Sugar Is the Real Villain… Not Fat. Here’s Why

What don't we know about sugar, Dr. Schaefy? What what do we what don't we understand? >> Uh we first have to sort of distinguish between what kind of sugars are we talking about? When we say sugar, generally we mean table sugar, but obviously there are a lot of different carbohydrates that are called, you know, simple sugars. The sugar that you want to watch out for is fructose specifically. So that is you obviously it comes in fruits and so forth, but it's you know half of sucrose. Sucrossse is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. And then you have high fructose corn syrup. And that's been painted as this sort of evil monster. And it is, but it's almost identical to sucrossse uh because it has very similar levels. It's almost 50/50% fructose glucose, but it's just a mixture of the two as opposed to being a bound form. And then honey actually has more fructose than both of those. >> Yeah. So the the problem with fructose is that is how it's metabolized in your body. It's actually non-essential. It's not something that you need in your body. There are no biochemical processes in your body that require fructose. It can't be done by something else. So, you don't need it at all. A major problem is that it goes directly to your liver and then gets broken down from there into fatty droplets and other other sorts of uh byproducts. The problem there is is that it actually gets broken down to the same byproducts as ethanol, alcohol, right? So, you get the same diseases and damage to your body from eating fructose as you do from from drinking alcohol. So you can get fatty liver disease from being an alcoholic and from eating pure sugar. >> Exactly. Yeah. So they they actually it actually used to be, you know, very well known that only alcoholics got fatty liver disease. And then in the 1990s when we started increasing a lot of our sugar consumption, putting sugar in everything because we got rid of the fat in different foods and everything tasted horrible and so they put sugar in everything. >> Mhm. >> And then all of a sudden, you know, 10year-olds were getting fatty liver disease and they were also getting adult onset diabetes. Type two diabetes used to be called adult onset diabetes because really only found it in adults and generally they're alcoholics and that's because the alcohol really causes that and then all of a sudden 10-year-olds are getting this and they're saying well wow what what's going on here? How can a 10-year-old get adult onset diabetes? They're not an adult and you know he's getting fatty liver disease but only alcoholics get fatty liver disease. How can someone who's never drank alcohol get this? So instead of actually looking into this and actually thinking for literally one second, they just said, you know what, just we'll just rename it. And so now it's non-alcoholic fatty liver disease type. Exactly the same thing. >> Yeah. Wow. You mentioned something earlier um about people adding or companies adding sugar to food because they removed the fat meaning it tastes terrible. >> Yeah. Yeah. Fat, you know, you talk to any chef, they'll tell you fat is flavor. >> Yeah. Butter. >> Yeah. Exactly. And so, you know, we're told that fat's bad for you. It's not. It's actually really, really good for you. Animal fat is. Vegetable oils and so forth are actually quite toxic for a number of reasons. Um, but when you take that out, I mean, it takes very very bland and horrible. Like even steak, like I love steak, but like a lean steak, you can only have so much of it before it's just sort of like, >> you know, uh, whereas like a, you know, fatty steak is obviously much better. >> Keep going. Yeah, totally. Um, so you mentioned before fructose is one of the worst forms of sugar. >> Um, so if if I'm eating fruit, I feel like there's a limit to how much whole fruit I can eat. Like I'm not going to eat more than two apples. >> Yeah. So is it is it dangerous or is it detrimental for people to be eating whole fruit? >> So obviously, you know, it's better, you know, because it's dose dependent, you know, but that's like saying, you know, I'm only doing two lines of Coke instead of a whole bag, you know. So, but yeah, you're right. It uh, you know, two apples is very different than two glasses of of apple juice. Exactly. >> You know, like a glass of apple juice, you'll have something like 10 apples, you know, worth of juice go into that. It's going to be a lot more sugar. Um, it's also been shown that the fiber in in fruit and so forth when you eat that, you know, delays the absorption of fruit, it delays absorption of everything because you can't, it's literally sawdust. That's what that's what cellulus is. That's what fiber is. And they add sawdust into processed foods to up the the fiber content. You know, there's tons of foods that that can eat that. Um, and so what does that do? it blocks, you know, enzymes and so forth from getting at these uh the different foods in your in your gut and it blocks them from actually hitting the you know the um you know the the the villi and things like that in your small intestine and getting absorbed. So it delays that stops that absorption that it gets into your colon and you know bacteria eat it and so forth and you eliminate it. So it does reduce some of the the fructose in there but at the same time you are getting that stuff in. So it is very important