R. Lustig and the highly sugar loaded processed foods

December 1, 2014

For Immediate Release

Contact: Wolfram Alderson, Executive Director, Institute for Responsible Nutrition

(415) 265-5306 or wolfram@responsiblefoods.org

 

Dr. Robert H. Lustig Featured in

Groundbreaking Public TV Program

Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food 

 

The holidays are a time for indulgences like sweet treats. But most of us eat sweets every meal, every day—during the holidays and all year round. We don’t realize it but sugar is hiding in three-quartersof the items in the American food supply.

 

“The average American family is eating two desserts every meal, six desserts a day,” said Dr. Robert H. Lustig about the amount of sugar we consume. Dr. Lustig is irate that so many children come to his clinic with diet-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, and he is doing something about it. The San Francisco pediatrician’s efforts to fix this epidemic are showcased in a new public television specialSweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food. The program addresses health problems associated with our standard American diet and how this affects children and adults in the U.S. and worldwide. 

 

“Most people think of sugar and junk food as empty calories, but they are way worse,” Dr. Lustig said. “Sugar turns into unhealthy fat in the body, and processed food, including supposedly healthy choices such as fruit-flavored yogurt, is loaded with added sugar,” he said. In Sweet Revenge, Dr. Lustig explains the science behind how our bodies work, and where sugar is hiding in the food and drinks we consume every day. According to Dr. Lustig and other leading researchers, too much sugar is just as dangerous to consume as too much alcohol, and both cause liver disease. “You would never give your child a can of beer but you don’t think twice about giving them a can of soda,” he says in one of many stunning revelations in the program.

 

Dr. Lustig is the widely recognized scientific and moral compass of today’s global anti-sugar movement, a New York Times best-selling author, and a pediatric neuroendocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He pulls no punches in his exposé of how much sugar and processed food we eat, and its catastrophic health and economic impacts. 

 

The stakes could not be higher. In 1980, virtually no U.S. children had type 2 diabetes. Today 30 million children and adults in the United States—9.3 percent of the population—have diabetes, and that number is growing quickly. In the last 15 years diabetes cases rose by 50 percent or more in 42 states, and by 100 percent or more in 18 of those states. Although 80 percent of the obese population has metabolic disease (such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, lipid or blood fat diseases and others), so does 40 percent of the non-obese normal weight population. This is a public health crisis.

 

In Sweet Revenge, Dr. Lustig lays the blame squarely on the processed food industry, not consumers, for rising rates of type 2 diabetes and other diseases that are entirely preventable. Viewers of the program learn that a single can of soda contains a staggering nine teaspoons of sugar—a full day’s adult dose limit, and three times the amount a child should consume (according to the American Heart Association). Every month, a family of four consumes the equivalent of six, five-pound bags of sugar, half of it hidden in processed food. The result is that pediatricians, including Dr. Lustig, are increasingly treating kids with type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease, which in the past were diseases found only in adults.

 

The good news is that public television viewers will have the ultimate sweet revenge when they learn that, as startling and complex as the problem is, the solution is surprisingly simple.

 

Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food includes segments with demonstrations and tips from San Francisco Bay Area master chef and restaurateur Cindy Gershen, who followed Dr. Lustig’s tips to lose 100 pounds and keep it off. Gershen has established a highly successful culinary arts program at a Bay Area high school.

 

Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food

(Check your local public television listings.)

 

About the Institute for Responsible Nutrition

Alarmed by high numbers of children presenting with severe obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic metabolic diseases, Dr. Lustig and others founded the Institute for Responsible Nutrition, whose mission is to reverse childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes with analysis, research, education, and action. www.responsiblefoods.org

 

About Dr. Robert H. Lustig

Robert H. Lustig, MD, MSL is a pediatric endocrinologist and author of the New York Times best-seller Fat Chance—Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease. Together with Heather Millar and Cindy Gershen, Dr. Lustigauthored the Fat Chance Cookbook: More Than 100 Recipes Ready in Under 30 Minutes to Help You Lose the Sugar and the Weight. He is leading the groundswell to expose the metabolic dangers of consuming processed food, and the costs to our health, our health care system, and our economy. Dr. Lustig is featured in the public television program Sweet Revenge: Turning the Tables on Processed Food.

 

Media Liaison for Dr. Robert H. Lustig

Wolfram Alderson, Executive Director, Institute for Responsible Nutrition (415) 265-5306 or wolfram@responsiblefoods.org

 

Sweet Revenge Producer

Ken Nochimson, Executive Producer, Advise & Consent LLC (732) 616-9912 or ken.nochimson@adviseandconsent.net