Let me clear up a few things right away. I’m not a fan of overeating sugar, whether pure cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup. But glucose is the perfect fuel because it burns completely with only carbon dioxide and water as the by-products. I think what everyone should do is respect glucose for what it can do and what overconsumption can do: make us fat—but no more than the other carbohydrates we over consume. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the filmmaker’s weight gain.

He claims to have eaten the equivalent of 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, keeping his calories the same as his regular diet, and gaining almost 20 pounds. My simple opinion is: bull. People in the movie spent some time suggesting that a calorie is not just a calorie, that somehow you can get more from sugar. I’ll address that in a moment. The real problem is that while he thinks he didn’t over eat, he absolutely must have to gain close to 20 pounds in two months. Period. I’m not suggesting he intentionally lied, but I watched him eat and he was not measuring much of anything. Unless you weigh or measure, you can’t say that you ate what you claimed you ate.

But let’s say that he was correct, that he ate 2,300 calories per day with 800 calories coming from sugar. What that would require was somehow more calories are extracted from sugar. My question is how? To go molecular for a second, the energy we get from food is the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the food; if we take in more fuel than we need, the body stores the extra energy as fat. If sugar has only so much energy stored in the chemical bonds, how can it release more? Glucose or fructose, doesn’t matter. That would require some form of unknown chemical reaction that could create energy. That doesn’t happen in any biochemistry of food I’ve ever studied. If it could, it would come at a cost, an energy cost somewhere.

The idea that a calorie is not a calorie has always been a foolish argument because there’s no chemistry to support it. We cannot make more energy than we begin with. The only way he gains 20 pounds is he overate. A lot.

He spends a lot of the movie talking about sugar spikes and falls that made him “addicted” to sugar. I’ve never seen anyone drink that much fruit juice, to the extent that it wasn’t reasonable. I asked on Facebook how sugar affects people who drink juice or any other form of sugar, but not sodas. The results were 1:3 against a sugar rush of any kind. I also included physicians and other healthcare professionals. Was it a formal study? No. And neither was what the author did to himself in this film.

To me, his film was a real work of fiction. Add it to your collection of fantasy films.

If you reduce the amount of sugar in your diet after watching this film, that’s great. You really can’t go wrong getting your calories from better nutritional choices. But don’t base your decision on this pretend research.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet