Fat and Sugar, Part 1
First, fat was the dietary bad guy. We were warned back in the 1980s to cut back on eggs, meat and full-fat dairy to avoid heart disease. So we started eating more bread, rice and pasta and fat-free snacks. But we got sicker and fatter. Now sugar is the bad guy. Contributor Jill Eisen explores the complex, and sometimes contradictory, science of nutrition -- and tries to find clarity amidst the thicket of studies and ambiguous research.
First, fat was the dietary bad guy. We were warned back in the 1980s to cut back on eggs, meat and full-fat dairy to avoid heart disease. So we started eating more bread, rice and pasta and fat-free snacks. But we got sicker and fatter. Now sugar is the bad guy. Contributor Jill Eisen explores the complex, and sometimes contradictory, science of nutrition -- and tries to find clarity amidst the thicket of studies and ambiguous research. Part 2 airs Friday, December 30. **This episode originally aired June 15, 2016.
Walter Willett, Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health talking about saturated fat
"It's the hormone insulin that makes you fat and keeps you fat. It's also the hormone insulin in excess that's the number one predictor of heart disease. In essence we've been fighting the wrong enemy the last 15 years. The enemy has never been fat. The enemy has been excess production of insulin. There's [sic] two ways you can produce excess levels of insulin in your body. One, is to eat too many fat-free carbohydrates at any one meal. And two, eat too many calories at any one meal. In the last 15 years, especially in America, Americans have been doing exactly that.
-- Barry Sears
"Farmers have known for thousands of years, the way you fatten up any animal is to put them in a pen so they can't run around, and then you feed them lots of grain, basically carbohydrates, whole-grain carbohydrates. Those animals predictably get fat. So we've basically created a North American feed lot where we have people exercising very little, eating lots of refined starches. Things like white bread and potatoes and white rice as well as all the sodas and things made with large amounts of sugar. And not surprisingly, we're getting fat."
-- Walter Willett
Guests in the program:
- Gary Taubes, science journalist, author of Why We Get Fat, and Good Calories, Bad Calories
- Nina Teicholz, science journalist, author of The Big Fat Surprise
- Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University
- Robert H. Lustig, Pediatric Endocrinologist, Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program at the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital
- Dariush Mozaffarian, cardiologist and Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University
- Leonard Syme, Professor Emeritus, Epidemiology and Community Health, University of California, Berkeley
- Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University.
- Barry Sears, Biochemist and President of the Inflammation Research Foundation
- Christopher Labos, cardiologist, epidemiologist and science journalist
- David Ludwig endocrinologist, researcher and professor at the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, Director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at the Boston Children's Hospital
- David L. Katz MD, founding director of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine
Reading List:
- Is Sugar Toxic? by Gary Taubes - New York Times Magazine, April 13, 2011
- Death By Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health by Denise Minger, Primal Nutrition Inc., 2014
- Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, New Trends Publishing, 2001
- Nourishing Broth: An Old Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World by Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniel, Grand Central Life & Style, 2014
- Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease by Robert H. Lustig M.D. , Plume Reprint Edition, 2013
- Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) by Marion Nestle, Oxford University Press, 2015
- Pure White and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing Us and What We Can do to Stop It by John Yudkin and Robert H. Lustig, Penguin Books, 2013
- Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat by Harvey Levenstein, University of Chicago Press, 2013
- Always Hungry: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells and Lose Weight Permanently by David Ludwig, MD, PHD, Grand Central Life & Style, 2016
- Disease Proof: Slash Your Risk of Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes and More - by 80% by David L. Katz, MD, Plume Press, 2014
- Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes, Anchor Books, 2008
- Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes, Anchor Books, 2011
- The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes, Knopf, Forthcoming, December 27, 2016
- The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2015
- Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets by Joanna Blythman, Harper Collins, 2015
- Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, McClelland & Stewart, 2013
Related Websites:
- Food Politics by Marion Nestle
- The West A. Price Foundation for wise traditions in food, farming and the healing arts
Documentaries & Videos
- The Secrets of Sugar, the fifth estate, Oct. 4, 2013
- Fed Up - a movie by Stephanie Soechtig
- Sugar Coated - a film by Michèle Hozer
- Sugar: The Bitter Truth, by Robert Lustig
WEB EXTRA | Listen to Jill Eisen's interview with Sally Fallon Morell, President of the Weston A Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions and Nourishing Broth.
The Weston Price Foundation advocates eating the way traditional traditional societies ate--and is based on the work of Weston Price--a dentist and researcher. Weston Price studied 14 traditional societies around the world where people seemed especially healthy and robust. He noticed that they tended to have wide jaws and strong, straight teeth. Some of the traditional societies relied mostly on plant foods and some mostly on animal foods but all of them included animal fats in their diets. Dr. Price discovered that when they started eating Western diets which included sugar and refined grains and industrial oils, they quickly developed cavities, and started getting the same chronic diseases that plague Western societies. What's more, in a single generation, their children developed narrower jaws and crooked teeth. Read more...
**This episode was produced by Greg Kelly