Help Me, Help You - The Skinny on Obesity

It's nearly June and I've yet to be enthralled by much of anything at the movies, including the two films I reviewed this week, Hysteria and Men in Black 3. So far this year, television has made the biggest impression on me as I catch up on the shows I've missed -- Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Mad Men-- and even a few current programs -- Modern Family, 30 Rock, Community. Sometimes I wish I were a TV critic.

But what's kept me most interested this Spring is a series I've been working on for my "real job" at University of California Television, which now includes a YouTube original channel, UCTV Prime. The series is called "The Skinny on Obesity" and it features seven short episodes that make the case that sugar is a toxin that's fueling the obesity epidemic. This is a theory most publicly espoused by UCSF's Dr. Robert Lustig, whose 90-minute UCTV talk, "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," went viral, sparking national coverage that includes a recent "60 Minutes" segment with Sanjay Gupta. 

When YouTube awarded us with an original channel (the only university to be included in their historic effort to fund and develop original content on the platform), we knew we had to dig deeper into Dr. Lustig's message, which was obviously striking a chord in the public consciousness. Hence, "The Skinny on Obesity," which posted its final episode today.

Now, I 've had to watch these videos over and over again, in many different stages of completion. I've offered input and, more so, developed the complementary content for the programs on the UCTV website. I've also been swimming in YouTube annotations, playlists and comments. Who knew my job would one day be fiddling around on YouTube all day?

The point is, it's starting to sink in. I can sense a deep-rooted shift in how I think about food in my daily life now that I have a deeper understanding of how my body processes sugar and the biochemical impact it has on my brain and behavior. I'm making different food choices; just little ones for now, but ones that fall on the lifestyle changing spectrum, not a flash in the pan diet. Pretty cool job perk if you ask me.

Hope you'll watch the series too - -and spread the word! My day job may depend on it.