This month I want to share with you a book that was recommended to me by one of the leaders in my profession, Dr. Dan Murphy. Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine by Robert H. Lustig. In the words of Dr. Murphy, “This book is a MUST READ” and I could not agree with him more!
Pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Lustig serves up an eye-opening survey to explain why processed food is killing people. Forty years of medical practice convinced Lustig that the problem was not what’s in food, but what’s been done to food: processed foods (largely thanks to added sugars), he writes, are “a toxic and addictive consumable poison” that have increased rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, depression, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. A return to “real food,” he writes, can improve lives, ease health-care costs, and save the planet. Lustig decries modern medicine’s method of treating symptoms instead of addressing diet and, on the personal level, proposes a solution for healthy eating that involves protecting the liver and tending to the gut. Lustig crisply condemns Big Pharma and the food industry, and is indisputably thorough on the science, drilling down to the eight cellular pathologies behind metabolic syndrome. Lustig’s case that readers treat sugar like an addictive substance is strong, and candid asides on such topics as how to interpret one’s lab test results keep things moving along. This indictment of the food industry lands as a must-read guide to a healthier world.
Robert H. Lustig, M.D., is an internationally renowned pediatric endocrinologist who has spent the past sixteen years treating childhood obesity and studying the effects of sugar on the central nervous system, metabolism, and disease. He is the director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital; a member of the UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment; as well as a member of the Obesity Task Force of the Endocrine Society.
For more information about Dr. Lustig and his book, visit their website.