the title of the paper is called The Lucretian Swerve. And it's about personal responsibility, free will, and the criminal justice system. And the argument that this paper makes is that the only reason we had free will is basically to publish transgressors.

That is purely a function of the criminal justice system. And the personal responsibility plays directly into this notion of free will. If you have free will, then you can exercise personal responsibility, except it's not true. So when you actually look at it, it's half your DNA, half your environment with some random stochastic eventualities. Well, you can't fix your genetics. You can't fix those random stochastic eventualities. So all there is is the environment.

So our concept of personal responsibility is completely hinged on the changes in our environment that have occurred. And I agree with that. So this is not something that is choice. This is something that is response. Response to the environment. So how do you fix it? You fix the environment. And this goes for carbon.

It's the carbon pulse too. Right. I was going to say it's another corollary with my story, which is we have become an energy-hungry superorganism as a global culture. An individual behavior change isn't really going to change that until we change the cultural aspirations, the economic rules and the incentives, et cetera. So in your field, how do like subsidies and guys? play into these issues, especially for the corn industry, is big ag involved in this and would

reducing processed food consumption kind of, again, dovetailing into my story, necessarily require us to move back to more locally produced foods due to the issue of shipping longevity and energy costs and some of those things? It's exactly what the problem is. So I, in my opinion, and this is opinion, in my opinion, food subsidies are the problem. Now, food subsidies started as early as 1790, because that is the sugar tariff was the second oldest piece of legislation in the United States. And it is still there. Okay?

1790. How does that function? I've never heard of that. The sugar tariff, it was basically to keep sugar from other countries out so we could develop our own sugar industry. But we didn't need that much sugar. We only ate five pounds of sugar back then. No.

Right, exactly. Well, the point was to make more. Okay? And it was just particularly important because where were we getting our sugar from? We were getting it from the Caribbean. Okay. But now we just had the revolution. now we had, you know, this question about slaves and what have you.

And so we needed to help promote a sugar industry. And so we developed, so, you know, 1790 sugar tariff. Now, the real problem in terms of subsidies came in 1933 with the original farm bill. Now, the farm bill, the first one, 1933, was in response to two things that we had no control over. One was the depression and the other was the dust bowl. So we had a destitute population in the southwest part of the United States that were dying of famine. And all the food was in the northeast and the Midwest. And we had to get the food from the northeast Midwest to the southwest.

But the problem was if you just took whole food and put it on a railroad car, it would be rancid by the time it got there. So we had to induce, we had to provide subsidies to the manufacturing industry to process the carbohydrate, the grain into flour, into 10 pound bags of flour and 10 pound bags of sugar, and put them on those railroad cars so that they wouldn't go rancid by the time they got there. So they could then be baked up and we could feed a population in extremists. And that made sense all the way through World War II. So processing itself wasn't just because it tasted better or it made more money, but it was a necessity and the complexity of our growing population and spread out everywhere and supply chains and all that. It was a requirement almost. Exactly right. And the Farm Bill was the thing that allowed for that to happen.

And now fast forward almost 100 years. We don't need the farm bill. Why not? We don't need those subsidies. Those subsidies are a problem. So we subsidize things that can be stored. We subsidize food into commodities. Commodities are storable food.

That's the definition. And what are they? Corn, wheat, soy, sugar, all of which are bad for us. But that's what we subsidize. Is it just because of a momentum that we've always subsidized it? and then there's been power and lobbyists and everything. And so it's like there's a momentum there. It's hard to break.

That's exactly right. And the more we try to break it, the more they push back and exert political pressure on every administration since Eisenhower. Do you know offhand the dollar amount of subsidies that goes to to process foods and sugar and big ag roughly? Yeah, it's about, I think, well, in, in 2000, 2015, the last time I looked, it was $192 billion. And so it's probably higher now. Let's just say that that was removed. How would the food companies respond to that?

