Is Fruit As Bad As Processed Sugar? - How To Burn Fat & Repair The Body | Dr. William Li

Are there particular foods that are uniquely worse for us when it comes to fat deposition, when it comes to the types of fats that we want to make sure that are under control? Yeah. Well, look, the answer is yes. And the science tells us that the foods that encourage the excessive growth of body fat and that encourage inflammation and uh and um and thwart our metabolism kind of knock our metabolism derailed our metabolism uh are very much the foods that are talked about as being not so good for you sodas both regular soda and diet sodas with artificial sweetener sodas um non-caloric sodas um uh added sugars too much added sugar too much calories i mean that's like basically not not just filling up your gas tank that's like putting a jet nozzle and jetting out that gas like your metabolism can handle it but at a certain point it's going to go whoa this is way too much for me to handle over time again once or twice occasionally not a big deal over time that overwhelmingness of the metabolism leads to So spillage leads to waste, leads to toxicity, so added sugars. Number three, ultra-processed foods. Now, ultra-processed foods almost has become a bumper sticker, so let me explain a little bit more closely. These are food products that big companies make, but even small companies make them, and they fundamentally take whole foods, raw ingredients, and they transform them and combine them in ways and extrude them and shape them in ways in which the product doesn't even resemble food anymore. And so the fact of the matter is that the shape of your breakfast cereal or some of the candy you might eat, the combinations, that's ultra-processed. And ultra-processed foods also tend to be cheap. It tends to live forever or last for a long time. And the reason it lasts, and it tastes great. It tastes great because it's artificially flavored, often with chemicals. It looks beautiful because it's artificially colored. Now, I know in Europe, for example, there's been, I think, a faster enlightenment of protecting citizens by banning some of the artificial flavorings and colors. In America, in the United States of America, not so. There's still a lot of things that are banned in Europe that are common in the foods that are surrounding us now. those damage our metabolism they damage our health defenses they damage our gut microbiome which is connected to our metabolism by helping to streamline our metabolism um so that's ultra processed foods anything that by the way you pick up and it's got like 20 ingredients and you look at them and you can't pronounce most of them and you can't tell what they do that's something that is important that i sort of use a shorthand for people like teach me dr lee about what an ultra processed food actually is, I say, look, there's a lot to say about that. But if you pick up a package and you read the ingredients, just like 20 ingredients on there, and you can't define what every ingredient does, what it contributes, it's probably ultra processed. That's a good way to look at it. And then I would actually say that other things that encourage derailing of our metabolism over it you know unhealthy oils uh excessive saturated fats like in red meats excessive like a little bit good source of protein um uh uh and i would also say processed meats uh you know because they're processed they've got all kinds of other chemicals and things associated with them uh so by the way i just listed the same things that everyone talks about over and over again that are not so good for us what i'm saying is that now we have another reason to understand that they actually derail our hardwired metabolism and they encourage harmful body fat to actually grow yeah yeah exactly i think you know it always serves as a reminder um to go through this and as a general heuristic you know what you just described there if you can't recognize the ingredients it's packaged it has a very long shelf life it most likely has got a lot of contaminants and a lot of additives um the environmental pollutants that you talk about in your book as well about how they're obesogenic you know a lot more people are coming around to this idea about phthalates and other obesogens um as derailing our metabolism so that's really important um i think we should we should go into the good stuff now like i i want to talk about these bioactives so you know it was enlightening to to read about the mechanisms behind bioactives and how they can impact, uh, healthy fat, you know, how they can amp up, uh, your, your brown fat, how they can trigger thermogenesis and how they can improve your mitochondria that, you know, the, the power cells of your, the powerhouses of your cells. Why don't we talk about those mechanisms first, then perhaps we can go into some of those bioactives and then dive into some of those delicious foods that you and I both love. Sure. Okay. so um as we discussed there are um three main types of body fat wiggly jigglies which is the subcutaneous fat you can see the visceral fat which is the the choking fat of our organs wrapped around our organs okay that you need some of it but too much of any of those things is not good and then the brown fat which is to our to to the best of our knowledge it's all good stuff all right it actually it's the space heater the fuel cell and it and it's designed to burn down extra energy so it's a good fat that can fight the bad fat in fact by burning off extra fuel why by the way i want to explain why it's called brown fat because it has to do with the mechanism um brown fat is is brown colored and they've looked at this under the microscope because brown fat contains a lot of iron it turns out that the space heater function the the the the cellular organelle that generates the heat is the mitochondria and when i was in medical school and probably you as well rupee and we're trying to we had to memorize everything um and there were like thousands of things to memorize every single week um i tried to find fun ways to memorize