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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Doctor Robert Lustig. Doctor Robert Lustig is an endocrinologist. That is, he's a specialist in the function of hormones in the body and a professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. He has authored more than 100 peer reviewed studies exploring how different types of nutrients, that is, food, impact our cellular functioning, our organ functioning, and thereby our health. During today's discussion, we discussed the idea of whether or not a calorie is indeed a calorie, and whether or not our body weight and body composition only reflects the number of calories we eat versus the calories that we burn. We talk about how different food types, that is, how the different macronutrients, protein, fat, and carbohydrates are processed in the body and the important role that fiber and the gut microbiome plays in that process. And we pay particular attention to the topic of how different types of sugars, and fructose in particular, can indeed be addictive to the brain and can modify the way that hormones in the body, in particular insulin, impact our liver health, kidney health, and indeed the health of all of our cells and organs. Indeed, doctor Lustig is an expert in how sugar impacts the brain and body. We talk about how certain types of sugars can indeed be addictive in the same way that certain drugs of abuse and behaviors can become addictive. So, in other words, how sugar actually changes the way that the brain works. And we discuss how the food industry, that is, the commoditization and sale of particular types of food, has altered the way that we eat and indeed, the foods that we crave. Today's discussion covers all of that. And by the end of today's discussion, you'll have a thorough understanding of how foods are processed when they enter your body, and how those different food choices are impacting your immediate and long term health. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium, and potassium, the so called electrolytes, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potassium are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrolytes need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electrolyte concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits in cognitive and physical performance. Element contains a science back to electrolyte ratio of 1000 milligrams. That's 1 gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes. And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try elemt, you can go to drink element. That's lmnt.com Huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinkelementlmnt.com Huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up. Waking up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga Nidra sessions, and NSDR non sleep deep rest protocols. I started using the waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditations since my teens and I started doing yoga Nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app turned out to be the waking up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the waking up app a try and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up app has lots of different types of yoga Nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga Nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations, and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga, Nidra, and something similar to it called non sleep, deep rest, or NSDR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to wakingup.com huberman and access a free 30 day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com huberman to access a free 30 day trial. And now for my discussion with doctor Robert Lustig. Doctor Robert Lustig, welcome.

Speaker B: Pleasure, truly. Just being here, being invited. High honor. Really appreciate it. And it's not doctor, it's just Rob.

Speaker A: Okay, Rob, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. I've seen your now famous, can we also say infamous but famous YouTube video about sugar. We'll put a link to it in the show. Note captions. It's been viewed many, many millions of times.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I still can't figure out why that is. You know, I didn't think my mother would watch it, and she didn't, but 24 and a half million people did.

Speaker A: Well, I think people are very interested in what to eat, what not to eat. And we'll start off simply talking about what most everyone believes and understands, which is that a calorie is a form of heat energy that's given off during the processing of some food bit or something. If that's mysterious to people, just understand that a calorie is a unit of energy. And I was taught, and still many, many people worldwide believe that a calorie is a calorie, meaning if I consume more calories in whatever form, then I metabolize by thinking, feeling, moving, exercising, etcetera, then I will gain weight. And if I consume fewer calories than I burn, I will lose weight. And we could talk a lot about where that weight loss comes from. Does it come from adipose, body fat stores, or from muscle? Or from protein? Or muscle, of course, is protein, et cetera. But let's start off with, is a calorie truly a calorie when it comes to the processing of different types of calories?

Speaker B: Everyone thinks that obesity is about energy balance. That is, calories in, calories out, therefore two gluttony and sloth. Therefore, if you're fat, it's your fault. Therefore, diet and exercise, therefore, any calorie can be part of a balanced diet. Therefore, don't pick on our calories. Go pick on somebody else's calories. This is actually what the food industry uses to assuage their culpability for the change in the food supply and the rise in obesity and chronic disease like diabetes. Now, it is true that a calorie is that unit of energy that raises 1 gram of water one degree centigrade. And so therefore, a calorie burned is a calorie burned. I don't argue that that's true. That's the first law of thermodynamics. But that doesn't mean a calorie eaten is a calorie eaten. That's not the same. And that's where people get it wrong. So let me give you some examples of how that calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten. You like almonds?

Speaker A: I do.

