My name is Damon Gameau.
This is my weatherboard house.
This is a time-lapse
of my girlfriend's pregnancy.
There's three months to go.
And this is a photo of me at age 10.
I was a rare boy whose face
grew into his teeth.
Five years ago,
when I met my girlfriend,
I was pretty much living on cigarettes,
sugar and my homemade Australian pizzas.
But then, as men often do,
they feign interest in things
to impress a girl.
The lovers' bike.
For me, it was healthy eating.
I actually cut out refined sugar
from my diet to seal the deal.
But now sugar is
dominating the headlines
and there's so much debate
and conjecture on the topic
that it's hard to know what to believe.
But with this little person on the way,
I feel like I need some
definitive answers.
If the average Australian family of four
had to buy the sugar
they are consuming in a week,
they would be going to the supermarket,
taking six 1-kilo bags of sugar
off the shelves... six...
taking it home, eating it all that week
and then going back next week
and doing it again.
Clearly, the ability to be
on a high-sugar diet
is really new,
especially in terms of
evolutionary time zone.
Sugar has become
so prevalent in today's society
that if you removed
all the items containing it
from a standard supermarket's shelves...
just 20% of items would remain.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
this is the condensed history of sugar.
The first reports of sugar came
from New Guinea in 8000 BC.
Local mythology says that
the human race came about
after a man made love to
the stalk of a sugar cane.
Ow.
Then, via trader migration routes,
the cane made its way to India.
Thank you.
In the 12th century,
sugar arrived in Europe.
And, due to its rarity,
it quickly became
a status symbol for royalty.
Queen Elizabeth I had
a real love of sugar.
So much so that her teeth rotted
and went black from it.
Eugh.
At the start of the 20th century,
sugar was still seen as a treat...
something you would add to
a cup of tea or cup of coffee...
but then, in 1955, an event occurred
that significantly influenced
the amount of sugar we eat today.
A stunned nation
hears that its president
is stricken with a heart attack at...
On September 23, 1955,
the US President Dwight Eisenhower
suffered a heart attack
and the issue of heart disease
was thrust into the public domain.
Summoned to the hospital,
a famed Boston heart specialist...
Two strong theories emerged.
One, led by an American
scientist named Ancel Keys,
who declared that fat was the problem...
while a British doctor named John Yudkin
believed sugar was to blame.
I'd be very happy if everybody
ate four pounds of sugar a year.
They eat a hundred pounds!
Over the next two decades,
the discussion brought fierce
arguments from both camps.
But by the end of the 1970s,
Ancel Keys had won out.
Fat became the villain,
sugar was exonerated,
and the low-fat movement
was in full swing.
We institutionalised this idea
that a low-fat diet is a healthy diet.
So what you want to do is remove fats...
This is how industry perceived this.
We're gonna remove fat
from otherwise healthy foods,
and when we do this
we have to replace the calories,
we have to make sure
we have the right mouth feel.
And it has to taste as good
as it did with fat,
and the best way to
do that is with sugar.
With sugar now
saturating our food supply
and the constant confusion
over its effects on our health,
the only real way to get some answers
is for me to start eating sugar again
and see what it does to my body.
So the first step is to set up
an experiment
with the help of a team of experts.
My chief sugar adviser is
the author David Gillespie...
aka The Crusader.
In charge of my blood tests
is one of Australia's
leading clinical pathologists,
Dr Ken Sikaris, aka Professor Blood.
My nutritionist is Sharon Johnston...
the Celtic Food Queen.
And supervising my overall
health is Dr Debbie Herbst,
aka Check Upz.
OK, so, I want to do this mission,
I want to find out
what sugar does to me.
What kind of things do I need to do?
If you want to match
Australian averages,
you're gonna have to be in the range,
40 teaspoons of sugar a day.
- 40 a day?
- Yeah, 40 a day.
That's what's embedded in
most of the processed food
that most people are eating.
So...
Right, so does that mean
I'm gonna eat a lot
of these kind of sour rainbow blowpipes?
I mean, is that... How am
I gonna get to 40 teaspoons?
You won't need to come near a place
like this to get to 40 teaspoons.
You just go to a supermarket
and you'll get to 40 teaspoons.
Right.
The point is to test out
a very high sugar diet
and to see what effects we get,
what changes I notice in the body.
Two months, I wanna eat
40 teaspoons of sugar a day.
- 40 teaspoons?!
- 40 teaspoons.
How are you gonna do that?
Off-the-shelf breakfast cereals,
like Just Right,
low-fat flavoured yoghurt.
Another good one would be
some beans on toast.
Baked beans?!
One serving of an iced tea,
you'll end up with nearly
nine teaspoons of sugar.
If I can achieve 40 teaspoons a day
without touching perceived
candy or junk food...
I mean, I can't quite fathom
that's possible,
but if we can do that
and see some changes,
then that's, yeah, that seems
like a pretty good story.
A lot of your health markers
are going to be going
in very much the wrong direction,
and I'm very glad to hear
that you're gonna be having
some medical supervision,
'cause I think you're gonna need it.
Anyone in the family have diabetes?
- No.
- OK.
- Not that I know of.
- Not that you know of? Good.
And heart disease?
No. All pretty thin
and wiry Irish or French folk.
We're going to look at how the
blood sugar changes, obviously.
We've got blood tests that can
look at the effect of the heart.
But, even more than that,
we're looking for the changes
that might occur in the liver
and its production of fat.
I'd like to go to 1932, please.
Done.
Coming.
Let's just see how tall you are.
So you've got a really normal,
healthy blood pressure...
121 over 79.
Your heart rate's pretty good
at 75, so that's pretty good.
Alrighty, so, we'll just have
a listen to your heart,
see what it sounds like.
You know what it's saying, Damon.
Don't do this crazy thing?
Exactly. That's exactly
what I heard it saying.
There are some tests that we're doing
just to make sure
that you're not doing
anything too stupid here.
Usually I'm telling people not
to eat all this sort of stuff,
so...
I personally think you're
insane for doing it at all.
But... No, no, no, honestly.
I think it's dangerous.
But I guess on the plus side,
everybody else is already doing it.
So, this is where my
health stands pre-experiment.
My total calorie intake is
approximately 2,300 a day.
With 50% coming from good
fats like avocado and nuts,
26% from protein such as eggs,
meat or fish,
and 24% from carbohydrates
like fresh vegetables.
And of course there is no refined sugar.
I currently weigh 76kg
with a waist circumference of 84cm.
My blood tests showed
a very healthy liver,
a very low level of triglyceride,
which is fat in the bloodstream,
and, thankfully, no sign of
insulin resistance or diabetes.
Overall, I rated slightly healthier
than the average Western male of my age.
The next step in the experiment
was to do a shop.
To calculate my 40 teaspoons,
I need to keep in mind that one teaspoon
equals roughly four grams of sugar.
But I also need a lesson
in the different types of sugar.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
it's time to meet the sugar family.
When we eat certain foods,
they adhere to a rule.
They break down to glucose
which our body uses for fuel.
Breads, pasta, vegies and grain
all turn to glucose
to be used by our brain.
Ooh!
But also our cells and our organs, too.
So without any glucose
there would be no you.
Lactose is next,
and she's as smooth as silk.
She's the first sugar mammals have...
it's in their mother's milk.
You'll find it in cheese and
milk and tubs of yoghurt, too.
But take care if you're intolerant,
you'll be rushing to the loo.
Now, sucrose is the sugar
that all the fuss is about.
Some say it's dangerous
while others still have doubt.
