Alec Baldwin: I’m Alec Baldwin and you’re listening to Here’s the Thing from WNYC Radio.

One of every three American adults is obese. Some reacted to Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg’s recent proposal to limit the sale of plus size sodas as just another example of a super sized government, but the truth is stark. Children today are the first American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due to obesity. As you probably already know, obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease and even cancer and is arguably becoming the most pressing public health issue of our time. Last year this issue became a personal one when my doctor told me I was pre-diabetic. So when I read about Dr. Robert Lustig and his widely popular anti-sugar lecture posted online, I paid attention. And next, I gave up sugar.

Robert Lustig [video clip]: So why do I call it the Coca-Cola conspiracy? Well, what’s in Coke? Caffeine, good, good. So what’s caffeine? It’s a mild stimulant, right? It’s also a diuretic. It makes you pee free water. What else is in Coke? We’ll get to the sugar in a minute. What else? Salt, 55 milligrams of sodium per can, it’s like drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on sodium and lose free water, you get? Thirstier, right. So why is there so much sugar in Coke? To hide the salt.

Alec Baldwin: Dr. Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco. Back in the '80s he became interested in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He was treating kids recovering from brain tumor surgery.

Robert Lustig: I had a stable of kids who were enormously obese. And thing was they weren’t obese before the tumor, but they started gaining weight at 30 to 40 pounds a year after the tumor.

Alec Baldwin: Per year?

Robert Lustig: Per year. With no cessation, nonstop.

Alec Baldwin: These kids suffered from something called hypothalamic obesity, an especially heinous form of obesity that doesn’t respond to diet or exercise.

Robert Lustig: In 1994 when the hormone Leptin was first discovered it became very clear that these kids, because that area of the brain was dead, they couldn’t see their Leptin signal. Now normally Leptin will tell you, you don’t need to eat so much and you can burn energy properly.

Alec Baldwin: It literally is the signal about appetite.

Robert Lustig: Right. And these kids were constantly hungry and worst yet, they were the world’s biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in every single thing around them. They would sit on the couch, eat Doritos and sleep. This was their life. And the parents would come to me and say this is double jeopardy. My child has survived the tumor only to succumb to a complication of the treatment. They are non-functional.

[Crosstalk]

Alec Baldwin: Why did they become couch potatoes? What was the link there?

Robert Lustig: Because when your brain sees Leptin, you want to burn energy, you want to exercise, you want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you want to go do things.

Alec Baldwin: So Leptin signals the body to exercise?

Robert Lustig: Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on board to exercise.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: When your brain can’t see it, your brain thinks you’re starving. And my job was to figure out a way to take care of these kids. So my research in obesity started back in 1995. We said okay, these kids brain--that area of the brain is dead. I can’t bring it back. I’m not a neurosurgeon, I can’t transplant the hypothalamus. What can I do? So after doing some research [I] realized that we could work downstream of the brain. The brain was signaling the pancreas to make extra insulin. Insulin makes you store energy. So these kids are known to have enormously high insulin levels. So I said, all right let’s give these kids a medicine that will block the release of insulin. We did a study and low and behold patient starting losing weight. But more importantly they started exercising. One kid started competitive swimming; two kids started lifting weights at home. One kid became the manager of his high school basketball team, running around collecting all the basketballs.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: I mean, you know parents were calling me up within a week saying 'I’ve got my kid back.'

Alec Baldwin: Right. But some people also link this - who you talk about the activity or the lack of activity to political things and economic things like cuts in school budgets for activities and so forth and technology. That kids are much more interested in virtual games and not getting out there and playing a game. Do you see that with the kids you work with as well?

Robert Lustig: There’s no question that all those things are true. The question is are those cause or effect. There are a lot of correlations and a lot of ‘em have nothing to do with anything. The point was this was cause because we were interfering with insulin release and these kids changed their behavior. And that was the first key to what I think is the entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic.

Alec Baldwin: And then what happened for you? What did you do next?

Robert Lustig: So then we said maybe there are adults out there who have the same problem; they just don’t have a brain tumor. Let’s look for it. So we did a whole study, pilot study, with 44 obese adults and we gave ‘em the same drug to do the same thing. And low and behold, 8 out of the 44, not all of ‘em by any means, but 8 out of the 44 lost a lot of weight, a pound a week over 24 weeks without doing anything. And what was even more amazing was their fat intake didn’t change, their protein intake didn’t change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime. They went from 900 calories a day to 350 calories a day in carbohydrate. They stopped snacking between meals. And the most important --

Alec Baldwin: Crackers.