Speaker B: Me, too. Almonds are great. You eat 160 calories in almonds. How many of those do you absorb? 130. You eat 160, you absorb 130. Where'd the other 30 go in the.

Speaker A: Processing of that food? Energy?

Speaker B: No. Turns out the fiber in those almonds, both soluble and insoluble fiber. And by the way, fiber is sort of the key to the kingdom in this story. It forms a gel on the inside of your intestine. The insoluble fiber, the cellulose, forms a fishnet, if you will. A lattice work on the inside of your duodenum, the soluble fiber, which are globular, plug the holes in that fishnet. Together they form a secondary barrier. You can actually see it on electron microscopy, a whitish gelatinous. And that prevents absorption of those 30 calories. So, yes, 130 get absorbed, but many of them don't. They end up going further down the intestine to the next part, called the jejunum. And that's where the microbiome is. Now. Everyone knows about the microbiome nowadays. It's all the bacteria. We always say when women are pregnant, you're eating for two. Well, we're always eating for 100 trillion. Now they have to eat. Well, what do they eat? They eat what you eat. The question is how much did you get versus how much did they get? Well, if you ate almonds, they're getting those 30 calories. So even though you count the calories at your lips, that doesn't matter. What really matters is counting the calories at your intestinal brush border, okay? And they're not the same. So if you feed your gut, that's a good thing, because then your gut will take those calories and turn it into things like short chain fatty acids, which end up being protective against chronic metabolic disease. Acetate, propionate, butyrate, valerate, those are actually good. They're anti inflammatory, anti Alzheimer's, because you fed your microbiome. So even though you ate 160, you absorbed 130. So a calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten because if you ate it with fiber, it wasn't for you, it was for your bacteria. But that's not the way you count them up. So that's problem number one. Problem number two, amino acids. So we all eat protein. Let's say you eat too much protein. You had the Porterhouse steakhouse. Now, if you're a bodybuilder, those amino acids might go to muscle, and you might increase your muscle mass because you're a bodybuilder, because you're putting excess force on those muscles and you're growing those muscles. Okay, but let's say you're not a bodybuilder. Let's say you're a mere mortal like me.

Speaker A: Or let's say you're a kid going through puberty who's synthesizing a lot of muscle, not because they're lifting weights, because.

Speaker B: Testosterone'S making it happen. Yeah, absolutely. But let's say you're not. Let's say you're just schlump off the street like Joe Schmo. And you eat that porterhouse. You've taken on all these amino acids. There's no place to store it other than muscle. So your liver takes the excess and deamidates that amino acid, takes the amino group off to turn it from an amino acid into an organic acid. And then that organic acid can then enter the krebs cycle, the tricarboxylic acid cycle. What goes on in the mitochondria in order to generate ATP, the chemical energy that your body needs in order to power itself. Okay, now that's a good thing. It takes double the amount of energy to prepare that amino acid for burning as it does to prepare a carbohydrate for burning or fruit or.

Speaker A: Cause when you asked about almonds, why the 160 versus 130? I thought it was the processing. It turned out it was fiber. You're saying for protein. Let's make it realistic for a really nice big porterhouse steak, which I love, by the way. Let's say. Let's say 800 calories. Well, it turns out how much of that is. So that's what goes in your mouth? My mouth? How much of it is actually eaten to stay with your calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten in the processing of that, what percentage actually goes into your total caloric intake?

Speaker B: Right. So about 10% of everything you eat goes to just maintaining body temperature. It's called the thermic effect of food. But when you're eating protein, you actually generate more. And the reason is because it takes two ATP to phosphorylate that organic acid as opposed to one ATP to phosphorylate that carbohydrate for consumption. So you actually have a net loss of energy because it was an amino acid versus a monosaccharide, a sugar. Now you brought up fat. Fat doesn't need to be phosphorylated. So it actually doesn't have any thermic effect of food at that point. So depends on what it is as to whether or not you have loss.

Speaker A: Okay, so, but in this, let's make it actually realistic. A 1600 calorie porterhouse with a nice slab of butter, of grass fed butter on there. I do this every once in a while. Not often.

Speaker B: Some creamed spinach and maybe some mushrooms along the side.

