Robert Lustig MD

Directions Website

The official page for Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

He specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology. Robert Lustig has been a pediatric endocrinologist for 32 years. In that time, he has watched the obesity and metabolic syndrome rates climb, first to the level of epidemic , and now the rates in other countries qualify this as a pandemic. Worse yet, these problems are occurring in infants and toddlers, who clearly cannot be guilty of character flaws. Something else is going on. You can also read, see, and hear what Robert is up to at: http://chc.ucsf.edu/coast/fatchance.html

MISSION

Robert is devoting his public effort to making a difference in the lives of today’s children. And by helping children, it will no doubt help adults as well. Robert has the science, the clinical experience, and the policy training to shine a light on our current medical assumptions, and have society rethink obesity and its associated diseases. Just like efforts against tobacco and alcohol, these efforts includes education, research, and as necessary, litigation.

10/31/2026

Chronic diseases are not ‘druggable,’ but they are ‘foodable'.

10/30/2026

Enjoy the holiday, but know what’s in the wrapper.

This quiz is our treat.

10/29/2026

Reminder everyone: the Fat Chance Cookbook is free on my website. More than 100 recipes, as well as food swaps and more.

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Dr. Lustig is offering this free download of the Fat Chance Cookbook. The Fat Chance Cookbook provides more than 100 recipes as well as meal plans, nutritional analyses, shopping lists, and food swaps. Easy ways to drastically reduce sugar and increase fiber to lose wei...

10/28/2026

You can’t out-exercise a bad diet, and you can’t expect a child to thrive on food engineered to be eaten past fullness.

(from Washington Post)

The effort is backed by an uneasy alliance between the right-wing Make America Healthy Again movement and progressives, both motivated by concerns over food safety.

10/27/2026

If you’re told by every TV commercial and everybody you know that you’re unhappy, to ‘buy this and you’ll be happy,’ you start to believe them. But it doesn’t make you happy; it actually makes you unhappy.

10/26/2026

We're nearing the final few hours of Metabolic Psychiatry Summit 2026 - a completely free online slate of expert speakers that I think you'll enjoy. Use the link below to get access details by email:

https://quitsugarsummit.com/psychiatry?a_aid=651d65f5d49f9

10/24/2026

In case you missed it earlier this week...

Everyone postulates that real food in school cafeterias would improve kids' learning and cognition, but no one had any data. Well, now we have proof that our non-profit Eat Real Certified improves grades.

We analyzed the California standardized testing for english-language arts and math, based on whether the school adopted our Eat Real standards over the past six years.

Bottom line: a 5.24% improvement in ELA, and 2% in math. And the kids like the food! Win-win-win.

Ask any athlete, surgeon, or working mom and they’ll tell you they perform better when they eat better. But anecdotal evidence is not a strong enough foundation for policy transformation. The game-changer is authoritative data

10/24/2026

The externality is the opportunity.
Twenty years after The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan reflects on why America’s food system has changed so little—and why there are new reasons for optimism.
In his October 20, 2026 essay, ⁠“The New Food Movement,” published in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/.../american.../688643), Pollan explores the growing convergence of public awareness, scientific understanding, and political momentum for food-system reform.
The Metabolic Matrix adds another dimension to this conversation: moving beyond where food comes from and how it is processed to what food actually does to human metabolism.
The central question: Can positive metabolic outcomes become a fundamental requirement of food design, rather than treating human health as an externality to be managed after products reach the marketplace?
Read the new Metabolic Matrix perspective: The New Food Movement: From Food Politics to Metabolic Health.
https://metabolicmatrix.info/2026/10/the-new-food-movement-from-food-politics-to-metabolic-health/

10/24/2026

My Metabolic Psychiatry Summit interview goes live tomorrow, October 24th, and it will be free to watch online for 24 hours. A direct, science-based, and hopeful conversation about metabolic health and its potential to transform how we approach mental health.

Register here:

Learn How Metabolic Therapies Are Helping People Put Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, Addiction, Schizophrenia And More Into Remission.

10/23/2026

Yeesh.

Yes, ultraprocessed food is a problem. Yes, real food is better. And there's nothing inherently disastrous about the alternative foods in this article (except raw milk gives me the wi***es, due to bacterial contamination).

But really people, can't we find a happy medium in between these two extremes? The diet we should all strive for is a diet low in low reactive oxygen species - the ions that do damage to cells. Foods high in ROS are sugar, refined carbs, heated fats, burned proteins, emulsifiers, pesticides, and food dyes. That leaves a WHOLE LOT in the supermarket to choose from.

Extreme eating, either way, is not the answer.

More Americans are rejecting everything they’ve been taught about food.

Address

San Francisco, CA

Website

http://www.robertlustig.com/, https://metabolical.com/

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