Robert Lustig: Right. Bugles, you know.

Alec Baldwin: I can’t believe you just said Bugles.

Robert Lustig: You bet.

Alec Baldwin: Pringles.

Robert Lustig: Absolutely.

Alec Baldwin: Yeah.

Robert Lustig: And these kids needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it. And these adults needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly, when we got their insulin down guess what, they started exercising. So this all of a sudden became very clear what’s going on. For these kids with the brain tumors they couldn’t see their Leptin, their insulins were sky high because their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving they would eat everything under the sun and it still wouldn’t be enough ‘cause they could never see their Leptin. And what we realized was this is obesity too. They can’t see their Leptin either.

Alec Baldwin: Well, why? They don’t have brain tumors.

Robert Lustig: That’s where sugar came in.

Alec Baldwin: So sugar was a culprit that enabled other bad eating.

Robert Lustig: Exactly. And we’ve learned that the higher your insulin goes the hungrier you get.

Alec Baldwin: The hungrier you are.

Robert Lustig: That’s right.

Alec Baldwin: So sugar is an appetite stimulant.

Robert Lustig: In a sense, yes.

Alec Baldwin: Accelerant, whatever you want to call it.

Robert Lustig: You can call it that.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: Absolutely. We know that because David Ludwig at my opposite number at Boston Children’s, he prepped a bunch of kids with a soda, a can of soda, 150 calories, and then he let ‘em lose at the fast food restaurant. So the question is did they eat more or did they eat less. What do you think?

Alec Baldwin: They ate more.

Robert Lustig: They ate more.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: Their insulin was high and also there’s a --

Alec Baldwin: High insulin makes you hungry.

Robert Lustig: That’s right. High insulin makes you hungry and also there’s a hormone in your stomach that signals hunger called Ghrelin and when Ghrelin’s high you’re hungry and sugar doesn’t knock it down.

Alec Baldwin: When I gave up sugar it was amazing. It was like pushing a toboggan along a track to eventually get down the slope. The first couple weeks, the first couple months, early May through June. By the time I get to July and August we’re going downhill and the weights just coming off me. Now I cut out carbs and I gave up pasta because that was the mega dose of carbohydrate. I mean I would eat you know the fish tank sized bowl of pasta. You know I ate a lot of pasta.

Robert Lustig: And it’s easy to do. A lot of people think that the Italian diet is the Mediterranean diet.

Alec Baldwin: No.

Robert Lustig: Not at all.

Alec Baldwin: No.

Robert Lustig: There is no pasta in the Mediterranean diet. We started the pasta craze because of all the immigrant Italians who couldn’t afford to eat meat and vegetables here, that’s what they fell back on -

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: - and it actually got exported from here back to Italy, same as chop suey did to China. You know these are all American inventions. So the fact is that the Italian diet is not the Mediterranean diet, never was, never will be.

Alec Baldwin: But I would say to people 'I cut back on bread.' They’d say "Okay, great.' Then I’d say to them 'I gave up pasta.' They’d say, 'Whoa, really? Wow.' Then I’d say 'I gave up sugar' and they’d go --

Robert Lustig: 'You’re insane.'

Alec Baldwin: Exactly. It was if I said to them 'Let's go learn to play the classical piano now. Let’s begin now.' It is just is undoable to them. The looks I got from people about giving up sugar.

How did sugar become we’re consuming 130 pounds of sugar per person per year? Was it always that way?

Robert Lustig: No, no. This is very new.

Alec Baldwin: What do you think changed that?

Robert Lustig: Money. And marketing and you know the food industry. So there are a couple sort-of milestones in this story. The first is the nascent candy and soft drink and sugar industry in America, which dates back to the early 1900s. But that didn’t really get things started, ‘cause sugar was still kind of expensive and sugar had been expensive all throughout history. In 1959, we lost our sugar fix because Castro took over Cuba. And that actually started the Florida sugar industry.

Alec Baldwin: ‘Cause the sugar had come from Cuba prior to that.

Robert Lustig: That’s right.

Alec Baldwin: A lot of it.

Robert Lustig: A lot of it. So that started the American sugar industry really in top notch gear. It had been in Louisiana, it had been in Hawaii. Then high fructose corn syrup came along.

Alec Baldwin: High fructose corn syrup shows up and all of a sudden it’s in everything. Why?

Robert Lustig: Well, it actually took awhile.

