@Hotpepper20000 From the material I have been watching/reading, I suspect there are a lot of contributors to the insulin problem. Not a complete list, and in no particular order:
- Sugar. Robert Lustig documents the contributions of sugar (HFCS and sucrose - aka fructose, to be precise) to obesity, diabetes and other metabolic ills. He makes a VERY compelling case.
- Constant eating. Fung makes a good case that constant eating means we don't have periods of fasting that are long enough to allow insulin to drop. I've seen a number quoted for how long an average "westerner" goes without eating in an average day, and it's something like 10 hours. ie, we pretty much eat from waking to bed time now. Number is not accurate...it's from memory, but it's the trend that's important.
- High carb diet. Over the last 50 years our diets have become increasingly carb focused, causing more insulin response.
- Highly processed food. More quickly absorbed, causing higher and quicker spikes in glucose and insulin.
Basically putting the pieces together, if you wanted to make a plan to flood a human with as much endogenous insulin as possible, as often as possible, and for as long as possible, you probably couldn't come up with a plan significantly better than the Standard American Diet.
