YOU WON'T GAIN A POUND!

IVY LEAGUE DOC: A new 'micro sponge' fiber traps caloriesso you can enjoy sugary, carby treats without the damage

- LISA MAXBAUER

FAST FACT THE AVERAGE AMERICAN ENJOYS 26 COOKIES DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON - Sanders Candy/OnePoll

Holiday cookies, pecan pie, cornbread stuffing, cocktails... World-renowned sugar expert Robert Lustig, M.D.—whose YouTube lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has been viewed 25 million times—knows people are going to eat more carbs than usual this time of year. He says, “We know processed food isn’t going away. Why not find a way to counteract it?”

So Dr. Lustig and his team painstakingly developed a dietary safety mechanism, which took 14 years to perfect. It’s a special type of engineered fiber being called a calorie-absorbing “micro sponge.”

Known as Monch Monch, it is 100% naturally derived from plants, including the konjac root. One serving can trap up to 24 grams of sugar in the body, so the sweet stuff isn’t processed. That reduces sugar spikes, fat storage, liver clogging and weight gain. Dr. Lustig says the goal is “improving health without limiting your choices.”

And boy does the world need more nutrition tools. “We have a metabolic health crisis,” says Dr. Lustig, who notes that 45% of adults have fatty liver disease, 50% are diabetic or prediabetic and 65% are overweight or obese.

How did this happen?

Dr. Lustig, an alum of both MIT and Cornell, says, “I can sum it up with two concepts: too much sugar; too little fiber.” Indeed, the average American’s sugar intake has risen from 1 tsp. to 22 tsp. daily—a 2,100% increase. And women eat an average of 335 more calories a day now than women in the prior generation.

Why? Over the years, food manufacturers have removed fiber from their products to lengthen shelf life. They also increased the amount of sugar to improve the palatability of these processed products.