An Evening with Dr Robert Lustig and Guests – “Processed Food: An Experiment That Failed”

We were incredibly fortunate to have Dr. Robert Lustig, UCSF, (“The man who believes sugar is poison”), visit our London office recently to give a talk on the health risks associated with sugar. Dr Lustig gave an introductory talk,“Processed food: an experiment that failed”, which was then followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with several of his peers; Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Action on Sugar, Dr. Michael Yudkin, Oxford University, Dr. Jack Winkler, London Metropolitan University and Mr. Philip Whalley, CLSA, London.

In his talk Dr Lustig presented a barrage of powerful and convincing evidence in support of the hypothesis that processed food has been a failed experiment. According to Dr Lustig we are all currently research subjects in a society-wide experiment, carried out by the food industry and that experiment is proving to be disastrous.

Processed food simply doesn’t have enough fibre, micronutrients or omega-3 fatty acids. Instead it has lots of trans fats, additives, emulsifiers, salt and sugar. Dr Lustig argued that added sugar is a much better indicator of processed food than salt. One statistic that especially stuck out was that of the 600,000 items in the American food supply, three in every four have added sugar.

Dr Lustig particularly attacked the hypothesis that “all calories count, no matter where they come from”. He argued that this supposedly “common sense” view is in fact a lie discredited by a wealth of evidence but propagated by the food industry.

The truth, according to Dr Lustig, is that some calories cause more disease than others with the worst offender being calories from added sugar. For example, fruit juice is a lot worse for your health than fruit, even if there is the same number of calories in both. This is because the fruit has fibre and micronutrients that the juice lacks.

The link between consuming sugar in fizzy drinks and diabetes is extremely well confirmed. Long-term chronic diseases like diabetes have a huge impact on healthcare costs and threaten the sustainability of the NHS.

His conclusion was therefore that “Processed food is an experiment that failed on every level”. It has failed in terms of public health, the environment and the economy.

Dr Lustig’s talk was followed by a brief discussion and Q&A with the wider panel. Dr Michael Yudkin spoke about the groundbreaking and influential work of his father, John Yudkin, who wrote “Pure, White and Deadly”. He expressed his dismay that the food industry is still trying to discredit anti-sugar scientists, as it did with his father.

Following on from that Dr Jack Winkler explained that the UK’s lowered sugar guidelines have failed to be effective. They are simply lower targets that we are still failing to meet. He also discussed the problem of under-reporting in epidemiological studies into sugar, basically if you want to know how many calories people in the UK are consuming, you should ask them and then add 50%! To meet our national guidelines we need to cut our sugar consumption by 75%, which would require massive social change.

Dr Aseem Malhotra stressed the need for policy intervention to improve the information available to consumers and to increase the range of options and alternatives available to consumers. The food industry tries to play the “personal responsibility” card but in reathe deck is heavily stacked in their favour.

The possibility of divesting from companies which fail to act on sugar in their products was raised by Philip Whalley. He also spoke about the need to invest in positive strategies and initiatives.

There were some insightful and interesting questions from the audience, including one that introduced the impact of sugar on dental health into the discussion. Another asked the panellists to identify one essential policy change they would make if they could.

Dr Lustig said he would get rid of the existing system of agricultural and food subsidies. Dr Malhotra said we should tackle the affordability, acceptability and availability of processed food. He also argued we should take a stand and ban processed food in hospitals.  Finally Dr Yudkin stressed the need for a realistic and pragmatic approach which aims to improve the nutritional value of the processed food people are actually eating now.

We have also made a Storify from the event which collects together all the tweets on the #DSActionOnSugar hashtag.