Hello Health Champions. How is it that Mexicans and other Latino populations in Central America
and South America have relied on corn for their main staple as their entire foundation
for their existence for thousands of years and not developed any significant health problems
and yet in the last few decades the rates of obesity and diabetes have soared. Today I want to
give you the skinny and the fat on corn and what it does to your body. Coming right up. Hey I'm Dr.
Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health
by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all
the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video. As I'm sure you're aware obesity is
epidemic all around the world. Apart from a few pacific islands where the rates are just
astronomical if we only count larger countries today Mexico unfortunately is the number one in
adult obesity according to some recent estimates they have surpassed even the united states today
and they're also number one in childhood obesity so among adults we now have 8 out of 10
people being overweight 44 of people are obese and if you've been watching this channel you know
that storage of fat is linked to insulin and insulin resistance is pretty much
synonymous with type 2 diabetes severe insulin resistance so therefore there is also no surprise
that Mexico is one of the leading countries in adult type 2 diabetes with over 15 percent of
adults so a lot of the blame has been put on corn that these cultures they eat so much corn and corn
is a starch and it's sugar and it's all this stuff but they've done so for tens of thousands of years
without developing any significant problems so does it have carbs yes absolutely is it a problem
yes but we can't look at just a single factor and put all the blame on it so let's take a look
at the bigger picture according to official sources they're as usual very quick to lay the
blame on the usual stuff they're saying they eat too many calories they've increased their fat they
eat more meat they eat more sugar more processed foods and they have decreased their activity
and all of these things are true but which ones are truly relevant well the fact that they're
eating more calories is not really relevant the question is why are they eating more calories
and we'll come back to that one a little bit are they eating more fat yes but fat does
not stimulate insulin so unless you eat a lot of sugar and carbs together with the fat the fat is
not the problem it's focusing on the wrong thing meat also is very satisfying it helps you eat less
by keeping you full and it does not stimulate a lot of insulin not nearly as much as carbohydrates
so that's not it either and these three things typically get a lot of blame but they're not
the ones to blame because these things help people lose weight when they eat the right kinds
however they're absolutely right in sugar and they're absolutely right in processed
foods because both of those will dramatically increase insulin production and insulin resistance
and also they will make you eat more calories so these are the primary things to blame so
what about physical activity does that matter if you watch some of my videos you hear me say that
activity exercise is not significant in reversing a fatty liver and insulin resistance
but physical activity is huge in preventing the development of insulin resistance because
a working muscle uses up glucose and carbohydrate without the need for much insulin it's like it's
sucking the glucose and carbs out of the system and turns it into energy for labor for activity
and in doing that it keeps a lot of the congestion out of the liver so it's huge
in preventing insulin resistance but it's not significant in reversing it because once the fat
is in the liver it can't do much to pull it out of there but it does get a big green check mark
that it was a significant factor but here's what's really going on when we look at the income
the gross domestic product per person in the sixties was less than five hundred dollars in the
seventies it was over a thousand in the eighties it was over two thousand nineties was over four in
the 2000s it was over 8 000 and in the 2010s and on it was about 10 000 per person so what this
means is that up through 1960 when they were all skinny and ate a lot of corn they were basically
just fighting to eat enough food to survive and that was the same with a lot of different
countries in the world that this is the primary driving factor in obesity because once people
stop fighting for survival and they get some money now they start eating junk because that's a part
of affluence unfortunately before we learn what that stuff really does it's a sign of affluence
and luxury so they started increasing processed foods they started increasing sugar a couple of
years ago Mexico was the number one consumer of soft drinks in the world per capita now they've
dropped back to third place or something like that but they drink an enormous amount of sugar they
change in society with moving away from physical labor obviously is true now the corn didn't really
change the culture Mexican culture Latino culture still consumes and did consume about 40 percent
of their calories from corn so that's still there but it was together with the processed food and
the sugar that it turned into a problem have they increased their calories yes absolutely
probably by five six seven hundred calories per day per person but that's not the right question
the question is why do they feel the need to eat more and it is because the processed food
and the sugar makes you hungry for two different very powerful reasons the first reason
is that both of these stimulate insulin they drive blood sugar they stimulate insulin insulin
stores away the excess now you can't get to it so you get hungry and you eat more
the other reason is the processed food and sugar are completely depleted they have no nutrients
so you're packing a lot of fuel into the body but you're not providing any micronutrients so your
body still feel like it's missing it's lacking what it was looking for in the food and therefore
it says go eat more because we still didn't get the things that we were looking for and another
factor is genetics even though genetics didn't cause this in the sense that they had the same
genetics when they were skinny as they do now you can still have a genetic predisposition that makes
