Devoured

As Americans have gotten heavier over the past century, and disease rates have skyrocketed, there have been many theories: We’re eating too much fat. Too many carbs. An excess of sugar. Is it our lifestyle or our diet that’s to blame? Or could there be a single common cause that explains the sharp increase in not only obesity, but conditions as disparate as heart disease, cancer, and dementia? Nature put a “fat switch” in our bodies. Stuck in the “on” position, it’s the hidden source of weight gain, heart disease, and many other common health struggles. But you can turn it off. Dr. Richard Johnson has been on the cutting edge of this research for more than a decade. His team’s discovery of the fructose-powered survival switch—a metabolic pathway that animals in nature turn on and off as needed, but that our modern diet has permanently fixed in the on position, becoming a fat switch—revolutionized the way we think about why we gain weight. In Nature Wants Us to Be Fat: The Surprising Science Behind Why We Gain