Robert Lustig on BBC Radio 4 - PM

Beebop

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Anyone hear this?

He said something like: "Well diets like the paleolithic diet and Atkins - they work!", before going on to say that sugar is the cause of all evil.

I was partly laughing, and partly hoping that no-one I cared about was listening. In fact, I was hoping that
no-one at all in the whole country was listening, at prime time, to a high profile, well respected, BBC radio programme.
le sigh. :roll:
 

dietf***ed

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The unfortunate truth of the matter is different diets work for different people. Some will benefit from Lustig's advice and a large majority won't. Just the facts of life and nutrition ..
 

chris

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dietf***ed said:
The unfortunate truth of the matter is different diets work for different people.

This is only true to a small extent. Low carbs/sugar is stupid.

Lustig has been tagged an "obesity expert" but Lustig himself is pretty chubby, ignore Lustig.
 

charlie

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davehorne

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Beebop said:
Anyone hear this?

He said something like: "Well diets like the paleolithic diet and Atkins - they work!", before going on to say that sugar is the cause of all evil.

I was partly laughing, and partly hoping that no-one I cared about was listening. In fact, I was hoping that
no-one at all in the whole country was listening, at prime time, to a high profile, well respected, BBC radio programme.
le sigh. :roll:

First, I'm only posting here because I Googled 'Robert Lustig BBC Breakfast' and this site was the first hit. I watched him this morning on Breakfast.

I take issue with your comment. I've wanted to lose just ten pounds for the last 20 years and could never manage to do it.

By accident I stumbled upon a YouTube talk by Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat, and learned how our bodies deal with fat storage. After watching that talk it all made sense. (It's a 60 to 70 minute talk and towards the end he uses drawings to show what happens at the cell level.) In order to use your own fat depots as a fuel source you only need a 'negative stimulus of an insulin deficiency'. In other words, you do everything you can not to provoke an insulin response (that's why sugar is to be avoided at all costs). This is in essence the Atkins diet ... or you could call this a low glycemic diet ... or a Paleolithic diet. By simply and easily changing my diet - I just eat real foods, no processed foods, which means no foods with added sugars (and no starchy foods as well) - I've managed to lose 25 pounds and have easily kept them off. (I also had blood work done and the 'numbers' were all excellent.)

It's also with noting that before the Paleolithic revolution (before we started growing crops of wheat, barley, corn, etc.) the average height of males were about 5'9" or so. We got shorter (and sicker) from eating a less varied diet. (The average height during the Paleolithic revolution was around 5'3".) Over the last hundred years or so we've manged to get back to the height of our ancestors from 11,000 years ago.

I'm not going to get in a pissing contest with you. I've done a lot of reading on this ... and have learned this first hand as it were.

All the best, DH
 

davehorne

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A minor correction for accuracy ... I Googled ... Robert Lustig BBC Breakfast March 2013 ... and this site was the first hit. :)
 
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Beebop

Beebop

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Hey DH,
Welcome to this forum!

I'm glad you've found success with your diet.

I was really posting this in part of this forum where you can let off steam about things that annoy you. And the interview I heard annoyed me and I wanted to share that with other like-minded people.

I have a different understanding of nutrition and health to you. May we both find health through whatever path we take.

p.s. check out Ray Peat's articles on sugar. They are highly informative.
 

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davehorne

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Hi, ... yet another correction ... and I couldn't go back and re edit my original post.

The agricultural revolution I was referring to is also called the Neolithic revolution and not the Paleolithic revolution. Sorry.

I'll take a look at Ray Peat's articles.
 

gretchen

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Look at that red, semi-inflamed skin. I wish he would stop calling high fructose corn syrup "sugar".
 

charlie

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Oh crap! We are doing it all wrong! Change of plans! Less sugar more fiber! And packaging, must eat as much packaging as possible to help stop the absorption of sugar! :lol:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... ert-lustig


Funny, look at the top comments under the video. Heh. And NO thats not me.
 

montmorency

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@Davehorne:

I've been where you were/are, so I think I know where you are coming from. See my posts elsewhere if interested.

I admire Gary Taubes as a writer ... I read his "Good Calories, Bad Calories" ("The Diet Delusion" in the UK), and it's a tour de force in the sense of a fairly objective history of dieting, from William Banting (1796 – 1878) onwards. He is a trained science writer with a background in the "hard" physical sciences, which are actually a bit more rigourous than the "soft" biological sciences and especially "nutritional" science (which is barely scientific at all - mainstream nutrition I mean).

He says he started writing that book with an open mind and only came to certain conclusions after reviewing tons of research, only part of which made it to the final book (~600 pages including index and references). The only fault I find with that book is that in his conclusions chapter, he fails to finger PUFAs, even though in the main body of the book he gives plenty of evidence of the dangers of them. I don't know why he failed to do that. I can only assume he wanted to keep his basic message as simple as possible. Not that that really makes sense as part of a 600-odd page book.

I'm slightly more critical of what he did after the book, which was to become an evangelist for low-carb, and I thought this even when I was pretty gung-ho for it myself. I would have preferred to see him remain objective.

Anyway, my personal story is that although I had quite a lot of success with low-carb (and I am prepared to refute certain things that certain people say about it on here and elsewhere), I felt it wasn't the whole story. Then I discovered Ray Peat.

Horrible cliché I know, but I describe myself as still being on a quest for knowledge, which I suspect will be going on for a long time (regarding health and nutrition).

One advantage in the low-carb approach is that it is relatively simple to implement (although I saw plenty of people making a pig's ear of it on LC forums), whereas Ray Peat's approach requires a bit more subtlety and nuance.


Oh yeah, Lustig: Well, even when I was low-carbing, I watched his video lectures with some skepticism (or cynicism). I didn't find him convincing. He wasn't even a believer in low-carb, so far as I knew, in his early days of fame. As I've mentioned, Dr Richard Feinman (seemingly a very smart guy who happens to be a low-carber) described people like Lustig as "fructophobes", in one of his blog articles. I found that quite funny.

I'd still recommend people even who hate low-carb with a vengeance to read Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (aka "The Diet Delusion"). I think Gary writes better than he speaks, so I don't really recommend his video lectures.
 

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