so i used to memorize mitochondria as the mighty chondria you know and it's small but mighty and these are the fuel cells these are the nuclear power plants of our cells they generate energy and to generate that energy there's a lot of iron in it same kind of iron that causes rust all right that gets rusty and so rusty iron is brown and so mitochondria are brown and brown fat even though it's thin and it's wafer thin is packed with mitochondria this fuel generating light up um stuff the organelles the nuclear power plants and because it's so densely packed of mitochondria mitochondria it's got a lot of iron in it so that's why it looks brown so number one there's a reason why brown fat looks brown yeah um now uh the way that actually you can turn on and get rid of harmful body fat the easiest way is actually to activate thermogenesis basically that's just turning flipping the switch so that your brown fat starts to fire up um i showed you a little lighter a torch but actually if you think about a gas stove which most people have in their kitchens or their homes right what do you do you turn on the the handle and it goes click click click, click, whoosh, right? That's what certain foods can actually do. When you're eating certain foods, it actually sends signals to your brown fat and it goes whoosh. And once it goes whoosh, just like your stove, it requires fuel to keep that flame going. Where's it going to draw that fuel from? It's going to draw it from your harmful fat. So that's how you burn it down. So that's one basic mechanism, but it gets much more interesting than that for thermogenesis. for example hot chili peppers which i happen to like spicy food um but everyone knows what happens when you eat something spicy like a chili pepper uh pepper flakes you put on your pizza that's a great example right in fact i have a little sample here let me just show you i just happen to be in front of i just have to be in front of a desk so i can show you this stuff oh yeah beautiful right and it comes like and it comes off of a plant like that okay so what happens is that when you put it in your tongue you feel the burn the zing and what's happening is that there's a bioactive called capsaicin it actually is also there's another family called capsaicinoids they're all that chemical family and like a key that fits into a lock your tongue has the lock it's a receptor for capsaicin it's a capsaicin receptor there's a name for it by the way i know i'll be giving lots of easy to understand analogies for for your listeners viewers. But all right, we got to dive in and be a little bit of a scientist here. We've got a receptor that's called TRPV1. And it's not only all over our tongue, but it actually is in our esophagus, in our stomach, in our guts, all the way down to our intestines. And it's also at the very tail end, even our rectum. So you've heard that saying, burning on the way in and burning on the way out. Hey, you know what? That's because of TRPV1, the receptor. But here's the interesting thing, the connection between body fat and thermogenesis. Hot chili pepper on your tongue lock the key fits into the lock the TRPV1 receptor as soon as that happens you feel ah it's spicy your tongue sends a text message to your brain amazingly and it tells your brain to do two things one is to release endorphins endorphins are the feel-good hormones which is why some people really are addicted to eating spicy food ah i gotta have my i gotta have me some more spicy food now the other thing that not everybody has the same degree of response so some people, it's just way too spicy. They have too many receptors. The TRPV1 is so dense in their tongue that even a little spice is overwhelming, okay? But the second thing that the capsaicin from chili peppers on the tongue can activate with the text message to your brain, it can release norepinephrine, okay? Norepinephrine is a fight-or-flight hormone. So basically, put up your dukes, all right, or run away, okay? And what happens when you do that, your eyes dilate, you start to sweat, right? And you remember people eating spicy food, they often sweat and they turn red, right? You start breathing a little bit faster. That's what's happening. And the next time you eat something spicy, I think you and I talked about this when we were in person last year, but this is what's amazing. If you eat something spicy and you just put yourself, like meditate a little bit, go into a quiet place and pay attention to your body, you will literally feel, your brain, your activated brain, your excited brain releasing norepinephrine, you'll feel it running down the side of your neck because the norepinephrine is going down nerves. You will actually feel that sensation happening, the current going down. And it goes right down to the brown fat that's pressed around the side of your neck to light up that flame. That's called thermogenesis. That signal norepinephrine binds to a receptor on the top of your brown fat. It's called UCP1, don't worry about the names but what that UCP1 does, another lock and key on top of your brown fat is it then ignites your uh your burner on your stove uh and then whoosh it goes up and now in order to keep that flame going it's got to draw the energy down right so that's an example of chili peppers found in both Mediterranean cuisine um Asian cuisine all kinds of Asian cuisines that actually are part of this um culinary traditions that that you know are very much part of our humanity and that's just one example of an ingredient and a mechanism there's other ways mechanisms that can work as well but i thought i would start with thermogenesis i love that yeah yeah absolutely i mean you know i remember talking about that and how uh and the meditation and you know being intuitive as to what's going on in your body um for for those of I mean, there was also a reference to a couple of, or lots of studies in the book about a dose response with more chilies in the diet. So they looked at different population and they measured how much chili they have in their diet every single day. And you