Fat Chance
In ‘Fat Chance’, Robert Lustig documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of metabolic syndrome – whose symptoms include obesity, diabetes and heart disease – over the last 30 years. He exposes for the first time how changes in the food industry and in our wider environment have affected our collective metabolisms and our waistlines, and he shows how industry and political forces, motivated by greed, don’t want things to change.In the late 1970s, when the US government mandated the removal of fat from food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress, and suggests societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. Compelling, controversial, and completely based in science, Fat Chance debunks the widely held notion to prove “a calorie is NOT a calorie”, and takes that science to its logical conclusion to improve health worldwide.
Читать Fat Chance онлайн беплатно
FAT
CHANCE
The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease
Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.
First published in Great Britain by
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by Hudson Street Press, a member of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Robert H. Lustig 2012
The right of Robert H. Lustig to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Ebook Edition © December 2012 ISBN: 9780007514137
Version: 2018-08-03
This book is dedicated to all the obese patients worldwide who suffer daily, and the family members who suffer with them. The children who will not know a normal childhood, who will endure an inhuman existence, and will die a slow and early death. The parents who are engulfed by guilt. The unborn children, who are already imprisoned by changes in their brains and their bodies. But most of all, I dedicate this book to those of you who are or have been my patients; for it is you who taught me the science of your affliction. You also taught me more than medical school ever did or could; and that each life is valuable, precious, and worth saving. You maintained your dignity in the face of the most adverse circumstances imaginable. You shared with me your misery, and your joy in small victories. We cried and we laughed together. I hope I was of some service and comfort.
This book is my way of returning the favor.
This book is written only for those of you who eat food.
The rest of you are off the hook.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Time to Think Outside the Box
Part I. The Greatest Story Ever Sold
1. A Fallacy of Biblical Proportion
2. A Calorie Is a Calorie—or Is It?
3. Personal Responsibility versus the Obese Six-Month-Old
Part II. To Eat or Not to Eat? That’s Not the Question
4. Gluttony and Sloth—Behaviors Driven by Hormones
5. Food Addiction—Fact or Fallacy
7. The Birth, Care, and Feeding of a Fat Cell
8. The Difference Between “Fat” and “Sick”
9. Metabolic Syndrome: The New Scourge
Part IV. The “Real” Toxic Environment
10. The Omnivore’s Curse: Low Fat versus Low Carb
13. Exercise—The Other Half of the Antidote
14. Micronutrients: Home Run or Hyperbole?
16. The “Empire” Strikes Back: Response of the Food Industry
17. Altering Your Food Environment
18. Altering Your Hormonal Environment
19. Last Resorts: When Altering Your Environment Isn’t Enough
Part VI. The Public Health Solution
20. The “Nanny State”: Personal versus Societal Responsibility
21. What Hath Government Wrought?
22. A Call for Global Sugar Reduction
“We just eat too damn much.”
—Governor Tommy Thompson (R-Wisc.), U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Today, NBC, 2004
Indeed we do. That’s it, thanks for buying this book, you’ve been a great audience, I’m outta here.
Well, that’s what the U.S. government would have you believe. All the major U.S. governmental health agencies, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Surgeon General, say that obesity results from an energy imbalance: eating too many calories and not getting enough physical activity. And they are right—to a point. Are we eating more? Of course. Are we exercising less? No doubt. Despite knowing this, it hasn’t made any difference in the rates of obesity or associated diseases. More to the point, how did this epidemic happen and in such a short interval of just thirty years? People say, “The food is there,” and it is. But it was there before. People say, “The TV is there,” and it is. But it was there before, and we didn’t have this caloric catastrophe. There’s more to this story, way more, and it’s not pretty.