Speaker A: Honestly, I see it when I'm eating a porterhouse. I don't want to adulterate the taste with anything else except maybe some butter, maybe a salad afterwards. But let's say 1600 calories, it's got some fat in there for sure. Let's say 1000 of those calories is protein. The other 600 are fat, something like that. Depending on how marbled it is. Based on what you just said about the thermic effect of food and protein in particular, of that thousand calories, how much actually can we count? I'm not a calorie counter, but does one include as calories truly ingested?

Speaker B: Well, if you ingested 1600, well, that's.

Speaker A: What went in the mouth. But what is going to go against your burn deficit?

Speaker B: Right. So I would have to actually do the math to figure that out. But as a guess.

Speaker A: Yeah. Back of the envelope.

Speaker B: Back of the envelope calculation, you're going to lose about 25% of that. Wow.

Speaker A: So we're talking 750 calories. Yeah. And to translate this a bit. So what we're saying here is if you're somebody who is trying to lose weight or maintain weight or perhaps even gain weight, you eat a 1600 calorie porterhouse with a slab of butter on it. 600 of those calories, we're saying in this is fat with the remaining thousand calories that all went in your mouth. So you count it at your mouth, right, but 700. But then when you compare it against your energy burn for that day to maintain temperature, brain activity, physical activity, really, it's only 750 calories.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: That's a huge difference.

Speaker B: Exactly. And another reason why a calorie is not a calorie. Now, let's take the third. Let's take fats. So here we have omega three s. Heart healthy, anti inflammatory, anti Alzheimer's, save your life. And over here we have trans fats, the devil incarnate consumable poison. Because you can't break the trans double bond, you don't have the desaturase to break that trans double bond. So it basically accumulates lines your arteries, lines your liver, causes chronic metabolic disease, causes insulin resistance. Omega three s don't even get broken down for energy because they're so important. They stay intact because your brain needs them, your heart needs them. Whereas trans fats can't be broken down because of that trans double bond. One save your life, other one kill you. They're both nine calories per gram. If you explode them in a bomb, calorimeter. Because a calorie burned is a calorie burned. But a calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten, because one will save your life, one will kill you. And finally, the big kahuna, the one that blows everything else out of the water. Fructose and glucose.

Speaker A: All right?

Speaker B: Now, glucose is the energy of life.

Speaker A: So here we're talking carbohydrates. I think most of our audience will be familiar with the so called macronutrients. So we talked about fat, in this case, almonds. There's some fiber in there. Probably a little bit of carbohydrate.

Speaker B: A little bit.

Speaker A: Little bit. We talked about the porterhouse with butter. You can be hungry already. That's protein and fat.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Very little, if any, carbohydrate. Zero, essentially. Maybe 10, zero. Yeah. And then now we're talking about carbohydrates, and we're going to subdivide that into glucose and fructose.

Speaker B: Right. Galactose basically becomes glucose in the liver. So we can dispense with that unless you have a disease called galactosemia, which is about one in 20,000 and causes neonatal meningitis. And, you know, it's a disease, as a pediatric endocrinologist, I would take care of. But we can dispense with that for the moment. All right, so, glucose, fructose. Glucose is the energy of life. Every cell on the planet burns glucose for energy. Glucose is so damn important that if you don't consume it, your body makes it. So it will take an amino acid and turn it into glucose.

Speaker A: That's gluconeogenesis.

Speaker B: Gluconeogenesis, that's right. It will take a fatty acid and turn it into glucose. And specifically, the glycerol portion of the triglyceride will turn into glucose. So the inuit, they didn't have any place to grow carbohydrate. They had ice, they had whale blubber. They still have serum glucose level. And the reason is because you had to, you have to have a serum glucose level in order to power your brain, in order to power your heart. Yes, you can use ketones. Of course you can. But only if you're in a ketogenic state will you use exclusively ketones. And you also need glucose for structural changes in specific proteins and particularly hormones. So glucose molecules will stud tsH LH, FSH different pituitary hormones in order to increase their potency. It's one of the reasons why aging leads to defective hormonogenesis. For instance, hypogonadism. Hypothyroidism is the loss of glycosylation on individual peptide hormones. Because of the inability to add glucose because of insulin. It's an aging phenomenon.

Speaker A: Okay, we'll come back to this because I think it's really important. The idea that ingestion of carbohydrates and as you called it, the studying of carbohydrate molecules on hormones can augment the function of those hormones. And with aging, that's a less efficient process.

Speaker B: It's a less efficient process, but it's not because of consumption.