They would have to change some of their practices. That would be the assumption. So the Giannini Foundation at UC Berkeley actually did this exercise, this modeling exercise, back in 2007. They asked the question, what would? the price of food look like if we got rid of all food subsidies. You'd have to get rid of all of them. And the reason is because if you subsidize one thing, that means you're taxing everything else, because you have to make book. I mean, subsidies distort the market. That's what they do.

Okay. So, you know, you want the market to work. I want the market to work. Okay. It's very libertarian. Let the market work. Well, the market's not working because of the subsidies. So let's get rid of the subsidies. So what would happen to the price of food? Now, the, you know, the betting man would say, well, the price of food would go up. Turns out the price of food would not go up. It would stay the same except for two items. Corn and sugar, those would go up. And that's exactly what we want to go up because that's what we have to reduce the effective availability of because they're the biggest problem. So fresh fruit and fresh vegetables that are grown in California and shipped to Wisconsin where I live, that wouldn't change then if the subsidies went away because it's still going to be

somewhat expensive to ship and whatever. That's already in the price. But you're saying that the real bad foods for our mitochondria would go up in price, which would be a good signal to people to consume less. Yes. That's right. Are you working on things like that? Or are there people working? on this? There are people who are modeling it. The question is, is anyone working on it at a policy level? And the answer is, stay tuned. So is there, in addition to the subsidies, would breaking up the monocultures in the United States

we're only talking about now and adopting regenerative agriculture, which is more labor intensive, better for climate, better for the health of the people involved, in it, would that aid in the reduction of obesity and related diseases? Absolutely. No question. No ifs, or buts. It'll reduce obesity because it'll allow for fruits, vegetables, and fiber-containing foods, which are necessary to become more plentiful and therefore less expensive.

So people will be able to incorporate them into their diets because they are less expensive and more available. And it will also reduce the nitrous oxide and methane and carbon dioxide burden, which will have enormous effects on cellular metabolism. So it's a win-win. What is the effect of nitrous oxide? So, well, nitrous oxide is a heat trapping. Right, right.

Okay, I thought you meant on the individual. On a climate standpoint, it would reduce that. Well, yeah, but I mean, carbon dioxide is is a problem too. You know, and if you look at the, you know, people talk about all three greenhouse gases like they're equivalent. They're not. You know, you know this. I'm no doubt. If you have three components to each greenhouse gas, that is parts per million and then residence time, and then heat trapping capacity,

you could develop a formula for how bad each greenhouse gas was. It turns out the one that gets all the attention, that gets all the press, is methane. Because they want to get rid of the cows. Here's the problem with that. Methane is actually the lowest in terms of parts per million. and it's also the lowest in terms of residence time. So it is 25 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide. I don't argue that.

It is definitely more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, but there's less of it and it has a lower residence time of only nine years. The nitrous oxide that you have to spray, that you have to spray nitrogen fertilizer on the crops because there's no cows on the farm to carbon fix and provide nitrogen for the crops. So you have to spray the nitrogen instead, which then forms nitrous oxide, which then goes into the air. It has the longest residence time of 114 years, and it has a heat trapping capacity of 250 compared to methane, which is only 25. It's 10 times more heat trapping.

So us spraying nitrogen fertilizer on crops because we took the cows off the farm is basically, you know, truly shooting ourselves in the foot. It's like doing the absolute worst thing. And worse yet, we have the cows now in Kansas on these CAFOs, concentrated animal feeding operations, right? where all the cattle are, you know, basically in, you know, in pens and can't move, right? And so they're all lying in their own excrement, and they're eating corn, which is not high in legumes, is not high in some of the compounds that are needed for immunologic competency. So these cows get sick very easily. And so what happens?

The cattlemen have to give the cows shots of antibiotics. So virtually all of the CAFO-treated meat that we consume in this country is all antibiotic-laden. So what are those antibiotics doing? Does that carry over into our gut microbiome and disrupt it? Absolutely. And it disrupts the cow's microbiome. So it kills off the good beneficial bacteria in the cow's microbiome and allows the methanogens, the methane-producing bacteria to basically take over.