it more likely for you to develop diabetes than another population once you start eating this junk
so for some populations they might have a 5 diabetes rate and other populations might have
a 15 or 20 percent diabetes rate so there is a genetic predisposition but the genetics are not
causing it the genetics predisposes you to become obese and diabetic once you start
eating the processed foods but let's take a closer look at corn to understand more about
what it is and what it does it's the number one crop in the world and ninety percent of it today
is GMO together with soybeans it is virtually all GMO which is why it's so important that you
get organic so that you get a truer food so you get more of an original food source the Latinos
for thousands of years certainly we're not eating the GMOs so there's more corn grown than there's
wheat or rice or anything else in the world 44.7 billion bushels and a bushel is 56 pounds or 25
kilos so if you multiply that out that's two and a half trillion pounds or 1.14 trillion kilos
320 pounds per person 146 kilograms of corn per person in the whole world and then of course
the US tops the list at 2087 pounds per person almost a metric ton of corn per person 948 kilos
so nobody obviously can eat that much corn so where does it go well 40%
goes into ethanol that's your car fuel it's mixed in with the gasoline and 36% goes to animal feed
so a big reason that they're not doing more grass-fed and naturally raised animals is that
well someone has to eat all this corn so that's why they're kind of perpetuating these horrendous
animal factories and that that's a way to basically get rid of the corn and then 12 %
goes into human consumption in some shape or form. The vast majority of this goes into high fructose
corn syrup which is obviously the sweetener of choice for the last few years where it goes into
a majority of processed food products but corn is also used for corn starch and maltodextrins and
all sorts of other derivatives there's hundreds and hundreds of different products that they
use corn for and they all find their way into the processed foods have you heard the saying you are
what you eat well let's take a closer look at this because this is fascinating to me the Mexicans
Latinos are often called the people of the corn because there's so much in their lifestyle
that is around corn I'm going to get just a little technical but don't worry about it it's going to
all come together. Corn binds four carbons at a time it metabolizes carbon differently
virtually all of the carbohydrates in plants come from carbon dioxide in the air
and while most plants take in three carbons at a time corn takes in four carbons at a time so it's
more efficient it can bind more carbon per unit of time per unit of water consumed than other plants
and that's why it's been so great at surviving and why it is so gratifying and so plentiful to grow
and harvest it one more thing that happens when it does this it takes in more carbon 13 isotope
and what this means is don't worry about it but it means we can go back and measure in our body
tissues and in the foods we can measure how much of this food how much of our tissues are coming
from corn and in the book the omnivore's dilemma Michael Pollan had access to a scientist who could
measure this so he collected some food from some fast food restaurants and he sent it to the lab
and here is what he found the soft drink that you drink that becomes part of your body is 100% corn
the meat patty that you eat that you think of as meat is 93% corn and the milkshake was 78%
corn the dressing was 65% corn the chicken nuggets 56 % corn the cheeseburger overall when you mix in
all of the dressings and the bread was still 52 % corn and there was nothing in there that you think
was corn but the isotope analysis doesn't lie this is where it comes from. French fries even
were 23% corn so when they analyzed hair samples they found that about 70 % of the human body was
corn when you eat this stuff which is way way way more than or in the bodies of Mexican people so
when we say people of the corn what your body is actually made of then the US
population has more corn they are truly people of the corn whether they ever eat the stuff
or not so the question becomes are you corn fed are you corn and why does it matter
because corn fed animals are basically insulin resistance it's not their natural food just
like sugar isn't natural to humans and they become insulin resistant the marbling and the excess fat
in their tissues is basically insulin resistance it's congestion it's an unnatural state and if you
eat a grass fed a cow in balance it's going to have about a one to one ratio of omega-3s
to omega-6s omega-3s are anti-inflammatory or neutral and omega-6s are pro-inflammatory
and if you eat grass-fed beef that is healthy and balanced you're going to remain in balance
but if you eat corn-fed beef it's going to have as much as a 20 to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3
instead of a one-to-one ratio so that makes it pro-inflammatory and this inflammation is part of
what's causing degeneration and degenerative disease and metabolic syndrome and so forth so the
significance of this is that if your body mostly consists of corn because you eat that stuff then
you are basically going to be predisposed and well on your way to this inflammation and this
metabolic syndrome does that mean that you should never eat corn fed beef no it means
you do the best you can i understand that people are on different budgets they have different means
they start at different places in their journey so if you have access and you can afford it then
grass-fed beef is going to be the best one if you have to eat corn-fed beef and chicken you're still
way way better off than eating these other worse forms so if you're going to eat corn itself then
organic corn is going to be way way better than GMO corn which is going to be way better than corn
starch and of course the worst of this is what we consume most of our corn today is as high fructose
corn syrup so these are not necessarily in this order because they affect us differently but
you get the general idea that this is the best end of the spectrum and this is the worst end of
the spectrum if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how to get truly healthy
you really need to check out that one next thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time