According to Dr. Robert Lustig, it is unfair to entirely blame the U.S population -- two-thirds of which is overweight -- when the cookies, potato chips, yogurts, white breads and other processed foods that make up most of America's food supply are packed with sugars that fool the body into thinking it is hungry, even after food has been consumed.
This, Lustig said, is because the massive amounts of sugars in the mainstream U.S. diet can flood the body with insulin. This overabundance of insulin then blocks the hormone leptin, which ordinarily signals the brain when the body is full. Without this signal, the brain compels the body to increase its calorie intake and conserve energy; a pattern that Lustig said is akin to nicotine addiction.
Despite the fact that many in the medical and dietary fields have long suggested a link between obesity and increased sugar consumption -- a recent American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study suggested that one soda a day can add about 15 pounds a year to the average waistline -- Lustig's theory has caused some contention in both the food industry and mainstream medicine.
"I disagree with some of the details, particularly regarding the effects of insulin, and I think some of it is fairly speculative," said Dr. Peter Havel, a nutrition researcher at UC Davis. "It is really more of a hypothetical proposal rather than a review of established science. But I think there are some interesting ideas proposed in the article, many of which could and should be tested in animal models."
"You can complain that society does this to you, or that you don't have options, but I don't see it that way," said Vittoria Baltazzi, who lost 30 pounds in 16 years, and has kept the weight off for six years. While leading a Weight Watchers discussion in downtown San Francisco, she added, "If you are conscious of what you're doing, you can overcome your environment."
Still, doctors and other diet experts are seeing more obese or overweight patients who are unable to adopt lifestyle changes that can help them lose weight and improve their health, which seems to lend credibility to Lustig's hypothesis.
"Everyone's assuming you have a choice, but when your brain is starving, you don't have a choice," he says. "When you look at it that way, all of a sudden Big Food looks like the perpetrator, and the patient becomes the victim ... when you don't have a choice, it's not your fault."
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