Speaker A: Right. People are still, I see the plenty of folks who are 65 and older eating plenty of carbohydrates. You're saying a lot of them have deficient thyroid, testosterone, estrogen, prolactin, et cetera. Because of the way those carbohydrates are not studying the hormones.

Speaker B: Exactly. So all of those are glycoprotein hormones.

Speaker A: Let's tee that up for later because I think that's an interesting, it's a very important avenue to go down.

Speaker B: Okay? And there's a disease in children, in babies called congenital disorders of glycosylation. Where you can't put glucose molecules on specific proteins. And it causes severe mental retardation, all sorts of metabolic havoc. And a lot of those babies die, for that matter. So that's an important thing. All right? But that's how important glucose is. Fructose, on the other hand, this sweet molecule, the molecule we seek, the reason why the food industry studs every food in the grocery store. 73% of all items in the american grocery store have added sugar on purpose. For the food industry's purpose is not for yours. Because fructose is addictive, activates the nucleus, accumbens the reward center of the brain, in the same way that cocaine, heroin, nicotine, alcohol do and drives dopamine receptors down, just like nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin do that molecule. Fructose is, number one, completely vestigial to all vertebrate life. There is no biochemical reaction in any vertebrate that requires dietary fructose. That's number one. Number two.

Speaker A: Okay, sorry. I'm gonna just answer. So you're saying that even though we can process fructose, we have a limited.

Speaker B: Capacity to process it in the same way we have a limited capacity to metabolize alcohol. Now, if you have one drink a day, you're okay. If you have two drinks a day, depends on how big you are. You and I can probably, I would.

Speaker A: Argue two drinks a week is the maximum, but let's not go there. But in terms of. You're saying, when you say fructose, processing of fructose is vestigial, what you're saying is that we don't need to do it. It's like the appendix. It's an organ for which it has no function.

Speaker B: Exactly. And fructose has no function in the human body, period.

Speaker A: You don't need it.

Speaker B: You don't need it. You don't need it. But our diet is replete with it. In fact, our fructose consumption's gone up 25 fold since the beginning of the last century.

Speaker A: I have to ask this now. I love fruit. That is berries galore, especially since the price of berries seems to have come down. It used to be that you only get them at certain times of year. I'm what you call a drive by blueberry eater. So I'll just walk past and just take a fistful. You can't put them in front of me without me eating them. This is even difficult for me when other people, I don't know are eating them. So I eat lots of blueberries, strawberries, blackberries. If they're in season, I love them.

Speaker B: No problem.

Speaker A: Loaded with fructose.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Plenty of fiber, low fructose, low fructose, and berries.

Speaker B: Berries are the lowest fructose of all the food.

Speaker A: I was so worried about asking you this today.

Speaker B: Not a problem.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And fruit is okay because of the fiber. So the molecule, the fructose molecule is the same whether it's in a berry or in a banana or for that matter, in a Coca cola. The fructose molecule is the same molecule. The difference is that in the berry, it comes with a whole lot of fiber in the banana, it comes with a whole lot less fiber. And in the Coca cola, it doesn't come with any fiber. And the fiber is what mitigates the absorption. So when you consume the fructose with fiber. So your blueberries, you're feeding your microbiome that fructose wasn't for you.

Speaker A: Got it. Such a relief. And I must say, recently I had a whole body MRI as a preemptive thing.

Speaker B: What was that?

Speaker A: It was great. I got to watch a Netflix in there. And I never had a whole body MRI. I learned a few things that were useful to me. I got a clean bill of health, so that's great. One of the pieces of feedback I got is that my gut was filled with this very high contrast stuff. And they asked, do you consume a lot of blueberries? And I said, indeed I do. Why? And they said, because that high contrast stuff, it shows up white on the scan is high concentrations of magnesium that we see in people that ingest large amounts of blueberries, which is pretty rare. And yours are comparable to a bear in blueberry season.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And basically my entire gut was filled with blueberries. I suppose I need to cut back a little bit. But now I know that fruit is okay, especially if the fruit has a lot of fiber. But fructose itself, especially if it's not partnered with fiber, is first of all not required for survival at all. But you're telling me is problematic.