So each cow today is making six times the methane than they did in 1968. But it wouldn't have to be that way just because it's a cow and people eat beef. It's because of the way they fatten them up on the cathodes with corn. Exactly right. So you have to undo, you have to unwind this whole thing together. Well, you have to understand it first in order to unwind it. So thank you for explaining it so clearly. Let me ask you this.

This is just my own personal sense, but you're an endocrinologist, so I get to ask you this. What is the impact of antibiotics writ large on our microbiome and our metabolism? It seems to me in some ways antibiotics are one of the best inventions of human history, but it seems like we might have traded mortality for morbidity. Like it's a great thing because we don't die because we take a. antibiotics when we have a disease. But at the same time, the antibiotics are weakening our response as individuals because it's killing all the beneficial bacteria as well as the bad ones. Do you have any thoughts on that? I do. I have lots of thoughts on that. And you're, you almost stated it

correctly. It's not just morbidity mortality. I mean, ultimately, antibiotics kill. I'm sorry, bacteria kill quickly. Pneumonia kills quickly. You know, various infectious diseases. The reason that our lifespan has gone from 47 years to 78 years are two, you know, changes in the 20th century. Antibiotics and actually three changes. Antibiotics, vaccination, and hygiene. Okay, sanitation.

Those three things. Antibiotics, vaccination, sanitation. That's the reason we went from 47 mean age to 78 years mean age. Okay, those three things. Antibiotics are good when you use them right, when you use them for the disease that you have in front of you. But that's not what we've been doing. every kid who gets a viral otitis, you know, an ear infection,

okay, it's viral. We won't let them back into school until they're on an antibiotic. But antibiotics don't kill viruses. Exactly. Antibiotics don't kill viruses. Those viruses would go away by themselves, but every kid gets an antibiotic

for every ear infection. And in fact, every patient who ends up in the hospital, hospital ends up on an antibiotic. And the problem is, the more you use the antibiotics, the more resistant the bacteria get. And so you have to develop new antibiotics and new antibiotics. And now we have strains of bacteria that are not even susceptible to antibiotics. So we've created a legion of superbugs. In addition, we have sterilized our microbiome. And this is work from Marty Blazer at NYU, who's basically showed that the earlier antibiotics get

introduced into a newborn's gut, the more likely that that gut microbiome will change and promote obesity going forward in the future. Is there any evidence of people in communities that they're, rather than just someone living in their house with just their wife and two kids or something, people living in communities cooking together, sharing, working together, that they're, they're sharing each other's microbiome because of interaction, and that's, a healthy benefit or is that just kind of speculation? I think it's speculation, but, you know, there is definitely something to microbial diversity. The more kinds of bacteria you have in your intestine, the better off you are. That's clear. Whether you get them from other people or not is not

clear. Do you take probiotic supplement type things yourself? No, and I'll tell you why. probiotics are live cultures. They are bacteria that are live. Okay. You want to increase your bacterial diversity. So you take a probiotic. Now that probiotic goes into your intestine. It should take up space.

It should grow. It should take. It should, you know, proliferate. It should be able to do that. And it should be able to do it with one dose. So how come you keep needing it? How come we have to take it every day? Right.

Yeah, right. Why is that? Okay. The point is, if the probiotic were taking, you know, actually set up shop, you don't only have to take it once, but that's not true. And the reason is because the reason the probiotic's not there in the first place, because the internal milieu of your intestine is toxic. It's not conducive to the growth of those bacteria,

which is why they're not. there in the first place. So what do you think adding a probiotic to a toxic environment will do? Nothing. And that's what's happening. Nothing. What you have to do is you have to change that internal milieu. And how do you do that? You have to allow fiber. Fiber. Fiber is not a probiotic. Fiber is a prebiotic. So what are some things that contain fiber that are readily available at grocery stores or restaurants. How about all the produce? Okay.

That's what the produce is for. It's for, the produce is not for you. The produce is for your bacteria. Wow. You have to feed your gut. Statement. So people that were living on the person in Sao Paulo's scale of the category four, if they would switch from that category food to

produce, right there, it would start changing some reactions in their physiology, their gut, et cetera? In two days. Really? Two days. You would notice differences or a doctor would notice differences? A doctor would notice differences in two days. How can this not be more widely known, Rob?

