Your Shoulders and Sugar

Here’s one of the tidbits I love from Dr. Gundry’s book.

He explains that we humans have a certain type of shoulder joint – shared only with the great apes – that allows us to to reach the far end of tree branches where ripe fruit hangs.

However, the catch is that in nature, fruit only ripens on a seasonal basis. And in the days before Twix and Twinkies, fruit was our only source of fructose. It took an effort to reach (you had to climb a tree) and it was not available year round.

The fructose from fruit goes directly to the liver, and excess fructose is stored as fat. This used to work out well for us – fruit ripened in late summer and early fall, we ate lots of it and stored the calories as fat to make it through the winter. Dr. Gundry explains the message of our genetic computer: “if a food tastes sweet, eat lots of it because winter is coming and you need all the body fat you can get to survive until spring.”

Do you see how this is a recipe for disaster in modern society with food constantly available?

The last time I climbed a tree to get fruit was 4 years ago while hiking in California, and I got an orange that was so bitter it tasted like a lemon. Yet in everyday life, I can eat watermelon, bananas and kiwi year round, without expending any effort beyond walking 5 minutes to Whole Foods.

Dr. Gundry says that “the obesity epidemic today is a direct result of people eating the wrong foods as if they are in perpetual summer, accumulating fat for a winter that never comes.”

So how do we counter this?
– Eat fruit sparingly and in season
– No processed sugars
– Eat lots more leafy greens!