81:01between glucose and fructose, remember?
81:0372 versus 24 and started the whole thing into motion
81:07as term of what happens that's bad.
81:09Bottom line, no difference.
81:13So, we have something called beer belly.
81:17Well, welcome to soda belly.
81:20'Cause that's what America's suffering from.
81:23No ifs ands or buts.
81:24That's what it is.
81:26Now, you wouldn't think twice about
81:29not giving your kid a Budweiser.
81:33But, you don't think twice about
81:35giving your kid a can of Coke.
81:39But, they're the same, 81:41in the same dosing, for the same reason,
81:44through the same mechanism.
81:45Fructose is ethanol without the buzz.
81:51Fructose is a carbohydrate.
81:53Yes, it is.
81:55But fructose is metabolized like a fat.
81:57And I've just shown you that 30%
81:58of any ingested fructose load ends up as fat.
82:02So when people talk about high fat diets doing bad things,
82:05no, what they're really talking
82:06about is high fructose diets,
82:08and that's what Ancel Keys was looking at.
82:14So, the corollary to that is, in America at least,
82:18and around the world too, a low fat diet
82:20isn't really a low fat diet.
82:22Because the fructose or sucrose doubles as fat,
82:24it's really a high fat diet.
82:26That's why our diets don't work.
82:30And fructose, just like ethanol,
82:33for the same reason, through the same mechanism,
82:35and in the same dosing, is also as toxin.
82:40Now, last, what can we do about it?
82:44Can we do anything about it?
82:46How 'bout the FDA? 82:49You think they can do something about it.
82:51After all, aren't they supposed to regulate our food?
82:54Aren't they supposed to regulate
82:55what they can put in food?
82:58Weren't they supposed to regulate tobacco?
83:02Now they are, actually.
83:03So, you know, weird things.
83:05So, I wanna just show you what
83:07the tobacco company thinks of all this.
83:11This is actually from the UCSF Legacy
83:14Tobacco Documents Library that
83:15Stan Glantz runs right across the street.
83:17Stan's a good guy, like Stan a lot.
83:21And he showed me this.
83:23"Under the regulations governing food additives,"
83:25so this came from an Altria or Phillip Morris executive,
83:29"it is required that additives be safe,
83:31"defined as a reasonable certainty
83:33"by competent scientists that no harm
83:35"will result form the intended use of the additive."
83:38Now, does fructose meet that standard?
83:43Well, the FDA says that fructose,
83:45high fructose corn syrup, has what's knows as GRAS,
83:48G R A S status, generally regarded as safe.
83:53Now, where'd that come from?
83:56No where.
83:58It came from no where.
84:00It came from the notion that, "Well, fructose
84:02"is natural, it's in fruit, it must be okay."
84:07Well, tobacco's natural too.
84:09But it's not.
84:10Ethanol's natural, but it's not.
84:12A whole bunch of, you know,
84:14Jamaican ackee fruit's natural, but it's not either.
84:16It kills you.
84:20Keeping on going.
84:21"A food shall be deemed to be adulterated
84:23"if it bears or contains any poisonous
84:25"or deleterious substance which may
84:26"render it injurious to health."
84:30Fructose fits that description, right?
84:33Uh-uh, but now with the prevention
84:35of chronic diseases, even though
84:37it's own regulations explicitly 84:39postulate the connection between
84:40such products and such diseases.
84:42In other words, the FDA will only regulate
84:45acute toxins, not a chronic toxin.
84:48Fructose is a chronic toxin.
84:50Acute fructose exposure did nothing, remember.
84:53'Cause the brain doesn't metabolize fructose.
84:55The liver does.
84:56And the liver doesn't get sick after one fructose meal.
84:59It get's sick after 1000 fructose meals.
85:02But, that's how many we eat.
85:05So, the FDA isn't touching this.
85:07The USDA isn't touching this.
85:09Because if the USDA touched this, what would that mean?