I mean, you do read it out there in places, but not with this clarity. Because the food industry is very powerful. And they have a very big mouthpiece. Have you, I mean, you've been speaking about this issue for over a decade. Have you seen positive trends in the right direction? And what will it really take to start, like, significant change on this? Yeah. So really good question.

So I actually have data. And the food industry generated it for me. How about that? There is a public relations arm of the food industry called IFIC, the International Food Information Council. And they, every year, publish their annual report, and as part of the annual report, they ask the public a question. And each year it's a different question. In 2011, they asked the question, what nutrient or food stuff is the greatest contributor to weight gain? And at that time, 11% said refined carbohydrate and sugar.

And 48% said a calorie is a calorie or I don't know. In 2018, they asked the exact same question the exact same way, seven years later. And now, 33% of the population answered refined carbohydrate and sugar. And the same number of people went down in terms of a calories of a calorie, a calorie or I don't know. In other words, those people had been educated as to what the real problem was. So education does work, but education alone is no match for any substance of abuse. Right. I know that. You can't unaddict somebody with education. Well, and I'm somewhat aware of these issues. And to me,

it's the refined carbs have gotten the bad name. And of course, sugar is a refined carb. But people try to low carb and all those, but maybe that's not the real danger. You had matzabal for breakfast. That's carbs, but there's no sugar in that. So maybe carbs are okay as long as there's no sugar or processed involved. Yes?

So this is, well, this is a question. In the nutritional scientific community right now is, is it carb restriction or is it sugar restriction? And I'll be very honest with you. It depends on the patient. There are some people that require carb restriction. If their beta cells and their pancreases are exploding insulin, they need carb restriction. But if they have liver fat, they very well may just need sugar restriction. So probably different modalities for different people.

So a few weeks ago I was at a Homeland Security Conference and I met a gentleman there who knew you or knew of your work and we were talking and I told him we would be on this call and he told me to ask you, is obesity a national and homeland security issue? Absolutely. If I named him, would you be able to tell me if it was him? Sure. Dan O'Connor? Yeah, Dan. Okay, I had a feeling. And he knows the answer to that.

He's the one who said it to me. Yes, of course it is. How so? I mean, you know, that, well, if 93% of Americans have some form of metabolic dysfunction. And if the food at the PX and at the cafeterias are, you know, ultra process, which they are. Okay. We are basically fattening up our own troops and we're contributing to their mitochondrial dysfunction.

Well, to me, it's... That's not a fighting force that you want to field. Well, it's troops and military aside, I think it's a homeland security issue for the, the viability of our nation and our intelligence and creativity and health and discovery and innovation and everything, right? It's kind of sapping a lot of our potential. If people are, 93% of Americans have some metabolic dysfunction? Yep, according to Tufts.

And what would you speculate that the 7% of others, how did they luck out or how did they avert this? I wish I knew the answer to that. I don't know. Okay. I don't know. So if you had to speculate the next 20 or 30 years, knowing which, well, let me ask you one more question. I have so many questions for you, Rob, but we'll wrap this up soon.

I have read in the climate. We'll have to do a part two. Yeah, we'll have to do a part two. I've read in the climate literature that warmer temperatures, good for plant growth, but they grow the plants, but not necessarily the nutrient. and that the micronutrients like zinc and things like that don't get assimilated. So we might have a larger plant, but what humans actually eat from the plant is missing critical inputs. Have you looked into that?

Have you heard of that? I have. I've not personally looked into it other than writing about it in metabolical. It's not like I've done research in it myself. Yeah. But there are two issues. One is soil versus dirt. And the other is selective breeding.

Two different issues. So soil versus dirt. What's the difference between soil and dirt? Soil has microorganisms and healthy microseul function, et cetera. Soil has a microbiome and dirt doesn't. Okay. That's the difference. And dirt, if you're going to grow a plant in dirt, you need to add a whole bunch of nitrous oxide

and other things. Nitrogen, right. Nitrogen. And you have to carbon fix. Right. Exactly. That's exactly the point. So you can grow anything in soil.