to be aware of that and you're also getting other things that you don't want as well. Fiber in and of itself actually causes damage to your gut lining, causes microabbrasion, causes increased mucous secretion, inflammatory reaction and so forth. And so people especially with autoimmune disorders, Crohn's also clitis, they have a real hard time with fiber and so forth. >> Absolutely. So where do you think the story of fiber being good for us has come from? How do you think >> Yeah. I I mean I remember this when I was a kid. So the the entire argument on why we should eat fiber and and vegetables in general is what everything was about the fat fat craze in the 1980s. It was like, you know, fat busters and all these sorts of things. It's like, you know, diet, diet, diet, you know, fat, you know, you are what you eat. If you eat fat, you get fat. That was a whole argument. Completely wrong. >> I eat a lot of fat. I got 78% of my calories in fat. I generally maintain below 10% of body fat. Even when I'm not working out. >> And where do you get the fat from? >> From steak generally. Yeah. From beef, things like that. Butter, you know, like I melt butter into my ribeye steaks, you know. Um, so in the 1980s, well, 198 1978 1977 to 1980, the USDA declared uh unequivocally that cholesterol causes heart disease, saturated fat increases cholesterol, stop eating both of these things. Uh, that's completely wrong. It's going to be completely debunked. Um, but that changed how everyone viewed everything. So, the obesity rate in England after World War II was 6%. In 1983, when they adopted these same these same dietary models, it was still 6%. Now it's like over 24%. You know, same thing in America. It was 6% and 8%. And then it, you know, tripled in a very short period of time. Um, so everyone started getting fat, everyone started getting sick and they got even more crazed about not eating fat. Then they said, "You should eat vegetables because they don't have nutrition, because they don't have calories, and because they have they're bulky and they have fiber, which you cannot absorb. So it was never thought, it was never actually argued at that time that this is nutritionally beneficial. They said, "Hey, this isn't nutritionally beneficial. So therefore, you'll feel full. So you can eat as much of it as you want and you'll get full and you won't you won't get any fat." There was a celery diet where it said you can just, you know, it takes more calories to process the celery that you eat than you get from the celery. So like, oh, just eat all the celery you want. It's like, well, that's how much celery I want, you know? And they don't talk about all, you know, other things in there as well, which are very harmful toxic components that are in plants and vegetables and so forth that are that plant's way of defending itself against being eaten that people just aren't thinking about. But that was the entire argument was that you can't break it down. You can't get nutrition from it, >> but it makes you feel full, >> but it makes it feel full. You get the stress receptors and your body your body produces a bit of leptin. Your brain goes, "Oh, I'm full." So forth. Um, and it's nonsense. People were getting fatter. They're getting sicker. They're getting unwell. This is when uh a lot of the eating disorders really took off. You know, bulimia, anorexia, and so forth. People are starved for nutrients. You need the fat, you need the meat, you need those things. But fat makes you fat. Meat has a lot of fat. Oh my goodness, stay away from it. And they and they're craving it. And everything in their body is like, you need to eat this. And so they'll binge and purge. They'll they'll eat it and then they'll go, oh my god, I can't believe I did that. And they'll vomit it up. Or you get anorexics, which people have these sort of problems for a number of different issues. This is just one of them that's theorized is that they aren't going to eat the the everything that their body's craving them to have because that's going to make them fat >> and they have a very strong aversion to all the vegetables and things like that because they don't make them feel good because of poisons and so forth. They just don't feel good. They don't like it. They don't taste good and so they just don't eat at all. Yeah. And you get into a very pathological relationship with your food as opposed to being you eat food to, you know, give your body nutrition. Now you're eating for a lot of other different reasons. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at Carnivore Bar. I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat. For those times that you're out hiking, road tripping, or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat, fat, and salt if you want it, the Carnivore Bar is a great option. So I like this product not because it's just pure meat, but also because I want the carnivore market to thrive as well. And the more we support meat only products, the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream. So if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right, thanks guys. >> So if we if we go back to the effect that sugar has on your body. So we talked about fatty liver disease. >> Um how else is is sugar affecting our bodies? >> Yeah. So um professor Robert Lustig who's a you know professor ameritus uh at University of California San Francisco Medical School um in pediatric