That’s pretty much the cause of the obesity epidemic:
‘That does not mean burgers are OK. “The play I’m making is not sugar per se, the play I’m making is insulin,” he says. Foodstuffs that raise insulin levels in the body too high are the problem. He blames insulin for 75% to 80% of all obesity. Insulin is the hormone, he says, which causes energy to be stored in fat cells. Sugar energy is the most egregious of those, but there are three other categories: trans fats (which are on the way out), alcohol (which children do not drink) and dietary amino acids.
These amino acids are found in corn-fed American beef. “In grass-fed beef, like in Argentina, there are no problems,” he said. “And that’s why the Argentinians are doing fine. The Argentinians have a meat-based diet … I love their meat. It is red, it’s not marbled, it’s a little tougher to cut but it’s very tasty. And it’s grass-fed. That’s what cows are supposed to eat – grass.
“We [in the US] feed them corn and the reason is twofold – one, we don’t have enough land and, two, when you feed them corn they fatten up. It usually takes 18 months to get a cow from birth to slaughter. Today it takes six weeks and you get all that marbling in the meat. That’s muscle insulin resistance. That animal has the same disease we do, it’s just that we slaughter them before they get sick.”‘
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I keep banging on about this subject. Admittedly it’s become a bit of an obsession. I keep telling people to read the work of Gary Taubes and the likes, because I really think sugar and the food industry will become the new smoking/tobacco industry/cancer denial debacle.
There will be dozens of deliberate attempts, some quite subtle, to cause doubt about insulin driving obesity (influenced by sugars), and the fact that a calorie really is not just a calorie. And you can bet that little will be done by governments, given how powerful food companies actually are.
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