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Dr Lustig’s Evolutionary Concept on Fructose and Fattening
Robert Lustig, MD, well known for his compelling arguments to remove sugar from our diet, delivered an intriguing message to the Ancestral Health Symposium. The presentation was titled, “The Trouble with Fructose: a Darwinian Perspective”, and proposed an interesting idea related to fructose, a common component of most of the sugar we eat. Of course if you’re already hooked on sugar… Get Expert Help Every Step of the Way - See this Review of Diane Sanfilippo's 21-Day Sugar Detox Program.
Presented by the Ancestral Health Society, the Symposium fosters collaboration among healthcare professionals, scientists, and laypersons on developing solutions to current health challenges based on an evolutionary perspective. It was held at UCLA, August 5–6, 2011, in Los Angeles, CA.
“The trouble with fructose: A Darwinian perspective” by Robert Lustig, MD from Ancestry on Vimeo.
In the video, Dr. Lustig raises an interesting idea. Fructose, which comprises roughly 50% of table sugar, fruit sugars, and High Fructose Corn Syrup (found in many foods), has some unique properties that are unhealthy for us. He explains the hormonal sequence by which consumption of fructose can lead to a hormonal “fattening” tendency, which permits the body, which normally constrains itself from taking on extra fat, to instead add extra fat.
This would, at first blush, seem unlikely. In other words, the body doesn’t normally do things that are unhealthy. So why would we have evolved over the centuries to “fatten” when we consume a lot of fructose? The answer lies in fruit. For ancient man, the main source of fructose was fruit sugar. With this in mind, Dr. Lustig conjectures that, since fruit is only in season part of the year, ancient man evolved to develop this hormonal response to fatten up on fruit sugar, while fruit was in season, to help get thru the winter and the long stretch till fruit was in season again.
The sad reality now is that, if this idea is correct, we have this same mechanism in place in our bodies. Most of us eat fructose every day though, not just during one season of the year. Hence the reason we tend to “fatten” up year round.
This post is featured on the Modern Paleo Blog.
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