neuroendocrinology. So he deals with kids with you know bad you know diabetes and things like that. Um he along with the biochemistry program at UC UCSF which is it's a I think last time I checked it was like the number six medical research institution in America. So it's the very very top institution. Yeah, >> they showed biochemically, you know, how fructose is is broken down in your body by your liver and so forth. Um, and and it shows like all these different sorts of things. And it it also showed that it causes peripheral insulin resistance, which is type two diabetes. Uh, it's also in, you know, involved in atherosclerosis and so forth. So, you know, heart disease. We've actually had studies showing or suggesting anyway that sugar caused heart disease back in the 40s and 50s. And it was actually then that the sugar companies got wind of this and they said like okay we need to cover this up and >> fat's bad >> that's it. And so they they actually the journal American Medical Association actually published this in 2015 actual internal memos from the sugar companies back then uh detailing how they paid off three Harvard professors to falsify data and publish fraudulent studies to make it appear as that cholesterol is causing heart disease when it was really sugar. And then one of those professors was named head of the USDA in 1965 and then all of a sudden the USDA just declares that this is happening and you know it's appealing to authority you know you know teacher says so you know says that cholesterol is bad therefore cholesterol is bad and it it it completely uh well you know ruined the reputations of everyone that was saying no no no it's really sugar and actually destroyed their careers and their livelihoods and so forth and and they were and they were dead right the whole time. So, uh, Lustig showed that showed that this does the same damage to your body as alcohol. After it's after it's broken down, obviously doesn't make you drunk and have the same central nervous uh, effects, but after it's broken down, it has the same damage to your body and kids as well. You know, give them, you know, people don't realize how much sugar is around. >> You know, you never give a kid, you know, whiskey, I hope, you know, >> and um, >> but you you probably give them, you know, orange juice or other juices, right? while one 12 oz glass of orange juice has as many grams of fructose as three shots of 40% whiskey have alcohol and does the same damage to their little body. Um so he he was showing all all sorts of things and and he's written you know dozens of papers on the subject. Uh he's written books on the subject and so forth done tons and tons of talks as well avail readily available on YouTube. They're very interesting. He just talks about fructose and how damaging this is and how it causes sort of the same things as alcohol fatty liver disease cerosis diabetes even heart disease. Uh it's implicated in cancer. It certainly feeds cancer if not you know precipitating and causing cancer. Um and it's and even has a strong correlation with Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is now referred to in some circles as type three diabetes and saying, "Oh, there's these similar metabolic changes and effects that we're seeing in this disease process as as with type 2 diabetes." Like, well, yeah, no kidding. There they have the same cause or at least they have one of the same causes. >> That That's interesting. I remember reading reports about uh elderly people who have Alzheimer's being put onto a ketogenic highfat diet and the Alzheimer's being prepared. >> Yeah. Well, it was it's um there was there was quite large studies with that with the highfat ketogenic diet they found was it was a better treatment model than every Alzheimer's drug that's ever been tried, >> right? >> You know, um >> less profitable probably. >> Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, that's the thing with with doctors now is is you we're used to for for thousands of years of medicine, you know, you had a disease that came up and or an injury or something and you had a treatment for that thing. Um and so now we're looking at this. Now we have these chronic diseases. Ah this is a disease. We need to treat this disease. But the problem is it's not a disease. These are toxicities. These are these are poisoning coming and you know sometimes we recognize something as poisoning. You know lead poisoning is it was like the Romans right back in the day they had they had lead pipes and they all had sort of low-grade lead poisoning for you know however long. And they just thought well this is just how you age. This is how you do and this is normal. And it's like well no actually it's not normal. Something's happening. something's making us sick. They figured out was lead pipes. So, we're living in that now. We don't realize we're being poisoned, but we're all being poisoned. So, like vegetables, fruit, you know, bread, sugar, these sorts of things, they're they're all our lead pipes. And, you know, you have to have some outsider looking in going like, I can tell you that this is not normal. Oh, honey, that's an animal product, right? Well, it's actually, you know, bee vomit. And they're just vomiting up concentrated nectar, okay, which comes from a plant. So, if you want to get technical, it goes back and uh you know, it's not it's not exactly an animal, but it's also sugar. Okay?