Sucrose is the table sugar
we have in coffee or tea.
She's the sugar family's
sweet little daughter.
Or not, apparently.
Ooh.
Now, this table sugar, or sucrose,
is made up of two sugars.
It is 50% glucose, the head of
the family, plus 50% fructose.
Now, fructose may well be
the sugar family's
mischievous teenage son,
because in the past this
fructose was very, very rare.
It was found in fruit and vegies
and honey, if you dared.
But now we find it everywhere!
In so many foods we eat.
And you'll always know
if you're eating fructose
'cause it's the thing
that makes food sweet.
You see, people on this planet
are growing sicker every day,
and many scientists now believe
that fructose has a role to play.
- Hey, hey!
- The first load.
Why don't we make these
middle shelves the sugar zone?
- I love it.
- Here's some juicy juice.
- Juice boxes, babe.
- Yep.
Up&Go.
So, here are the rules
for my next 60 days.
I must consume 40 teaspoons
of sugar a day,
but they must be hidden sugars
found in commonly perceived
healthy foods and drinks.
So no soft drink, chocolate,
confectionary or ice-cream.
These 40 teaspoons of sugar
will consist of sucrose
and fructose specifically.
They can be added, like jam,
or naturally occurring,
like sultanas.
I must always choose low-fat foods
and maintain the same level
of exercise as I already do.
That's three laps of my garden
twice a week
and a 10-minute workout
on my homemade gym.
And by homemade, I mean homemade.
Tomorrow morning I start.
What are your feelings?
Uh...
I hope you're OK.
Darling, do we have a metric cup,
like, to measure size?
Yep.
Right, so, this Just Right tells me
that it's 12 grams of sugar
per serving, right?
So, that's...
Divided by four, that's roughly three...
three teaspoons of sugar per serving.
That's a recommended serving size
with three teaspoons of sugar.
Now, I don't know about you
but I'm a growing boy.
I'm gonna need
a little bit more of that.
That feels like a shot of Just Right.
Yeah, maybe 2.5.
OK, so, 2.5...
So, one was just under three
teaspoons, two is six teaspoons,
and the other half
is about 7.5 teaspoons of sugar,
just in that bowl.
And I haven't added the yoghurt yet.
Per serving there is 27 grams,
but a lot of that's gonna be
lactose, so I reckon 18 grams.
18 divided by 4 is just over 4.
So, four to my seven, so there's
11 teaspoons of sugar,
and then I've gotta add my juice.
I'm gonna put about 400 mils
of apple juice, that will do me.
There we're looking at nine
teaspoons, so this combined,
I'm looking at nearly
20 teaspoons to start the day.
Hey, David. How are you going?
Good. How are you?
Mate, I've just got a quick question.
We just were...
I just sort of had my first breakfast
and it got to about 20 teaspoons.
20 teaspoons?!
I almost couldn't believe it.
But I did all the maths
and it just seems ridiculous.
Mate, you're gonna have to be on a diet
for the rest of the day if
you're only allowed to have
20 teaspoons for the rest of the day.
That's what I mean!
I'll have to eat celery
for the rest of the day.
Just obscene.
When we were still foraging
and hunting and gathering
and trying to search for fruit
and things in our environment,
we needed to be highly attuned
to what sweetness there was,
because we really need the calories.
And of course now we bring with us
that ancient lust for sugar,
that ability to find even small amounts,
and it's a case where
we were looking for a little
but now we have too much.
And so the system,
in an evolutionary terms,
is not really set up to deal with
this sudden abundance
of highly refined sugar.
After just two days of the experiment
I was amazed at how easy it was
to get to 40 teaspoons
without eating any junk food.
I've just had a breakthrough as
to how we might be consuming
so much fructose.
I just bought these four apples.
Now, I know that if I tried
to eat these apples
I'd probably get through
two of them and I'd feel full.
The fibre in the fruit
would tell my body to stop,
it's had enough to eat.
But I wanna see what happens if
I can juice these four apples.
Right, so that's four apples.
That's the sugar from
four apples in one glass.
Now, one apple is about
four teaspoons of sugar,
so that's 16 teaspoons
of sugar in that glass.
See, nature has given us
this perfect little packet,
and it's got all the nutrients,
the fibre
that tells us when we're full,
and just the right amount
of sugar in this.
But what we do is
we invent a machine like this
which extracts only the sugar
and then we throw everything else away.
This high amount of sugar in juice,
and drinks in general,
was certainly the biggest
surprise of the first week.
Beverage tend to really create a rush,
what I kind of call a tsunami effect.
So you basically have
this huge wave of sugar
that gets to your liver.
And that has a lot of consequence.
It was now day 12
and time for my first weigh-in.
Moment of truth.
79.3. Huh?
- I'm about to cry.
- Why?
3.2 kilos.
- In 12 days?
- In 12 days.
And that's without one fizzy drink,
no ice-cream, no chocolate.
That is eating healthy food.
It's alarming. Alarming, alarming.
Debbie's alarm wasn't about
the amount of weight I had gained...
it was the fact that it was
all around my belly.
This is what's known as visceral fat.
I'm having a baby!
Here's a great example of it.
On this person,
the fat comes up as black.
You can see there is
a very small amount of fat
just under the skin, but lots of
visceral fat on the inside,
cramping the organs.
There is a term for this:
We know that with fructose,
you tend to accumulate
more fat in this area.
We don't know why,
but we know, on the other hand,
that when you do accumulate
that fat in this area
you have a lot of metabolic disease
that are associated with this.
On day 15, it occurred to me
what 40 teaspoons of sugar
would actually look like
stripped of its cleverly
marketed packaging.
Today I'm gonna eat 40
actual teaspoons of sugar.
Just Right, low-fat yoghurt...
there's 10 teaspoons of sugar.
Here, just a bowl of plain Vita
Brits. So what I'm gonna do...
This now equals that.
It's time for my midmorning snack.
Now, I could have this
amount of frozen yoghurt or...
So it's lunch.
I have this delicious
piece of chicken here.
Now, I could add half a packet
of this teriyaki chicken sauce...
or, alternatively...
Now, to wash it down,
I could have one of these
or...
So, it's the midafternoon slump.
Now, as a pick-me-up, I could
have this Go Natural Superfood
Apple Strawberry Cranberry Ripple bar
or I could have this 7-teaspoon
water cracker sugar sandwich.
It was at this point
that I thought I'd better
check in with Professor Blood.
The big change is that
the liver function tests
have had an amazing rise
in one of the enzyme levels,
the ALT level.
The ALT is an enzyme in the liver
which helps the reactions go out.
If it appears in your blood,
'cause that's where we measured it,
it shows that the liver cells
are releasing their contents...
i.e., they're being damaged or dying.
And so the...
You know, the... It's really...
- My liver cells are dying.
- They are. They are.
It's obviously getting full of fat.
You've got the signs of a fatty liver.
And this is really the first time
I've actually seen that it
can be actually developed
in two or three weeks.
Given my liver has turned to fat
after just 18 days,
I think it's time to take a closer look
at what sugar does
once it enters the body.
This is the actor Brenton Thwaites.
He's very kindly volunteered his body
for the following demonstration.
After sugar enters the body,
it splits into two parts...
fructose and glucose.
Both of which
make their way to the liver.
Now, once in the liver,
the glucose is dealt with efficiently.
It's either used immediately for energy
or it's stored for later,
like a spare battery.
But the fructose half of sugar
is very different.