Speaker B: Yeah. And let me tell you why it's problematic. We haven't gotten to that yet. We're just talking about whether it's vestigial versus needed. Now let's talk about what fructose does. Turns out fructose inhibits three, count them, three separate enzymes necessary for normal mitochondrial function. Mild, your mitochondria make ATP. Your mitochondria have to work at peak efficiency. That's what metabolic health is. Is mitochondria working at peak efficiency? Well, there are three enzymes that are inhibited by fructose. Number one, amp kinase. Now, amp kinase is the fuel gauge on the liver cell. It's the thing that tells the liver to make more mitochondria, fresher mitochondria, because if your amp levels are high, that means you've dephosphorylated a bunch of atps and you have to regenerate them. So you need some more mitochondria. So it's a negative feedback pathway. Well, you need that Amp kinase to generate that mitochondrial biogenesis signal. Except that fructose, a metabolite of fructose called methylglyoxyl mgo sits in the active site of the gamma subunit of that amp kinase and actually binds to arginines in that active site, rendering that enzyme now dead. It's an irreversible inhibition because of the covalent bonding of that methylglyoxyl, that aldehyde to the arginine. And now that enzyme is dead.

Speaker A: Okay, so it basically acts like a key that doesn't turn the lock, but prevents the key that you want in that lock from entering the lock.

Speaker B: It's like gluing a lock shut.

Speaker A: Got it. So that's one of the enzymes.

Speaker B: That's 1 second one, acad L acyl CoA dehydrogenase lung chain. So this is necessary to cleave two carbon fragments off fatty acids to prepare them for metabolism. So it inhibits that one and then finally it inhibits carnitine. Palmidal transferase one now, CPT one now. That's the enzyme that regenerates carnitine. Carnitine is the shuttle mechanism by which you get the fatty acids from the outer mitochondrial membrane through to the inner mitochondrial membrane so that they can be beta oxidized for energy. So if you don't have that CPT one, you're basically carnitine less and therefore you can't generate beta oxidation.

Speaker A: You said fructose inhibits all three of these enzymatic pathways. As a biologist, I have to ask, how potently does it inhibit them? I mean, because there are drugs that block receptors and then there are drugs that block receptors with unbelievable affinity. So, you know, I mean, mechanistically in a dish, meaning in vitro, you can see all sorts of things, but how significant is this for, like, for obesity, for mitochondrial function in vivo in us?

Speaker B: All right, so look, you know, the dose determines the poison, right? Paracelsus 1537. There are toxins that are parts per billion and will kill you. Like sarin, ricin, cyanide. By the way, cyanide is a good analogy because it's working on mitochondria. It's basically causing mitochondria to be completely defective. Then there are intermediate toxins like arsenic and carbon tetrachloride, parts per million, and they take a little longer to work. They're not going to kill you on the spot.

Speaker A: That's why I can eat an apple seed that has a little bit of arsenic in it, but I'm not going to die.

Speaker B: And then finally there, and by the tobacco smoke goes in there, and then finally you have weak toxins where it's not one exposure that will kill you. It's 10,000 exposures that'll kill you.

Speaker A: Like alcohol or toxic people.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, sometimes.

Speaker A: Sometimes it only takes one mild toxic. Couldn't resist, sorry. Sometimes it only mildly toxic people.

Speaker B: Anyway, the point is that fructose is in that last category. So it's not what you do one day that kills you, it's what you do every day that kills you. And if you basically eat ultra processed food, high in sugar for ten years in a row, it's going to show up in terms of your comorbidities. And ultimately, yeah, it will kill you. And we have the data to show how many years you will lose. So right now in America, we pay an eight year longevity tax. If you look at Japan, who, they have a mean age of death of 88, we have a mean age of 80, okay? We're paying an eight year longevity tax just by living here. And we're talking about the healthy people. Now, if you have metabolic syndrome, it's a 15 year longevity tax. And, sorry, if you have obesity, it's a 15 year longevity tax. And if you have metabolic syndrome, it's a 20 year longevity tax that is primarily, not completely, but primarily sugar. It's also omega six s. It's also trans fats left over because now they're gone. But people are still suffering. The ravages of the trans fats from.

Speaker A: The previous generation, are they gone? I do remember as a kid when we had margarine in our refrigerator. This is actually a big debate in my home. One parent, I won't identify which Washington, pro margarine, the other was pro butter, anti margarine. The marriage didn't last, but there were other reasons.

Speaker B: That's probably why I went.

Speaker A: Butter.

