Fat Chance

Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

By: Robert H. Lustig

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Robert Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video Sugar: The Bitter Truth has been viewed more than two million times. Now, in this much anticipated book, he documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years.

In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.

To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. Compelling, controversial, and completely based in science, Fat Chance debunks the widely held notion to prove "a calorie is NOT a calorie", and takes that science to its logical conclusion to improve health worldwide.

©2012 Robert H. Lustig (P)2012 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"No scientist has done more in the last 50 years to alert Americans to the potential dangers of sugar in the diet than Dr. Robert Lustig.” (Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat)

“Our eating habits are killing us. In this timely and important book, Dr. Robert Lustig presents the scientific evidence for the toxicity of sugar and the disastrous effects of modern industrial food on the hormones that control hunger, satiety, and weight. He gives recommendations for a personal solution to the problem we face and also suggests a public policy solution. Fat Chance is the best book I've read on the relationship between diet and health and the clearest explanation of epidemic obesity in our society.”–Andrew Weil, MD, author of Spontaneous Happiness and You Can’t Afford to Get Sick)

“Fat Chance is THE manifesto for our time. It reveals the real reasons we why we are a fat nation and how to cure the obesity epidemic. It gets right to the root of the problem, which is not gluttony and sloth, as the food industry, government and your neighbor would have you believe. It is because we are drowning in a sea of sugar which poisons our metabolism, shrinks our brains, and threatens our national security and global competitiveness. Every American, politician, teacher, and business leader must read this book. Our nation's future depends on it.” (Mark Hyman, MD, author of The Blood Sugar Solution)

This book is incredible!

The first part of being healthier is understanding the chemistry of the body and the effects that different foods have on our bodies. This book has been part of a lifestyle change that has resulted in feeling healthier - a byproduct of this has also been weight loss.

Best book on the subject

This book is easily one of the best books on the subject of sugar consumption in the Western-Industrial diet. It exposes facts regarding the effects of sugar consumption on LDL, triglycerides, insulin resistance, heart disease, addiction, a primary factor in weight gain and the issue of obesity itself, as well as possible links to cancer and dementia.

By dropping all added sugar from my own diet, I went from 225 lbs to 128 lbs. This was four years ago. I have not once had any significant weight gain since. I personally advocate eating "real food," as Michael Pollan states. Most of my diet consists of leafy greens and vegetables (on which I place no intake restriction at all), then fruits (only fresh, with fibre still intact), eggs and safe dairy products, nuts and nut butters, healthy oils, and occasional meat. On this diet, I never feel hunger (due to its high fibre, fat, and protein content), and my weight is completely stabilized.

This book advocates for governmental intervention in our current high sugar, low fibre diet. While many reject this notion, because of the insistence on free market/nanny state/etc., I agree with the author that it is far worse to have the fox in charge of the henhouse in the sense that the food industry in our kitchen is much worse than the government being in our kitchen.

Thank you Robert Lustig for helping expose the truth about sugar.

A must-read for every parent worldwide.

This book is based on facts, strong science, statistics, and history. Everyone should read this.

Don't miss this one

Where does Fat Chance rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best. A game changer for anyone interested in the obesity epidemic and trying to stay healthy

A must read

As a cardiologist and father, I consider this book an absolute must for people interested in individual and global health.
While it has been known to many of us since many years how much the bad composition of food is affecting our lives and the society in general, it takes someone like Dr. Lustig, an eminent scientist in this field, to summarize the key highlights of this knowledge and craft the powerful message, that we have to get back to real food instead of sugared, addictive products. This will only be possible by a bottom-up approach, because, as it has been the case with tobacco, the alliance between food industry and politics doesn't have the interest per doesn't understand to take enough action. If we want to get on the epidemic of obesity and related diseases (cardiovascular, metabolic, dementia, depression), we have to increase fibers, but more importantly, reduce the detrimental impact of a family of substances which is so similar to alcohols yet used as a treat for our children: fructose-containing sugars.
This book explains and provides first-hand information, why that is and what people can do, for themselves and for future generations.
Very well presented by the reader, full of interesting, hard facts, this is an entertaining book, while being a much-needed eye-opener.

Reprendre contrôle de notre nutrition.

J'ai bien aimé l'information que contiens ce livre, il explique clairement pourquoi aujourd'hui la majorité des gens ont un problème de surpoid et comment s'en sortir. Beaucoup de termes scientifique par contre ils ont vulgarisés et bien expliqués. Certains chapitres sont un peu long où il parle de stratégie pour faire pression sur no gouvernements.
Je vous le recommande si vous voulez comprendre comment nous accumulons du poid et ce que vous pouvez faire pour le perdre définitivement sans l'achat de gaget miracle.

A good read

This book has changed my life. I was gaining weight uncontrollably and now I feel like I finally have gained control over my diet and life . I recommend this book to all my loved ones .

Every American needs to read this.

I am promoting this book strongly to all my friends and family. The research that went into this book is bullet proof and, although I am very health conscious anyway, I went through my pantry and made more changes. I thought what I was doing was enough, but this book convinced me otherwise.

Good Information Buried in Too Much Politics

The author should spend more time on how to win and less on why you can't.

Well-written, well-read, solid content

I have heard Lustig interviewed before on Jimmy Moore's low-carb podcast and by Alec Baldwin. I find him to be very credible. I found the writing style very informative and engaging, and I thought JT Ross was a very good narrator...striking just the right tone for the book overall...however, his mispronunciation of the word "satiety" (just Google it for the correct pronunciation) was pretty distracting, as the word occurs often. Of course, we all bring our preconceptions to a book when we read it, and I was really hoping for more practical advice on "what to eat" than I ended up with. Yes, the essential information is there...but it would have been much more helpful to me personally if there had been a section along the lines of "here are sample menus which would be supported by Lustig's presentation of science". It might be that it came across better in reading the book visually...but I didn't pick up much of that here. I think people writing for this subject often don't realize that many of us just "don't speak the language of food" and really need someone to "paint a picture" for us. I must say I did feel like he really did a tremendous job of busting stereotypes and explaining both why we are where we are with the obesity epidemic and how best to proceed as a society. I liked the way he went thru all the popular diets and explained both their strengths and weaknesses. So I found the book quite enjoyable overall and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to people who are looking to get their bearings on the myriad of varying opinions about diet and exercise.