Mexicans Were Skinny On Corn For 1000's Of Years - What Went Wrong? Doctor Explains

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