can definitely see a dose response in the likelihood of them being slim as well. So, you know, it's a mechanism that nicely fits with some epidemiological data as well that you've put throughout that entire book. and clinical trials, because I've actually taken the capsaicin out from chili peppers. They packed them into a little uniform tablets of the same dose. And they studied this low dose versus high dose. And they gave an intervention for four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks. And you can kind of see the longer you give it, the more weight you will actually lose. And so, you know, by the way, this comes right back to something very important. Most people who go on diets have a singular goal which is actually to lose weight but what we really want to do is improve our body composition by burning down the harmful fat let's let's dive into different categories of food now um fruit i think fruit has got a bit of a bad name you know everyone's sort of demonizing the fact that it has uh natural delicious sugars um but you know you talked about apples grapefruit berries uh you know even tomatoes uh as as being beneficial as part of this smorgasbord of all these different ingredients should be that we should be consuming why don't we dive into a fruit of your choice and and and go into what they contain and how they might be beneficial at fighting fat and and and improving our metabolism because i i think it's you know something i'm commonly asked about like should i eat fruit is it not you know uh is it not something that puts a makes me put on weight all right well obviously you can see i'm in front of a table that i've been using for show and tell here's one of my favorite fruits it's a pear okay and it's a medium-sized pear and pears are very nutrient dense it's one of my favorite fruits um they're sweet but not too sweet they're not as sweet as a mango they're not sweet as a pineapple um and they've got a lot of dietary fiber they've got six grams of dietary fiber and pears also have a bioactive called chlorogenic acid um chlorogenic acid is not only found in pears it's found in apples it's found in coffee you know mother nature is very clever she actually puts a lot of these useful bioactives across multiple food types but i love pears and i want to use this one of the things that i i a fruit i enjoy eating to address this um i think it's a it's an extreme interpretation well intentioned about the harms of sugar and fructose you know i think as as people we we love to either um make a food a hero or a villain and um it is true sugar too much sugar not good good for you but you know our brain depends on sugar our body can make sugar and so it's really not fair to basically say oh a sweet fruit is really bad um fruits are very nutrient-dense, which is they have sugar for energy, they have fiber, they've got microbiome, they've got bioactives to activate our health defenses and activate our metabolism and activate thermogenesis as well. Here's what you want to do. You want to actually choose foods like fruits that taste great, that are pleasing, that also are nutrient-dense and give you all these other factors that are good for your body. So net-net, you're getting some energy from the fructose and of sugar you're getting some prebiotic stuff from the from the dietary fiber and you're getting a ton of these bioactives to activate your health defense you just can't reduce everything to the sweetness of the fruit that's ridiculous and i think that's very important to actually state that yeah yeah i think it's really important and you know when i look at an apple or a pear or berry i don't just think about you know it's got vitamin c it's got a bit of sugar and i'm thinking of like the hundreds if not thousands of different polyphenols that are having unique impacts on my body yes some of it is on uh on weight control and you know all the things i've learned from your books uh but you know also on angiogenesis on DNA on our gut microbiota you're really i want people to really think about the wider aspect of what we're consuming on a day-to-day basis and whole foods are just fantastic they're giving us that that huge selection of different uh nutrients Now, let me give you an example, though, where we do want to be careful. Oranges, citrus, are wonderfully delicious. They're pretty sweet. There's quite a lot of sugar in an orange. So people always ask me, well, what about fruit juice? And I tell people, you know what? Oranges, citruses are very nutrient-dense. They've got dietary fiber. Anybody who's ever peeled an orange and eaten it slice by slice knows there's a lot of dietary fiber to it. You can see it. You can taste it. You can feel it. It's also very sweet, which, you know, is good, but too much sweetness, not so good. And it's loaded with bioactive, like these polyphenols, naringenin, hesperidin, limonene, like all kinds of great stuff that's good for your metabolism, fights body fat, activates your health defenses. But let's compare an orange to a glass of orange juice. Now, I like to eat, I like, I actually like orange juice. But, you know, if you remove all the fiber from orange, all the pulp you're getting, you're removing a lot of the good stuff all right if you ultra process the orange juice like you see in a lot of the commercial inexpensive versions you can buy in the grocery store you might have actually removed some of the polyphenols as well but even if you fresh squeeze it a tall glass of orange juice i could you know on a hot day and i want to slake my thirst that tall glass that'll go down my gullet i can whip it down in 30 seconds look look look look look right okay you know how many oranges in the sugar of orange of those oranges that would take to make a tall glass of orange juice on average eight oranges now i would never sit down and eat eight oranges at a time yeah that's an example of where you want the all the beneficial healthful benefits the fruits versus the juice if you choose the juice it's a lot easier to eat a lot more of that sugar compared to a whole fruit.