Metabolical
by Robert H. Lustig · first published 2021
13mentions
6recommended by
9HN commenters
2021–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explains how sugar and processed food drive metabolic disease, with a focus on liver function and insulin. It serves as an accessible starting point on nutrition and metabolism for general readers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Quick book recommendations: Life in the Fasting Lane, by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer, and Megan Ramos: https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-in-the-fasting-lane-how-... Metabolical, by Robert Lustig: https://www.worldcat.org/title/metabolical-the-lure-and-the-... Metabolical lays out recommendations for healthy food from birth to death, and Life in the Fasting Lane is more for…
on “Nearly 30% of adolescents, teens in U.S. have prediabetes” ↗…0.003-0.005 ratio of salt to water by weight (sea water is on average 0.035 salt to water). I've found Life in the Fasting Lane, by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer, and Megan Ramos to be helpful, along with Metabolical, by Robert Lustig and The Fasting Cure, by Upton Sinclair (for the 100-years-ago perspective; in some ways not much has changed) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also writes positively about fasting in one…
on “Ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket” ↗…about metabolic disease, the best place to start is youtube vids of presentations by Robert Lustig, a respected endocrinologist specializing in liver disease. He has several books out, most recently "Metabolical", that you probably can get from your local library.
on “Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?” ↗For anyone that's been confused by all the disjoint and contradictory nutritional information that's bombarding us these days, I'd recommend two books: (Metabolical - Robert H. Lustig) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53240367-metabolical (Drop Acid - David Perlmutter) https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57505860 They are both new books, by two different…
on “Ultra-processed foods may contribute to cognitive decline” ↗From Dr. Robert Lustig in his book, Metabolical (highly recommended): "Michael Pollan (full disclosure, he’s a friend), in his now-famous New York Times Magazine article, espoused seven simple words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Three separate…
on “Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer” ↗I'd recommend you read these two books "Ultraprocessed people" and "Metabolical". They go into depth of how and why processing of food at industrial scale is bad for your mental and psychical health and the environment as well.
on “We might never know the truth about ultra-processed foods” ↗Yep! Lustig has a book, Metabolical, that goes into kind of a simple explanation of the underlying mechanism here, and it's roughly like this: fiber-rich foods contain a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber, the insoluble fiber basically…
on “Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%” ↗https://www.amazon.com/Metabolical-Processed-Nutrition-Moder... p. 39-42 "the kidney is very adept at excreting excess sodium. But there’s one thing that inhibits sodium excretion by the kidney—insulin resistance. High insulin levels…
on “High blood pressure cases double in 30 years” ↗Robert Lustig has been preaching this for years: https://www.amazon.com/Metabolical-Processed-Nutrition-Moder... A good rule of thumb if you care about avoiding UPFs but don't want to overly limit your diet is to only buy foods with 5 ingredients in them (plus or minus 2 :).
on “Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad” ↗…listening to endocrinologists, the endocrine system is a signaling system in the body, so these people are very keenly aware of all of these feedback loops and how they reinforce each other. In his recent Metabolical, Dr. Lustig, a research endocrinologist, suggests that focusing on weight for health outcomes is actually totally backwards anyway, that there are more thin sick people than fat sick people in terms of…
on “Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?” ↗These questions are explored in greater detail in Lustig’s recent Metabolical, which makes a systematic case, although somewhat of a brief one (it's not the main point of the book) that heavy greenhouse gas emissions of the bigger greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide can…
on “Global warming: is weight loss a solution?” ↗Similar claims were also made by Dr. Lustig’s book Metabolical earlier this year, which of course is more concerned with the diabetic aspects but indeed considers Alzheimer's etc. metabolic disorders. Not seeing Bredesen on the bibliography so I think the research…
on “Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program” ↗I'm not an expert by any means, but here's the gist of my understanding of the statin controversy from reading Metabolical: - There's two types of LDL cholesterol that are measured together in a standard fasting lipid profile: type A LDL and type B LDL - Type A LDL makes up 80% of LDL and is increased by dietary fat consumption…
on “We Need Scientific Dissidents Now More Than Ever” ↗