Alec Baldwin: ‘Cause it’s sweeter?

Robert Lustig: It is sweeter, but most important it’s cheaper.

Alec Baldwin: But do you find that also this is what’s happening over the last I don’t know how many years, I mean I’m not somebody who knows the history of this but certainly in my lifetime, which is the goal, is to make everything sweeter.

Robert Lustig: Right. The point is that this is actually evolutionary, this is in our DNA. Because there is no foodstuff anywhere in the world that is both sweet and acutely poisonous.

Alec Baldwin: Right. So it was a signal to us.

Robert Lustig: It was a signal to us that it was safe to eat.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: Even Jamaican acai fruit, which has a substance in it called Hypoglycin which causes Jamaican vomiting sickness. It can kill you. It’s only in the immature fruit, as soon as the fruit falls from the tree to ground, Jamaican’s know it’s okay to eat ‘cause it’s now right and the toxin is gone. So we are programmed to like sweet. And what has happened is the food industry figured it out and they highjacked our taste buds for their own purposes.

Alec Baldwin: When you think about this epidemic - and it is an epidemic -

Robert Lustig: It’s a pandemic.

Alec Baldwin: I don’t say this with any smugness or satisfaction; I say this with a lot of sadness because I had always been thin. I thought I was doing the right thing health-wise. I’m a vegetarian. I’m a pescetarian if you will. And I’m beginning to really, really blow up here you know.

Robert Lustig: Listen, we’ve got vegan Type 2s who are massively obese and just because you’re vegan doesn’t protect you.

Alec Baldwin: And they’re getting that from what?

Robert Lustig: What do you think they’re getting it from? Sodas. Sodas are vegan.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: Especially South Asians, Indians. They can’t carry as much subcutaneous fat and once you basically fill up your subcutaneous, your love handle fat stores, it starts building up in your liver and when that happens it’s all downhill after that.

Alec Baldwin: But when I go out there in the world now and I have a tremendous awareness to this obesity issue that other people are dealing with and I have a tremendous empathy for them. I must say everywhere I go I see it. You want to walk up to that guy and you want to walk up to this woman and you gotta go, give up something. You know the frappuccinos or the candy or the bread, ‘cause you really see that people are suffering.

Robert Lustig: And that’s why this is so important.

Alec Baldwin: But other people have worked towards this prior to you.

Robert Lustig: Yes.

Alec Baldwin: You’re not the first person -

Robert Lustig: Oh, no.

Alec Baldwin: - to say sugar is bad.

Robert Lustig: Look this has been going on since the '70s, this discussion.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: The chief anti-sugar campaigner was a guy by the name of John Yudkin and he was a British physiologist, nutritionist. And he wrote a book back in 1972 called "Pure White and Deadly." You read this book, it’s just astounding. Everything came to pass. On this other side, we had this guy Ancel Keys and he had done a sabbatical at the University of Cambridge in 1952 and he saw you know what the Brits were eating and it was pretty horrible. And he came to the conclusion that saturated fat had to be the cause of heart disease. And he did many studies all over the world and he published a 500-page tome called the "Seven Countries Study" back in 1970. And that was the question, was it the fat or was it the sugar. We didn’t know at that point what happened to sugar in the liver. We didn’t know that it got turned into fat. What we knew was that saturated fat correlated with LDL levels and LDL correlated with cardiovascular disease. So the thought was let’s get rid of the saturated fat and cardiovascular disease will disappear. The whole country went low fat back in 1980. Here’s the problem, when you go low fat the food tastes like cardboard and the foot industry knew it. What were they gonna do? How were they gonna sell food? And now we had high fructose corn syrup, too.

Alec Baldwin: When does that get introduced into the food market?

Robert Lustig: The early '70s, ’73, ’75.

Alec Baldwin: By who?

Robert Lustig: Actually I don’t know by who.

Alec Baldwin: American corporations.

Robert Lustig: American corporations.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: In 1980, the second worst hurricane in American history. Hurricane Allen, it wiped out the entire Caribbean sugar crop. And the food industry, especially the beverage industry, ran scared. They said 'Where are we gonna get the sugar for all the soft drinks?'

Alec Baldwin: Right. It was an unreliable market.

Robert Lustig: Exactly. And they started introducing it and they started upping the dose and by 1985 the transformation as complete.

Alec Baldwin: Is the process of getting table sugar from cane sugar more labor intensive and more expensive than the high fructose corn syrup process?

Robert Lustig: By a lot.