The liver doesn't have a system
to regulate the fructose
because it was so rare in nature,
so it hoovers it out of the bloodstream
whether it needs it or not.
And if all our spare batteries are full,
then it rapidly turns it into fat.
Some of that fat
is gonna stay in the liver
and you're gonna have increased risk
for insulin resistance and diabetes.
What also happens is that
this fat in the liver
is then sent out into the
bloodstream as triglycerides,
which can lead to excess weight
plus blocked arteries and heart disease.
Now, when we're eating lots of sugar
and other carbohydrates
like bread and pasta,
we're producing lots of glucose.
A hormone called insulin is released,
which is like a key that helps
to open our cells' doors
so they can absorb all the glucose,
remove it from the bloodstream
and burn it for energy.
The more glucose in the blood,
the more insulin is released.
But the key point for us
is that while this insulin
is in the blood
dealing with all the glucose,
it tells our fat cells
to hold on to the fat.
It actually turns off
our fat-burning processes.
So when we're eating lots of sugar,
we're putting fat into our
bodies via the fatty liver.
Plus, because of all the glucose,
we maintain the level of insulin,
which tells our fat cells
to hold on to the fat.
We can't burn off fat
when insulin is around
dealing with all the sugar!
This is what may be happening
to a huge number of the population.'
It's highly unlikely
with Brenton, though.
The issue that we're talking about
is that there are these chronic diseases
related to obesity and diabetes...
heart disease,
many cancers, gout, hypertension,
high blood pressure,
possibly Alzheimer's disease.
The question is,
would these diseases exist...
if sugar wasn't in the diet?
So, this morning I've woken up
and I feel pretty drained.
I had a chicken dish last night
that was pretty sweet.
And I could just tell
that my body feels lethargic
and it's waiting for
its next sugar injection.
So the perfectly named Up&Go
is gonna start my day today.
Banana flavoured with, uh...
about four to five teaspoons of sugar.
It was obvious
that sugar was affecting me physically,
but the real surprise
was the impact it was having
on my moods.
It's amazing, it's so sweet
and I can feel my brain responds
to it straightaway.
Like, it tastes delicious.
The thing I've noticed the most
is the mood swings.
Big highs when I have the sugar
and I feel super alert
and switched on for about 45 minutes
and then I'll get this feeling
of real lethargy,
I'll feel vague, a bit aloof
until I get that next hit again
and then I'm right to concentrate.
I just noticed the attention is reduced
and he's much more distracted.
- Hm.
- And it's very unlike him.
Very unusual.
What you're describing is absolutely
what the research has shown,
is a high concentration, energy,
followed by a crash.
The brain and body runs on glucose.
If the glucose level is going
constantly up and down,
you know, zinging high and low
and high and low
and back and forth,
then your mental function
is just unstable.
If your glucose level is stable
and not fluctuating,
then you have more clarity.
It's almost like the body is
getting used to this new reality
that I've created,
and it gets its burst of energy
from the sugar.
And then when that's not happening,
it's, like, going, "OK, we're ready."
Like, I guess, I used to smoke,
it's a similar feeling.
Tell me a little bit
more about what it's like
when you've just had some sugar
and when you're on the sugar high.
A quite childish thing comes out in me.
I go, "Whoo," and then I'm
full of beans for a while.
He can be like that
in day-to-day life, too,
he's really fun and playful,
but the difference is
there's a kind of manic edge
to it that wasn't there before.
It's kind of a bit more like, "Ah'."
Now, the manic state
is quite interesting
because it's not the same
as happiness, right?
There's a sort of a sense
of being wired.
It's raining sugar!
So, it's interesting
'cause that's what we do see.
And I'm not suggesting
you've got bipolar disorder
but it's a phenomena that we
see in that particular condition
where there's a very high mood
but it's not actually
a very pleasant mood.
So, Damon, the way that blood
sugar affects your mood,
I like to explain to people with
a really simple diagram.
So, this is your
blood sugar levels here.
This is the point where
your brain is really happy
'cause it's got enough sugar
to keep it going.
It is your most important organ
in the body, in that way.
When you eat something
that's really sugary,
like lollies or fruit juices,
that sort of thing,
your blood sugar will spike
really quickly
and then it will crash down
again really quickly.
The reason it crashes
really quickly is because,
in response to that sugar,
the body releases insulin,
the hormone that takes it into the cells
so it can be used for energy.
So, that big crash though
means that your brain's no longer happy,
so, in response to that,
we get the release of stress
hormones like adrenaline,
which is then signalling the brain
to tell you to eat something
sugary again
so that we can get it back up again.
And so, once again, we get
more insulin and it dips down,
and that's why you get
the fluctuations in your mood,
from that sugar spiking and falling.
And the problem with the adrenaline
is that that can lead to anxiety
and even panic attacks
because of those mood changes.
Given my experience
of fluctuating blood sugar levels,
I couldn't help but think of children
struggling to learn at school.
Could a diet full of hidden sugar
be contributing to the problem?
This has had a very profound impact
on children's behaviour,
on mental illness.
It has exacerbated many different types
of neurological disorders,
but we don't actually name
what the cause is,
which is the sugar that's in the diet.
Sugar Crisp is candy-coated
right down to the last
wheat puff in the box.
- As a cereal it's dandy.
- For snacks it's so handy.
Or eat it like candy.
Post's Sugar Crisp.
Don't laugh. It's for the...
You know why I'm doing it.
The speed at which my high-sugar diet
was affecting me
took us all by surprise.
I was going to have to expand
the scope of the experiment,
and this would take me
out of town for a few days.
In 2002 I spent some time with
an Aboriginal community
and was stunned by the amount
of sugar they consumed.
Like so many indigenous cultures
introduced to a Western diet,
their relationship with sugar
seemed particularly destructive.
The Aborigines
have remarkably little sugar
in their diet.
Two or three small pieces of candy
would be equal to the sum total
of the amount of sweetness
that an Aborigine would get in one year.
In 2008,
Coca-Cola claimed that
Australia's Northern Territory
was their highest-selling region
per capita in the world.
This was, in large part,
due to the local stores
in the Aboriginal communities.
Just 100km from Uluru
is the small town of Amata.
It has always been alcohol-free,
but in 2007 its population
of just under 400 people
consumed 40,000 litres of soft drink.
So one Aboriginal man decided
to do something about it.
His name is John Tregenza.
This is his case, this is his putaru
and this is his nickname.
Why?
'Cause I cut through the bullshit.
When I first come up here, in 1973,
I would estimate that,
say, 10% of the people's diet
came from the store,
and now it's almost 100%.
So it was obviously critical
that people's health
depended on what they were
carrying out the store door.
This reliance on the store
has been caused by a variety
of environmental changes.
The main one being the
introduction of a foreign grass
that took over the plains
and drove away the native plants
and animals
that had provided bush tucker
for centuries.
Being in Amata, it was hard to
believe that only 40 years ago
these people were living
predominantly off the land.
All our families and old people,
all our grandfathers
and great-great-grandparents,
they only eating bush tucker,
like emus, kangaroos, turkey,
wild tomatoes, wild beets.
And they were healthy,
no sickness.
And then the white fella
came into Australia,
he bring all the sweet things
like lollies... biscuits, everything.
With stores filling up
with highly profitable sugary items
and the community's health
rapidly declining,
John, his colleagues
and a local health council
established a program
to ensure people had access
to fresh, healthy produce.
They called it Mai Wiru
The Mai Wiru quickly went to work.
They removed deep-fryers,
added free cold water fountains
and hired a nutritionist to
educate the community.
