DoctorOz: This Man Ate 40 Teaspoons of "Healthy" Sugar a Day for 60 Days!

It is so good for you, and if you're curious about health, well, it's doubly good for you. In fact, we are hard-wired to be curious. You heard the word homo sapien? Yes. Actually, what it really means is wise man. That's in Latin what it means, and you got that way by being curious. It inspires passion and desire to pass on what you have learned, and that's what happened to Damon Gamo. Damon was curious about the amount of sugar he was eating, so he turned himself into a human guinea pig. He ate the equivalent of this much sugar, 40 teaspoons a day for 60 days. That's roughly 5,000 sugar cubes, and he did it. Here's the important part. He did it eating supposedly healthy foods. I asked this of you because you guys are pretty healthy. That's why you're here. So how many teaspoonfuls of sugar do you guys think you have in a normal day when you're eating well? What do you think? Hands up. Thoughts. Yell them out. Go on. 10. 20. 20. It's like bidding. 500, 600? 600? Just check your arms. That's a lot of sugar. I don't even know I do it. All right, so we all actually have different amounts of sugar we think we eat, but what Damon's experiment is trying to prove to us is even doing the right things, you make mistakes. So this is a big eye-opener today. Wait until you see what all that sugar did to his body and to his moods. His super bomb experiment leaves off today's show, and then we're going to tell you some good news. There are healthy changes being made to some of your other favorite foods, all because you all demanded it. We asked for this to happen, and folks are making changes for us. I'll fill you in, and later in the show we're turning the corner to get to the root of an illness that many of us suffer from in silence, feeling insecure. Ask yourself, is that what's holding you back from a happy, healthy life? But first, that sugar film. It was for me, and for many others, the must-see movie of the summer. I want you to meet Damon Gamow. Damon Gamow was curious about the effects that sugar had on his body, so he allowed sugar to overtake his life. Literally. Sugar is now found in 80% of the foods we eat, but with the constant confusion over its effects on our health, and with this little person on the way, I feel like I need some definitive answers. So here are the rules for my next 60 days. I must consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, but they must be hidden sugars, found in commonly perceived healthy foods and drinks. That's a recommended serving size of three teaspoons of sugar. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm a growing boy. I'm gonna need a little bit more of that. People on this planet are growing sicker every day, and many scientists now believe that fructose has a role to play. You've got the signs of a fatty liver. This is the first time I've seen that it can be developed in two or three weeks. Fuse is a lot shorter. I'm not feeling very well at all today. 40 teaspoons. It comes up a lot. Yeah. Why that amount of sugar every day? That amount? Because sadly, that's what most Australians are eating every day. And in fact, other countries and people in other parts of the world are also having similar amounts. All right, so just to be clear, when I was asking earlier how much you guys actually think you take in, the FDA recommends that added sugar not exceed 10% of your daily calories. That, for most people, is about 12 teaspoons a day. And in fact, the World Health Organization have even gone one step further now and recommended that it should be 5%, which for someone on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet is 6 teaspoons a day. So, given we're having somewhere near 40 teaspoons a day, you can see why it's causing all these problems. Seven times more than we're supposed to have, in theory, according to some experts. Now, here's the part that I alluded to that makes this experiment so interesting. You avoid it. I'm gonna cut this off. Soda, ice cream, candy, all the other sources of sugar that are obvious to us, you weren't allowed to take. That's right. I think we all inherently understand that if we had too many donuts and chocolates and sodas, we're going to get sick. But I was walking down a supermarket aisle and I picked up a can of tomato soup and I saw that it had eight teaspoons of sugar in it. And I thought, I wonder if people are actually aware that there's that much sugar in this perceived kind of savory dinner. And then, so the experiment was, I had to eat things like low-fat yogurts, muesli, granola bars, sports drinks, vitamin waters, iced teas, condiments like pasta sauces. All of these things are full of sugar. They often have a picture of a bee or a flower on the front cover and they use slogans like packed with energy and essential vitamin D. But they have as much, if not more, sugar than some of these other junk foods. You know, I travel a lot to some of the shows in many other countries. And so I was struck by how difficult it was to get even seemingly healthy foods. You actually found those seemingly healthy foods and you still couldn't find