Alec Baldwin: ‘Cause high fructose corn syrup comes from corn.

Robert Lustig: Right.

Alec Baldwin: And the corn market and the corn supply in this country is far more plentiful and far more reliable than the cane sugar supply.

Robert Lustig: Correct. Sixteen percent of all of the corn grown in American today ends up as high fructose corn syrup. So we have boatloads of it.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: And it’s cheap. And because it’s cheap it started finding its way into things that never had sugar before, like hamburger buns, hamburger meat, barbeque sauce, ketchup, salad dressing. I mean pretty much everything you can imagine in the store, indeed Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina has just done a study that shows that 80 percent of the food items, there are 600,000 food items in America, 80 percent of them are laced with sugar, added sugar.

Alec Baldwin: Do you think that they understood back then that sweetening the bun - was it just about taste?

Robert Lustig: They knew that when they put it in, we bought more.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: That they knew.

Alec Baldwin: They knew that when this was in there people ate more of it.

Robert Lustig: Right.

Alec Baldwin: Palpability equals sales. It did then, it does now. And we love sugar. And that’s why the entire food supply of America is not sweeter than you can imagine.

Alec Baldwin: You walk into a drug store and there is an expanse of sugary items, candy, gum, mints. And I have friends of mine who were grown people, men and women, they see a candy and you see them change behaviorally before your eyes. They’ll come in and they’re having a very serious conversation with you or they’re the person you know and all of a sudden they turn and they go, ooh jelly beans. And it’s like kryptonite to them -

Robert Lustig: It is.

Alec Baldwin: - and they just can’t stop eating that stuff.

Robert Lustig: Here’s the problem. There’s an area of your brain called the reward center, everybody’s heard of it because you know drug addiction.

Alec Baldwin: Cocaine addiction.

Robert Lustig: Cocaine, morphine, heroine, nicotine. They all work in the same place. And the neurotransmitter that signal pleasures called dopamine. You’ve probably heard of it.

Alec Baldwin: Of course.

Robert Lustig: Dopamine. When you get a dopamine rush you get pleasure and sugar does it the same way as all of those drugs of abuse. The problem is when you get that pleasure; you down regulate the little proteins that catch the dopamine called dopamine receptors. And the more you down regulate ‘em the more dopamine you need to get the same effect. And that’s called tolerance. And then when you take the stuff away, then there’s no dopamine to interact with these few proteins left and that’s called withdrawal; tolerance and withdrawal, that’s called addiction. So we know how that works for all of these other drugs of abuse, it turns out sugar does the same thing.

Alec Baldwin: Same thing. It’s the same as cocaine.

Robert Lustig: The difference is that for cocaine you gotta go find it whereas for sugar we have what we call system saturation.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: It’s everywhere, you can’t escape it.

[Music]

Alec Baldwin: This is Alec Baldwin and you’re listening to Here’s the Thing. Today I’m talking with Dr. Robert Lustig. More in a moment.

Here’s the Thing is supported by Legal Zoon. Legal Zoom is not a law firm but provides self help legal services at customer’s specific direction. Legal Zoom has been dedicated to the needs of individuals, families and small businesses for more than a decade. Information is available at Legalzoom.com. Use the code “The Thing” for a special offer available to Here’s the Thing listeners.

[Music]

Alec Baldwin: We talk about regulation of like alcohol and tobacco and I want to say that that’s something that people have tried in public policy with sugar. They tried to stop food stamps being used to purchase soft drinks and I believe they lost that.

Robert Lustig: Right. Bloomberg petitioned the USDA to take soft drinks off food stamps and the USDA rebuffed it.

Alec Baldwin: Well, why do you think they did?

Robert Lustig: Why do you think they did?

Alec Baldwin: I mean other than the straight up political influence of the soda industry.

Robert Lustig: Isn’t that enough?

Alec Baldwin: How does the USDA do that? No one’s saying to the people who are on food stamps you can’t have soda; I just don’t want the government to pay for it.

Robert Lustig: The USDA’s job is to sell food. That mean sell it whoever’s gonna buy it.

Alec Baldwin: Right. So it’s about commerce.

Robert Lustig: Absolutely. And who controls the USDA? The USDA is basically the governmental arm of the food industry.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: And the job of the USDA --

Alec Baldwin: You don’t have a lot of faith in the USDA.

Robert Lustig: Not a whole lot, no. The job of the USDA is to protect the food supply and that includes protecting it from people like me.

