What are the main factors contributing to the obesity epidemic? How can we stop the trend of weight gain before it catastrophically changes the average human lifespan? Dr. Robert Lustig, author of the viral lecture Sugar: A Bitter Truth by renowned pediatric endocrinologist, has spent much of his career trying to find these answers, and the documentary “Fat and Thin” Skinny on Obesity reveals his enormous efforts in this area of research.
For Dr. Meli and his colleagues, obesity is the plague of our modern population. “The reason we got into this epidemic can be summed up in one sentence,” said Dr. pleasure. “The argument is that a calorie is a calorie.” In his view, mass weight gain goes beyond this simplistic equation. Instead, obesity is more deeply rooted in cultural and environmental factors that have helped redefine our existence over the past few decades. Our industrialized diets are designed to provide quick and cheap on-the-go food, made up of unknown ingredients and chemicals produced in lucrative food labs. These products thrive in global markets because they serve a culture that prioritizes convenience over healthy eating and sedentary living over physical activity.
However, all other factors aside, the one that has proven to be the most detrimental to our health is sugar. The presence of these sugars is especially insidious in foods advertised as low in calories, as they are often used to supplement foods that lack flavor. So the high sugar content in the vast majority of processed foods is indisputable proof that there is definitely more than just calories. “Sugar is 50 times more powerful than total calories in explaining global diabetes rates,” explains Dr. pleasure. It’s also a culprit in the development of metabolic syndrome, and the attendant cases of type 2 diabetes, heart and liver disease, high blood pressure, dementia, and cancer.
Thin on Fat makes an utterly convincing case for the dangers of sugar and illuminates the ways we can combat sugar’s greatest threat to our well-being. More broadly, the obesity epidemic is the result of devastating changes in our culture, and solutions can only be found by redefining our relationship with the food we eat.
