The study of weight gain, weight loss, and obesity is a minefield of junk science, misinformed opinions, and scams. The amount of misinformation is staggering. You have to cleverly identify reliable sources and uncontaminated studies.
The common belief that people get fat primarily because they eat too much faces a strong challenge today, backed by good scientific evidence. The evidence points more to what we eat than quantity.
Some fat and obese people are puzzled by their increasing weight gain, because they feel that they don’t actually eat more than the average person. Some even consciously reduce the portion sizes of what they eat, but still gain weight.
There is a growing community of health scientists, nutritionists, and healthy eating advocates who now believe that excessive sugar consumption is the root cause.
For many years we have been told that we gain weight by eating foods that are high in fat. Therefore, to avoid gaining weight, the advice has always been to reduce the consumption of fatty foods, especially meat.
Many popular diet plans were created on this premise, with questionable degrees of success, but mostly failures. New research claims that excessive sugar consumption is the real cause of the weight gain epidemic that we are seeing in most of the developed world.
Corn sugar is considered the main source of this global problem. An important voice in the campaign to get us to reduce our sugar intake is Dr. Robert Lustig. He calls this fructose from corn, “poison.”
His eye-opening exhibit, “Sugar the Bitter Truth,” has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube. His argument is both compelling and alarming. In this presentation, he quite convincingly traces the obesity pandemic to the ubiquitous use of fructose from corn in fast foods, prepackaged foods, and beverages.
Renowned food scientists around the world agree with their findings.
I watched this video several times and took a closer look at the content on the labels of many foods in the grocery store. Almost all processed foods on the shelves have fructose corn syrup as an ingredient.
The evidence that this excessive consumption of sugar is the main cause of the dramatic evolutionary change in our physical appearance is difficult to disprove. Both short-term and long-term studies show clear links between the preponderance of sugar in our diet and the large, protruding stomachs that are now the norm.
The food industry as a whole seems quite reluctant to publicly acknowledge its leading role in causing this “pandemic” (as Dr. Lustig calls it).
Some in the anti-sugar field claim that the giants of the processed food industry have known about this problem for years and deliberately covered it up to keep making huge profits. They put their greed before public health.
Your should watch the video of Dr. Lustig. He’s an academic, and you might get a bit lost when he gets into the heavy science details, but stay focused and look at him a couple of times. This is a wake-up call for all of us.