For the children, they made music videos
with psychedelic vegetables
and put up these signs
on the store's fridges.
I put this one to the test
and I think they might be
onto something.
But, most importantly, the local
people were empowered
and began making their own
decisions about their health.
The community at Amata decided
that they were wanting to reduce
the amount of sugar intake
that they were having
throughout the community.
The first high-sugar item to go
was the black fizzy stuff.
Then they've said, "We don't want Coke,"
so they don't have Coke.
So no-one is upset about it,
it is a decision by the elders.
And so we don't have Coke.
Mai Wiru was working
and in a very short time Amata had
the lowest rate of sugar
consumption in the region.
With the level of sugar consumption
in other communities I've been
in, it's astronomical.
It is over the top.
I think the Mai Wiru group,
in itself, could teach a lot of
the other communities a lot.
But just when everything seemed
to be headed in the right direction,
the government slashed
Mai Wiru's funding.
The organisation is now left
with a skeleton of staff,
the nutritionist was the first to go.
The Pitjantjatjara
Yankunytjatjara people
really feel it
because it was their idea.
Like, they're the ones
who saw the problem,
they're the ones who bury
their own people,
they're the ones who wanted
to make a change
and they've been totally ignored,
overridden and having
funding taken off by
the Federal and State governments
and given to
a non-Aboriginal organisation.
It's really quite outrageous.
The thing that struck me about Amata
is that although Coke is gone,
without a nutritionist to
continue the education
people are still consuming
vast amounts of sugar
in other products.
And their health is suffering
as a consequence.
There's a perception abroad
that the problems
with obesity and diabetes
may be related to alcohol,
but here at Amata it's been
a dry community
ever since it was established,
so all of the health problems,
including diabetes and kidney failure,
is all related to the diet.
John offered to
take me to a special place
where the full effects of a
disabled Mai Wiru can be felt.
I've known almost everyone buried here.
I've got family members buried here.
These five graves here
are all people under 40.
That's another young person in there.
A whole group up here
of two sisters and a brother
who all passed away from kidney failure.
Most of these deaths here are premature
and could have been avoided
with correct diet
and access to affordable healthy food.
It's a complete tragedy.
After four days in Amata,
it occurred to me that
what is happening to my body
is perhaps a concentrated version
of what has happened here
and in many other
Indigenous communities.
I'd been sugar-free for a long time
and now, by suddenly subjecting
myself to a high-sugar diet,
the effects have been both rapid
and acute.
If immediate action isn't taken
to restore the positive direction
that Mai Wiru was heading in,
then the oldest living culture on earth
is in great danger of disappearing.
Oh, look at that.'
81.2.
- OK, so what's that in...
- 1.6 kilos.
So in a month I've put on five.
Something like that.
- 76.
- You started out at 76, yeah.
Over five kilos.
- Oh, my God.
- What?
Hang on, is that a...
Hang on, don't tell me.
- 91?!
- 91.
So, OK, 7cm.
7cm.
If I keep going for
the next three or four months
at these levels, would I be
knocking on the door of obesity?
Definitely. You haven't got far to go.
I'm eating a lot more than I would.
Um... I'm snacking a lot more
than I would have before.
I find it very hard to feel full.
Not surprising because you're
not eating very much good fats
or proteins.
It's the fat and the protein
that actually helps us feel fuller.
All the low-fat foods that we've
been told are good for us
and that we should be eating
actually tend to be
higher in sugar anyway,
as you know,
and they're not helping us to feel full.
With the effects of sugar
now clearly taking a toll on me,
and having witnessed
its devastation in Amata...
I'm packing.
I needed to talk to some people
that knew a lot more about
the subject than I did.
Have a look behind you.
It's hanging off my cupboard door.
It was time to head to
the cultural capital of convenience,
the mecca of the processed
food and sugar industry,
and the current number-one-ranked
world obesity champion...
Look out, America.
Here comes Sugar Daddy.
So, we're here in America.
Day one, jet lag.
So I just went in to Jamba Juice
and got me one of these.
139 grams of sugar.
I actually need the calculator for this.
That...
that is 34 teaspoons of sugar...
in that drink.
That is nearly my daily
allowance in this cup.
What a great jet lag cure.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Now, if I was to eat
the same amount of sugar
that was in that smoothie
but the sugar was in
its original fruit packaging
I would have to eat four peaches,
nine limes,
30 lemons and 30 strawberries.
This might be fine for a bear
about to go into hibernation,
but it can have damaging effects
for a human
who thinks they are making
a healthy choice.
One of the interesting conflicts
today is this idea,
pushed by some of our government...
well-meaning government officials,
that if you could just get
Coca-Colas out of McDonald's
and get the kids to drink fruit
smoothies they'd be healthier.
And yet the fruit smoothies have
just as much sugar as a Coca-Cola.
The first thing I noticed
with American foods
was how difficult it was gonna
be to stay under 40 teaspoons.
It wasn't just the abundance
of sugar in the food
but also the presence of a sweetener
called high fructose corn syrup.
Its primary delivery system
is soft drink,
which adds roughly
4,000 teaspoons a year
to the diet of each American.
People don't actually realise
that high fructose corn syrup and sugar
are virtually identical.
See, corn refiners back in
the 1980s did their best
to make sure that people didn't equate
high fructose corn syrup with sugar.
Flash forward 20 years later,
people are blaming
high fructose corn syrup
for the obesity epidemic.
And now the corn refiners
are desperately trying to say
that they are sugar,
they're no different,
and the sugar industry's going,
"No, you're not.
"You're entirely different."
With sugar and high fructose corn syrup
now in the spotlight,
I notice that companies are using
a range of seductive names
for other fructose-based sweeteners.
Any sugar...
brown sugar, white sugar,
high fructose corn syrup,
fruit juice concentrate
from fruit juice...
equal effect on your health.
Not feeling very well at all today.
Nauseous in my stomach
and had a headache all morning.
And it's interesting,
'cause we're driving through
rural America now,
we're in North Carolina.
It's so hard to get any kind
of decent food.
There are signs that say 'food exit',
but that food is either McDonald's
or Taco Bell or KFC.
It's impossible.
And if you grow up as a kid and this
is your only experience of food
and what food is,
it's little wonder that there's
a massive problem
in this country.
The next stop was
Barbourville, Kentucky.
In the great cola wars of the 1990s,
Pepsi and Coke were
engaged in a fierce battle.
The Pepsi army took a strong foothold
in the state of Kentucky
and their number-one sniper
is the drink Mountain Dew.
In this 1.25-litre bottle
you'll find 37 teaspoons of sugar
and 40% more caffeine than
the same size bottle of Coke.
The people of Kentucky
have understandably had
some problems with their teeth,
and one dentist is doing
something about it.
His name is Edwin Smith.
This is his letterbox,
this is his daughter
and this is him
as a collectable figurine.
Edwin drives around the state
of Kentucky in RVs
he has converted
into mobile dental clinics.
He and his team visit schools,
educate the kids
and treat their teeth.
Early in my practice
I saw these patients who
would have this unusual decay,
brown decay, around the gum line,
usually the front teeth.
Most of these people were
addicted to Mountain Dew,
in particular.
And that's where
we came up with the term
'Mountain Dew mouth'.
I've talked to some kids who say
they may drink 10 a day.
They started drinking it so early that
they don't know when they started.
Mountain Dew will tickle your innards
'cause there's a bang in every bottle.
They take the lid off,
they take a drink.
20 minutes or so, it starts to wear off
and they take another drink.
