I've been increasingly wary of my sugar intake ever since my dad was diagnosed as diabetic. Since my dad's side of the family all has diabetes, and I don't want diabetes, I figure I should try to prevent that.
I liked this lecture because not only does Lustig tell us why fructose is bad, he shows us exactly why it's bad. Lustig tells us that by the end of the lecture, he hopes we will think of fructose as a poison. He was successful. Everytime I drank a pop I felt guilty, but now I'll feel as though I'm drinking poison. It's clear from the evidence he provides that fructose is the worst part of our diet. I feel bad for foreign countries whose diets have become more American.
Turns out that almost everything Americans eat (processed food) has added sugar. That makes it pretty hard to eat. I've been to the supermarket and looked at all the packaged foods, and everything contained high fructose corn syrup.
I guess we'll all enjoy our diabetes. Maybe everyone will have diabetes someday. Then it wouldn't be a problem because it'd just be "the way things are." Perhaps diabetes will be a rite of passage, after or in place of puberty. Imagine this scene:
A young man about 19 years old is playing video games in his room after hard day of studying for his exams. Just as he's about to come in first place in the game, he starts feeling jittery and gets a headrush and spills his Mountain Dew all over the place as he passes out.
A week later his family is sitting at a banquet table. As they eat their cookie appetizers and sip on their Cokes, they gaze at the boy about to become a man. He is at the end of the table, standing up. His mother is in tears, his father has a proud grin on his face. The family physician is preparing to give our young man his first insulin shot. Although he will take pills to control his insulin levels, the shot is the tradition. The doctor measures the boy's blood sugar levels and with care and precision, pricks the boy's finger with an antique insulin syringe. Now this man will take insulin pills in addition to his anti-depression pills, his multi-vitamin, his sleep aid, and his asthma-pills. For this culture, the more pills you take, the more mature you've become.
The YouTube description:
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.
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