Dr. Robert Lustig: How Sugar & Processed Foods Impact Your Health

It's not what you do one day that kills you; it's what you do every day that kills you. And if you basically eat ultra-processed food high in sugar for 10 years in a row, it's going to show up in terms of your comorbidities. And ultimately, yeah, it will kill you.

There's this thing called glycemic index ... It's garbage. It is complete and utter BS ... Nothing is more egregious in terms of argument than the glycemic index. And this is one of the things dietitians promote and espouse, and this is one of the things that's got to go.

Therefore, a calorie burned is a calorie burnt. I don't argue that that's true. That's the first law of thermodynamics. But that doesn't mean a calorie eaten is a calorie eaten. That's not the same, and that's where people get it wrong.

We have trans fats—the devil incarnate. Consumable poison—because you can't break the trans double bond ... It basically accumulates, lines your arteries, lines your liver, causes chronic metabolic disease, causes insulin resistance.

When you consume the fructose with fiber—so your blueberries—you're feeding your microbiome. That fructose wasn't for you.

Right now, in America, we pay an 8-year longevity tax. If you look at Japan, they have a mean age of death of 88. We have a mean age of 80.

You can make trans fats in your own kitchen by taking olive oil and heating it to beyond the smoking point. So, they're not completely gone; they're just gone from ultra-processed food.

This whole calorie is a calorie just makes no sense, and it hasn't worked at any level, and there is no study that actually shows that cutting calories makes a difference.

I can show you voluminous data that shows that virtually every weight loss study that that led to you know caloric restriction basically didn't work.

If you look at what happens to energy in the body, 65% of that which is ingested goes to resting energy expenditure—just to power the body, 10% goes to the thermic effect of food, and then 25% ghost activity.

About 10% of everything you eat goes to just maintaining body temperature. It's called the thermic effect of food. But when you're eating protein, you actually generate more heat.

Our fructose consumption has gone up 25-fold since the beginning of the last century.

Fructose inhibits three—count em, three—separate enzymes necessary for normal mitochondrial function.