It takes the oral cavity
about 20 minutes
to cleanse itself naturally with saliva,
so if you're taking a drink
every 20 minutes,
it's as though you're bathing
your teeth in this all day long.
What's the youngest kids that you treat?
Sometimes 3-year-olds,
3-, 4-year-olds that have
a lot of tooth decay.
And those are usually what they
call baby bottle tooth decay,
and that's from having juices
in baby bottles.
Sometimes it's from having soft
drinks in the baby bottles, too.
Do you do the majority
of your treatments in Kentucky?
- Yes. Yeah.
- OK.
It's eastern Kentucky,
the Appalachian region,
the mountains.
That's the poorest region in the state.
It's directly related to poverty.
Yep.
It's pretty common
for people around here
to drink a lot of pop.
Mainly it's Mountain Dew and Pepsi.
This is 17-year-old Larry Hammons.
He's lived in Kentucky all his life.
This is his tatt,
this is his favourite T-shirt
and these are his teeth.
My 18th birthday's in eight days
and, I mean,
people look down upon me
because of my teeth.
As I was a kid I was never
worried about my teeth
and I would just take a pop
everywhere I went
and I'd always have one in my hand.
And how old do you reckon you were
when you had your first
Mountain Dew, like, how old?
I would probably say two or three.
And how much a day
would you say you have?
I would say at least four
or five bottles.
If it was cans,
I would say at least a 12-pack.
12 cans a day.
Man, are there people
doing that in this town?
Yeah.
What about... You were talking
about your cousin before.
I would say about six
or seven cans a day,
and he's only three years old.
Wow. And how does he...
Does he drink it from the can?
No, from a bottle.
She puts it in his bottle.
Edwin is meeting Larry today
because he plans to remove
all of his teeth
and replace them with dentures.
He has 26 teeth that
need to be extracted altogether.
I'd like to say that that's
really rare but it's not.
- You doing OK, Larry?
- Yeah, pretty good.
- Nervous.
- OK.
Have you got any questions about today?
- Yeah.
- What?
When can we get this started?
Can we get his mom in here? OK.
I don't want no pain for him.
I wish I could take it for him.
You're doing well, mate.
Hell no.
You're a brave man.
My blood pressure is saying, "Whoosh."
Yeah.
Well, right now,
Larry doesn't feel numb,
and I think we have a couple of
factors playing a role in that.
One is that he's very nervous
and the adrenaline's flowing,
and the other is that he has
infection in there
and has had infection for some time,
so the anaesthetic does not
take effect as well.
The condition his teeth are in now
you know he's suffered a lot
before he's even been here,
so he knows what pain is.
Due to infection,
no amount of anaesthetic
would work on Larry's gums,
so Edwin has decided to
postpone the procedure
for another day.
When contacted,
Pepsi said that in moderation
Mountain Dew is part of
a healthy, balanced diet.
But I would argue that any drink
with that much sugar
and caffeine in it
is quite difficult to have
in moderation.
In fact, despite sitting through
Larry's ordeal,
the biggest shock came
when Larry told me
that he still loved Mountain Dew
and would continue to drink it.
Hi, honey.' Oh, it was an amazing day.
When you think of Amata and now this,
you're seeing the direct effects
of what sugar's doing,
and the companies,
they just don't see it
because they're... they're
worried about making money,
they're not on the ground level
seeing the effects,
and they don't care, really.
And I spoke to the dentist about, like,
what Pepsi have done about it
and stuff, and he said,
"Oh, look, they contacted me and said,
"'Look, we really wanna help you out, '"
and, you know, so they've bought an RV,
another car to help with
the kids, but he's, like,
"Look, yeah, it's good,"
but they don't really need
an RV, they need education.
But, as he said today...
They need to not drink
Mountain Dew every day.
But, as he said, they're not
gonna educate the kids
'cause that means
they'll stop drinking it,
and that's a disaster for them.
My experience with Larry
led me to a Pulitzer
Prize-winning author
who has written extensively
on how the food giants
have got us hooked on their products.
You can't underestimate
the amount of scientific effort
that these companies will put into
maximising the allure of their products.
Understanding the sort of fundamentals
of how we taste
and why we crave
and what makes food addictive.
I was lucky enough to spend some time
with a legend in
the processed food industry.
His name is Howard Moskowitz.
And he walked me through
his recent creation
of a new soda flavour for Dr Pepper.
He started with 61 levels of
sweeteners in the formulation,
subjected that to more than 3,000
consumer taste tests around the country,
then took that data
and out came the optimum
level of sweetness
that was guaranteed to send
their new soda
flying off the shelf.
Behind the closed doors of industry,
this optimal amount of sugar
is referred to as 'the bliss point'.
Back in the 1970s,
Howard Moskowitz discovered
that as you increase
the amount of sugar in a product
people liked it more and more.
But then they peaked
and if any more sugar was added
then they stopped liking it.
So I discovered the bliss point,
and that's what it was
christened... the bliss point.
Well, fast forward 45 years
later, it means pasta sauce,
it means sodas, it means cereals.
Creating bliss points in
products all over the place
is exploiting the biology of the child.
You know, it's created
this expectation in kids
that everything
they eat should taste sweet,
so when you get to
the vegetable aisle, right,
and you're trying to get little
Mikey to eat that broccoli
and he starts tasting
those bitter notes, right,
instead of sweetness, you know,
you're in for a load of trouble
as a parent.
It's understandable
that our palates have adjusted
to all of these blissed out foods
when we have such
a primal desire for sweet.
Even Mother Nature herself
has created a berry
that makes everything taste sweet.
So, in front of me
I have three food items
that it's fair to say I don't enjoy.
This here piping hot chilli,
this here sour lemon
and this nasty bottle
of apple cider vinegar.
But apparently
if I put this miracle berry
onto my tongue
and then eat those things,
it's supposed to make them taste sweet.
No way!
That's an orange.
I'm dubious.
When it hit my throat
it was really intense,
but in the mouth...
I don't know what it tasted like.
Maybe, um... lemonade kind of thing.
Wasn't too sweet,
but it was not apple cider vinegar.
But this has got me nervous.
I do not like chilli at all.
Please work.
Nothing.
Oh! It's hit my throat, though!
There's no miracle berry
on my oesophagus.
Damn.
This experiment with my tastebuds
made me realise what the food
companies have always known...
that adding sweetness
can make anything palatable.
I'm so sorry.
Well, almost anything.
It was now day 35,
and the rule of the experiment
I was finding increasingly hard
to maintain was exercise.
My motivation had plummeted.
My heart hurts.
Hello, Sharon.
How are you feeling?
Well, if you could see
me you would not recognise me,
'cause there's a few pimples
that have arrived,
there's a lot of fat
and fullness in my face,
and my tummy is really
quite something to behold.
I can't fit into my favourite
new shorts anymore,
which is a bit disappointing.
When did the pimples break out?
About three days ago.
Um... it's probably your liver reacting.
Often skin conditions are related
to poor liver functioning.
So, if someone's on a sort of,
like, high-processed sugar diet,
you'll see it in their eyes,
you'll see bags under the eyes,
you'll see it in their skin.
Whether they're here or they're
just really drawn and lethargic.
Sugar's effects on me
physically were obvious,
but my cravings for it and
the mental toll it was taking
prompted me to explore what
it was doing to my brain.
So I took my pimply face to
the Oregon Research Institute.
This group of scientists, who
I'm trusting enormously,
own this colossal
magnetic sucking machine
called an FMRI...
which they are going to
put me and my brain into.