them without sugar. And the part about this experiment that's a little bit concerning to me as a physician is that there are some potential dangers. So when you spoke to your doctors in Australia about doing this crazy deal, what did they tell you? Well, look, the ones that kind of were in the know were like, you're an absolute idiot. What are you doing? You should stop doing this. Especially because I had a baby on the way too. But I think the, for me, I was so naive to it that I said, look, because I was eating these perceived healthy foods, I mean, these are often foods that parents give their kids thinking they're doing the right thing. I really didn't think we'd get any results. And that's why I made the experiment 60 days instead of 30 days because I honestly didn't think we'd see much. So it was a bit of a shock to see the results we did get so quickly. Let's do that. Let's show everyone the results. So I'm going to show you a picture of Damien with his stud-like body, right? This is him before the experiment started. I apologize to the yellow undies, too. That's right. I was going to comment on them, but I'll actually comment on this. Notice his waistline. Notice the bit of protrusion in his belly. OK, so after 60 days, this is what he looked like. Now, you know, we talk about the smiley face here, as your nose, which are some eyes there. But the, you know, for a lot of us, this belly is sort of a subtle little problem. When you look at the side, you see how big you've become and only in 60 days. Yeah. So what happened on the inside to your health? Well, this is, I mean, a lot of the conjecture around sugar is that it does its damage on the inside. There's actually a term now called toffee, which is thin on the outside and fat on the inside. So after the 60 days, I was on the verge of cirrhosis when the liver hardens and it's hard to come back from. I was pre-type 2 diabetic. I had heart disease risks. I had four inches of visceral fat around my belly and I put on 19 pounds. Just a cautionary thought. You know, we start to identify challenges that the liver has. We don't actually know if it's going towards cirrhosis or not half the time. But we start to see changes in the enzyme, the chemical levels in the blood. And that's an early tip off that we're doing things that are not good for us. And again, I'm going to highlight this. You did this eating food you thought was good for you. What about your mood? Well, that was probably one of the biggest surprises was the effect on my mental health. Obviously, I'm quite sensitive to sugar. I hadn't had some for a while and I really noticed that I was fine once I had the sugar. But then about 45 minutes afterwards, I'd start to taper off a bit. I'd lose focus and concentration. I was a bit sort of aloof until I had more sugar and then I'd be OK again. And I guess I just spent the whole day going up and down. And so I think there's something in that. I mean, I don't think everyone's as sensitive as other people. We're all different. But I think lots of people are very sensitive to sugar and they don't realize it. Well, you mentioned the brain. Come over here. Well, I've got some cool brain scans here. These, I think, are going to put a lot of credibility behind what you're saying with regard to addiction and craving alike. So this is the brain of someone who's a cocaine addict. And I'm just going to orient you here. All you've got to focus on is that red area there. That red area is is the habit forming part of the brain. So when the addict, this is them just mind their own business, is shown pictures, just pictures of someone snorting cocaine. Look what happens to the red. It disappears because there's dopamine being released. It's being blown out, so to speak, being hit really hard. The way you'd feel if you're an addict, maybe doing it yourself. Now, let me change this. Forget about cocaine addict. Let's talk about a regular person, someone like you and me, but someone maybe who is sensitive to these junk foods. If that's the case, now look what happens. You still have that red area, that place that exhibits, you know, the tendency to have an addiction. But watch what happens when this person is shown junk food. What happens? Same thing. The red blows out. It's telling me that this brain is very similar to this brain. The cocaine addict's brain and the junk food brain are actually similar because they're both being affected the same way when we take in, in particular, sugar. So this is a real phenomenon being looked at by scientists for many reasons. You do this experiment for two months. So when you actually decide your six days was over, you might turn back to normal. How long does that take? About six days. For me, the first week was a bit tricky. I had a few headaches. I didn't sleep very well. But six days is very doable when you think about the rest of your life. Yeah, I think six days is a pretty good bargain. Here's the deal. When we come back, the one food Damon says he has, here is your argument. I'm going to find out if it's true, has the most sugar. And it's going to surprise you. It's actually something we think is healthy for us. That's next.