And the reason is because the microorganisms in the soil, the viruses, the fungi, the bacteria, are actually producing things the plant needs to be nutritious. So the plant conglomerates. those things, but the plant doesn't necessarily make those things. Got it. So when you grow plants in soil, they are more nutritious because of those microorganisms. When you grow plants in dirt, yes, you have to throw nitrogen on them, you have to throw water on them, you know.

Yes, it'll grow, but it won't have nearly the nutritional content that that same plant growing soil will have because those microorganisms are not there. scientifically established. That's scientifically established. Yeah. Second problem, selective breeding. People like sweet. And so all the fruit and vegetable growers said, okay, let's take our best hybrids and hybridize them together and make the sweetest possible apple, the sweetest possible pair, the sweetest possible, you know, tomato, et cetera, et cetera.

because then people will like them better and they will buy them. Well, it turns out as you selectively hybridize, you actually reduce all of the things in the fruit and in the vegetable that were nutritious because those things are bitter. They have a bitter taste. So the polyphenols, the clavinoids, the carotenoids, all the things that actually contribute to the nutritional quality of the plant have actually been selectively bred out so that the sweetness will show through instead. So this is partly

man-made by selective hybrid hybridization and it's partly plant made because of the soil dirt issue. But yes, there's no question that our fruits and vegetables today are less nutritious than they were 25, 50 years. And then it's a positive feedback, right? Because people buy those products, it has more fructose and less of the micronutrients. And it's, it gets our taste buds more tethered away from tiger piss and dog poop that taste bad but actually have nutrition in them from earlier in the podcast. Wow, I've learned a ton here. So a few of closing questions for people listening, what can people do right now in their control to minimize the risks that you discuss about metabolic disorder and mitochondrial dysfunction

and create more healthy baselines for themselves in the future? Three words. Eat real food. Okay. Eat real food. Now, that's hard to do. It shouldn't be hard to do, but it's hard to do. And the reason it's hard to do is because we have food deserts, you know,

through much of the country where you can't even get real food. And also, the cost of real food is four times higher than ultra-processed food. because the consumer price index. So there's an inequity aspect to everything you're talking about because for people... This is... Yeah. This is the basis of social determinants of health. Right here.

This is what it's about. Fix the food. Now, the question is how? How can you fix the food? Well, how about differential subsidization? Okay. Here's a concept. So number one, get rid of all the food subsidies.

But if you're not going to get rid of all the food subsidies, how about tax? the ultra-processed food and use the money from the tax to subsidize real food. Zero-sum game to the government, not a money grab, but what you're doing is you're improving effective availability for the people who need it most. Will they go for that, though, because the healthier food isn't going to taste as good. Of course not. Yeah. Well, number one, number one, yes, they will, the public will go for it eventually, because money is. money and price. Everyone's determined that price is the most important thing. That's, you know, that's been shown 50 ways from Sunday. The problem is, will the food companies go for it? And the

answer is they won't be out anything because you still have to eat and you still have to drink. I have so many questions for you that, but the big thing that's like rolling in my mind, it's almost four o'clock here is I'm wondering, what the hell should I have for dinner tonight after talking to Dr. Lusty? So do you have... Yeah, I know. I have that effect on people. Yeah. Well, it's a good effect. So do you have specific recommendations for young humans listening to this that are aware of climate change,

aware of how messed up our culture is? Maybe they've learned some new things today from this discussion. What do you tell teenagers and 20-somethings who are learning these things? Right. So the first thing is education works. Okay. We think of it this way. All right.

This is how I explain it to people. Okay. In the last 30 years in this country, we have had four, count them, four cultural tectonic shifts in this country. Here they are. Ready? Number one. Bicycle helmets and seatbelts. Number two.