They will then show me
images of this high-sugar,
low-fat milkshake and
then feed me the milkshake
through a special megastraw.
Then they'll take
some photos of my brain
and show me how it reacted.
Wow.
Now I'm gonna climb into my own brain
and see what effects
sugar just had on it.
Now, the first step is that we
see what's called a cue,
or a trigger...
which, in my case, was the milkshake.
It can be a picture of one
or the real thing.
Now, when we see this sugary
cue, or trigger,
a chemical called dopamine
is released in our brain.
This is an evolutionary urge
when sweetness was rare,
so when we saw it,
our brain said, "Get that,
"'cause you need it for quick
energy and to feel good."
Now, the next step is that
we get the sugary item.
We bring it to our mouth
and we taste its sweetness.
It's then that chemicals called opioids
and beta-endorphins are
released and we feel terrific.
Sugar loads have the same
reward areas as nicotine,
cocaine and sex!
But it doesn't last long.
Now, if some of us eat
sugary foods often enough
and establish this happy feeling
of reward,
it can create subconscious
or mindless habits,
which are easily triggered by
more images of sugary foods.
Throw into the mix that
the fructose half of sugar
also affects our appetite
control centres,
plus the glucose half affects our moods,
and suddenly we have
a very volatile combination
on our hands.
One of the very interesting
emerging findings
in this literature is
the more you eat high-sugar foods,
the more you're gonna desire
high-sugar foods
and wanna continue eating them.
This desire to wanna
keep eating more sugary foods
sounds a lot like addictive behaviour.
Serge Ahmed, who's
now in Bordeaux, in France,
published a really cool study
where he basically showed that
rats will work harder for sugar
than they will for cocaine.
Unlike the drug dealer, who's, you know,
squired away some place hiding,
the food giants are in your face
everywhere you go.
In the boardrooms of these food giants,
'addiction' is a dirty word.
When it comes to obesity and illness,
the food industry have always
argued that people need to take
personal responsibility
for their food choices.
When it comes to eating,
fat people are basically very stupid.
No, but, you see,
I was away this weekend
and it is difficult in friends' houses.
OK, Mrs Wright, no more chocolates.
For more than 50 years,
the food industry has insisted
that obesity is caused
by too many calories
and not enough exercise.
Which implies that anyone overweight
is simply lazy or greedy.
OK, so, we just passed halfway.
And I've never counted
calories in my life.
I'm trying my best in this experiment.
It's hard to be accurate, obviously.
But it looks like my calories
so far are pretty much
exactly the same as they were
pre-experiment.
And that feels strange because
I feel like I'm eating a lot more.
But I can see here that
when I was eating, pre-experiment,
avocado and nuts and stuff,
there's a lot more calories
in fat than there is in sugar.
So... in fact, it's half.
Like, nine calories per gram of fat
whereas sugar's only got four calories,
so I can see why we're told that
sugar's OK and don't eat fat,
'cause there's less calories.
But... I'm eating
the same amount of calories
as I did before but
my liver's turned to fat,
my belly's chasing my lady's.
It's doing something
to my brain, we know that now.
And I'm not feeling full.
So it feels like the calories from sugar
behave very differently
to other calories.
The sugar industry absolutely
depended on this idea
that it's just about energy balance.
'Cause if there's something
uniquely deleterious
about sugar...
then they're in the realm
that cigarettes are in,
tobacco and lung cancer.
But if it's just about eating too much
or not exercising too little,
if a calorie of sugar
is no different than
a calorie of broccoli, they're fine.
Just tell people to
moderate their weight...
if you're getting fat, eat less
and that's all there is.
So the sugar industry also
sort of pushed this idea
that a calorie is a calorie
is a calorie,
and yet these calories do
dramatically different things
in the human body,
and they always have.
It's become clear to me
that in the search for profits,
the food companies
are not only targeting
our primal desire for sugar,
but are also insisting
that all calories are equal.
The result is that we feel like failures
if we're addicted or overweight.
Perhaps the greed that is actually
making us overweight and sick
is of the corporate variety.
- Hello, you.
- Hello, honey.
Can you show me the belly?
Have a look at this baby. He's
actually doing little kicks.
Quick.
Aww.
Hello, baby.
Hello, baby.
Hello, Daddy.
- Bye.
- Love you.
- Bye.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye.
- Bye.
Do you know how many sugarholics
there are in this country?
Millions and millions of them.
As you go around the schoolyards,
you watch the young boys
and girls of this country
and see how many of these children...
Their soft, weak muscles
are out of condition,
they don't have the energy
and vitality they should have.
They look like sugar, they don't...
After 45 days,
it became more and more evident
that we're just not getting
a clear message about sugar.
Could the fact that sugar's
global trade is worth $50 billion
have anything to do with it?
It turns out that the
suppression of the message
began in the 1970s
when the US Government was
reviewing the safety of sugar
for the first time.
The Sugar Association
launched a campaign
to ensure their product wasn't vilified.
In this case,
what the sugar industry did,
is they stepped in when the
evidence was ambiguous
and they said,
"We're gonna kinda make sure
it's always ambiguous."
To do this, the Sugar
Association paid scientists,
hired a PR company
and released a report with
a press release that read:
They put out this document
called Sugar in the Diet of Man.
There was no sign that it was
paid for by the sugar industry.
It looks like a very official document,
it's published in a journal.
The sugar industry sends out
25,000 copies.
This report was then
used by the government
to determine its findings.
Sugar was exonerated and the rest
of the world followed suit.
Jack Tatem, president
of the Sugar Association's
presenting to his board and he says,
"Look, there is no conclusive evidence
"linking sugar
to these chronic diseases.
"And this is the lifeblood
of our organisation,
"it's the lifeblood of our product.
"If anyone ever links sugar to
these diseases, we're dead.
"So our job, what we have to do...
"is make sure that
there's no consensus."
You know.
This manipulation of evidence
and deliberate muddying of the waters
is all sounding very familiar.
OK, how's about taking a nap?
Hey, I got a better idea.
Let's take a Winston break.
That's it! Winston is...
And, evidently,
it's still going on today.
If you create a list of the things
that the tobacco industry did
to stall or to fight off
public health actions
that would curtail smoking,
the food companies are doing
every single one.
Paying scientists to do studies
that favour industry positions,
paying money to professional
organisations,
like heart-related and
cancer-related organisations,
putting out deceptive statements
in the press,
characterising science that
doesn't work out for industry
as 'junk science'.
There's a very long list
of these things.
The tobacco industry did them all
and the food industry is doing them all.
Many of the reviews,
the final review,
is that there is no evidence
that sugar is associated
with metabolic disease
of any kind,
are funded by the sugar industry.
Given everything I have learnt so far
it was hard to believe
there are still scientists
defending sugar and fructose.
I was curious to meet one of them.
I haven't eaten sugar
for nearly three years
and part of this film is
that I'm, for 60 days,
eating a very high-fructose sugar diet.
I thought maybe I'll put on
a little bit of weight,
I put on six kilos in Australia,
which is 15 pounds.
Right.
All hidden sugars...
granola bars, low-fat yoghurt.
What's happening?
Well, what I'd say is that
that's a very powerful anecdote
and I think, you know, it's...
I think that can be true
for a lot of people.
But I would say that you had
to be careful any time you do
a high amount of anything.
I think if I was to put you,
again, on a white bread diet,
you know, or to put you on
a, you know, potato chip diet
or French fry diet,
you might have a similar effect.
