Prof Robert Lustig is well renown for his research and clinical practice on childhood obesity and diabetes. Dr. Robert Lustig is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and he specialises in the field of neuroendocrinology.
This talk was given at the Public Health Collaboration conference 2019 at the Royal College of General Practitioners in London. Prof Robert Lustig discusses corporate wealth or public health. He discusses the three myths of the food industry, the dark forces and the solutions. He starts by looking into what has happened with type 2 diabetes over the years. There are two inconvenient truths, one of which is that there is no rational medical therapy to prevent chronic metabolic disease and the other one is long-term treatment, as treatment does not equal prevention. Until we fix the food then the other issues are not going to be fixed and nothing else will happen. Prof Robert Lustig talks about calories and how different calories are metabolised differently, as well as taking a closer look into sugar and carbs. The food industry and pharma industry often sponsor research and this bias must be considered when looking into the research. Prof Lustig goes over these examples highlighting where this bias occurs. He concludes this public health crisis is due to the “exposure” to processed food and the food industry adulterating our food supply for profit. Therefore our best chances of improvement are public education, which can help in moving forward and focusing around real food, business actions, government agency action and legal action.
