You could hear Dr Lustig saying at 1:03:46 minute of the video that there are more non-obese people who are sick. This was in relation to the diagram he presented earlier:
Taking that there are still more non-obese people in the U.S. than obese, it truly appears that more of them suffer metabolic diseases. However, how about overweight? We now know that of people older than 20 years, 69% of the US population was NOT of a healthy weight, i.e up to the BMI 25 in 2011-2012. Over a third (35.1%) of these adults were obese, so more obese than overweight among the people with excess body weight, leaving the only overweight group at 33.9%. Does overweight to you look as normal weight? While we might have become accustomed to see overweight people as a norm, metabolically it is not healthy and for many to become overweight is only a transition state to the proper obesity.
This was just to illustrate the complexity of the problem. What I wanted to say was that it matters in what context the data is presented. When you take the size of the non-obese (not normal weight as the diagram suggests) people, it really looks like more people of normal weight are metabolically sick. After what I told you above, does it still look so clear to you? Or has the picture been distorted somehow?
Of course it was! And taking into account that the percentage of obese people in the diagram pointing to 30% is probably of older date (because the quite recent data on obesity indicates 35.1%), you can only deduce that the obesity prevalence has been increasing, along the increasing metabolic diseases, while the sugar consumption has been falling since 2000. Then remind yourself the percentage of diseases people within the diagram above: 80% of obese but only 40% of allegedly normal, but of which over a half is overweight. What percent of overweight suffered the metabolic diseases in contrast to those of truly normal weight? This data was not presented.
Put it together in your head and see what is happening. Do you really think that pointing at the number of people in each group instead of taking the whole context and presenting it as such is correct?
Adding up to this article I would like to bring to your attention more information why a positive energy balance, which leads to obesity, may be behind the insulin resistance more than the fructose consumption. This basically reflects the fact that the extra body weight has negative impact on our metabolism, at least regarding the insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, with a possible causal link to the NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease).
One more addition: after watching another video of Dr Lustig, you could hear him saying at 5:33 minute:
“Obesity is certainly associated with those diseases but it is not the cause of those diseases (dementia, cancer, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes…). And when you do the math… obese or not, it is more than half of the U.S. population."
I have trimmed the quotation - it basically said that it does not matter whether you are obese or of a normal weight, over a half of the U.S. population is metabolically sick.
Well, the same applies to the U.S. population in terms of being overweight and obese. Those 69% you have got bold at the beginning of this post. Surprised? I am not.
To me it appears, that Dr Lustig has suddenly realized that fructose is not a leading factor in the development of human obesity as he used to say back in 2009 (it is glucose, what a secret), so now he left the obesity out and focuses on the metabolic diseases.
You know what? As the research and debate among the scientists will continue, many of the listed metabolic diseases will also be written off from the fructose-cause mechanism, at least in the meaning that fructose is not the primary cause, but it can contribute at certain conditions… as many other factors.