Dhru sat down with Dr. Richard Johnson to talk about his team’s discovery of the fructose-powered survival switch—a metabolic pathway that animals in nature turn on and off as needed, but that our modern diet has permanently fixed in the on position, becoming a fat switch—and how it has revolutionized the way we think about why we gain weight.

Dr. Richard Johnson is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver and has been a practicing physician and clinical scientist for over 25 years. He is internationally recognized for his seminal work on the role of sugar and its component fructose, in obesity and diabetes. His work has also suggested a fundamental role for uric acid (which is generated during fructose metabolism) in metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Johnson is a prolific scientist with research that has been funded by the National Institute of Health since the 1980s. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has published over 700 papers, lectured in over 45 countries, and is a highly cited scientist. He previously authored The Sugar Fix with Timothy Gower in 2008, and The Fat Switch in 2012. His new book is entitled Nature Wants Us to Be Fat and was published on February 8, 2022.