I think the issue is
that all of these calories
really need to be regarded
as discretionary.
I found John's position on calories
so similar to the line that
the food industry takes
that I felt compelled to question
the source of his research funding.
Have you ever received any kind
of funding from Coca-Cola?
You know, I think this is
a really important question,
and it's very important for me
that I be transparent.
So we have received
investigator-initiated,
unrestricted funding from Coca-Cola.
What that means is they had
no say over our questions
we were asking,
how we conducted the research,
our analysis, our interpretation
and our data plan.
It's a red flag...
For me to hear you even
say that is, like, "Whoa, OK."
Because this is a company
with 650 beverage products...
You're right, you're right.
...that rely on fructose
and sugar, so...
So what I would say is you're right.
I mean, we realised this going in
and, I mean, some may view this
as sort of shaking hands
with the devil, I guess.
I mean, even though
that's the case, you know,
we're confident enough in what
we're doing and our protocols
and we're laying everything bare,
that we could afford
to engage with them.
I think that we should not take money
from the industry directly.
I think it's just morally wrong
to do that,
and, you know, money's tough,
so it's a big dilemma
for researcher, as well.
But we don't want to taint the answer,
we want to know the truth.
Just one week later,
I saw an ad for a symposium on fructose
and sweetened beverages.
It was sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Their keynote speaker
was Dr John Sievenpiper.
He spoke about calories
and there being no link between
fructose and cardiometabolic
diseases in the studies.
Coke madly tweeted about it
and then the host asked the audience...
To maybe put together
a YouTube video to, you know,
bring some balance back
to those messages
that are out there for the public.
I found this video on YouTube,
but I'm not sure it's quite
what they had in mind.
As the US leg of my experiment
neared its conclusion,
what really struck me
is that despite all the effects
sugar is having on us,
in many ways we've just
adapted to its saturation.
And I'm just noticing how
incredible the human body
and the human mind is
because even though I'm having
40 teaspoons of sugar a day,
I've adjusted now to this new reality.
My body just accepts
that this is what I eat,
and my brain deals with
the moods up and down,
I just get on with life
and it's fine, I can function.
But, uh... I'm not nearly
as efficient as I was,
my fuse is a lot shorter, I'm exhausted.
And I think that's how a lot
of people live their lives.
People are up and down all day,
but it's just their reality,
so they accept it
and they've never experienced
anything different.
And I have
and I'm really excited
to get back to that point.
If you've always lived this way,
you have no idea what life can be like.
It's not part of your
frame of reference.
Now, a lot of people will say,
"Well, I eat sugar all the time
and, you know,
"I'm perfectly fine."
Well, what they don't understand is that
they eat sugar all the time
and they're fuzzy and their
mind is cloudy all the time.
Sugar has now become so deeply ingrained
into the fabric of our society
that some people can't
imagine life without it.
What say we took away added sugar,
well, then what are people gonna do
to get that same feeling in
their life that sugar gave them,
in terms of their values
and preferences?
But we forget that
we didn't always live like this.
Society has changed.
200 years ago there was not
a society in the world
when they had a festival that
was basing what they ate
and what they drank on sugar.
Today, it has become synonymous
with any celebration.
But, more profoundly,
it is one of the simplest ways
we communicate love.
I think the reason that sugar has become
so ingrained is that it
actually evokes love.
Our brains respond
to the chemical effect
the same way we respond to love.
If we're feeling upset, what do we do?
We have some sugar, "Oh, I feel better."
If there's not enough sweetness
in our life, not enough love,
"Oh, I'll just have some chocolate."
With sugar having
such complex associations
with our hearts, minds and bodies,
I wonder if it is having
far greater ramifications
for the culture than we've considered.
Rudolf Steiner said that sugar
essentially causes materialism.
And that development
of the sugar metabolism
and the sugar drug culture
developed a materialistic culture.
We live in a time of instant
gratification,
nobody wants to wait for anything.
What's sugar? Quick energy,
it's straight to the brain.
Eat that pie!
Eat that pie! Eat that pie.'
Eat that pie! Eat that pie.'
Eat that pie!
Eat that pie!
Eat that pie! Eat that pie.'
Eat that pie! Eat that pie.'
Eat that pie!
Hi, darling.
Oh, look at this.
Hello, little dude.
How are you going in there, dudie?
Massive.
How big's mine, too? Look at that.
Oh, my God.
Alright, let's do it.
After 60 days
and 2,360 teaspoons of sugar,
it was time for the last meal.
I thought it would be fitting to cram
all the remaining 40 teaspoons
into items that could be found
in a child's school lunch box.
Closed!
Yeah!
Be gone.
One week later, after having
all my blood tests done,
I assembled the team
to hear the final verdict
on what sugar had done to my body.
The obvious place to start is the liver.
A key marker for
determining liver health
is a hormone called ALT.
In the first month alone mine jumped
from 20 below the safety line
to 20 above the safety line.
So it took you from, say,
the best 20% of the men
to the worst 10%.
- In one month.
- In one month.
Fatty liver is the first step
towards insulin resistance,
so once you're on an insulin
resistance pathway
then you're on a pathway
towards type-2 diabetes
and then, ultimately,
insulin-dependent type-2 diabetes.
Today in Australia,
nine people had a limb
amputated to that disease.
My triglyceride levels,
which is the fat in the blood,
went from a healthy 0.08 to 1.5.
So you'd hit the risk point...
Gee-whiz.
In two months of healthy eating.
Of healthy eating.
High triglycerides
can also indicate a switch
from healthy cholesterol
to the damaging small,
dense LDL cholesterol.
Small, dense LDL
lines you up for heart disease
because they're the ones
that are embedding
in the arterial walls,
forming plaques...
and that's the bit you don't want.
You can have all the LDL
you like, but don't have those.
In terms of weight,
I gained 8.5kg overall
and added 7% to my total body fat.
But, more ominously,
increased my waist measurement by 10cm.
This is the dangerous visceral fat.
I showed a slight change
in the bum expansion test,
a variance in the rear flesh wings test
and had great success
in the highly scientific
'belly slap, make
a fat wave' wobble test.
I was quite, as you know, you know,
quite alarmed that
you were able to do that
in such a short amount of time, again,
eating heart-approved, healthy foods
that everyone's going along
thinking, you know,
it's totally fine to be doing.
And we're worried about the future
of this obesity epidemic in Australia,
whether it's going to lead to
an epidemic
of liver disease in the long term.
But perhaps the most
enlightening of my results
was the calorie count.
As I'd discovered, my calorie intake
was virtually the same
as my pre-experiment diet.
The big difference was
the source of the calories.
I'd pretty much done a direct swap
of healthy fats
for sugar-laden products.
I was looking at
the total calories, as well,
and very often it would come out as less
than what he had eaten previously.
The way that calories have been
measured in the past
needs to be re-looked at.
This calorie counting and
this intense fixation with...
And it's our fault, as much as...
I take responsibility
because it's a message we've
been spewing out for the last 30
or 40 years, but we really have
to try and turn things around.
And Damon is living evidence,
living proof,
it is not the calories,
it's the source of the calories.
It's where they're coming from.
I'm surprised how quickly
things went downhill for you,
I honestly am.
To put on so much
weight in just 60 days,
without really changing
the number of calories
you were eating, without,
you know, eating rubbish,
to have such a big effect...
10cm on the waist,
8.5 kilos on the body,
full-blown fatty liver disease
developed,
well on your way to cirrhosis,
well on your way to insulin
resistance... that's a disaster.