Smoking in public places. Number three. Drunk driving. Number four. Condom. and bathrooms. 30 years ago, if a legislator stood up in a state house or Congress or parliament or the Duma or anywhere else around the world and proposed any one of those four items for legislation,

they'd have gotten left right out of town. And now that seems so obvious. Liberty interest. Get out of my kitchen. Get out of my bathroom. Get out of my car. Today, they're all facts of life. No one's belly aching about any of those things.

We're belly aching about new stuff, like vaccines, right? But those things are settled. Okay. And if you don't click your seatbelt before you pull out of your driveway, your kids will scream at you. Now, how'd that happen? And why did it take 30 years? Answer, we taught the children.

The children grew up. And they voted. And the naysayers are dead. That's why it's a generational tectonic shift. Are you finding traction with educating young people with this message? Absolutely. Yes, we are. And we are teaching kids about food in kindergarten through 12th grade, Rainbow Chefs Academy,

which I'm an advisor to, at in the, Mount Diablo Unified School District. We have an entire food curriculum. We teach fourth graders how to cook in class in the cafeteria. We use the cafeteria as an education center. So that when a kid goes into the grocery store with the mother and goes to the produce aisle and says, hey, mom, there's an artichoke. Can we have that for dinner?

And the mom says, well, I don't know how to make an artichoke. And the kid says, yeah, but I do. And the kid becomes the positive disruptive force. in the household. Teach the children. You can do this. This can be done. We are doing this. Now, there is a problem. It's called time. We have a clock. We have a drop dead clock. We have a 1.5 centigrade temperature increase on climate beyond which there's the point of no return. And we have to meet it. And that's the problem. We have to speed this education up. And we're going to have to educate the naysayers too because we've got to fix this problem fast. And that's hard. Yeah. Yeah,

for sure. And we're going to have to educate politicians as well. So I have three final questions that I ask all my guests. I hope you don't mind. They're a little bit on the personal side. What do you care most about in the world, Rob? Fixing the problem. I can believe that. There's nothing else. If you don't fix the problem, if you don't fix the problem, what else is there? Yeah.

Yeah. The problem is we have multiple problems, but I am convinced that this one is that. We only have one problem. Okay, the problem is the problem you have identified. The problem is the problem of overconsumption. Yeah. A couple centuries ago, they had people dying from overconsumption, which was a word for tuberculosis. But now it actually is literally overconsumption as a culture and as individuals.

Yeah. So if you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing that you would do to improve human and planetary future? future's. Get rid of the food subsidies. Okay. No if, sands or buts. Get rid of the food subsidies. There's no reason for them. Excellent. They distort the market. Let the market work. And what is next for you? You recently wrote this book. I know you're speaking and talking to people in DC to try to change their mind. You're dedicating your wisdom and connections towards, you know, What are you doing now?

Another deep scholarly book or what? So, yeah, I'm going to, right now I've got a bunch of things on my plate, but I have an idea for a book that I'm going to write with my best friend in science, Dr. Alyssa Epple, she is a psycho endocrinologist. She wrote, she co-wrote the book, The Telemere Effect with Liz Blackburn, Nobel Prize winner about telomeres. She wrote the stress prescription just came out recently. She and I are going to write a book about the amygdine.

ground zero for chronic disease. And why the amygdala is under assault 24-7-365 and why that is the basic neurobiology of our problem of overconsumption. I thought the amygdala is where we stored our emotional memories and trauma and things like that. That's the fear center. Fear center, yeah.

The place where we store memories is the hippocampus. Right, right, right. Okay. The campus actually feeds back on the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is reason that also modulates and temporizes the amygdala. When the amygdala is a let to go hog wild, that's when your brain goes from being a brain to being a lizard. And is food related to that?

You bet it is. All right. Well, you're going to come back for that one. I really enjoyed this, and I learned a lot. And it's also given me the cognitive ability to trump my emotional needs in the present for sugary tasting things. And I'm going to make some changes. So thank you so much, Dr. Lusting. And to be continued.

My pleasure, Nate. Anytime. Anytime. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. And visit The Great Simplification.com for more information on future release. leases.