When did obesity start in America?
Around 1980. Dr. Martin opened this episode by reading from a nutrition journal article called Obesity: An Unexplained Epidemic. It said obesity had soared since 1980, and that no one could say why.
He says you can see the change for yourself:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186And I always tell people, look, if you left the planet in the 1970s and you came back to planet Earth in 2023, and you went to your local mall or Costco or wherever people gather, what would you see? You'd be shocked.
The journal called it unexplained. He calls himself a why guy, and he says the answer is on our plates.
Did Americans start eating more after 1980?
Not according to that article. It said Americans were eating less than they used to and still getting bigger.
For Dr. Martin, that is the whole point:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186It's what they're eating. I've told you this, it seems like thousands of times it ain't calories.
He says the real difference is insulin, which he calls a growth hormone, and today we have far more of it. If you have counted calories for years and the scale still will not budge, read his take on why it is so hard to lose weight after 60.
What changed about sugar in 1980?
Food makers switched to high fructose corn syrup, a cheap liquid sugar made from corn.
This is the first change he points to:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186So, the first thing that happened since 1980 is that we changed sugars. We changed sugars. So we went to a high fructose corn syrup.
By his account, the big soda companies had all switched by 1982, and the government was subsidizing corn.
Once it was cheap, he says, it spread fast:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186And everybody in the food industry, when they realized the government subsidized it, made it cheap, very cheap, and it was cheaper than putting ordinary sugar in food.
He says it went into sodas, chocolate bars, cereals, snacks and salad dressings. Before long it was in nearly everything.
Is high fructose corn syrup worse than sugar?
He says yes, because of what it does to insulin over time.
The food industry sold it as the better sugar, he says, because fructose does not spike insulin the way table sugar does.
What they missed, in his view:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186But what they didn't realize is that high fructose corn syrup, it didn't spike your insulin, but it spiked your insulin resistance, big time.
Insulin resistance means your cells stop responding to insulin. So your pancreas has to make even more of it. Here are the signs of insulin resistance in women over 60.
He points to bears, which fill up on berries to get fat before winter. He loves berries and says they are good for you. A man-made liquid sugar in everything is another matter.
"And if you want to get fat, high fructose corn syrup is unreal. It's sugar on steroids. It'll puff you up big time."
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186Did the low-fat diet cause obesity?
He says it was the other half of the story. Fat came out of food at the same time the cheap sugar went in.
He traces the low-fat idea to Ancel Keys, a researcher who taught that fat clogs your arteries. By the 1960s, he says, Keys was on the cover of Time Magazine, and by the 1980s women especially were buying low fat everything.
What was in those foods:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186And what became the most popular breakfast for women was low fat yogurt. And guess what they put in the yogurt? Fructose, high fructose corn syrup. Guess what they put in the salad dressings? High fructose corn syrup.
People were told to limit eggs, butter and fatty meat. The ones who still ate meat, he says, switched to a little chicken on a salad. He went against the grain then and still does. See how many eggs a day he thinks are fine and whether chicken is really healthier than beef.
Even the cereal aisle changed:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186They put hearts on the boxes of cereal. Imagine that. Cereal has a heart on the box. You know why? Because it's low fat.
Does insulin make you gain weight?
He says yes. More insulin means growth in places you do not want it.
It starts in the liver. He says fructose, like alcohol, goes straight there to be broken down.
What comes next, as he explains it:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186What happens in the liver doesn't stay in the liver, unfortunately. Insulin is a growth hormone. It makes things grow.
He lists a bigger body, a bigger heart and a bigger liver. A big heart sounds kind, he jokes, until you know it means a heart that has grown in size, which doctors call cardiomyopathy.
On fatty liver that has nothing to do with drinking:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186We didn't study it. You know why we didn't study it? Because it didn't exist until 1980.
Back then, he says, liver disease in the textbooks meant cirrhosis from alcohol. Today he calls fatty liver an epidemic, even in kids. Read how quickly sugar can lead to fatty liver.
When did obesity become a problem in the US?
From 1980 on, he says, and it has not let up.
He watched it unfold:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186I was still a young puppy in 1980, and I watched it happen, and it got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
Where that has left us, in his view:
Dr. Martin, from The Doctor Is In, episode 1186We have more heart disease than we ever did before. We have more non-alcoholic fatty liver. It's an epidemic even in kids. And we have an epidemic today of diabetes.
Most people still think about calories and low fat today, he says, and he is not optimistic that will change soon. If your own numbers are creeping up, start with what normal blood sugar looks like for a woman over 60.
Watch him explain the 1980 shift
He walks through the sugar switch, the low-fat years and what insulin does, jotting notes on his little board as he goes.
Common questions
When did obesity start to rise?
He puts the turn at 1980 and says it only got worse from there. He ties it to the sugar switch and the low-fat years arriving together. Episode 1186.
When did America become obese?
Over the decades after 1980, in his view, as high fructose corn syrup went into nearly everything people ate. He calls that syrup the biggest culprit. Episode 1186.
When did the obesity epidemic start?
The article he read dated the epidemic from 1980 and called it unexplained. He says it is no mystery: they switched the sugar. Episode 1186.
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