Translating Science Into Policy With Dr. Robert Lustig

In this expansive lecture, delivered at a CrossFit Health event at CrossFit Headquarters on March 9, 2019, Dr. Robert Lustig explores the lacuna that has emerged between medical research and policy, specifically as they pertain to metabolic disease. Taking up the cause of Dr. Jeremiah Stamler who asks, “If a researcher isn’t willing to follow his data into the policy arena, who will?” Lustig says, “My job is to translate the science into rational and effective policy.”

Via a review of recent scientific literature, Lustig dispels a series of myths about chronic disease. The first myth is that chronic disease is about obesity. Lustig points to flaws in scientific research that appears to support this myth, noting, for instance, its confusion of correlation and concordance. He demonstrates that the data instead shows the problem is not obesity but all the metabolic diseases that attend obesity: diabetes, hypertension, lipid abnormalities, cardiovascular disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian disease, cancer, and dementia.

Lustig dismantles another myth by using science and reason: the myth that all calories are equal in their effect on human metabolism—a myth historically propagated by the Coca-Cola company as part of its “energy balance” initiatives. “Science tells a different story,” Lustig says, explaining that some calories are metabolized differently than others because they have different metabolic pathways. He focuses on processed foods and sugar to illustrate this point before highlighting various ways that multinational corporations have used shoddy science to pollute the scientific literature.

Lustig closes his talk by offering a series of proposals for fixing these problems. Among them are rolling back the subsidies on corn, wheat, soy, and sugar; and renaming Type 2 diabetes “Processed Food Disease.”

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