Name: Metabolical
ISBN: 9780063027718

Metabolical

author of Fat Chance explains the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic disease, documents how processed food has impacted them to ruin our health, economy, and environment over the past 50 years, and proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet. Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist who has long been on the cutting edge of medicine and science, challenges our current healthcare paradigm which has gone off the rails under the influence of Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what the problem is. One of Lustig's singular gifts as a communicator is his ability to "connect the dots" for the general reader, in order to unpack the scientific data and concepts behind his arguments, as he tells the "real story of food" and "the story of real food." Metabolical weaves the interconnected strands of nutrition, health/disease, medicine, environment, and society into a completely new fabric by proving on a scientific basis a series of iconoclastic revelations, among them: Medicine for chronic disease treats symptoms, not the disease itself You can diagnose your own biochemical profile Chronic diseases are not "druggable," but they are "foodable" Processed food isn't just toxic, it's addictive The war between vegan and keto is a false war--the combatants are on the same side Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government are on the other side Making the case that food is the only lever we have to…

What Hacker News says

crdrostNov 2025

Yep! Lustig has a book, Metabolical, that goes into kind of a simple explanation of the underlying mechanism here, and it's roughly like this: fiber-rich foods contain a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber, the insoluble fiber basically forms a sort of "net" of chunks and strings and such that you can't digest, and the soluble fiber forms a "gel" which gets stuck in the net and traps other foods. This gel is infused with various enzymes to break down foods in the duodenum, and then passes to the first and second half of the "zig-zag" parts of the small intestine -- the jejunum and the ileum.

The combination of fibers then leads to a given packet of calories traveling further down the jejunum as it gets absorbed, which makes more of the bacteria living along the length of the intestine happy with you, as well as protecting from blood glucose spikes that come with concomitant "crashes".

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lovestoryJul 2024

I'd recommend you read these two books "Ultraprocessed people" and "Metabolical". They go into depth of how and why processing of food at industrial scale is bad for your mental and psychical health and the environment as well.

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sp3000Nov 2023

From Dr. Robert Lustig in his book, Metabolical (highly recommended):

"Michael Pollan (full disclosure, he’s a friend), in his now-famous New York Times Magazine article, espoused seven simple words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Three separate clauses, but I think that each clause is misleading. Eat food doesn’t take into account that some people may do better on a low-fat diet, while others may do better on a high-fat diet. Not too much doesn’t say how you are supposed to moderate that, as it doesn’t take into account food addiction or what generates satiety. And mostly plants doesn’t take into account that Coke, French fries, and Doritos are all plant-based. If you buy your organic, all-natural, GMO-free tortilla chips at Whole Foods, you’re still stuffing your liver and starving your gut—you’re just paying more for the privilege."

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outworlderMar 2023

For anyone that's been confused by all the disjoint and contradictory nutritional information that's bombarding us these days, I'd recommend two books:

(Metabolical - Robert H. Lustig) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53240367-metabolical

(Drop Acid - David Perlmutter) https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57505860

They are both new books, by two different authors, they both rally against processed food (and talk at length about what processed food IS) and, crucially, they are adamantly against dietary sugar.

The tone of both of them was a bit off-putting to me at first: they try to spend time convincing you that the food we have today is terrible and, if you are already convinced of that like I was, it's a bit grating. But keep going, there's good nuggets all over.

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meristohmMar 2022

Quick book recommendations:

Life in the Fasting Lane, by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer, and Megan Ramos: https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-in-the-fasting-lane-how-...

Metabolical, by Robert Lustig: https://www.worldcat.org/title/metabolical-the-lure-and-the-...

Metabolical lays out recommendations for healthy food from birth to death, and Life in the Fasting Lane is more for any of you adults who'd like to experiment with going without food for longer, thus allowing the body to get out of "storage" mode and experience a variety of benefits. I'm almost 24 hours since I ate dinner yesterday, worked a tougher-than-usual day, and am feeling better than I was on a typical day before I started ramping up a month ago to three meals a week. I'll likely adjust that as I go, finding "listening to my body" easier and easier as I get older and keep experimenting. Good luck with your challenges.

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meristohmMar 2022

Nice work, Brazil. I look forward to the day the USA does the same.

> What kind of snob would disparage a Creme Egg or fail to recognise the joy of licking cheesy Wotsit dust from your fingers?

I am thankful that my parents valued gardening for sustenance, making meals at home (not that I don't know what a Happy Meal is, just that it was a rare treat), and blocking out playtime outside, during which time if we wanted to eat it'd have to be something we foraged. They weren't perfect, of course, and I've dealth with mental-health issues over the years, in part decreasing the barrier to treating my symptoms with lower-quality food more frequently throughout the day. I've finally re-adjusted to eating less frequently and making those meals out of mostly Nova 1 and 2 ingredients (I see sardines are Nova 3-4, unfortunately; I wish I lived closer to the water). Anyway, I have the privilege to be one of those snobs regarding many of the foods my childhood peers are nostalgic for.

> The question is whether these foods would still be harmful if the levels of sugar and oil could be reduced.

> On the unprocessed diet, a hormone called PYY, which reduces appetite, was elevated, suggesting that homemade food keeps us fuller for longer.

> But if you accept the argument that processing is itself part of the problem, all of this tweaking and reformulation becomes so much meaningless window-dressing.

While it's not an easy road at first, it feels right (for me, at least; someone who's struggle is less about weight and more about mental health and how I feel in my body) to go longer without food and to prepare sit-down meals of minimally-processed foods, eaten slowly until sated. After a day or two without eating, those meals are heavenly and I'm much less likely to want to reach for a distraction while I'm eating. One thing that really helps is adding salt to warm/hot water, about 0.003-0.005 ratio of salt to water by weight (sea water is on average 0.035 salt to water).

I've found Life in the Fasting Lane, by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer, and Megan Ramos to be helpful,

along with

Metabolical, by Robert Lustig

and

The Fasting Cure, by Upton Sinclair (for the 100-years-ago perspective; in some ways not much has changed)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also writes positively about fasting in one of his earlier books (in which there are some bits of advice I'm still skeptical about, mind)

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