Alec Baldwin: In terms of threats to public health, would you equate other products and other substances that are commonly used as being equally threatening as sugar? Do you think there’s a caffeine epidemic in this country?

Robert Lustig: There is a caffeine epidemic.

Alec Baldwin: I believe there is.

Robert Lustig: And it’s being stoked by all the coffee companies.

Alec Baldwin: But it’s of less concern to you than sugar?

Robert Lustig: Oh, way because there’s no toxic downside. With sugar, Type II diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, gastric bypasses. $147 billion a year down a rat hole for taking care of chronic diseases which don’t need to be. We could balance the budget on that. We wouldn’t need healthcare reform if we had obesity reform and we can’t have obesity reform until we have some sort of sugar policy.

Alec Baldwin: You mention pretty regularly the food industry this, the food industry that and you know most Americans who I think are smart realize that we have more than enough food to feed three quote un-quote “square meals a day” to everybody in this country and those that aren’t getting it it’s because of the distribution of food in our society. However, we have to cut a lot of corners to get there in the way we produce beef, in the way we produce livestock, in the way we produce pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, all of this stuff.

Robert Lustig: We need a new food model. We need a new food growing model. By 2050, we’re gonna need four California Central Valleys in order to feed our population, we won’t even have one. Because of the runoff in the Sierra, the changes in soil erosion, we won’t even have one. So you know what the obesity epidemic might even take care of itself because we’ll have a famine because we are misusing our food system. Michael Pollan writes about this routinely. The bottom line is biochemically our current food environment does not work for us and until we fix it, we’ll continue to pour money down a rat hole. We will continue to be sick; we will continue to die of things like diabetes and heart disease. Medicare will be broke by 2024 because there won’t be any money to pay for it. You won’t be able to see a doctor because they’ll be too busy taking care of all the other fat people in the emergency room who are having their heart attacks and there won’t be enough food anyway.

Alec Baldwin: As I’m listening to you I’m getting really depressed and I want to go have ice cream now. You’re really bumming me, I mean I want an Almond Joy bar really badly right now.

Robert Lustig: Look the bottom line is there’s a lot of reason to be positive and I’ll tell you why.

Alec Baldwin: Give me an example.

Robert Lustig: People are getting it. This is the tipping point. We’re here now. People are starting to recognize.

Alec Baldwin: That there’s an obesity epidemic in America.

[Crosstalk]

Robert Lustig: Not just obesity.

Alec Baldwin: Heart disease.

Robert Lustig: Non-communicable disease epidemic.

Alec Baldwin: Okay. Diabetes, heart disease.

Robert Lustig: Yeah, exactly.

Alec Baldwin: Cancer.

Robert Lustig: That’s what sucks out all the money from the entire medical establishment.

Alec Baldwin: Now in the 60 Minutes program that you were on recently, they got into the cancer link.

Robert Lustig: Breast cancer in particular is famous for having insulin receptors and growing in response to insulin.

Alec Baldwin: Prostate.

Robert Lustig: Yes.

Alec Baldwin: Do prostate tumors have insulin receptors?

Robert Lustig: Yes, they do. So there’s a lot of reason to be concerned and there’s a lot of reason to keep your insulin down for all sorts of reasons. Number one, it doesn’t fuel and tumors. Number two it let’s your Leptin work, number three it doesn’t increase the smooth muscle of your coronary arteries so that you might end up getting a heart attack. There’s a whole bunch of reasons to keep your insulin down. And the thing that makes your insulin go up most, sugar.

Alec Baldwin: A lot of people are terrified when they sit down in a restaurant. A lot of people that are staying to stay fit and trying to stay healthy, they can go through periods; I’ve been through this myself. Where I have like a mild panic attack when I sit down at the restaurant, ‘cause I say to myself 'There’s an enemy lurking in everything here. There’s mercury in the fish and there’s hormones in the chicken.' And I don’t eat beef and poultry. And there’s too much sodium here and there’s too much fat here. I don’t eat dairy.

Robert Lustig: It’s true. It really is true. And ultimately we’re all gonna die of something.

Alec Baldwin: Right. With some very small number of exceptions, isn’t an argument being made that everything we’re eating is gonna kill us?

Robert Lustig: Sure. Absolutely. And I know that and you know it too.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: The question is how and when and with what misery that comes with it.

Alec Baldwin: Right, and can we slow it down.

Robert Lustig: And the answer is yes you can. The single best thing you can do for yourself quality of life-wise, exercise. By far and away nothing else comes close. The next thing that’s most important is when you’re eating make sure you have some fiber.

