Metabolical Quotes

“Autoimmune Disease—the “Leak” in Your Gut Autoimmune diseases are a disaster and there are no good medicines available (steroids work, but the treatment is worse than the disease). They’ve been around for centuries, but there’s been a clear uptick in the last fifty years. Why? Two hypotheses have been proffered to explain it: the barrier hypothesis (our skin or lungs are letting in antigens) and the hygiene hypothesis (we don’t eat dirt and are too hygienic). But in fact, in the gut, they’re the same thing; because the gut is the dirtiest place in the world—one hundred trillion bacteria to have to fend off at all times—you don’t need an intestine, you need a fortress. We’ve known for a while that leaky gut is akin to chinks in the walls of that fortress. Antigens, like enemy soldiers, escape through those chinks into the bloodstream, where T cells and antibodies react against them. But in a case of mistaken identity, these immune cells then accidentally identify parts of your body as foreign invaders and generate an immune response to kill them off, a process termed molecular mimicry. Then there are two new twists. First, it appears that one autoimmune disease, called ankylosing spondylitis, produces antibodies to a gut bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conversely, a different autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis produces antibodies to a second gut bacterium called Proteus mirabilis. Now, this might not seem that earth-shattering, but recent work has shown that the refined carbohydrates in processed food feed those two bacteria in particular, and that carbohydrate restriction improves both of these diseases. Indeed, a low-sugar, high-fiber Mediterranean diet has been shown to be efficacious at prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, introduction of fiber to the diet appears to improve asthma (frequently an autoimmune disease), likely by improving gut function and reducing inflammation.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“So our food’s safe, right? But what if it acts more like a slow poison, like cigarettes—one won’t kill you, but ten thousand consumed over ten years might? Unlike Salmonella, you won’t be feeling the effects immediately. But eventually, you’ll feel it . . . everywhere. In your heart, muscles, bladder, brain, and especially your wallet.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Parents recognize this as the “sugar high,” but it’s actually the negative feedback system of energy balance at work. The cookie stimulated insulin release, which drove energy into fat tissue, which released leptin, which reached the hypothalamus, which activated the sympathetic nervous system, which led to increased energy expenditure, including involuntary contraction of muscles, aka fidgeting—all to maintain energy neutrality.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“That’s right, twenty-five people have to diet and exercise insanely to prevent one of them from progressing on to developing diabetes.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“barbecuing or even smoking your meat leads to PAH formation as well.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Even though lard got a bad name as a saturated fat, it’s way safer to fry in than any other oil.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“What and how did babies eat after weaning off the breast before there was commercial baby food? As we explored earlier, they ate what their parents ate, and they gummed it to death. As a result, they got very strong mastication muscles (masseter, temporalis, and pterygoids), necessary to grow the jaw and increase the airway size.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“sucking on mother’s nipple is far better than sucking on a plastic one. The infant has to suck harder to make a seal, and this action strengthens and grows the sixteen muscles”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“you have to introduce a savory food to an infant a median of thirteen times before they’ll accept it.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“maternal sucrose consumption of 50 grams/day—consistent with the upper limit of current USDA guidelines—negatively impacted mid-childhood cognitive testing. Also of note, prenatal diet soda consumption was shown to negatively impact mid-childhood verbal scores as well.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“soy-based lactose-free formula is now 25 percent of all US formula sales.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“in the UK it’s been proven that maternal seafood consumption predicts improved neurodevelopmental outcomes in children.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“parents from Florida to Belgium have been brought up on charges of neglect due to feeding their babies a standard vegan diet.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“if you give an obese five-year-old kid a cookie, he’s in the pantry looking for more cookies, and then back on the couch—because this kid’s brain is leptin resistant. There is no sugar high.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“84 percent of “born-again” vegans revert back to eating meat.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Although vegans assume they eat healthy, in fact the biggest problem with a vegan or plant-based diet is processed food abuse.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“there’s no biochemical reaction in any animal cell on the planet that requires dietary fructose.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“genetics account for 25 to 30 percent of a person’s longevity.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“ultra-processed food consumption is associated with depression in people.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Laboratory Fatty liver disease ALT >25 in Caucasians, >20 in African Americans, >30 in Latinos GGT >35 Uric acid > 5.5 Glucose intolerance Fasting glucose > 100 or 2-hour glucose > 140; HbA1c > 6.0 percent Type 2 diabetes mellitus Fasting glucose > 125 or 2-hour glucose > 200; HbA1c > 6.5 percent Dyslipidemia and heart disease Lipid profile: TG > 150, HDL < 40, TG:HDL > 2.5, LDL-C >300, LDL-P >1000 Homocysteine > 15 Insulin resistance Fasting insulin > 15 Insulin hypersecretion 3-hour OGTT with insulin levels; measure insulin secretion and resistance indices”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR = glucose x insulin ÷ 405), which assesses your risk for diabetes. A HOMA-IR of less than 2.8 is excellent, 4.3 is average, and anything higher means trouble.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“a fasting blood glucose of 90 is already questionable.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“If the TG level is above 150, that’s metabolic syndrome until proven otherwise.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“The second thing to look at is the HDL. If it’s over 60, it almost doesn’t matter what the other fractions are, as this is a sign of good cardiovascular health.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“All the diseases of metabolic syndrome are associated with increased waist circumference—even in normal weight people—and so waist circumference is much more sensitive for disease risk than is BMI;”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“When I entered medical school in 1976, the upper limit of normal (two standard deviations from the mean) for ALT was 25.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“the third most common cause of death today is prescription medication.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“New data also shows a small but statistically significant negative correlation between fluoride exposure and childhood IQ, which appears to be exacerbated when fluoridated water is used to mix infant formula.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Price found that they universally maintained near-perfectly aligned teeth and jaws, as well as no dental caries, as long as they followed their traditional diets.”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

“Dental caries is a modern phenomenon. Our ancestors didn’t brush their teeth,”
― Robert H. Lustig, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine