Robert Lustig MD

03/12/2026

ICYMI: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald and I had quite the conversation on this episode of New Frontiers in Functional Medicine:

Dr. Robert Lustig joins Dr. Kara Fitzgerald to break down the new USDA dietary guidelines, sugar, ultra-processed foods, GLP-1s, and food policy.

03/12/2026

There's a reason that the WHO and the USDA have provided upper limits of sugar -- because dietary sugar fries your kids' liver and brain, just like alcohol.

03/11/2026

What’s wrong with RFK’s dietary guidelines? What about fats and protein? How can we make ultraprocessed healthy? How can we improve the food and save money at the same time?

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald and I sort the “wheat” from the “chaff” (hint, the chaff is fiber) in this freewheeling episode.

Dr. Robert Lustig joins Dr. Kara Fitzgerald to break down the new USDA dietary guidelines, sugar, ultra-processed foods, GLP-1s, and food policy.

03/10/2026

Real food, containing endogenous micronutrients, prevents metabolic syndrome. Processed food causes metabolic syndrome.

03/06/2026

I'm all for U.S. Medical Schools teaching nutrition, but not MAHA nutrition.

RFK's inverted food pyramid gets three things right:

1) Cut the added sugar.

2) Reduce ultraprocessed food consumption.

3) Eat real food.

The rest of it is hogwash. Protein? A scam. Saturated fats? There are two, RFK doesn't distinguish. Fiber? Not even mentioned. And on and on. The push to get nutrition into medical schools needs to be around metabolic health, and has to be evidence based, something RFK wouldn't know if it bit him in the a**.

The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has tapped into an old debate about how much doctors should know about nutrition. But some of his ideas, and tactics, concern medical experts.

03/06/2026

Now we're talkin'.... maybe.

Does 115 grams of sugar in one drink destroy your liver and pancreas? Not acutely. Just like smoking one pack of ci******es doesn't cause lung failure. This is a chronic exposure.

The problem is that the GRAS list currently only looks at acute, not chronic toxicity. Of course, RFK wants to do away with GRAS. But that's up to Congress. And the way things are going, don't expect anyone in Congress to believe anything RFK says. I sure wouldn't, as much as I want to see these drinks shrink as well.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said Dunkin’ and other companies will need to prove that their ingredients are safe, prompting Massachusetts Gov. Maura Hea…

03/04/2026

Hey, all you Bay Area neuroscientists!

Come hear why autism and Alzheimer's might be the same disease, and what to do about it. April 2, Los Altos.

Discover how new science on brain energy is reshaping what we know about cognitive decline—and how you can protect memory as you age.

02/28/2026

The Japanese have a saying:

‘Eat until you are 80 percent full.’

02/28/2026

By the way, here's a free pdf of Fat Chance Cookbook:https://robertlustig.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Fat-Chance-Cookbook_Eat-REAL-Download.pdf

And, if you're interested in a physical copy: https://a.co/d/0eaqSQnO

More than 100 recipes in here, designed to help lose the sugar and the weight.

Dr. Robert Lustig’s message that 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’...

02/28/2026

Sugar is celebratory. Sugar is something that we used to enjoy. Now, it basically has coated our tongues. It’s turned into a diet staple, and it’s killing us.

02/27/2026

Friends in Los Altos, join me on April 2nd for an insightful evening of sharing research. Metabolism and cognitive health will be the tip of the iceberg...

Register here:

Meet Dr. Robert Lustig—endocrinologist, best-selling author, and creator of the viral YouTube lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” Join the MIT alumnus for a talk on metabolic health, mitochondria, and brain disease prevention.

02/25/2026

This report from Sapien Labs has assessed correlations between ultraprocessed food and depression worldwide:

https://sapienlabs.org/global-mind-health-report/

Surprise! They find that UPF is a primary correlate with depression, even after demographic and socioeconomic variables are factored out. This makes perfect sense to me, as UPF is low in tryptophan (low serotonin), high in fructose (mitochondrial dysfunction and ATP reduction), and microbiome changes (gut and systemic inflammation resulting in insulin resistance). UPF's are a primary hazard today in the U.S., but we are working to make UPF healthy in the Middle East. See my meeting in Davos last month:

https://vimeo.com/1161828692/be464bf563?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

A view of the mind health of the Internet-enabled world and the factors that drive it.