85:12That would mean an admission to the world
85:14that our food is a problem.
85:18So, what to you think that would do?
85:20There are three things in this country
85:22that we can still sell overseas.
85:25Weapons, entertainment, and food.
85:30Cars? (laughs) Computers?
85:33I don't thinks so.
85:35Can anybody think of anything else
85:36that another country wants of ours?
85:39What?
85:41Tobacco, right, tobacco. (laughs)
85:43All right, you get the picture.
85:44So, the USDA doesn't wanna know about this.
85:47'Cause this is bad news.
85:49And so, who runs the food pyramid?
85:53The USDA.
85:54It's the fox in charge of the hen house.
85:58Because their job is to sell food.
86:00And who's eating it?
86:01We are.
86:04So, in summary, fructose, and I don't care
86:07what the vehicle is, it's irrelevant,
86:10sucrose or high fructose corn syrup,
86:11I don't care, fructose consumption's increased
86:13in the past 30 years, coinciding with the obesity epidemic.
86:17A calorie is not a calorie.
86:20And the dietitians in the country
86:21are actually perpetrating this on us. 86:24Because the more you think a calorie's a calorie,
86:26the more you think, well than if you
86:28ate less and exercise more, it would work.
86:30It doesn't.
86:32All of the studies show it doesn't work.
86:35Here's why it doesn't work,
86:36because a calorie is not a calorie.
86:39Fructose is not glucose.
86:41We know a calorie is not a calorie.
86:43'Cause there are good fats and bad fats.
86:45There's good protein and bad protein.
86:47Okay, there's good carbohydrate and bad carbohydrate.
86:50And glucose is good carbohydrate.
86:52Glucose is the energy of life.
86:54Fructose is poison.
86:58You are not what you eat.
86:59You are what you do with what you eat.
87:01And what you do with fructose
87:02is particularly egregious and dangerous.
87:05Hepatic fructose metabolism leads to all
87:07the manifestations of the metabolic syndrome.
87:09Hypertension through that uric acid pathway,
87:12de novo lipogenesis, dyslipidemia,
87:13hepatic steatosis through that DNL pathway,
87:17those three enzymes, the new fat making pathway,
87:19inflammation through JNK1, hepatic insulin resistance
87:22because of the serine phosphorylation
87:24of IRS-1, obesity because of the VLDL transport
87:27to the adiposite, and leptin resistance
87:29promoting continuous consumption,
87:31basically starving your brain,
87:34making you think you need more.
87:37Fructose ingestion interferes with obesity intervention,
87:39as we showed in our clinic.
87:41The more soft drinks, the less well
87:43diet and exercise actually worked.
87:45Fructose is a chronic hepatotoxin
87:48for the same reason that alcohol is.
87:50The only difference is alcohol is
87:51metabolized by the brain, so you get alcohol effects.
87:55Fructose is not metabolized by the brain
87:57so you don't get those effects.
87:58But everything else it does is the same.
88:01But the FDA can't and won't regulate it.
88:04It's up to us.
88:05I'm standing here today to recruit you.
88:09That's a famous saying here in San Francisco, right?
88:13"I'm Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you."
88:16I'm Robert Lustig, and I'm here to recruit you
88:18in the war against bad food.
88:22And this is what's bad.
88:24With that, I wanna thank my colleagues
88:27at the UCSF Department of Pediatrics
88:28in our Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Clinic,
88:31UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,
88:34and also Department of Nutritional Sciences
88:36at UC Berkeley, in particular Doctor Jean-Marc Schwarz,
88:40who is a card carrying fructose biochemist,
88:42PhD biochemist, who vetted all of these
88:45pathways that I've shown you today,
88:47and looked at this and said, "Oh my God, it is a toxin."
88:50He worked in the stuff for 15 years,
88:52and he didn't even realize it was a toxin until he saw this.
88:56So, with that, I'll close.
88:57Thanks you.
88:58(audience applauds)
89:01(upbeat techno music)