Robert Lustig explains how ultraprocessed foods and opioids increase reactive oxygen species in cells, tricking your body into storing more energy. He combines three theories of obesity into one model and argues prevention matters more than treatment.
Chapters
The way to conglomerate the energy balance model and the carbohydrate insulin model and the obesogen model into one model using Ross and redox potential as the intermediate. Everybody got it? Okay, so UPF obesogens all lead to redox. Here are the phenomena that come with that. And then you get all of this at the end. The point is, this is not just an academic exercise. And the reason is because you could do something about this. Okay, you could prevent it. You can't treat it, but you could prevent it. So ultra processed food and opioids both change redox potential within cells. That the ROS constitute a misleading cellular signal. It's mimicking energy sufficiency when there's not, and that's causing energy storage when it shouldn't be.