Metabolical
The Truth About Processed Food and How It Poisons People and the Planet
Big Ideas
Now to the title. Metabolical is a portmanteau (a word blending two others) of ‘metabolic’—the workings of the body—and ‘diabolical’—the workings of food, pharmacies and the Feds. All claim to be on your side, but they’re on their own sides, and you’re the victim of their propaganda.
This book will show you how what your doctor doesn’t know can kill you. Each person can screen for and diagnose his or her own risk for chronic disease; how to treat, and in many cases, reverse, those diseases so you can get off your medicines; and, most important, how to prevent these diseases and conditions from occurring in the first place.
While nutrition seems inordinately complex to most people, it’s only become that way because of the competing messages, which unfortunately have also propagandized the medical, dental, and dietary professions. In fact, the education part of this book is very easy. I will battle the cacophony of conflicting information on food and chronic disease with these two easy precepts: 1) protect the liver, 2) feed the gut. Every nutrient, every food, every food pattern, every food timing paradigm obeys these two precepts. However, implementing them is difficult and only possible with Real Food—even though that’s not what Big Food is selling.
The answers you need, in simple terms, to change your food, your health, and your life are all within these pages. … The science is here, the politics are exposed, and the public is finally ready to discard the previous old, worn-out dogma. It’s time for us to understand the real story of food, and the story of Real Food.
Metabolical.
I have to say that the title creeps me out a bit. (Hah.)
And, I must say that this was a tough book to read. Let’s just say that it’s not a warm and fluffy, super-inspiring self-development book.
As per the inside flaps of the book, Lustig documents how processed food has impacted each of the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic diseases “over the last fifty years to ruin our health, economy, and environment; and he proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet. ...
He insists that if we do not change the way we eat, we will continue to court chronic disease, bankrupt health care, and threaten the planet. But there is hope—this book explains what’s needed to fix all three.”
Although not warm and fluffy, it IS incredibly sobering and, ultimately, inspiring. (Get a copy of the book here.)
I got it during a binge I did on a series of books on nutrition/longevity/energy including Good Energy by Casey Means (I’m pretty sure I got the book on her recommendation; Dr. Lustig is a big part of her Levels app), Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind by Georgia Ede, Forever Strong by Gabrielle Lyon, and Outlive by Peter Attia.
Dr. Robert Lustig is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF.
He is also the author of a number of books including one of my favorites: Fat Chance.
As you can imagine, the book is packed with Big Ideas. As always, I’m excited to share some of my favorites, so let’s jump straight in!
The holy grail of Modern Medicine is you can’t fix healthcare until you fix health; and you can’t fix health until you fix the food. Everyone is talking about healthcare, few people are talking about health, and nobody is talking about the food.
The good news is that for chronic disease, genetics only explains about 15 percent of the variance in risk. The other 85 percent is environmental, which means there’s plenty you can do to mitigate your risk for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia, and virtually every other chronic disease.
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