Speaker B: Butter is fine. In fact, time declared front cover butter's back. Margarine was the bad guy, without question. And we know now, but back when we thought it was a calorie, it was a calorie. We thought, oh, margarine, it's the same nine calories per gram. And we said, it lowers your triglycerides. Bad idea. Because what it did was it lined your liver because you couldn't break that trans double bond. They're now gone from our food supply.

Speaker A: They're illegal.

Speaker B: They're illegal, they're banned. You can make trans fats in your own kitchen by taking olive oil and heating it to beyond the smoking point. So they're not completely gone, they're just gone from ultra processed food. So now sugar is the big problem because of these three enzymes that you are inhibiting the point is, we started this with a calorie is a calorie. Well, if you are inhibiting mitochondrial function, then a calorie is not a calorie, is it?

Speaker A: You're reducing the intensity of the furnace.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So this whole calories a calorie just makes no sense. And it hasn't worked at any level. And there is no study that actually shows that cutting calories makes a difference. And I can show you voluminous data that shows that virtually every weight loss study that led to caloric restriction basically didn't work, not for any length of time.

Speaker A: Just to round out our earlier discussion. Cause I find it fascinating and I know other people will as well. We talked about that 160 calories. That's actually 130 at the business end of things, of almonds. We talked about the porterhouse steak with butter and the 25% reduction in what's actually quote unquote eaten. And I'll get back to this, because this quote unquote issue, I think the problem is there's a lack of useful language to dissociate this stuff. Even just calling fat fat people think it's going to make you gain body fat. If we called it adipose tissue and lipids, we would have avoided this confusion. So I don't want to get there just yet, but I want to make.

Speaker B: Sure with that the food industry does this on purpose.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. So they tell you a sugar is a sugar, which is not true. They tell you a calorie is a calorie, which is not true. And they tell you a fat is a fat, which is not true. This is very specifically. So when you're talking about sugar, you're talking about dietary sugar or you're talking about blood sugar, because blood sugar is blood glucose.

Speaker A: And I never use dietary cholesterol or circulating cholesterol or.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Okay. So we've done this to ourselves, but the food industry has really promulgated it because we farmed out nutrition policy and information to the food industry. So they actually use this for their purposes. It's one of the problems in this field.

Speaker A: I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic greens. Athletic greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic greens and the reason I still take athletic greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long term health. And those probiotics and athletic greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, athletic greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met. And it tastes great. If you'd like to try athletic greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com Huberman and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up athletic greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, etcetera. And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D, three k, two again, that's athleticgreens.com Huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D, three k, two for the third category of macronutrients, carbohydrates. You differentiated glucose and fructose. If I ingest, let's say, half a bagel, since we were talking about New York, your city of origin, they have great bagels on the west coast. Yeah, it's not the same.

Speaker B: It's pretty pitiful.

Speaker A: Same with the pizza dough. It's like they claim it's the water. Whatever it is, it's different back there. And it's better.

Speaker B: Indeed.

Speaker A: Half a bagel, let's say 250 calories, mostly carbohydrate. This is an unlined, no cream cheese, no smear, as they call it back there. No, no cream cheese, no butter, none of that thing. Just half of bagels, 250 calories. So that's what I ate. You're saying that a calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten. How much of that carbohydrate, given that it's probably most, let's assume it's mostly glucose. Let's do it this way.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's polymerized glucose.

Speaker A: Okay, polymerized glucose. How much of that is actually utilized or burned versus, you know, the original 250.

Speaker B: So if you look at what happens to energy in the body, 65% of that which is ingested goes to resting energy expenditure just to power the body. 10% goes to the thermic effect of food, and then 25% goes to activity. That's the breakdown of where the energy goes.

Speaker A: And that's calories from fat, protein and carbohydrates.

Speaker B: Yeah, from everything together and glucose is a perfectly good example of how that works. The point is, though, that when you ingest glucose, you're getting a big glucose excursion in your bloodstream. So you're getting a big glucose spike, and that glucose spike has to come down. Well, what makes it come down? The hormone insulin. Insulin is the bad guy in this story. The higher your glucose goes, the more your pancreas will release insulin in order to bring that glucose down. Well, it turns out that glucose rise was not benign. That glucose rise led to endothelial dysfunction. Transient, but nonetheless endothelial dysfunction.