Hm.
You know, I obviously,
through my research,
have convinced myself that
sugar is almost assuredly
the problem, the fundamental problem.
You get rid of sugar
and everything else becomes
relatively harmless.
We would like
to do the definitive study,
but even if we find out
next month it gets funded,
it's still gonna be five more years
before I will have results.
What possible risk
to public health is there
in people lowering
their sugar consumption?
This is our problem
and we should all work together
to solve it instead of pointing fingers
and not being productive about that.
And I would love to see the food
industry come to the table
with scientists and healthcare
providers and do what's right.
The first week of giving
up sugar wasn't a lot of fun.
Frankly, it didn't feel that different
from giving up cigarettes.
I had headaches, I was moody
and my sleep patterns were terrible.
And I just tossed and turned all night
and then woke up very early,
and as soon as I was awake
I kind of was craving sugar.
I feel like I need a hit.
Um... it's the first real sign...
that this is gonna be a bit tricky.
But I knew from previous experience
that I wouldn't feel like this forever
and that ultimately it would
all be worth it.
Because food and sugar has
a very strong emotional component,
then we have to heal
ourselves emotionally
and we have to go through what
could be a disturbing experience
or an uncomfortable or even
awkward experience
coming off of it.
But once you get through it,
which is about two to four weeks,
suddenly the desire for sugar
disappears altogether.
One month after finishing
the experiment,
a miracle occurred.
Our daughter was born.
This is her mobile,
this is her teething giraffe
and this is her lunch.
- Hiya.
- Are you tired, bubby?
But then some other
remarkable things happened.
After just two months
of cutting out sugar...
my vitality had returned,
my skin was brighter
and, thankfully,
my moods had evened out.
I've had hundreds and hundreds of people
go off sugar just for the reason
of clearing up their mind,
and typically,
the result I get is, "Wow!
"I had no idea!"
In terms of my weight,
all I did is return to
my pre-experiment diet.
I swapped cereal and low-fat yoghurt
for bacon, eggs
and avocado without toast.
I snacked on nuts and cheese
instead of muesli bars,
and ate fish or meat
with the fat left on
and lots of green vegetables
for dinners.
I lost 6kg with minimal exercise.
Once you remove that hormone
disrupter, fructose,
from your diet,
your appetite control works
again and your weight drops.
Because I replaced sugar
with healthy fats,
I felt full again
and didn't have to eat as much.
Consequently, I spent the same
amount on shopping
as I had during the experiment.
Whenever you walk into a supermarket,
make an immediate right turn
or left turn
for the produce aisle and avoid
everything in the middle.
Everything in the middle is
a huge amount of calories
with very little nutrients.
And what we wanna do is reverse that.
But the biggest surprise
was that all of my blood tests had
returned to normal,
so no more heart disease risks
and no more fatty liver.
I think the most
important message is that
this is not you get
a fatty liver and that's it,
it will stay fatty,
it actually can be reversed very easily
by taking away the fructose
from your diet,
taking away all those drinks.
I mean, water is a good drink.
Yeah.
In truth, it did take
a while for my palate
to readjust to my lady's
unsweetened cooking.
Things tasted bland
for the first few weeks,
but then I rediscovered the full
flavours of fresh produce.
Mmm.
For just five days,
I want you to discontinue,
or take out of your diet, for five days,
these foods that I'm gonna show you,
and I promise you that
you will feel 100% better.
Will you please try this for me,
just as an experiment?
'Cause I'm here trying to help
you help yourself a little bit.
In the USA,
it was recently recommended
for men to have
no more than nine teaspoons
of sugar a day
and women no more than six.
Australia currently doesn't have
an equivalent recommendation.
I love chocolate.
I eat a little piece
of chocolate every day.
But I'm careful and I understand
the adverse effects
if I have too much of it.
But for me it's simpler
to cut out sugar altogether.
And that means avoiding
artificial sweeteners, too,
that keep the cravings alive.
If you continue to reinforce
it has to be sweet
in order for it to be good,
then you're never really learning
how to do food... good food.
I want my daughter to
grow up healthy and happy...
and not waste any of her
precious time counting calories
or obsessing over weight.
By educating our children,
perhaps they can avoid the mistakes
that our generation has made.
Do whatever you can
to turn fruit and vegetable
into the highlight of your meal.
Train your kids to love them.
That's what every
parent's got to figure out.
How do you get in all those
great nutrients?
How do you get those
superfoods into your child
and make it taste good at the same time
without spiking their blood sugar
so that they can sit down
and study and learn
and allow for the creation of genius.
That's why we're having
the sugar experiment.
We had to learn that this is not
the right way to go
in order to help inspire us
to get to the next level.
I certainly don't think
that sugar is solely to blame
for all own current health problems,
but given its prevalence
in our food supply,
lowering our consumption
is a great place to start.
Sugar's not evil,
but life is so much better...
when you get rid of it.
This experiment has proven
to me that refined sugar
and excess fructose are causing
serious damage to the health
and wellbeing of millions of people.
And as the debate heats up
and the food industry fight
tooth and nail
to shut the message down,
we'll be bombarded with
conflicting nutritional advice.
But for me, quite simply,
the proof is in the pudding.
About 10 teaspoons of it.
Hey, everybody
Let me introduce myself
I spread my love on every
item on your supermarket shelf
I taste so good, make you feel so high
That I bring you back for more
Plus I place my goodies
at your kiddies' eye level
When you're just about to
walk out the store
Now, people will tell you
that I rot your teeth
And make you fat
and give your body abuse
But forget about that,
just take off your clothes
And have a spa made
of chocolate mousse
Sing it, ladies
Oh, Mr Sugar, so sexy alright
We can taste you in our food
in nearly every bite
It feels so good
Can we have a little more?
Of course you can, ladies
I got white, brown, raw sugar
Sugar
Sugar
I'm not your friend I come in gum
Just eat me when you're on the run
Sugar
Sugar
Sugar
Treat to eat I taste so sweet
I get you when you leave the teat
And when you wake up in the morning
And you're feeling kind of peckish
This often where you find me the most
'Cause I'm lurking in your cereal
I'm lurking in your yoghurt
And sometimes I'm even found
in your toast
But here's a little secret
I can share with you
A secret you should put to use
There's about six
cheeky teaspoons of me
Hiding in a glass of juice
Hey
Some people think
that Mr Sugar hangs out
Only with the bright-coloured snacks
But I've been spreading
my crystals all over your food
And the company's been
hiding the facts
I'm in cola, granola and pasta sauce
Mushy peas, mac and cheese
And that radish from a horse
Canned fruit and soup,
even soup in a satchel
And Mr Sugar loves the term
'all natural'
White bread, corn chips,
muffin mix, gravy
Mayonnaise, satay, food for the baby
Baked beans for the teens
and an energy drink
And I'm clearly gonna be
in any food that's pink
I'm confessing I'm in dressing
and a hamburger bun
Where that cheeky corn syrup's
Trying to steal all my fun
Muesli bars, even some cigars
And a whole range of
marmalade and honey, jam jars
Oh, Mr Sugar, so ubiquitous
Our addiction to you
is quite ridiculous
We feel so sick when you're not around
That's why a spoonful of me
helps the medicine go down
Sugar
Sugar
Sugar
Sugar
Sugar
Put me in your coffee
Sugar
I'm the only thing in toffee
Sugar
Pick you up when you're down
Sugar
You should try me in brown
Sugar
You couldn't quit me for quids
Sugar
I'm coming for your kids.