Alec Baldwin: When people want to go eat fiber that you recommend they eat now where do they go?

Robert Lustig: Very simple, brown food, brown and green. Okay if it’s brown and green its got fiber.

Alec Baldwin: Brown meaning?

Robert Lustig: ‘Cause fiber is brown. Wheat comes out of the ground. What color is it? It’s brown. You send it to the mill you make bread out of it. Now what color is it? Where’d the brown go? It got milled off. God made carbohydrate with inherent fiber. So we have brown rice, whole grains, beans, we have lentils. We have other legumes, we have nuts, they’re all just great. But as soon as you remove the fiber, which is called processing, now you got a problem. Because now when you eat it the sugar gets absorbed so fast that your liver gets overloaded, your mitochondria basically get sick and now you’ve got insulin resistance and how you’ve got all the diseases going downstream from there.

Alec Baldwin: Do people need to have an elevated level of consciousness and discipline about eating pasta, rice and potatoes as well?

Robert Lustig: At the moment they do.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: Ultimately I’m hoping --

Alec Baldwin: ‘Cause mixing that with sugar, it’s that one-two punch.

Robert Lustig: For sure. Absolutely. I’m hoping that the food industry will pick up on this and do the right thing, but to be honest with you --

Alec Baldwin: What is the right thing?

Robert Lustig: Well, the right thing would be to actually sell real food so that we can eat real food.

Alec Baldwin: Not processed.

Robert Lustig: Not processed. They can do it now. You know years ago we couldn’t because we didn’t have the distribution system to be able to do it. We have it now. We could do it. We have the technological capability to serve and eat real food. But the food industry is making money hand over fist.

Alec Baldwin: If you could pick one or two things that you would change in public policy. If it was like getting the soda machines out of schools, it would be like no food stamps for soda. What would be a change in public policy you’d make?

Robert Lustig: One thing.

Alec Baldwin: What is it?

Robert Lustig: The FDA currently has fructose, the sweet part of sugar, on what is called the GRAS List, g-r-a-s, generally regarded as safe. Also has trans fats on it at the moment as well. It needs to be reevaluated, it needs to be revised. The last time this was looked at was 1986 and this was before the high fructose corn syrup, glut, this was before the excess sugar --

Alec Baldwin: So it’s a quarter of a century ago.

Robert Lustig: Exactly. And they have no plans on doing so. If I could do one thing in this entire thing it would be that.

Alec Baldwin: What would be one more?

Robert Lustig: I would think very strongly about limiting access of sugar beverages to infants and children, like Zero. There is no reason for it. And there’s something your listeners need to understand. There is not one biochemical reaction in your body, not one, that requires dietary fructose, not one that requires sugar. Dietary sugar is completely irrelevant to life. People say oh, you need sugar to live. Garbage.

[Music]

Alec Baldwin: Dr. Robert Lustig is writing a book about the dangers of sugar called "Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease." It will be out in December. Knowing what you know, what are things you don’t eat? What’s your diet become since you’ve been doing this work?

Robert Lustig: I carry a few extra pounds and I’m not happy about it. I don’t eat sugar.

Alec Baldwin: You don’t.

Robert Lustig: No. I have dessert twice a year. When I’m in New York I have a piece of Junior’s cheesecake and when I’m in New Orleans I have bread pudding -

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: - with whiskey sauce.

Alec Baldwin: Yeah.

Robert Lustig: Those are my two foibles.

Alec Baldwin: Well no one can begrudge you that. Dessert twice a year, wow -

Robert Lustig: Twice a year.

Alec Baldwin: - you’re doing well.

Robert Lustig: Other than that no, I really don’t. To be honest with you it’s not because I did this work, it’s because it usually just doesn’t appeal to me.

Alec Baldwin: And what are you eating that you think you shouldn’t be eating?

Robert Lustig: Well, I have a half a bagel in the morning with cheese, that’s sort of my standard breakfast and my wife get son me for that.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: For lunch unfortunately because I’m running between you know patients, it often ends up something being very processed and it’s a real problem.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Robert Lustig: For dinner though it’s a very standard dinner and I don’t snack between meals and I still can’t lose it. So I understand. I’m there. I’m part of it.

Alec Baldwin: You can’t see your Leptin?

Robert Lustig: Probably not.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

[Music]

Alec Baldwin: This is Alec Baldwin. Here’s the Thing is produced by WNYC Radio.

[End of Audio]