The New York Times bestselling 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 effect biochemical change to improve our health, Lustig explains what to eat based on two novel criteria: protect the liver, and feed the gut. He insists that if we do not fix our food and change the way we eat, we will continue to court chronic disease, bankrupt healthcare, and threaten the planet. But there is hope: this book explains what's needed to fix all three.

The landmark New York Times best seller that reveals how the explosion of sugar in our diets has created an obesity epidemic, and what we can do to save ourselves.

Robert Lustig is at the forefront of war against sugar -- showing us that it's toxic, it's addictive, and it's everywhere because the food companies want it to be. His 90-minute YouTube video Sugar: The Bitter Truth has been viewed more than 7 million times. Now, in this landmark book, he documents the science and the politics that have led to personal misery and public crisis -- the pandemic of obesity and chronic disease--over the last thirty years.

In the late 1970s, when the U.S. government declared that we needed to get the fat out of our diets, the food industry responded by pumping in more sugar to make food more palatable (and more salable), and by removing the fiber to make food last longer on the shelf. The result has been a perfect storm for our health, disastrously altering our biochemistry to make us think we're starving, drive our eating habits out of our control, and turn us into couch potatoes. If we cannot control how we eat, it's because of the catastrophic excess of sugar in our diet--the resulting hormonal imbalances have rewired our brains!

To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents strategies we can each use to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress, as well as societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. With scientific rigor and even a little humor, Fat Chance categorically proves that a calorie is not a calorie, and takes that knowledge to its logical conclusion--an overhaul of the global food system.

Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts.--David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker

The New York Times-bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease.

While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery--our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover.

Dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the contentment neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don't need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin--because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated--with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape.

With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.

The long-awaited cookbook companion to the instant New York Times bestseller Fat Chance shows you how to beat the odds--deliciously

Dr. Robert Lustig's message that a calorie is not a calorie revolutionized our understanding of weight loss and nutrition. But in order to avoid the hidden sugars that threaten our health and waistlines, Dr. Lustig warns that we must transform the way we shop, cook, and eat. Teaming up with Cindy Gershen--a chef who's lost more than one-hundred pounds on his plan--Dr. Lustig shows readers how to:

- Stock a pantry
- Prepare more than 100 fast and delicious recipes
- Feed a family--kids included--healthy foods they'll love
- Make entertaining easy and nutritious

More timely than ever now that newest edition of The Dietary Guidelines for Americans has for the first time placed hard limits on the amount of sugar we should consume, The Fat Chance Cookbook shows you how to lose weight, find your way back to health, and still enjoy delectable, memorable meals.

This volume will explore the epidemiology and the basic mechanisms of each of these prenatal phenomena, in an attempt to explain the role of the prenatal environment in promoting postnatal weight gain. This information will contribute to resolving the nature-nurture controversy. This information provides guidance to clinical practitioners involved in both prenatal and postnatal care. This volume further stimulates research into underlying mechanisms and prevention and treatment of this phenomenon.

This volume will explore the epidemiology and the basic mechanisms of each of these prenatal phenomena, in an attempt to explain the role of the prenatal environment in promoting postnatal weight gain. This information will contribute to resolving the nature-nurture controversy. This information provides guidance to clinical practitioners involved in both prenatal and postnatal care. This volume further stimulates research into underlying mechanisms and prevention and treatment of this phenomenon.